The GLOW 1992: Side Story, Maria Salas

Hope Is Fading

Maria comes awake.

She was, originally, tied and gagged but sensing very little fight in her the others have simply not returned either after the last potty break. Berg, beside her, is still bound. Even though they finally took the gag off of him, even needled him into talking, he has mostly stayed quiet.

The only sounds he has made has been a few sobs.

the burning bodies screaming friends dying a miscalculation death death death

Burning like it all will burn. Not long now. Twenty years. Almost as long as Maria has been alive, but also so very damned close.

Maria thuds her head against the wall. Why couldn't she see it coming? To try and stop it? If she even could. It's her friend Mucky all over again.

It kind of scares her to admit this, but she is pretty sure now after these past few hours: her sense of a future is all gone. Replaced only by the sounds of the friends and hippies burning to death. Painfully. Mostly harmless so-called eco-terrorists blistering and twisting away from the fire. Too late for some of them. Replaced by the face of...It.

Will she ever get her future sight, back? Does she want it back? Who the fuck knows?

How is Rosa? Jesus, her daughter.

They are in a fire tower. One that was abandoned. The space is no more than a hotel room, but the welding and new wood show the group have been repairing it for a while.

She had no sense, when she could sense such things, that Berg knew of its existence. This is the other group. The splinter group who thought the Ancient Terranauts weren't doing enough to spite the system.

Guns line the wall. Posters showing the local area with vulnerable targets. And posters of Saturday morning cartoons. Stuffed animals. The pink contrasting the military efficiency of the weaponry and signage. Like a young girl suddenly was turned into a radicalized soldier, or vice versa, in the middle of making this place.

Claus and Ellen, the two in charge, have not been here since the bindings were left off. They are no doubt getting ready for phase two of their plan.

Maria barely thinks of them. She just mostly thinks of the face. Standing there, over the fire. Over the trees. Over the fucking clouds. Hair touching the stars. Looking down. A face the size of a Florida county. Just a crack into a glimpse of how big it really was. Bending down. Smiling.

At her.

It was the goddamned kid. Tanya's boy.

I Can't Describe What I'm Feeling

Maria watches Berg and Erzse head around the corner of the building and disappear. She had risked propping the door open and glancing back out. A mixture of concern and paranoia. Concern that she is entangling more people into the madness. Paranoia that they might be listening.

"Are they gone?," the voice behind her asks.

"Like you don't know."

"My gift is caught up in other branches of the stream, right now. No reason to show off."

She turns and faces Finley Estevan. "Farsight." A man she loves like an adopted uncle or older brother, maybe like a father, though he's old enough to be practically a great-uncle to her.

In a normal world, people might talk about their odd mismatched relationship, not understanding The GLOW has offered them a deeper connection.

His eyes twitch independently of each other, glowing in Soulburn. She knows he is sorting through thousand of threads. His gift doesn't allow him to move any of them, but it does allow him to know right when to pluck them.

"Yes, they are gone."

"I'm granting you space to do this on the side since it does not interfere, but our goals come first. You know that right?"

She winces a bit at this. He's one of those jackasses who can say "our" so that it rhymes with, and means, "my." Sure, she reached out to him first but by this time she really wants this to be their plan. A team. She considers Fin to be the second most important person in her life. Only briefly does she wonder how many threads he might have carefully plucked to make her feel this way, but shoves the thoughts down.

He catches the wince, and sighs. "Look, Maria. I'm sorry. The time is close. Wisteria reports that he is ready to meet with Agent Blue and implant the suggestion to gather the Forked Tongue. Hedge magic in the moonshine. Knew it would sneak by that damned Nurse's eye.

He'll bring it with him, thinking to confront me with it, but we need to make sure the others get it. To have it there. Ok?"

"Yes, I know. This won't impact that."

At least, she hopes not. Maybe. She's not sure she cares.

Her Aunt Rosa, the third most important person in her life and her mother's much younger sister, had always talked about an even younger brother of them both. Mateo. They called him "La Espina," meaning "the thorn." "Tocado por Dios," is how Aunt Rosa had described him. A special kid, in that way Southern women say "special." Like "Bless your heart." A nicety that cuts like a dagger. Maria's grandparents parents had struggled to take care of Mateo. Ended up sending him to a home.

One whose name seemed destined by God. Thornrose. A place for a thorn. It was considered a good sign and it seems like the place had been excellent for him. Until it wasn't. Seventeen years ago, a teenaged Mateo was one of dozens of kids and their caretakers who had gone into the void. Local authorities did nothing. Aunt Rosa was eighteen at the time. Old enough to know, but way too young to know. Haunted by her little brother and the space left behind.

Maria's mom barely acknowledged her youngest sibling's absence. She already little Maria to dote upon, to try and turn into a doll. Maria sometimes hates her mom.

"Just make sure," Fin keeps talking ignoring her being off in another world, "That this goes down, please. I need you on this. Trust you. Otherwise we burn. She'll burn, too."

Maria chokes back the loudest "FUCK YOU!" she will ever have shouted. Rosa. Baby Rosa. Her baby. Whose gifts were already present in the womb, accelerating Maria's own. Her special child. Just hers. Currently at Aunt Rosa's house.

The vision of the ultimate Harrowing. Thousands screaming as the Soulburn sigils rip from their flesh.

And the crow. Flying overhead.

Somehow connected to Agent Blue.

"You can trust..."

Maria goes quiet as the front door chimes. Tanya is here. With the beads and curtains up, Maria sees her somewhat friend and so-so receptionist enter. For a second, Maria thinks she has brought her kid with her. Only a few blinks later and the kid at Tanya's hips is gone.

Maria knows, now, that Tanya's kid is not her kid. It's something much worse. Something into which their fates are bound.

She glances back and Fin is gone. She's not sure if he was ever physically here in the first place.

I Don't Exist in December

Maria waves off the offer of a drink and laughs a bit at the confusion on her friend Jerry's face as he goes, "Ohhhkay?," and then downs it himself.

She's risked a couple of cigarettes at the start of Larry and Tsu's annual holiday bash but is avoiding all alcohol. She'd say she was avoiding pot as well but the area is drenched in second hand highs. She's tried sticking to near the windows as best she can, but the cold outside means it will look a bit too weird if she opens them. She stares at the Christmas decorations as she pats the general location she assumes her little Rosa is sleeping, inside her, and realizes that it will only be another month or so before she is definitely showing.

Then the secret will be out. That'll be 1990, though. A whole new decade. New dreams. New hopes. And new...strangeness, like a horizon.

Maria's mom, a devout Catholic, has already fled the encroaching GLOW. Dad's been dead for five years or he might have prevented it for a time. Tendrils of Soulburn coming down from Wales. Talk in town is that Arbuck will connect Wales and Gaston to push The GLOW further south. A literal third space between two towns who don't give a shit if Arbuck exists.

Maria can already feeling it accelerating her own abilities to pluck at strands of the future. What started as a dumb hobby in tech school becoming a source of income. She has made plans to open up a shop down in the Medical Mall. The Arbuck strip unable to support enough genuine practitioners so the owners have decided to try and bring in a few new businesses on the cheap.

Soulburn has also awakened something else. She can feel it. The child in her. Better than her mama can ever be in so many ways. So strong she's making her mama stronger. That's what Aunt Rosa says, though her aunt means it in other ways than this.

"Mama's going to buy you a big house to grow up in, corazón."

Maria has never had a single vision about a house. That future is unknown to her. She's not yet ready to see it.

Ronny has already bounced, which seems a shame. He would have been a good father if he didn't have so many dumb friends. Ah, a tale as old as the Garden.

"They say you are going to open up your own palm reading joint," Mucky says, walking up to her. Mucky Barnwright. Tall, broad-shouldered woman. Mucky can't be her real name but she likes it so Maria likes it. As Jerry circles back around to hand Maria another glass of something blue and likely quite potent, Mucky stares him down. "She told you 'no,' asswipe."

Jerry bounces from the encounter.

"Damned boys can't see you patting your belly like that, all they think is that now that Ronny can't break their fingers they need to take a chance...no, don't fret, I won't tell if you don't want. Just seems obvious."

Maria smiles and leans against the much larger woman. She knows that Mucky will be dead in three months. Car accident. She also knows the drunk driver that hits Mucky would have gone on to take out a busload of kids coming back from a field trip the Tuesday after Memorial Day, had he not been killed along with this big beautiful person on a cold February morning. She had asked the cards what would happen if she stopped Mucky from going to work that morning, and got the even more harrowing vision back.

It's the first time, the first vision, that made Maria wonder if she should intervene.

She doesn't know if she's brave enough. If she has the right.

"Tarot cards," she says, trying to shake the fears from her mind. The sadness. The simple loss of self that knowing this much causes. Maria has always felt a bit out of sorts in the winter, but this time it is much worse.

"Eh?"

"Not palm reading. Tarot cards."

"Is there a difference?"

"No, not really."

Mucky chortles and takes another sip of beer. Maria has started to pull a cigarette to her own lips but Mucky yanks it and tosses it aside. Maria just laughs.

"Anyhow, miss mama to be, want to introduce you to someone. Family used to run The Green Heart before that all melted down. She's in need of work and she's trustworthy. Or, well, at least isn't the kind to stab you in the back. Same thing, this town."

As Mucky lead Maria to meet this new person, whose name is Tanya Green, Maria gets a glimpse of a woman that looks ten years older than her and also the same age. She's smoking from a bong and for a moment Maria comes to a complete stop. A young boy is standing there next to Tanya. Bedraggled. Shirtless. Skin so pale it looks like an aspirin. Hair as dark as the night sky.

"Who the fuck brings a kid to a place like this?," Maria asks. Her voice having an edge to it she didn't mean despite her choice of words. Suddenly furious. Because she is suddenly so scared it will take her days to realize this is the most frightened she has ever felt. Seeing the boy.

Mucky, not understanding, thinks Maria is talking about herself. "Oh, shit, right. Why don't you go on the back porch. Larry and Tsu have a heater set up. I'll get Tanya to come out and meet you."

It was a year later, after Maria had an urge to randomly pick up her new scrying glass and tap in a series of sigils that would call Finley Estevan, after the two of them had formed a strange friendship not unlike a father-daughter business partnership , after he told her about the Ultimate Harrowing and confirmed her dreams, that she realized she had been the only person in the room to see the kid clinging to Tanya. Possibly including Tanya, herself.

It is nearly three years later when she finally realized that pretty soon, everyone is going to know about The Kid. And that she, Maria Salas, now "Madame Sinister," had helped to bring that about.