The sun blazed down on St. Mary’s Cemetery as a young-ish woman plodded along the asphalt
path at an uninspiring clip, readjusting her layered tank tops and running belt while wiping sweat from her lip periodically.

“I don’t know why I do this to myself; this used to be enjoyable,” she thought as she rounded the
corner and narrowly avoided a smear of toxic-coloured Canadian goose shit.

It was becoming harder and harder for her to ignore the limitations time and living had imposed on her body; what used to be a lean, supple machine with plenty of stamina was now waking up regularly to a growing host of bodily discomforts and pains.

These days, she was finding it difficult to climb stairs without puffing at the top; it was painful to
stand when she was sitting for long periods (which was often the way of it); she yearned for the
ache of sore muscles in a good way, instead of the internal rebellion she had been trying to quell lately. She wasn’t sure if it was stress or age or both, but even after tweaking her diet, she wasn’t seeing results.

So it was back to running again.

She remembered running in her 20s, being able to wake up in a beam of mid-morning light
before leisurely quaffing a cup of coffee while reading, and heading out for a 5K for breakfast,
but she doesn’t have the time, energy, or resources she used to have, then.

Things had grown harder since then, more complicated.

“Just be grateful you got out here at all,” she rebuked herself as she stretched her arms behind
her back. “Be happy you got out.”

A blackbird called from a cattail down the slope toward the water. Come Autumn, this part of the verge would be bursting with rowan berries, plump, ample, and bitter — just like her.

She was coming up to a bench that she would ordinarily do leg rotations on (her left hip joint had an unfavourable way of sticking and needing to pop during the first kilometre, lately), but there was a young and slight woman on it with a few tote bags splayed around her, and she was rummaging through them underneath an oversized black straw hat.

“I don’t suppose you have a lighter on you?” The woman in the black straw hat hailed the runner as she went by.

“Um, no sorry I don’t,” she replied, halting her pace and teetering from leg to leg to continue the momentum. “Hey, I like your septum piercing.”

“Thanks.” The woman continued pawing through her bags. “I swear it’s here, I had it, I just, you
know? There are too many places where it could possibly be.” The woman held a cigarette in her hand, tsk-ed, and threw it loose into one of her bags.

“My name’s Mary,” the young-ish runner offered, pausing her repetitive movements.
“I’m Isabel,” the lady in black leaned back on the bench, interested. “You look familiar, or
maybe you remind me of someone. Anywho, how do you like the statue?”

“What statue?” Mary asked.

“You’ve never seen the statue? It’s right there,” Isabel gestured, jerking her a slender thumb over
her shoulder and stretching her arms along the back of the bench. “It’s something of an urban
legend around here, actually.” Isabel grinned.

“I’m new in town,” Mary answered, looking past the bench. “So what’s the deal, which statue is
it?”

Isabel stood up and smoothed her lacy skirts, invigorated.

“I’ll show you.”

Isabel moved from behind the bench towards a small copse of dwarfed evergreen trees that didn’t quite seem to fit in with the maples and oaks that otherwise accented the paths and tombs veining the cemetery.

“Here she is,” Isobel gestured widely, with flourish.

Looming above them at ten feet tall, in the mossy green and black patina of old weathered
things, the monument stood on a marbled rock, head lifted upward and wings spread back, as
though poised for ascension; the hands held various parts of the being’s robe, and by design or
circumstance, watermarks gave the impression of tears running down the facade and into them.

“Thy woman's form, in soft voluptuousness, Enriches vacant air in yon recess”

“Mary Wallstonecraft wrote that — yet another Mary. I’ve always thought the angelic form was
decidedly feminine. But: gender.” Isabel clucked her tongue, dismissing the word and squinting into the distance. “Well, what do you think?”

“It’s a beautiful monument…whose grave does it mark?” Mary looked down, beginning to read
the eroded epigraph.

“Some guy who lived here, long time ago. Heya!” Isabel waved to an older gentleman in a
brown suit who happened to be walking by leisurely.

​

“And what’s the urban legend?” Mary asked.

“Hm?” Isabel continued to watch the man recede down the path, eyes narrowing against the glare of the bright morning sun.

“You mentioned that there was an urban legend attached to the statue, well what was the
legend?”

“Oh, that,” Isabel turned back to Mary. “Well: they say that the eyes have been known to enchant people, as in, people who’ve looked into them will find themselves returning to the cemetery again as though possessed, and that the angel watches over the lost souls amongst the graves.”

“Creepy,” Mary said, back up at the statue.

“Do you feel the eyes on you, now?” Isabel asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Ah, no, I don’t really believe in all that stuff.”

“Suit yourself,” Isabel replied, nonchalant.

“Well, I’d better finish this run up and get heading back,” Mary got back to stretching. “It was
nice meeting you.”

“See you around,” Isabel smiled.

*

Midafternoon and Mary was running her cemetery route again; it was close to home and she
liked to repeat routes the better to gauge her progress which in the case of today, was slow and
not noteworthy.

“It’s not the one run that matters, but all the runs,” she reminded herself, huffing along.

Was comparison still the thief of joy if one was comparing oneself to oneself?

Mary came upon a familiar figure as she was nearing the statue once more.

“Hey, Isabel, right?”

“Hey, Mary.”

Isabel was once more toting and rummaging through multiple shopping bags, tipping her dark
sunhat up and her Hollywood sunglasses down as she tried to find what she was looking for.

“Hey, you don’t have a lighter, do you?”

​

“No, sorry, I don’t smoke. Hey I like your septum piercing.”

“Hmm? Oh yeah, thanks. Ugh, what can you do?” Isabel threw another loose cigarette into one
of the bags. “How’s your run going today?”

“It could be better, to be honest.”

“Isn’t that always the way?” Isabel puffed and slumped back on the bench, away from the bags
laid out before her.

Around the bend, behind the freaky trees, the unmitigated, boisterous laughter of overgrown
children punctured the midday still of the cemetery.

The women looked to each other in tandem, and then rounded the bend together.

A pack of teenagers surrounded the angelic monument, tinny, sample-ridden and auto-tuned
lackadaisical chanting coming from somewhere within the throng. Two girls were at the base of
the statue, leaning into each other, passing something between them and talking quietly as three
boys tossed a ball of sorts amongst themselves in a guy triangle.

In the background, on the path, the gentleman with the brown suit and was standing with his
hands on his cane, paused and watching the scene.

“Kids these days; no respect for the dead,” Mary shook her head. “Although, it looks like those
girls may have a light, if you’re still looking. “You should go on up there and ask.”

“Ech, I’d rather not, Mary,” Isabel sighted, grimacing through her sunglasses. “I try to avoid
young folks at all costs, whenever feasibly possible.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s embarrassing to be reminded that I was once that embarrassing, I suppose. C’mon, let’s go
back, I’ve left my parcels.”

*

Over the next few weeks Mary continued to return to the cemetery and use its paths as a trail for her running. She didn’t seem to be making any marked improvements in her distance or pacing, but she reminded herself to be patient, and that any day in her running shoes brought her closer to where she needed to be. Mary would often run into Isabel coming back from shopping, laden with bags, and chat briefly, or nod and smile while passing the gentleman in the brown suit on his leisurely stroll, and for the first time since the move, she felt she was starting to belong to her new surroundings.

“I can’t wait to fit into my old jeans again,” Mary thought to herself as she finished another loop. “I’m getting tired of wearing activewear.”

​

*
Mary realized, as though being jarred out of a dream, that she was back in the cemetery, but it
was nighttime, and she had no recollection of having got there. She felt as though she had been
plucked from the sky and dropped, and though there was a fog rolling in from the lake and
though it was dark, she had the impression of an impervious veil having been lifted. Certain
familiar objects seemed sharper, and Mary found it all to be deeply disturbing and spooky.

Out of habit rather than anything else, Mary began jogging, and she ended up at the angel statue, which was in a sorry state. Dislodged from its pedestal, the statue had been tipped and tagged with some illegible spray-painted moniker across the wingspan, now staring face-down into the wet earth as though in a final act of benediction.

“What the…?”

“Ugh I know, right? Why do kids suck so hard?” Isabel emerged from behind the freaky trees,
many paper bags hanging off her forearms, an unlit cigarette dangling from her darkly sticked
lips.

“Hey, I like your septum piercing,” Mary offered.

Isabel flung all of her purchases in all of her bags onto the foggy wet of the grass, and huffed.

“Are you really going to tell me you haven’t figured it out yet, Mary? Are you not the least bit
concerned that your only immediate recollections are going on shit runs in this cemetery? Where
were you before this, and where are you going after, and what’s my name, as I’ve told you
endless times before, pray tell?”

Mary was gobsmacked.

She couldn’t remember a thing.

Isabel began groping throughout her bags. “My God, what I wouldn’t do for a freaking lighter round here!!” She rounded on Mary. “Boo, Baby; we’re all dead here.”

Mary took a moment. She could see the brown-suited gentleman shuffling from around the
corner, bowing his head and smiling gently as though commiserating with her and this
information.

“Well, I mean, I guess that explains a lot."

“Mhmm.”

“So is this my ghost outfit, then?” Mary gestures down to her running ware that fit her better five
years ago. “And it won’t ever change?”

Isabel nodded.

“That’s mighty disappointing.”

“Isn’t it, just?” Isabel dropped the cigarette dangling from her lips haphazardly into one of her
shopping bags.
“Isn’t. It. Just.”

*

The sun blazed down on St. Mary’s Cemetery as a young-ish woman plodded along the asphalt
path at an uninspiring clip.

“Mind over matter,” Mary reminded herself as she chugged along the path, conjuring all manner of inspirational platitudes before passing a girl dressed head-to-toe in black with shopping bags strewn around her, an elderly man in a brown suit holding a cane, and an angel statue over a grave plate that had been righted and restored after being vandalized.

Mary had a funny feeling just then, an uneasy dreamlike sensation as though she were on stage
and everyone else was waiting for her to say her lines. She dismissed the discomfort and
continued around the bend, now out-of-sight from strangers, and finishing yet another loop in her daily run.

Mary knew one thing for certain: she really, really liked the look of that woman’s septum piercing.

M.F. Sutherland is a writer and editor living in Peterborough, Ontario. Sutherland has most recently been published in SQUID Literary & Arts Magazine, with poems in Chouette Literary and The Morgue Literary forthcoming. If you like, follow her writing on Instagram at: @megs.dregs