( TW: blood, violence, gore )

November 29th, 2002
9:03 P.M.
Margaret's POV

Margaret Johnson, clad in a pair of light blue pajamas and purple fuzzy house slippers, sat in her recliner in the empty living room as she attempted to finish reading The Green Mile by Stephen King. It was the last thing she wanted to achieve before she went to bed and turned in for the night. After all, there was nothing else to do in this house now that Christina no longer lived there with her. In fact, despite being sad that the house was vacant practically 24/7, Margaret had a lot more free time to do whatever she wanted.

And that was just the problem.

Margaret had more free time, besides her job as the head librarian at the local public library located about ten minutes away.

And she was very lonely.

Ever since Christina had moved into her Manhattan apartment in August, everything always seemed eerily... silent.

The almost fifty-four year old woman (her birthday was on Christmas Eve) hated the quiet. She utterly despised it.

But she just had to get used to it.

When her now broken family had once been complete, the house was often filled by quite a bit of noise; she would often hear the sink water running as she and Christina washed their dishes and dried them off together, she would hear the clinking of forks against plates as she, Michael, and Christina ate dinner together at the kitchen table, she would overhear her now ex-husband's cheers from the living room whenever his favorite football team would score a touchdown, and she would hear little Christina's yells of happiness whenever she won a board game or hid well in a game of Hide & Seek.

Now those sounds didn't reverberate in her home anymore...

The quiet almost terrified her.

When Christina was twelve, Margaret had still been naive and believed that Michael still loved her, even after twenty years of marriage. After all, they had been college sweethearts (having met when they were sophomores in the same university) and, when they had gotten married back in 1973 fresh out of college, they were the happiest they had ever been together.

They had waited for a whole decade to have Christina as they settled into their quiet little farmhouse in Missouri and those ten years were the most blissful of their entire marriage.

That was until Michael joined the U.S. Army when Margaret was five months pregnant with their only child....

That meant that he hadn't been there when his daughter was born....

And, when he finally got to meet an eight month old Christina when he came back home, he didn't seem to care all that much. After all, the army had taken a complete toll on him and Michael had completely changed. He was no longer the loving and supportive husband that put his family first, he mostly preferred being alone after returning home.

That shattered Margaret's heart.

Despite this, she had tried to maintain a healthy marriage with Michael but, whenever she would try to comfort him or put a smile on his face, he would always brush her off or walk away.

At that point, they both knew that they were staying married for their child; it was to the point that they had put up an act around Christina whenever she was nearby, and they pretended to still be the loving couple that had fallen head over heels for one another in college. But they had clearly fallen out of love many years prior, but they weren't ready to admit that.

It didn't surprise Margaret when, on March 8th, 1995, Michael had walked right up to her as she was serving dinner (a pre-teen Christina was taking a nap upstairs) and slapped the divorce papers onto the kitchen table.

She had seen it coming, after all, but she didn't want to have to do it herself.

But the actual reason Michael wanted a divorce came as an earth-shattering surprise to her.

Apparently, her own damn husband had been having an affair with the receptionist at the same building he worked in. And for three years, no doubt!

And, according to Michael, he had gotten the other woman pregnant. He had gotten her pregnant, for crying out loud!

And he didn't want Christina to know anything about that part.

So that meant that Margaret had been hiding something extremely important from her own daughter for the past seven years and she felt immensely guilty about it. She would have told her ages ago if it hadn't been for Michael changing his phone number after he left and emphasizing that she nor Christina should ever call him. So, even if she told her daughter everything, she was frightened that she wouldn't believe her.

Besides, she didn't want to hurt her only child even more than she already had been when her father left.

So, with her eyes filled with tears, Margaret had signed the divorce papers with shaking hands and Michael left her life forever after packing his things.

God, she hated him. She really did. It didn't matter that he had left her, but it infuriated her that he hadn't even bothered to call her to check on their daughter; it was as if she didn't exist to him anymore, now that he had another wife and child to worry about way more.

Apparently, Allyson was way more 'good-looking' than Margaret and that was why Michael had the affair. But she knew that wasn't true. Allyson was just younger by almost a decade and she was able to have kids, unlike she could now. She didn't even know the other woman very well, but she hated her as well; she caused Michael to completely abandon his own child just because she was younger and she had given him another – 'more important' to him – child.

She prayed to God that the bastard would never show his face around her or Christina ever again. If he did, she would probably kill him herself....

Margaret closed the book and sighed heavily to herself, burying her slightly wrinkled face in her trembling hands. She hated that this was something she thought every single day, but she hadn't been able to stop ever since the divorce; she had never felt so enraged when that pathetic excuse for a man walked out of their house for the last time. She hadn't even been able to say anything, and she hadn't been able to beg for Michael to stay, and she had felt like a coward that day.

But, now that she had more time to ponder over what exactly had happened, she was actually glad that she hadn't asked him to stay married to her. In fact, she was pretty fucking happy that he had left, but she was still overall heartbroken that he had thrown Christina's care for him away as if it were an old toy. She just wished he would never come back into her life ever again.

A sudden noise came from the small downstairs bathroom and the middle-aged woman whipped her head around as she stared in the direction. The first thing that occurred to her was that she had left something on the sink in there the wrong way and it had toppled over, but a sudden feeling hit her gut that she couldn't describe.

She often organized that bathroom, so there was no possible way that she had misplaced something incorrectly.

Her mind instantly went to the worst possibility.

What the hell was that? she thought to herself.

"Is somebody in there?" she called out nervously.

No answer.

Margaret wasn't normally the kind of woman that felt fear; she was someone that had never gone through anything particularly horrific in her entire life, after all. It must've been the confidence that she had passed down to her daughter, especially since she had used it to her advantage to protect her child. But something she was always scared of was the scenario of somebody breaking into her house; just the thought of that made her heartbeat begin to pick up speed.

She stood up from her recliner after setting it back to where it was before, and she slowly crossed the living room and to the kitchen. After rounding the corner, she reached for the doorknob of the bathroom but she paused for a brief moment, not sure if she should make her next move. After all, nobody could have been in there and she could have just been hearing things. A side effect of me getting older, she thought. At the same time... what if someone was in there?

How long had they been in there?

She started to think about the opportune chances she would have to make as soon as she opened that door. She figured that, if nobody was in there, she would scold herself for hearing things or pick up whatever had fallen in there. But... if someone was in there...

She would have no idea what she would do...

Margaret gently twisted the knob and swung the door open, revealing a mostly dark bathroom; the light from above the stove in the kitchen was the only source of light that showed the sink. So, in that case, the woman couldn't see a single thing when she first looked in, and she had to squint her eyes. That didn't help so she resorted to slowly reaching for the light switch and flipping it.

The bright light bulb illuminated the room almost instantly and it somewhat blinded Margaret for a moment. But, once she adjusted her eyesight, she was met with something she would never in a million years have expected to see.

At first, it seemed to be a weirdly-shaped silhouette that stood directly next to her sink; but, for at least three seconds, Margaret identified it to be a person dressed in the strangest costume she had ever seen. It looked to be green and extremely bulky, which made whoever it was tower over the short woman more than he already did, and the suit was adorned with some kind of face. No, not a face. A mask. It looked almost devilish. And she was able to see two green eyes where she should have seen eye lenses over them, and they were staring back at her with hatred.

Margaret suddenly came to the terrifying realization of who was standing in her bathroom.

Just as she did, however, the man's right fist swung upward and the light bulb shattered with an extremely loud smashing sound, and the bathroom was covered in darkness once more.

Margaret let out a shriek of shock and yanked the door shut, holding the doorknob tightly for just a moment. She took several deep breaths as she tried to process what in the world she just saw in her own damn bathroom.

How in the hell did the Green Goblin get into my house?! she thought frantically.

But, for some reason, her mind wouldn't let her think straight as an idea hit her head: run. She had to get the fuck out of her house and get to the nearest neighbor before it was too late.

She began to move away from the bathroom, risking the Green Goblin following her through the house.

All of a sudden, a green gloved hand busted through the wooden door, sending splinters flying across the kitchen as the Goblin grabbed Margaret by the face, forcefully pulling her back to the now damaged door. The shock of the moment made the woman unable to respond at first, not expecting what was happening to happen.

But, once she finally registered what was happening, she let out a blood-curdling scream when she saw that she was literally face to face with that nightmarish mask. That was when the Green Goblin took her by the head and slammed her against the doorway around a dozen times, each time leaving her even more disoriented as she struggled to escape his grasp on her. One particular time her forehead struck the doorway, she started to feel a streak of blood run down the left side of her face afterwards, and that just made her screech more.

"LET ME GO!" she bellowed in fear and agony, her pulse ricocheting against her neck like a hammer to a nail.

After thirty seconds of struggling against the superhuman monster and the gash on the side of her head growing wider, deeper, and bloodier, the woman finally pried herself from the Green Goblin's grip and she toppled to the floor. Adrenaline rushing through her body, Margaret scrambled to her feet and sprinted for the front door despite slipping on the hardwood floor several times. Lunging for the door, she tried to unlock the deadbolt hurriedly, but her hands were now bloody from cutting them on the broken chunk of the door that was gone, so they kept sliding off of the doorknob.

Crying out with frustration, she sighed with utter relief when she finally got the door to open.

A powerful hand dug its fingers into her brown hair and dragged her away from the open doorway to freedom, making her wail in excruciating pain as she tried to fight her attacker off, but to no avail.

Being jerked to the floor and hearing the front door slam shut extremely loudly, Margaret began sobbing hysterically as she weakly crawled away, the energy she had within her suddenly draining and leaving her with no hope. She could feel the presence of whoever the hell was attacking her behind her and the sound of heavy and furious breathing emanated from behind her, making her whimper from paralyzing horror. She no longer had the strength to get up or run, since she was utterly petrified.

"Please leave me alone!" she shrieked, begging the intruder to leave her be and spare her.

An iron grip around her ankle pulling her back to where she was made her yell out and claw at the wooden floor, her fingernails scraping against the panels. She then felt herself being forcefully turned to be on her back and she was staring right up at the Green Goblin; she opened her mouth to plead with him but, as though he had no mercy, he grabbed her by the collar of her nightshirt and lifted her off of the floor, making her try to punch at him to get him to let her go.

But her hits at his armored suit were no use and the Green Goblin used his free hand to grab something off of the side table next to the sofa. He held it out in front of Margaret, shaking it in her face but she was too delirious to focus on what he was doing.

"Where is she?!" he shouted, shaking the object in her face again.

Margaret finally got herself together despite her tears and she squinted her eyes to see what he was holding in front of her. Her eyes then widened to the size of saucers when she finally processed everything.

"WHERE IS SHE?!" the Green Goblin screamed.

He was holding a picture frame that contained a photo of a sixteen-year-old Christina that was taken on Christmas Day three years prior. The blonde had a grin on her face as she held a stuffed animal in her arms and the sight of that made Margaret tear up at the memory, thinking that this would be the last time she would ever remember that.

But then the Green Goblin's question finally resonated in her mind.

Where is she?

He wasn't here for her... he was looking for Christina.

He was looking for her daughter....

Flashbacks to when she had seen everything that happened at the World Unity Festival on the news almost five months prior hit Margaret like a train.

She remembered Christina being on that balcony that broke apart and that she had almost died.

And she was being targeted again....

Margaret's pure terror transformed to utter rage and protectiveness as her blood began to boil and her face twisted into an expression of fury. She then swatted the photo out of the Goblin's hand and spit on his mask.

"I'M NOT TELLING YOU SHIT!" she roared in his face. "YOU LEAVE MY BABY ALONE!"

That resulted in her getting thrown back down onto the floor and she grunted from the pain that was left on her spine.

"Tell me where she is and I'll let you live!" the Goblin yelled back at her, kneeling down to look her directly into her eyes with his eyes that were filled with loathing.

"NO!" Margaret howled savagely, her eyes filled with utter hatred now. "I'M NOT TELLING YOU WHERE SHE IS!"

She then closed her eyes, preparing for the agonizing death that was awaiting her and she didn't care about that. She wouldn't dare tell this son of a bitch where her daughter was, despite clearly knowing where she was at the current moment. Christina had gone back to her apartment after visiting Aunt May in the hospital and she had called Margaret twenty minutes ago. But she wouldn't say a word. She would never give her child's location away, always wanting her baby to be perfectly safe.

She would rather die than give her own daughter up to whoever the hell this was.

"That's okay," the Goblin replied in a much softer and more soothing tone, which made her eyes fly open in confusion.

The man above her then gripped Margaret by the neck and lifted her up off of the ground so she couldn't look away. He then started squeezing her throat madly.

The middle-aged woman began to cough and choke on her own oxygen as she desperately fought the Green Goblin back with everything she had within her. She punched at him with her bloody hands and thrashed her legs around but, despite everything she tried, none of it worked. She gritted her teeth and raised one of her hands to remove the monstrous mask that was staring back at her, and she lifted it off of the man's face. Her eyes grew wide with recognition as she saw who was under the mask, and she let out a sob mixed with a cough.

"N... N-Nor... Norman...?" she croaked out through the tight hold he had on her throat, her eyes filling with more tears.

"Because I already know where she is," the man snarled with a satisfied grin on his face.

Just as Margaret's eyes were rolling into the back of her head and her life was about to slip away, Norman Osborn took his hands that were holding her neck and brought them to her jaw. In one swift motion, he twisted her head around in a one-hundred-eighty degree angle, and he heard her neck snap violently.

Margaret Johnson was dead before she hit the floor.

A/N: i'm so sorry...

-denbroughswife