Does Your Lack of Conscience Tell You Everything's Alright?

Dead oak tress are scattered around the span in front of me. The grass is dead for the most part. Everything seems so grey. No one stands next to me or anywhere near me for that matter. There is no sign of life. Even the air is standing still.

Where am I?

The last thing I remember is taking a knife to my wrist and collapsing to the floor. Now I'm in this desolate area? What the hell is going on?

"Do you really want to know?" a voice asks from behind me.

It sounds vaguely familiar. A voice from a fleeting childhood memory. But I can't pinpoint which memory.

I turn to face the owner of the voice. My jaw slacks. The girl in front of me smirks. Her dirty blonde hair flows even in the lack of wind. She's taller than me but wears the clothes of a young child; she is clearly too old to be wearing the pink, ruffled attire. Compared to the day I saw her in her casket and in my parents' house, she looks so normal, so calm.

Except for the two bullet holes in her chest.

"Marie?" I ask.

"Very good, you remembered, Alice. You were so young when I saw you last," Marie says.

"Am I dead?" I ask.

That's the only possible explanation, right?

"Not yet," she offers no other explanation.

"Then what's going on?"

"You're in your own head."

"So I didn't die?"

"Like I said, not yet."

I'm so confused and I don't have time to be playing mind-games with a fifteen year old.

"I am older than you technically," Marie says.

She can hear me think? That's fucking creepy.

"Well, we are in your head. I can hear everything."

"Why are you here?" I ask.

"To knock some fucking sense into you, not in the literal sense of the phrase," she answers, still calm.

"Why?"

"Because you're an idiot," she states.

Ouch.

"Don't you see what you have," she asks. "You have a chance to go on with life and you're going to throw it away like this?"

"But Jeffery—," she cuts me off

"Oh shut up," she yells, "What the fuck is wrong with you? If I were given a chance to live my life, I would take it."

"I keep thinking about him though," I mumble.

"I know he hurt you but you have people willing to help you. Don't you think you're hurting them by doing this?"

"Jeffery taught me that no one cares and he's right."

"Oh, really? What about Alex?" she asks.

I pause.

Alex. The one man who's dedicated everything to make me feel okay. He deserves better.

"It doesn't matter anymore."

"Do you want to end up where I ended up? Do you want to be six feet under the ground in a tiny box that could make a claustrophobic person have a panic attack? You are meant to live your life with Alex. You can't do that if you're dead," Marie says.

"I'm going to die anyway, right?"

"Not if you fight for your life. You made a fucking mistake putting that blade to your wrist like that."

"You know, you say 'fuck' a lot for a fifteen year old," I state.

"You know, you're pretty stupid for a nineteen year old," she retaliates.

I didn't know she could be that mean. She was nothing but nice to me when we played games at my parents' home.

"Look," she starts, "You need to pull yourself out of this. You need to forget about Jeffery. You need to wake up and accept the help people are offering you."

"What if I don't wake up?"

"Then you'll die. You're not dead yet but you're pretty fucking close."

Maybe I want to die.

"Just remember, you are a human and you do deserve to live freely," Marie quotes my speech in the graveyard.

Maybe she's right.