"Maaariahhhhhhh"... a whispered, echoing memory jolted her awake.  For a few seconds she might have been in her bed for all she knew.  It was dark, she was curled on her side.  She wanted to sink back into the dream...Marcia was there. 

     The wisps of the dream dissipated as reality seeped into Mariah's consciousness like the chill night air that surrounded her.  The pain in her arm quickly brought her to the present as scenes of the day flashed through her mind.  The memorial service, her mother's tirade, speeding off on her brother's motorcycle because her mother's car was blocking her own.  The dangerous drive up the twisting ribbon of road that lead to the cabin by an inexperienced biker.

Their cabin, their childhood playhouse by the pond, Marcia's grave...poor Marcia. It was her face Mariah saw as she gouged at her arm with the knife.  Her face she was literally dying to see again because the pain of being without her was just too much to bear any longer. Marcia's face...identical to her own, well ten years ago it was, until she died.

Ten years ago to the day.

Mariah groaned and she rolled to her back and the chilly dew of the grassy hill she lay on soaked through her linen top. Would Marcia's face still be in the perfect bloom of a fifteen year old, she wondered. Would they be different in the hereafter since they died so far apart?  Cupping her throbbing arm, she slowly pulled herself up to sit.  Her hair, matted with tears, was stuck to her cheek, and when she reached up to brush it back, the moonlight reflected the black shadow of blood on her hand.

Since Marcia died, Mariah had been striving to fill the hole that was left.  It proved to be impossible.  The space she was to take up in the world had been designed for two to fill. Twins. Try as she might, Mariah was never enough to fill what Marcia was to their family.

What they didn't understand was that they weren't enough to fill up what Marcia was to Mariah.  When, at fifteen, she had been utterly torn in half.  She could only be half happy, half mad, half sad. Well, that wasn't true, she was twice as sad.  She felt she had only been able to take half breaths these last ten years, all the while performing her smiles to carry her family along and trying to live her half life.

Seems she could only half kill herself as well.  Damn it all.

Bringing herself to her feet, Mariah looked around. The moon was low in the sky and shimmered on the surface of the pond.  She shuddered at the memory of Marcia's voice calling her name and waking her.  Her voice had grown fainter over the years.  That was the real reason Mariah felt more like dying today than any day in the last ten years, she couldn't let the day come when Marcia's voice faded forever.

Into the night, Mariah opened her dry, pained throat and screamed out again, only this time, she screamed Marcia's name...then her own...After all her voice was supposed to be the same.  Right?