Lifting the black dress over her head she slid it down over her body. The young girl turned around, only to be met with her own reflection staring back at her. (To her own disappointment) Red, bloodshot eyes and pale, unhealthy looking skin was only the beginning to her nightmare, her happiness and innocence seemed drained from her. The girl looked like a complete stranger even to herself. What she wouldn't give to see her mama again. Alive that was. She wiped away the last of the tears she would shed, with her gloved finger.

Taking the hand of her now distant father. They began to make the journey to the funeral home in complete silence. The car came to a halt 30 minutes later when the old black Chevy pulled up alongside the funeral home. Little Marie shuddered a bit just by the looks of the place, cold and dreary, opposite of a home and more of a prison. How could they have ever left her mother in that place? Why would she want to be there of all places? Marie being as young as she was now understood death, just not fully.

The shock shone in her young face as she bravely walked to the casket where her mother laid and peered into the casket. It took every inch of her being to stay conscious. Her once beautiful, happy, elegant mother, once full of life lay against the white silk lining of her coffin and final resting place.

'Imitation. That's what it is. That cant be her…. it just cant be.' She reassured herself quietly. Reaching out with her black lace gloves she touched the side of her mother's face. Withdrawing her hand from the cold the body gave off. Silent tears poured from her eyes-against her will- as she slid down the coffin's side crying uncontrollably.

"Mama…. why? WHY?"

Clinging to the side of the coffin the girl was lifted as easily as any doll and placed on the nearby ground. Behind the veil of tears, the girl seen with alert eyes and broken heart as "her" coffin was lifted into the dark shaft of cold space of unwelcoming earth; the priest's words of comfort and mixed sorrow drowned out by cries of the family and carried away by the wind.

"Bye mama…" the little girl croaked as she clenched onto the silver heart locket, the last reminder of her mother.