Beneath the Stars
By Gold Sparrow
The Life and Death of Alice Marsden
Once upon a time, life was simple. She was...how old was she? Seven? And she was in first grade, right? Yeah. That was it.
Seven and a like a doll, some would say. Alice didn't think that was true, but people would say it. People were nice...mostly. Honestly, her seventh year of life was very blurry, but she remembers what really stuck.
Alice Marsden used to have long hair.
Long, pale-as-snow hair that her mother brushed and cut and tended to everyday before going to school, and sometimes after. She remembers a hand, so tiny and fat, reaching up and tugging on it, giggling and squealing when she chased after the culprit.
And when she caught that little criminal, she heaved him into the air so he was in front of the sun. At the time it felt like a rose-tinted memory, even as it was happening. Arms spread wide, joy filling the face, and it's too bright, too perfect.
The pretty filter is gone, and everything becomes clear.
White walls. White furniture. White...everything. She remembers the room, and the monitors all around her. Alice remembers being weak, really, truly weak, and helpless as the doctors held her life in their white-gloved hands.
A woman, someone pretty like a picture and fake like one too, simpering and checking her manicured nails when her father wasn't paying attention. Who was she?
She'd forgotten the face of her father's girlfriend.
"Your mother and I are seperated. Both of us just need to take a break from the stress…" The stress of your only daughter being terminally ill? You need a break? What about her? Sick, sad, pained her? "And I wanted to introduce you to-"
What was her name again?
When he thought Alice was asleep, he whispered something in the woman's ear and glass broke. No- that was just her excuse for a flirtatious giggle. What a-
Her father smiles, and guides her by the waist out of the room, never even taking a look back. Good thing too, because then he'd see her tears that crawled and clawed through her lashes.
"You could have said goodbye…" She whispers, the only thing she said the whole visit.
Harmony. Too pretty a name for such a blackhearted woman.
The rest really was a blur. When it wasn't light it was dark, when she wasn't sleeping she was awake, counting down the hours until she was tired enough to rest again. It was hopeless, Alice realized, to try to get up. Her lungs, something about her lungs, was definitely wrong. She could barely move, and that meant that she needed to use one of those stupid portable toilet thingys when nature called.
And it had to be a guy to help her do it.
EVERY TIME.
At least she had the soaps to look forward to.
Years passed like snails, but visits came too often. Sometimes it was just dad, other times just mom. She doesn't remember a time when both were in the same room smiling. But they came at the same time on a few occasions.
They didn't talk a lot, and when they did, it was about the illness, and the test results, and the miracle to save her that probably wouldn't happen. Her father married Harmony. Her little brother, that sweet thing that tugged her hair, turned twelve.
He almost never got to visit. But when he did, he gave her biggest, dorkest smile she'd ever seen and squeezed her hand too tightly for her not to cry out.
When you've been as sick as she, every little pinprick of pain gets amplified a hundred fold. He would always promise to be gentler next time, but he was jock, a football star, and he couldn't help but mismanage his strength.
Her sweet little brother.
She missed him everyday.
From his blond hair that shimmers pale gold when it hit the light, and the bright pools of blue that take up too much space on his face, to the youthful curves of babyfat waiting to be shed and leave behind a handsome man made her love him so much. Plus his over excitement and enthusiasm made her feel…not hopeful. Alice was never hopeful. But maybe…
Happy.
So happy that she wanted to live for the next time she saw him, for the next day and update on the annoying linebackers on his team. Even if that meant listening to Harmony and her dad coo at each other, and her mother's condescending words and tone.
Ah, but she didn't.
Pain is different for everyone, Alice was sure of it. Physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain. Each hurts, and each causes a effect on the life of the person, no matter how big or small. Some can handle a lot of pain, but other cannot.
It is not a matter of strength, as much as we would like it to be, but a matter of your will. And having a weak will is not something to be sad about. Who cares if you break easily? It's about what you accomplish that counts.
For Alice, her pain was an agony. She had a weak will, she'll admit. But still…her lungs burned, and her throat was constricted, like she ran a marathon. She wanted to scream, to beg for it to be over, but the air wouldn't come, and the spasms of her body rolled her onto her sides. Vaguely, she felt hands touching her, pinning her to the gurney, but she then began to scream. An animalistic, barbaric scream that echoed out of her mouth and out the hallway, alerting the entire hospital of the pain of Alice Marsden.
The scream stopped abruptly, and she tried to get breath. Once again, it didn't come. She was forced to jerk around like a fish out of water and something...foamy dribbled out of the corner of her mouth, and down her chin onto her throat.
Someone was shouting, and another was whispering into her ear.
Alice had no idea what he was saying, or if it was a he.
Only excruciating agony pounding like a sledgehammer through every nerve in her body.
Alice met Jane when she was fifteen. She also died about two weeks later, though that is another story for another time. There was nothing particularly interesting about the girl, in fact, there didn't seem to be anything eye-catching at all. She was...plain.
Brown hair. Not like like hot coco, not like dark chocolate. She didn't smell good, but not bad either, sort of like too-sweet-too-sour air freshener, but not strong at all. Her eyes were the same shade as her hair, and they didn't look bored or calm but blank.
Her features blended in with one another so well that she could barely tell them apart. Honestly, she just didn't seem important or newsworthy.
The girl just was.
The uniform- red pants, a white starch shirt and white apron to boot- showed her that this was the volunteer the hospital had gotten to help with the patients. She was carrying something, a yellow bouquet with girly, frilly flowers. She raised an eyebrow and regarded the girl she was to watch.
Alice fought the urge to laugh.
Yes, look upon this stick thin girl with a shaved head, whose blue eyes hold no life and pale skin show the blue and red veins the run across the flesh like the scars on her chest. Laugh at her, mock her, for this is the life she so generously was given.
Jane, the nametage read, Jane Hullburg.
The girl didn't say a word though, merely set the flowers up on her bedside table in a vase. Then she said, in a monotone voice that was somehow incredibly haunting,
"They're poppies"
"..." She's heard the name before, and a distant, far off memory of the good old days flutters on the corner of her mind, a park and a tour and a ice cold lemonade for the heat of the summer.
"Don't tell me you've never seen poppies before?"
"..." Of course she has, Alice hasn't been here forever.
She has...right?
"Well, they really are pretty" something about that sentence hits a nerve in Alice's heart, and she can almost feel a response slipping off her tongue, into the air, stabbing at the girl and bringing her down. All the anger of being ignored, all the resentment of being sick, all the utter sadness that consumes her each and every day, waiting to be plunged into the back of a volunteer.
But it doesn't come, and instead Alice leans back and calms her rushing heart. She doesn't want hurt again. Don't let it hurt again…
She grows to like Jane, and she has no idea why. She girl comes again and again, bringing a new flower, and a new vase. A splash of color on a bright, empty canvas. And also, a strange comic. Jane didn't stick around to explain how to read it, but Alice was able to figure it out.
Magi: the Labyrinth of Magic
In truth, Alice didn't like it that much. After the second volume came, and the third and fourth and fifth and on and on she was unable to put it down. Jane came in again and again, multiple times a day, each time bringing in a new piece of the comic.
Jane would complain about her schoolwork, and the plot of magi, and the gassy man in room 221 and Alice felt herself cracking a foreign expression that she realized was a smile.
The day Alice Marsden died, she asked Jane a question.
It was the first time the sick girl had asked the highschool senior a question, and the first time she had spoken since her father explained that her parents weren't getting back together again.
"Are you scared of death?" They had been discussing Solomon turning into God, and whether or not his body left back on Alma Torran was dead or not. It seemed appropriate, but they were in a hospital, and one of them was dying.
(Alice might have said already dead)
Jane didn't cock her head, didn't smile, didn't frown, merely be blank. Unreadable.
She was quiet for so long that Alice thought she could almost see through the senior, whose plain features already made it easy to ignore or overlook her despite her being an incrediable genius.
"You sound like a frog" It's true. Her voice, crack with disuse and quiet with nervousness sounded like the croaking reptile. Alice didn't have it in her to glare or speak again, however. "But to answer your question; no. I'm not afraid of death"
"Well...I guess it's because we all die at some point. It doesn't seem like it, but it's true. No matter how smart you are, or fit, or pretty, or brave, you'll die. Some quicker than others, others slower than some. Whatever is beyond this world we just have to bear it, and there is no point fearing the unknown" she pauses, as if contemplating her own words. "Well, you can fear the unknown, but there is no use fearing what is as natural as life"
The red roses were so pretty. Thank God they weren't the same color as the flames seeping toward her like arms outstretched in a yawn.
"...there is no use fearing what is as natural as life"
Maybe there was no point in it, but it was scary. Closing her eyes, Alice Marsden, fifteen years old, dreams about roses and a plain, ordinary girl with a large brain. And Alice Marsden says her goodbyes to her little brother, her bitter mother, absent father and even to self-centered Harmony.
Alice'll figure out what is beyond this world, and then tell them what it's like when they join her. It's the least she can do, right?
It was just a nice day. Rain clouds had passed, the sun shines in a dim, calming matter. In one wooden house surrounded by a garden sprouting veggies and fruits, a baby's wail breaks the silence and stirs the neighbors, who curse and sputter out their revulsion.
A happy, young, scared mother comforts her firstborn- a girl with tuffs of wild red hair and a cringing face- and shushes her with a tired voice.
A baby has been born.
Catrina has arrived, and Alice has found out the truth- there is no end to her tale. Not yet.
Hello!
Whatcha' think? I tried! I don't know, this is sort of depressing. But I started to type it and the words kept coming, not to mention the depth I've been able to achieve with Alice. The character you all know is Catrina, who is friendly and welcoming, but you don't know Alice. God, even I don't know Alice.
I never really played much with her life, but then I realized that she has a pretty bad living situation. Her parents are too busy thinking of how to ignore their child's death to give her attention, which leads to self-hate and a bitterness Alice can't help but want to express in any way possible, and her sibling, who is the only one she cared about, never saw only joy she got was at the end of her life with Jane who really was just a stranger who cared enough to come and chat and help, despite being a bit remote and awkward.
Really, Alice is almost a deeper character than Catrina, and I need to start showing that all the characters; Jane and Centola, John and Asad, Charlie and Eren, share some of the same characteristics. They can't just let go of who they were so easily, and I'm now determined to erase the line between the two worlds: ours and the magi world.
Ahem. Done. Thanks for reading! Please review!
BYE~~~~~~~