Who Are You?

Chapter 1

Mark had remembered his high school years, swimming in a pool of doubts and dark depression. He remembered the resentment he felt to the doctors who recommended he shove fistfuls of pills down his throat. He remembered the nights he spent up, caught up in his own insecurities, screaming into his pillow until his throat was sore and he couldn't talk for the next week. 

He remembered all of it and he hated it. The constant pressure of adults looking down at you and the absurd notion they all carried that constant therapy would do something for someone who was still drowning within themselves. 

Looking across the world now and seeing the websites directing parents how to deal with depressed kids and how the kids would eventually grow out of it like as cold infuriated him. If you looked deeper, you could find websites directing kids where to cut to get the most results, how to tie a noose correctly, and how to conceal cuts behind a layer a makeup. Mark found himself choking back tears in these searches. On sleepless nights checking to see if the condition of the world had gotten any better and being pushed onto his knees by stories of kids found dead, swinging in their basements with a note written on the back of their math homework hung in their stiff hand. 

Consoling his team gave him no exceeding hope. Kat had rubbed her throat as her face turned pale, excusing herself quickly with the click of her mouse and the sound of Mark's own voice coming through her headphones as she adjusted the sound. Asking Ethan about it later, he has discovered, as Ethan had looked around himself to make sure the silent office was in fact empty, that she had gone through a bout of bulimia throughout her high school experience. 

Amy had mentioned her brother in passing, telling Mark about the time she found him tied down in the bathtub, a jar of Oxycontin on the counter while a blood knife lay in the discarded water. Amy had told Mark, with a small shudder and glittering tears hanging in her eyes, that she had found him just as his eyes had closed, a smile still on his face. Mark had offered her a hug and she had buried her face in his shirt. He had let his own tears fall, silently, as he hugged Amy. 

Talking to Tyler had been uplifting. He had studied Mark through his glasses, looking up from his book, and asked voice serious and calm, "Are you okay, Mark?" Mark had quickly denied that he was going through anything like this. He had only wanted to see if Tyler had any experience with the ordeal. Tyler had shook his head, a relieved look passing over his face as he returned to his book. "Nothing too in depth. The stories are chilling as it is." Mark had agreed wholeheartedly. 

Ethan had brought about a particularly heartbreaking experience. Mark had asked about Kat, leaning across Ethan's desk before asking Ethan himself. Ethan had look mortified, cornered by Mark and shoved back into unwanted memories. Mark had opened his mouth to dismiss the question and apologize for stepping over the boundaries before he noticed the hand previously poised over Ethan's mouse tentatively pull down his maroon sleeve. Mark had locked up, focused on the pale hand. "High school was tough for this boy," Ethan had said in a raspy voice before clearing his throat and dropping the hand. Mark had looked Ethan. Ethan had looked back. "I like LA better though, better for the skin." He had laughed and rubbed his arm. "I am fine, Mark." Mark had nodded and had gotten up, leaving a lingering touch on Ethan's shoulder as he passed. 

Like being pushed in on all sides, the stories haunted his. His dreams were filled with images of guns and bottles of pills. He had one dream at least once a week where he lay in glass container. People surrounded him on all sides: tapping on the glass, cuts on their wrists and bullet wounds in their heads. The tank slowly filled with blood and the voices echoed all around. "Remember us! Don't forget!" rang in his head even in the waking world. 

When Mark had a good dream, full of family and friends surrounding his on all sides, he always woke up guilty. It was as if he had forgotten the lives of the souls that had clung to the outside of the glass. 

He had fallen asleep to one such dream on a Thursday night. A feeling guilt already squeezed his chest. He was in a field, an open sky and a pickup tuck they only things that accompanied him in the sea of waving grass. A woman lay on the hood of the pickup truck.

"Join me, if you would." 

Mark climbed onto the hood, the rusty paint falling to the ground only to be lost among the waving grass. He took in the woman's features. Her nose was long and slender, a hawk nose that seemed to fit her face. He hair hung in loose curls, black and long on the trucks peeling green paint. She wore a sundress, sunflowers curling around the fabric. She was studying the stars with an intensity matching Mark's passion for space. He lay down beside her and look up at the clear sky. There was no moon, only stars that shown steadily in the sky.

"They are pretty, yes?" Her voice was clear and soft.

"Yes."

"Each and everyone is a soul, removed from its physical body."

Mark cast a sidelong glance at her. She kept her gaze focused up. He went along with the drunkenness dream logic 

"They live without emotional or physical pain that their earthen life supplied." She turned her head to meet Mark's stare. "You wish to rid your world of its depression." It wasn't a question, but Mark nodded anyway. "I could do it for you."

"You could?" It was the first time Mark showed payed any interest to the strangeness of the dream. 

"I could. It has been on my agenda for some time. You provide me the means to do it."

"How?" 

"I require payment for my services. You can provide that."

"What would you want?"

"The person you love most. Do you know who it is?"

"Amy," Mark answered.

The lips of the woman curled up. She hummed. "I require the person you love most to forget all memories of you."

"Why?"

"I get bored."

"To stop all depression, you would only need those memories?"

"Yes. They could come back, to some extent."

"I would say, 'Yes.'" Mark sat up. The woman followed his example. 

"Excellent." Her lips curled into a smile. 

Mark woke up with a headache.