Alex is dead.
Alex is indistinguishable from the soil.
Alex is the dissemination of bad ideas, the confusing of such schools of thought.

Ben feels like Alex is.
Ben is lost in a crowd.
Ben is a poor choice of words, on the wrong end of a loaded barrel.

Alex feels nothing.
Alex feels the twitching of an index finger on the trigger.
Alex does not see her target, but catches the vague outline of a thing lost in translation.

Ben misspoke.
Ben makes a sand angel on a beach of excuses.
Ben is the bottom of a wine barrel, sublimates a clenched fist into an outstretched palm.

Alex is the opposite of sublimation.
Alex is subsumed by id.
Alex is locked in the cast iron *** of what she thinks her friend did.

Ben sits down at the table.
Ben places the gun in her hand.  
Ben cannot do this himself; Alex is shaking, shaking, shaken.

This:    
The vacant lot of 2AM - did she hear him correctly?
Not much of a distance for a voice to travel
Meek and fractured though it may be
So surely she heard what he said; the words "pull the trigger".
But what is the f()king point of an epilogue
If it contradicts the book? And what's the f()king point of a moral compass, if the needle is broken? No more can she read and she doesn't know the difference between North and South, she holds a tooth from The Always Open Mouth.

There are three types of people in this world: those who are rocks, those who are hard places, and those are pinned between the first two. Ben is a rock, and Alex isn't sure whether the only way to help both of them is to stay trapped, or to push him down this hill. Alex feels nothing now. And Ben is indistinguishable from the soil.