It Happened Once in a Dream
Chapter One: With Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Psychology.
Looking in the plain, full-body mirror propped up against the maroon, brick wall sprinkled with ancient, dim colors of spray paint, Cosima saw the oddly familiar, mangled, blond curls of an obvious taller, slender, and bloody pulp of a woman staring directly back at her. Several thick droplets of dark scarlet blood drip down from the distant woman's ghostly white, bony hand—splashing into the giant, red mess. She was wearing a thin, white tank that her blood seeped through making it stick to her frail skin with skintight, midnight black pants. Her thin, pale rose lips were busted with black and blue bruises traveling across her broken face, cuts gashed all over her thin physique, and a swollen, purple-ish hue beneath her left, caramel eye. She lets out a weak smile and raises her blood-drenched hand to the mirror, leaving a small, murderous handprint with heavy, dark crimson blood making its way down. She mouths an undecipherable, inaudible statement to Cosima.
Instinctually, Cosima forces her weak, trembling legs towards the unknown, however familiar, woman, but she was frozen. Cosima's gut sank as her heart swelled up—tearing and breaking the linings of her aching heart-that seemed to have pumping a dozen gallons by each passing second. An entire brew of emotions began to bubble up and snaking its way to her hands and tightly-wired-shut mouth, creating rock solid fists and a sore jaw.
"DELPHINE!" Cosima cries out in complete terror as specs of blood spluttered out of her mouth. Jerking her immobile legs, urging them to move forward, she hastily flicked her attention between her ominously clawed and scratched calves and the gory blonde. "DELPHINE!" she cries out again with hot, salty tears blurring her vision and an iron taste on her tongue.
Taking hold of one of her legs, Cosima vehemently lifted her leg one at a time, urging them forward. Looking down at her heavy, paralyzed legs, her black, thick-rimmed, cat-eyed glasses fell and shattered on the flat, cold, wooden surface and punctured her feet. Blood ran off to the sides, creating a thin, uneven trail. With her clear tears violently crashing down paired with vague shapes of the large loft she somehow knew, Cosima was left unable to see the mystifying woman.
"DELPHINE!" she cries out again; her voice fluctuating up and down and blood clots flying out. Sniffling and trying to keep her tears inside, she forced herself to move more quickly. "I'm almost there, Delphine!" she quietly cries to herself. "I'm almost there…" Cosima breathes, to herself.
Painfully inching closer and closer to the glossy mirror, Cosima was met face to face with the beautiful woman. Heaving hard with blood on the sides of Cosima's mouth, the nauseating feeling in her stomach uproared and her heart swelled up further-being stabbed by the solid bones of her ribcage.
"Delphine…" she softly cries as her lips tremble with fear, anxiety, and desperation. "Don't you dare…" she violently sobs, holding the glass edges of the tormenting mirror.
The woman in the mirror only slightly swayed her butchered face and whispers, "Jamais," as she reaches out, trying to caresses Cosima's scorching red, sweaty cheeks, but only touch the cold, glass of the mirror. Her large, puppy-brown eyes, however, sympathetically said otherwise.
"Delphine…" Cosima whispers. "You're not going to die today, Delphine," she reassures the blood covered person who thinly veiled her vacant looks with cheap hope.
Tilting her golden locks of hair with her sunken face, the stranger smiles with bloody tears running down her face and diverges the conversation, "You look good."
Cosima, after shaking her shaven head, finally smiles and jokes, "Almost as sexy as my tubes, right?" Lifting her trembling hand to the flat, cold mirror where the blonde's cheek appeared to be. "We're goin' to find a way," she murmurs. "You're going to be fine, Delphine," she strongly declares as her voice quivers. She slammed her stone-hard fists on the mirror trembling in complete fear.
Insistently slamming her hands against the cracking mirror, blood began stream down Cosima's sadistic hands from the miniscule shards of glass deeply lodged inside. Smashing her hands against the mirror harder with each thrust, her whole body began to violently shake.
"Cos...Cos…" began a faint, recognizable voice. "Cosima…! Cosima...!" it began to screech somehow making Cosima's arms stiff and paralyzed. "Cosima! Cosima! Cos!" the voice powerfully bellows, as an intense splash of wintery water jolted Cosima awake.
"Cosima," began a familiar, raspy southern belle accent, "what the hell were you dreaming of? Are you okay?" she asks, clutching Cosima's freezing wet body close to her with a warm embrace.
"H-holy s-s-shit, Victo-tor-ria" Cosima stutters, "Total-ly-ly, I-I'm fine. Just w-woke up with a bucket of ice water. Completely c-chill," she glares.
Pulling back, leaving Cosima's chest bare and frozen, Victoria's electric blue eyes had a range of emotions from petrifaction to complete frustrated anger to relief all of which pierced through Cosima.
"Well, what else was I suppose to do, Cos? You were screaming 'Delphine, Delphine, Delphine!' and nearly pushed me off the bed 'cause you were moving so much!" she yells with her hot, firm hands on Cosima's shoulders and her ravenous, dyed black hard in a bun and askew as her dark eyebrows furrowing down with concern.
Slowly raising her arctic hand to caress Victoria's warm cheeks, Cosima leans in and whispers, "I-It was just a d-dream, Tori." Cosima reassures her as her hand traveled to the back of her messy, midnight black hair and pulled her closer in, "Just a dream, that's all."
Victoria, compliantly leaning in, softly kissed the chilling lips of Cosima and parted.
"Who's Delphine, then?" she softly asks, slowly pulling back and gently taking Cosima's hands off her head.
"I don't know who they are, Victoria," Cosima replies, subtly shaking her head. "Like I said: it was just a dream."
"Then who was she in your dream?" Victoria immediately shoots up. "'Cause you 'n I both know that you only see faces that you've seen in your dreams. And, I just wanna know if you know her, at least."
Anxiety instantly shot up in Cosima's spine and the familiar feeling of her stomach sinking returned, and she immediately replies, "A dolphin."
Victoria, suspiciously raising one eyebrow and slightly elevating her tan chin, queries, "A dolphin? You were having a nightmare about…a dolphin?"
Cosima, sweetly grabbing hold of Victoria's clammy palms and repositioning herself, slowly replies and smiles, "No-dolphins. Haven't you heard those…" she breaks off and lifts her hands from grasping Victoria's nervous hands and continues with subtle hand motions, "Bizarre dolphin stories, lately, Tori? Blubber and everything, it's just a complete mess."
Softly chuckling, Victoria smiles and accepts Cosima's lies, and sweetly suggests, "Now, you've got to get clean, don't'chu?"
"I don't know. I did just wake up with a cold shower," Cosima replies, smiling ear to ear as she eyes Victoria's tan, muscular body and her black bra with gray lacings on the corners.
Victoria, leaning in close to Cosima whom passively lies down and let's her hands wander to the Victoria's built, lower back, counters, "Then, I guess we're just gonna hafta get dirty again, don't we?"
Softly laughing, Cosima begins, "I don't think it works like that, Tor—" before getting rudely interrupted by Victoria's lovely kisses. As Cosima felt the sides of Victoria's mouth slightly tug up, Cosima's stomach only sunk lower.