Shivers

I: Light

I ran a hand through my hair, nursing the lump on my forehead with my palm. I pulled myself up from the floor with the nightstand I had hit my head on and eased myself into the bed feeling my damp forehead again. I closed my eyes for a minute and tried to come back to the images in my head. I didn't remember falling off the bed, just the lump forming under my hand when I jerked my head away from the table with the lamp. I lay back against the bed and looked over at a fuzzy purple polka dotted camera with the imprinted lenses hanging from my lamp. "Only Miranda…" Never did figure out what to do with it.

My head turned back up to the ceiling and I pictured the dream again. It was like watching a TV drama: a dark screen- there's always only darkness at first. Through an empty white light and I can see her kneeling down in the middle of an empty room. I don't think I move. I don't remember moving- just watching as she plays with a gardenia and its petals. She plucked at the petals until the flower was nothing but a tiny bulb of pollen on a thorny green stick. She held onto the stem, whispering into the bare light. She clutched the stem tighter and I watched it seethe thorns out of its green skin into her pale one. Buds of blood crashed into the light and onto her skin, rolling down the crevices of her fingers. She held the stem closer until the roots of the thorn couldn't be seen and all the time she just sat unmoving, pushing her hands into the thorns.

When I finally did move it was to walk towards her and the thorns grew through her as I called her name. "Miranda!" The blood trickled to floor, spreading across her now bluish white skin. The puddle of blood spread to my feet. Miranda started to shake and the thorns grew enough to wrap themselves under her, digging into the untouched backs of her hands. I couldn't touch her. My hands didn't want to move. Then she stood and looked at me, face to face, the stem hanging from their deep places in the hearts of her hands. "Miranda…" Her thorny palms found my shoulders and I cried out as she dug them into me like they had done to her and I knew she could feel my warm blood flow over her hands and the vines in them. She pushed me back and I shut my eyes dreaming for a landing with her face looking down on me and finding my bed.

It wasn't the first time I'd had the dream and it would just remind me of the times leading up to before she had left:

Oh the Digital Bean. It was another day of mathematical equations. Miranda was the first thing I saw when I entered. Shockingly enough there was no Lizzie but I watched her click the colored mouse. The tiny arrow hovered above the exit "x" as she glanced to the sides of her, watching the rest of the Digital Bean customers engaged in Internet ventures. Her eyes returned to the screen and went back to the result from her search. She mumbled the words on the monitor to herself and smiled as the ding of a new message flew into her ear. She finally let the mouse go and anxiously hit the keys. What was she doing looking so suspicious?

I walked over to her. "Hey."

She yelped and left a trail of I's on the screen. Quickly she scrambled for the mouse and clicked the x before whipping around. "Hiya…Gordo."

I sat down at the empty chair beside her after one of the suspected spies had gotten up. "You…feeling alright?"

"Yeah. Fine. Why?"

"You're just acting kind of weird."

"Oh, you mean…" Something caught her eye. "Weirder than that?"

She pointed out Kate and her entourage at a table, romancing Guido Pullman.

"What are they doing with Guido Pullman?"

"Probably trying to get homework answers out of him."

"Don't they know I'm available?"

"Until they find out, I guess you'll have to settle for me and Lizzie, won't you?" She quipped, throwing her arm around her dejected friend.

I cocked my head to the side, "You're lucky I stick around for you."

Miranda snorted softly, and looked down at her feet: that was her only reply. I ignored the snort at first, barely noticed it, but I should've paid attention. I should've known.

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