Haunted
Here's my "i'm-not-dead" post as requested, lol. it's the simplified, second draft of my story i have to write for creative writing. any and all feedback appreciated:
Rand crouched before the marble slab, rolling his gray-green eyes over its inscription again and again. By now the words were as chiseled into his brain as they were into the tombstone: Elena Parker. Feb 13, 1982-Feb 14, 2002. She'd been his first love, the girl whom his whole high school life had seemed to revolve around just two years ago. Had it really been two years? Despite the stone obituary before him, Elena was still alive to him. Her long, thick, black hair, honeyed skin that seemed to glow, lips permanently split into a smile, shocking, blue eyes-all were still far too alive in his mind.
Rand stood, pulling his suede jacket closer around him so the collar scratched his unshaven jaw, prickled with gold. He walked before the other three tombstones, the rest of the Parker family. They had their own little fenced-in plot aside from the others of St. Dymphna Cemetery. Even in death the wealthy don't tend to congregate with the poor masses. Alexander and Emily Parker had been two very wealthy people; they had been Elena's parents. Older parents though, so their presence here didn't really surprise Rand.
Willow Parker, however, was far too young for him to expect and find her here. That and he'd seen her just yesterday. That was when she'd informed him that she was in fact dead, a ghost. He had just stared at her incredulously.
Now that he stared at Willow Parker again, doubt began to seed itself in his mind, for this Willow Parker was in written word, chiseled deep into the surface of a tombstone at the end of the Parker family row.
The memory of last night's dream stirred in his psyche. Willow's apartment always had an abandoned feel to it, with Emily's collection of antique furnishings shrouded with dust and cobwebs clogging every corner, but for the first time since he'd begun visiting her, Willow had been gone. In the dream he had searched the empty apartment for her, coming across a door with an implied forbiddance. Willow always kept it closed. He'd reached for the knob.
The inside of the room had been raven black. He'd reached in, groping the dry texture of the wall, fumbling for a switch. He'd come to wish he hadn't.
A naked bulb had ignited, washing the room with pale, sickly light. Sitting against the far wall had been the girl he sought. Her long, ivory legs were stretched out in front of her, tangled in, almost melting into the skirt of her long white gown. Her unruly hair was spilled out over her shoulders. The long barrel of a gun was tucked beneath her chin, beneath her blank blue stare.
Willow Parker. Feb 13, 1982-
Maybe it had been more than just a dream.
Someone had scattered anemone blossoms, fresh and red, before the tombstones. Rand plucked one from the grass and slipped from the secluded plot, out into the central area of the cemetery.
That morning Rand had relived his dream. After rapping at Willow's door for twenty minutes, a neighbor had redirected him to St. Dymphna's.
Beyond the cemetery's archway entrance, Rand made his way back to his car. Walking past the bulky, brick building nestled next to the cemetery, Rand paused a moment watching the double-glass doors and the woman who emerged from them. Above the doors a sign read: St. Dymphna's, a serpent-entwined caduceus branching from the stem of the "D."
The woman had skin like ice-coated wax. Her hair and catty lashes were night black. You'd swear to see her that the world had reverted to black and white, if not for the pale kiss of pink on her lips and her tear blue eyes.
"Willow!"
Her spine snapped straight. Easing her gaze onto Rand, she relaxed. Her shoulders fell back into a natural slope and a soft smile even budded on her lips.
Such a delicate motion, but it hammered a sharp pain straight through Rand's heart. Although polar-opposites with her twin when it came to personality, Elena had been vivacious and loud, while Willow had been sweet and soft-spoken, Willow resembled Elena like a photograph. Once upon a time Willow had even been as golden-skinned as Elena, but she seemed to have shunned the outdoors in the past year.
"Hey Rand, how're you?" Willow greeted him, tone whispery as the breeze. She wore a simple, white sundress that hugged to her small frame. Her toenails, gnawed back into tiny seashell-shapes, poked out from criss-crossing sandal straps. Probably inherited from her mother, a string of pearls circled her neck.
"I'm pretty good," he said, yanking his eyes off her familiar curves and back into the present. "How about you? Out for a little walk?"
Willow daintily stepped past him, an airy sway to her hips, "I'd hardly call it a little walk. I live half way across town."
Rand combed his fingers through his hair, "Wow, that is quite a hike." Sprays of blonde fell stubbornly back into his face. "Why don't you let me drive you?"
Willow turned, watching him over her shoulder a moment before answering, "Sure."
On the way back to Willow's apartment Rand casually prodded her about her business at the cemetery-side hospital, but to no avail.
"You finally brave the outside again, and of all the places to visit," Rand said, giving his venture one last stab. "Do you know someone in there?"
She turned to him, eyes handling him sharply. Rand decided to let the subject die.
Just inside the front door sat a bulging paper bag. Willow hefted it up onto her hip.
"Let me take care of that." Rand peeled the bag from her arms and took it into the kitchen. He hoped a little extra altruism would undo the damage he seemed to have done to her mood.
In the kitchen Rand emptied the bag, spreading its contents, namely various food items and such, out on the counter. Everything Willow could ever need was delivered.
Including people, Rand thought to himself, tucking away cans in the pantry. This was how his regular visits had begun, a sudden spell of nostalgia, stopping in with hopes of seeing Elena, a charitable chore or two . . .
Rand placed a fresh carton of milk in the fridge and tossed the paper bag into the trash bin beneath the sink before wandering back out into the living room.
An array of antique furniture rested on little rug-islands on the polished wood floor. With legs that bowed as if overburdened, matching couch and chairs crouched behind a coffee table lacquered dark. The couch fabric, seat cushions, and window drapes all matched, a deep carmine accented gold. Willow was nowhere to be seen. Rand set off down the hall in search of her, the familiarity of her vacancy rippling his skin. Other than the sound of the grandfather clock in the living room tapping the air with its constant tick tick, the apartment was silent.
Rand's steps hesitated as he passed between two doors, the one on the left being the "forbidden door" of his dream.
Lilting laughter touched his ears. Behind him the other door was slightly ajar.
"Oh wait until you meet him!" Willow's voice exalted from behind the door. "I know you'll adore him Sis, if anything I'm more worried about you trying to steal him away."
A moment of silence passed.
"Why? Well, don't tell him I said so, but he reminds me so much of your old high school flame."
Rand gently rapped a knuckle on the door, swinging it open a little further. "Willow? Are you all right?"
"Oh he's here! Make sure you come out soon and say hello."
Willow pulled open the door; her eyes were intently locked with her reflection's in the long mirror over the bathroom counter. She flipped her gaze onto him.
"Morgan!"
Rand stood rigid as Willow wrapped her arms tightly around him. The lingering, storm clouds of doubt in the back of his mind came squalling to the forefront: She was insane.
Lacing her fingers into his, she lead him back out into the living room, "You already met Mom and Dad, right?"
Once upon a time, "Yeah."
"They were so eager to meet you," Willow prattled on. "Where are they anyway? In the kitchen? Did they say they were going to run over to the store?" She collapsed onto the couch, drawing him down with her. Her eyes made a quick dart over the empty room before she snagged his lips in a kiss. "I've missed you so much," she murmured, again and again twisting his lips in her own.
Part of Rand wanted to just close his eyes and kiss her back, hold her tight. He took hold of her shoulders, pulling back to look at her, searching her face for the logic behind her actions. She dreamily stared back, not appearing to actually see him.
"I-I need to use the bathroom," he blurted, squirming up out of her arms.
"Hurry back love," she purred after him.
He nimbly made his way to the bathroom; once inside he shut and locked the door behind him. In the mirror his reflection panted unsteadily. The man in the mirror was of average height, slender with broad shoulders. He wore jeans and a collared, pale, green shirt beneath a tan jacket that seemed far too warm all of a sudden. His cheekbones were high, nose straight, and angular jaw rather neglected as far as shaving. He was Rand's own sort of twin.
Beside him on the counter stood a small, orange cylinder. He picked it up and shook it. Tiny, white pills rattled inside. From his pocket he pulled out his cell-phone, flipping it open and tapping out a number on the keypad.
"Hey Camden? I need you to look something up for me."
Camden was Rand's best friend of twenty years, his whole life really. He held a job at the newspaper and was Rand's own personal informant.
Rand read the name off the label of the pill container and listened across the line to the zealous clatter of a keyboard.
"Whoa, it's some crazy hallucinogen."
"Hey, while you're at it, could you look into St. Dymphna's, the hospital not the cemetery?" Rand added. "And you wouldn't by any chance know about a guy named Morgan who went to the same university as Willow."
Again the clack of typing fingers rained in Rand's ear.
"Let's see, St. Dymphna's is a hospital specializing in psychiatric help, psychological disorders, etcetera," Camden read. "And actually I took it upon myself to look into the circumstances surrounding the Parkers after you started getting cozy with the other twin."
Rand felt his cheeks redden, "I'm not "getting cozy" with her; I'm just trying to help her out."
"Right. Well, you don't have to worry about Morgan, her long-time college boyfriend. He broke it off with her after she dropped out of school-probably to come back home and take care of her parents."
Rand's brow crowded over his puzzled stare, "Wait, I thought her parents died; I just saw their grave markers today."
"The whole Parker family has pre-ordered stones, but only one is actually in use," Camden stated simply.
"Creepy."
"Tell me about it. The Parkers, well, Emily and Alexander at least, currently reside at St. Dymphna's. Supposedly both suffer from severe Alzheimers, don't even recognize their own faces according to a nurse there. Interestingly, I had to dig to find a faculty member who knew they were even there. It seems they've been erased from the computer files."
Rand had crept back out into the hall and was whispering "What? How?"
"Well, it seems right after the heiress to the Parker fortune, your buddy Willow, dropped out of school, the hospital received a very generous donation going towards nice new equipment and a handful of new, elite workers."
"So you think Willow bribed the hospital to make it look like her parents were never there, or had died?" Rand asked slowly.
"I'm betting on it."
Tucking away his phone, Rand peeked around the hall corner into the living room. Willow sat in an old Victorian chair, eyes dreamily fixed on nothing. She sat straight-backed with her hands curled over the chair's wooden armrests. Some favorite old lyrics flitted across Rand's mind: "Sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair." She even had the regal tilt to her chin, and a faint smile on her lips as if overseeing some apparitional court.
Rand ducked back down the hallway. Across from the bathroom was the door from his dream. Placing his fingers to the cool brass of the doorknob, he twisted it and slipped inside.
He felt his eyes gasp, desperately sucking at the black air for any sip of light. His footsteps unsteadily hugged the carpet as he shuffled forward. Braving a little more speed in the emptiness, his toe struck something-hard, triggering a rattle and a shattering crash. He backpedaled from the collision, but found himself on the floor as well, tangled in fabric; visions of a skirt wrapped around the shriveled legs of a corpse shot through his brain. He panicked.
Rosy light soaked the room. Rand looked down to see a long sunset-pink gown tangled at his feet. There was of course no dead body.
"Rand, what're you doing in here?"
Rand gaped, red-faced on the floor. The walls that surrounded him were a soft coral. They matched the bedspread, the carpet, and the broken lamp next to the nightstand. He'd been in this bedroom before. It was Elena's room. On the wall above where the body had been strewn in his dream, patches of chalky, white paint were slapped onto the pink.
Willow walked in out of the doorway; any trace of her remote, dreamy stare melted clean away, but her steely eyes barely touched Rand.
"She killed herself, didn't she?"
Willow jolted, face whiter than ever, "What?"
"Elena," Rand said, stroking the white patch on the wall. "I always knew she had problems, but I never imagined she'd actually take her own life."
"My sister is not dead," Willow said sternly. "She still lives here like she always did. She's fine."
Rand turned his gaze onto Willow, his tone a gentle challenge, "The situation with your parents was probably that little bit that pushed her over the edge."
"There is no situation with my parents."
"They're in St. Dymphna's Willow. I know they're who you visited."
"They're at work. They'll be home any minute."
"You can't live like this Willow."
"Stop it!" Willow shrieked, clamping her hands over her ears. "Just shut up!" She shook her head fiercely, eyes beginning to glisten. "You're lying."
"You're lying to yourself."
Willow tore from the room. A door slam followed soon after, from somewhere across the apartment.
Drawing a shaky breath, Rand climbed to his feet. He lightly tossed the pink gown onto the bed. It had been the dress Elena wore to the spring dance ninth grade. Not bothering to flip off the lights, Rand trudged across the hall into the bathroom. He swung open the medicine cabinet, gathering the rows of identical medicine bottles. He wasn't worried about Willow getting far. He watched the dumped pills swirl in the toilet bowl, and plunge down into the plumbing.
Making his way outside, down onto the street, he looked down the sidewalks, left and right. She was gone.
Rand slowly drove the route to the hospital, searching the strips of sidewalk on either side of the road. Once there he asked the receptionist about the Parkers.
"I'm sorry, but we don't have anyone here by that name."
"I used to know someone by that name," a voice said feebly behind him.
He turned to see a little woman with ruffled salt and pepper hair. She kind of tottered as she stood there, hands constantly fidgeting.
"Mrs. Parker?"
She looked at him, blinking her tear blue eyes at him a moment, before absently wandering away.
There was no mistaking Emily Parker; Rand had known her for years, although she obviously no longer knew him. Rand resignedly left the hospital.
He drove around town for two hours before he saw the car parked outside his old high school. A cute, little, blue sports car, very expensive and far from common. Elena had owned one just like it in pink.
In the school courtyard he found her. She sat so still she seemed just an extension of the stone bench beneath her. Eyes the only thing to move, she watched the kids lingering in the schoolyard.
Rand sat down beside her, trying to trace her gaze and understand what held her attention so intently. The schoolyard was familiar enough, but the kids weren't at all. She seemed to be watching two in particular, a girl with long, straight black hair and a boy she was obviously flirting with. The boy had pale blonde hair that hung past his ears and a smile that never quit.
"Who are they?" he finally asked, studying them to no avail.
Her tone surprised him, so soft and almost unsure.
"My sister and her boyfriend." She wriggled her nose, lips twitching in and out of a series of quick smirks as if she were trying to put on the right face. "She really likes him, but she doesn't eat lunch with me anymore, or have much time to do stuff."
Willow started to blink fiercely, still watching the kids. Rand wanted to put an arm around her, but he wasn't sure if she'd even feel it. She obviously wasn't quite here-not in this time at least.
Rand studied the two kids again. Her sister? Her sister's boyfriend? They looked to be about fourteen, fifteen, high school freshmen. The girl, her face obscured, toyed with a necklace as they talked.
A smile began to play on Rand's lips. The scene struck very near to a memory, a very dear memory.
Elena had toyed with her necklace that day long ago in the schoolyard, her eyes coyly darting up and down, up and down.
"You're best friends with Camden, aren't you?"
"He's like a brother," he'd responded, trying to sound casual, to keep perfectly cool.
Her eyes had plunged into his before ducking back down.
"Then why don't you ever go with him to Key Club?"
He'd shrugged, "Cam's been trying to get me to join clubs for years, but I'm not really big on the extracurricular stuff."
Her fingers had bumped along over the sparkly red-purple beads of her necklace.
"Well, if your best friend can't sway you, I don't suppose I have any chance."
One of her absent tugs had been a little too hard. The necklace had hung glittering in her hand. She'd groped with the clasp a moment behind her neck before Rand intervened.
"Allow me."
Smiling, she'd drawn her hair aside, like a curtain from her small, bare neck. The faint warmth of her skin had made his palms sweat as he awkwardly handled the clasp. Needless to say, he'd attended the Key Club meeting that day after school. He'd even stayed late to help the vice president make carwash posters, just him and Elena marking up poster-board with watery blue lettering. Afterwards he'd asked her out on a date, his first real date.
Rand shook off the daydream. The black-haired girl turned around; she had pretty, little, foreign eyes, nose slightly wide and flat, and a thin pink mouth. She looked nothing like Elena.
Rand looked over at Willow. She, on the other hand, looked everything like Elena.
Slightly hunched forward, Willow's long hair had fallen from where it lain across her back, now hanging thickly around her face, exposing her right shoulder blade and the little fairy tattoo that danced on it. She probably got it for her eighteenth birthday. That's when Elena got hers: an impish little pink fairy, crouching on her shoulder blade. She'd squeezed Rand's hand as they carved it into her skin.
Willow's fairy was a wispy blue, its delicate little body outstretched and a serene smile on its face; it could've passed for an angel. Rand frowned. Back when he'd been with Elena, he never really knew Willow; to him she was almost an echo, a quiet look-alike. The spindly, blue fairy was like a brand on Willow's skin, claiming her body for her own, asserting her own identity. Looking at it, Rand wondered who'd held her hand when she went under the needle.
Clutched in her hand was a dark orange container: the last of the pill bottles. Rand gently pried it from her icy fingers, replacing it with his hand. She startled, turning and fixing him with her cobalt eyes.
"Willow, you--we have to let go. We've got to stop living in the past. We've got to live period."
Her cheeks were already lined with wet, "But I lost everything. They all left me."
Rand gave her hand a squeeze, "You've got me. I'm not going anywhere."
Hesitantly, Willow leaned forward; apprehensively determined, her motions stuttered closer to Rand. She kissed him.
He closed his eyes and kissed her back.
Insides fluttering and head feeling afloat, Rand slowly drew back. He levelly met her eyes and she smiled, something in her face hinting some secret knowledge.
"Come with me."
Rand followed Willow out into the parking lot and drove her back to her apartment building as she instructed. She left him outside the building, standing in the alley. He waited there.
After what seemed liked hours, a frantic clattering exploded above. Rand looked up to see Willow, clambering down the fire escape. She grinned wildly as she hopped to the ground. Her face almost looked to be melting, cheeks flushed and sweaty.
"Hurry!"
She grabbed hold of his hand and dragged him into a brisk walk away from the building. Looking back Rand saw brilliant flames dancing in the second story window of the Parker apartment, stomping into soot and ash, furniture and photographs, quilts and clothes, Willow's ensnaring past.
Hand in hand they abandoned the cold, brick building, venturing down a road they'd never been.
Rand crouched before the marble slab, rolling his gray-green eyes over its inscription again and again. By now the words were as chiseled into his brain as they were into the tombstone: Elena Parker. Feb 13, 1982-Feb 14, 2002. She'd been his first love, the girl whom his whole high school life had seemed to revolve around just two years ago. Had it really been two years? Despite the stone obituary before him, Elena was still alive to him. Her long, thick, black hair, honeyed skin that seemed to glow, lips permanently split into a smile, shocking, blue eyes-all were still far too alive in his mind.
Rand stood, pulling his suede jacket closer around him so the collar scratched his unshaven jaw, prickled with gold. He walked before the other three tombstones, the rest of the Parker family. They had their own little fenced-in plot aside from the others of St. Dymphna Cemetery. Even in death the wealthy don't tend to congregate with the poor masses. Alexander and Emily Parker had been two very wealthy people; they had been Elena's parents. Older parents though, so their presence here didn't really surprise Rand.
Willow Parker, however, was far too young for him to expect and find her here. That and he'd seen her just yesterday. That was when she'd informed him that she was in fact dead, a ghost. He had just stared at her incredulously.
Now that he stared at Willow Parker again, doubt began to seed itself in his mind, for this Willow Parker was in written word, chiseled deep into the surface of a tombstone at the end of the Parker family row.
The memory of last night's dream stirred in his psyche. Willow's apartment always had an abandoned feel to it, with Emily's collection of antique furnishings shrouded with dust and cobwebs clogging every corner, but for the first time since he'd begun visiting her, Willow had been gone. In the dream he had searched the empty apartment for her, coming across a door with an implied forbiddance. Willow always kept it closed. He'd reached for the knob.
The inside of the room had been raven black. He'd reached in, groping the dry texture of the wall, fumbling for a switch. He'd come to wish he hadn't.
A naked bulb had ignited, washing the room with pale, sickly light. Sitting against the far wall had been the girl he sought. Her long, ivory legs were stretched out in front of her, tangled in, almost melting into the skirt of her long white gown. Her unruly hair was spilled out over her shoulders. The long barrel of a gun was tucked beneath her chin, beneath her blank blue stare.
Willow Parker. Feb 13, 1982-
Maybe it had been more than just a dream.
Someone had scattered anemone blossoms, fresh and red, before the tombstones. Rand plucked one from the grass and slipped from the secluded plot, out into the central area of the cemetery.
That morning Rand had relived his dream. After rapping at Willow's door for twenty minutes, a neighbor had redirected him to St. Dymphna's.
Beyond the cemetery's archway entrance, Rand made his way back to his car. Walking past the bulky, brick building nestled next to the cemetery, Rand paused a moment watching the double-glass doors and the woman who emerged from them. Above the doors a sign read: St. Dymphna's, a serpent-entwined caduceus branching from the stem of the "D."
The woman had skin like ice-coated wax. Her hair and catty lashes were night black. You'd swear to see her that the world had reverted to black and white, if not for the pale kiss of pink on her lips and her tear blue eyes.
"Willow!"
Her spine snapped straight. Easing her gaze onto Rand, she relaxed. Her shoulders fell back into a natural slope and a soft smile even budded on her lips.
Such a delicate motion, but it hammered a sharp pain straight through Rand's heart. Although polar-opposites with her twin when it came to personality, Elena had been vivacious and loud, while Willow had been sweet and soft-spoken, Willow resembled Elena like a photograph. Once upon a time Willow had even been as golden-skinned as Elena, but she seemed to have shunned the outdoors in the past year.
"Hey Rand, how're you?" Willow greeted him, tone whispery as the breeze. She wore a simple, white sundress that hugged to her small frame. Her toenails, gnawed back into tiny seashell-shapes, poked out from criss-crossing sandal straps. Probably inherited from her mother, a string of pearls circled her neck.
"I'm pretty good," he said, yanking his eyes off her familiar curves and back into the present. "How about you? Out for a little walk?"
Willow daintily stepped past him, an airy sway to her hips, "I'd hardly call it a little walk. I live half way across town."
Rand combed his fingers through his hair, "Wow, that is quite a hike." Sprays of blonde fell stubbornly back into his face. "Why don't you let me drive you?"
Willow turned, watching him over her shoulder a moment before answering, "Sure."
On the way back to Willow's apartment Rand casually prodded her about her business at the cemetery-side hospital, but to no avail.
"You finally brave the outside again, and of all the places to visit," Rand said, giving his venture one last stab. "Do you know someone in there?"
She turned to him, eyes handling him sharply. Rand decided to let the subject die.
Just inside the front door sat a bulging paper bag. Willow hefted it up onto her hip.
"Let me take care of that." Rand peeled the bag from her arms and took it into the kitchen. He hoped a little extra altruism would undo the damage he seemed to have done to her mood.
In the kitchen Rand emptied the bag, spreading its contents, namely various food items and such, out on the counter. Everything Willow could ever need was delivered.
Including people, Rand thought to himself, tucking away cans in the pantry. This was how his regular visits had begun, a sudden spell of nostalgia, stopping in with hopes of seeing Elena, a charitable chore or two . . .
Rand placed a fresh carton of milk in the fridge and tossed the paper bag into the trash bin beneath the sink before wandering back out into the living room.
An array of antique furniture rested on little rug-islands on the polished wood floor. With legs that bowed as if overburdened, matching couch and chairs crouched behind a coffee table lacquered dark. The couch fabric, seat cushions, and window drapes all matched, a deep carmine accented gold. Willow was nowhere to be seen. Rand set off down the hall in search of her, the familiarity of her vacancy rippling his skin. Other than the sound of the grandfather clock in the living room tapping the air with its constant tick tick, the apartment was silent.
Rand's steps hesitated as he passed between two doors, the one on the left being the "forbidden door" of his dream.
Lilting laughter touched his ears. Behind him the other door was slightly ajar.
"Oh wait until you meet him!" Willow's voice exalted from behind the door. "I know you'll adore him Sis, if anything I'm more worried about you trying to steal him away."
A moment of silence passed.
"Why? Well, don't tell him I said so, but he reminds me so much of your old high school flame."
Rand gently rapped a knuckle on the door, swinging it open a little further. "Willow? Are you all right?"
"Oh he's here! Make sure you come out soon and say hello."
Willow pulled open the door; her eyes were intently locked with her reflection's in the long mirror over the bathroom counter. She flipped her gaze onto him.
"Morgan!"
Rand stood rigid as Willow wrapped her arms tightly around him. The lingering, storm clouds of doubt in the back of his mind came squalling to the forefront: She was insane.
Lacing her fingers into his, she lead him back out into the living room, "You already met Mom and Dad, right?"
Once upon a time, "Yeah."
"They were so eager to meet you," Willow prattled on. "Where are they anyway? In the kitchen? Did they say they were going to run over to the store?" She collapsed onto the couch, drawing him down with her. Her eyes made a quick dart over the empty room before she snagged his lips in a kiss. "I've missed you so much," she murmured, again and again twisting his lips in her own.
Part of Rand wanted to just close his eyes and kiss her back, hold her tight. He took hold of her shoulders, pulling back to look at her, searching her face for the logic behind her actions. She dreamily stared back, not appearing to actually see him.
"I-I need to use the bathroom," he blurted, squirming up out of her arms.
"Hurry back love," she purred after him.
He nimbly made his way to the bathroom; once inside he shut and locked the door behind him. In the mirror his reflection panted unsteadily. The man in the mirror was of average height, slender with broad shoulders. He wore jeans and a collared, pale, green shirt beneath a tan jacket that seemed far too warm all of a sudden. His cheekbones were high, nose straight, and angular jaw rather neglected as far as shaving. He was Rand's own sort of twin.
Beside him on the counter stood a small, orange cylinder. He picked it up and shook it. Tiny, white pills rattled inside. From his pocket he pulled out his cell-phone, flipping it open and tapping out a number on the keypad.
"Hey Camden? I need you to look something up for me."
Camden was Rand's best friend of twenty years, his whole life really. He held a job at the newspaper and was Rand's own personal informant.
Rand read the name off the label of the pill container and listened across the line to the zealous clatter of a keyboard.
"Whoa, it's some crazy hallucinogen."
"Hey, while you're at it, could you look into St. Dymphna's, the hospital not the cemetery?" Rand added. "And you wouldn't by any chance know about a guy named Morgan who went to the same university as Willow."
Again the clack of typing fingers rained in Rand's ear.
"Let's see, St. Dymphna's is a hospital specializing in psychiatric help, psychological disorders, etcetera," Camden read. "And actually I took it upon myself to look into the circumstances surrounding the Parkers after you started getting cozy with the other twin."
Rand felt his cheeks redden, "I'm not "getting cozy" with her; I'm just trying to help her out."
"Right. Well, you don't have to worry about Morgan, her long-time college boyfriend. He broke it off with her after she dropped out of school-probably to come back home and take care of her parents."
Rand's brow crowded over his puzzled stare, "Wait, I thought her parents died; I just saw their grave markers today."
"The whole Parker family has pre-ordered stones, but only one is actually in use," Camden stated simply.
"Creepy."
"Tell me about it. The Parkers, well, Emily and Alexander at least, currently reside at St. Dymphna's. Supposedly both suffer from severe Alzheimers, don't even recognize their own faces according to a nurse there. Interestingly, I had to dig to find a faculty member who knew they were even there. It seems they've been erased from the computer files."
Rand had crept back out into the hall and was whispering "What? How?"
"Well, it seems right after the heiress to the Parker fortune, your buddy Willow, dropped out of school, the hospital received a very generous donation going towards nice new equipment and a handful of new, elite workers."
"So you think Willow bribed the hospital to make it look like her parents were never there, or had died?" Rand asked slowly.
"I'm betting on it."
Tucking away his phone, Rand peeked around the hall corner into the living room. Willow sat in an old Victorian chair, eyes dreamily fixed on nothing. She sat straight-backed with her hands curled over the chair's wooden armrests. Some favorite old lyrics flitted across Rand's mind: "Sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair." She even had the regal tilt to her chin, and a faint smile on her lips as if overseeing some apparitional court.
Rand ducked back down the hallway. Across from the bathroom was the door from his dream. Placing his fingers to the cool brass of the doorknob, he twisted it and slipped inside.
He felt his eyes gasp, desperately sucking at the black air for any sip of light. His footsteps unsteadily hugged the carpet as he shuffled forward. Braving a little more speed in the emptiness, his toe struck something-hard, triggering a rattle and a shattering crash. He backpedaled from the collision, but found himself on the floor as well, tangled in fabric; visions of a skirt wrapped around the shriveled legs of a corpse shot through his brain. He panicked.
Rosy light soaked the room. Rand looked down to see a long sunset-pink gown tangled at his feet. There was of course no dead body.
"Rand, what're you doing in here?"
Rand gaped, red-faced on the floor. The walls that surrounded him were a soft coral. They matched the bedspread, the carpet, and the broken lamp next to the nightstand. He'd been in this bedroom before. It was Elena's room. On the wall above where the body had been strewn in his dream, patches of chalky, white paint were slapped onto the pink.
Willow walked in out of the doorway; any trace of her remote, dreamy stare melted clean away, but her steely eyes barely touched Rand.
"She killed herself, didn't she?"
Willow jolted, face whiter than ever, "What?"
"Elena," Rand said, stroking the white patch on the wall. "I always knew she had problems, but I never imagined she'd actually take her own life."
"My sister is not dead," Willow said sternly. "She still lives here like she always did. She's fine."
Rand turned his gaze onto Willow, his tone a gentle challenge, "The situation with your parents was probably that little bit that pushed her over the edge."
"There is no situation with my parents."
"They're in St. Dymphna's Willow. I know they're who you visited."
"They're at work. They'll be home any minute."
"You can't live like this Willow."
"Stop it!" Willow shrieked, clamping her hands over her ears. "Just shut up!" She shook her head fiercely, eyes beginning to glisten. "You're lying."
"You're lying to yourself."
Willow tore from the room. A door slam followed soon after, from somewhere across the apartment.
Drawing a shaky breath, Rand climbed to his feet. He lightly tossed the pink gown onto the bed. It had been the dress Elena wore to the spring dance ninth grade. Not bothering to flip off the lights, Rand trudged across the hall into the bathroom. He swung open the medicine cabinet, gathering the rows of identical medicine bottles. He wasn't worried about Willow getting far. He watched the dumped pills swirl in the toilet bowl, and plunge down into the plumbing.
Making his way outside, down onto the street, he looked down the sidewalks, left and right. She was gone.
Rand slowly drove the route to the hospital, searching the strips of sidewalk on either side of the road. Once there he asked the receptionist about the Parkers.
"I'm sorry, but we don't have anyone here by that name."
"I used to know someone by that name," a voice said feebly behind him.
He turned to see a little woman with ruffled salt and pepper hair. She kind of tottered as she stood there, hands constantly fidgeting.
"Mrs. Parker?"
She looked at him, blinking her tear blue eyes at him a moment, before absently wandering away.
There was no mistaking Emily Parker; Rand had known her for years, although she obviously no longer knew him. Rand resignedly left the hospital.
He drove around town for two hours before he saw the car parked outside his old high school. A cute, little, blue sports car, very expensive and far from common. Elena had owned one just like it in pink.
In the school courtyard he found her. She sat so still she seemed just an extension of the stone bench beneath her. Eyes the only thing to move, she watched the kids lingering in the schoolyard.
Rand sat down beside her, trying to trace her gaze and understand what held her attention so intently. The schoolyard was familiar enough, but the kids weren't at all. She seemed to be watching two in particular, a girl with long, straight black hair and a boy she was obviously flirting with. The boy had pale blonde hair that hung past his ears and a smile that never quit.
"Who are they?" he finally asked, studying them to no avail.
Her tone surprised him, so soft and almost unsure.
"My sister and her boyfriend." She wriggled her nose, lips twitching in and out of a series of quick smirks as if she were trying to put on the right face. "She really likes him, but she doesn't eat lunch with me anymore, or have much time to do stuff."
Willow started to blink fiercely, still watching the kids. Rand wanted to put an arm around her, but he wasn't sure if she'd even feel it. She obviously wasn't quite here-not in this time at least.
Rand studied the two kids again. Her sister? Her sister's boyfriend? They looked to be about fourteen, fifteen, high school freshmen. The girl, her face obscured, toyed with a necklace as they talked.
A smile began to play on Rand's lips. The scene struck very near to a memory, a very dear memory.
Elena had toyed with her necklace that day long ago in the schoolyard, her eyes coyly darting up and down, up and down.
"You're best friends with Camden, aren't you?"
"He's like a brother," he'd responded, trying to sound casual, to keep perfectly cool.
Her eyes had plunged into his before ducking back down.
"Then why don't you ever go with him to Key Club?"
He'd shrugged, "Cam's been trying to get me to join clubs for years, but I'm not really big on the extracurricular stuff."
Her fingers had bumped along over the sparkly red-purple beads of her necklace.
"Well, if your best friend can't sway you, I don't suppose I have any chance."
One of her absent tugs had been a little too hard. The necklace had hung glittering in her hand. She'd groped with the clasp a moment behind her neck before Rand intervened.
"Allow me."
Smiling, she'd drawn her hair aside, like a curtain from her small, bare neck. The faint warmth of her skin had made his palms sweat as he awkwardly handled the clasp. Needless to say, he'd attended the Key Club meeting that day after school. He'd even stayed late to help the vice president make carwash posters, just him and Elena marking up poster-board with watery blue lettering. Afterwards he'd asked her out on a date, his first real date.
Rand shook off the daydream. The black-haired girl turned around; she had pretty, little, foreign eyes, nose slightly wide and flat, and a thin pink mouth. She looked nothing like Elena.
Rand looked over at Willow. She, on the other hand, looked everything like Elena.
Slightly hunched forward, Willow's long hair had fallen from where it lain across her back, now hanging thickly around her face, exposing her right shoulder blade and the little fairy tattoo that danced on it. She probably got it for her eighteenth birthday. That's when Elena got hers: an impish little pink fairy, crouching on her shoulder blade. She'd squeezed Rand's hand as they carved it into her skin.
Willow's fairy was a wispy blue, its delicate little body outstretched and a serene smile on its face; it could've passed for an angel. Rand frowned. Back when he'd been with Elena, he never really knew Willow; to him she was almost an echo, a quiet look-alike. The spindly, blue fairy was like a brand on Willow's skin, claiming her body for her own, asserting her own identity. Looking at it, Rand wondered who'd held her hand when she went under the needle.
Clutched in her hand was a dark orange container: the last of the pill bottles. Rand gently pried it from her icy fingers, replacing it with his hand. She startled, turning and fixing him with her cobalt eyes.
"Willow, you--we have to let go. We've got to stop living in the past. We've got to live period."
Her cheeks were already lined with wet, "But I lost everything. They all left me."
Rand gave her hand a squeeze, "You've got me. I'm not going anywhere."
Hesitantly, Willow leaned forward; apprehensively determined, her motions stuttered closer to Rand. She kissed him.
He closed his eyes and kissed her back.
Insides fluttering and head feeling afloat, Rand slowly drew back. He levelly met her eyes and she smiled, something in her face hinting some secret knowledge.
"Come with me."
Rand followed Willow out into the parking lot and drove her back to her apartment building as she instructed. She left him outside the building, standing in the alley. He waited there.
After what seemed liked hours, a frantic clattering exploded above. Rand looked up to see Willow, clambering down the fire escape. She grinned wildly as she hopped to the ground. Her face almost looked to be melting, cheeks flushed and sweaty.
"Hurry!"
She grabbed hold of his hand and dragged him into a brisk walk away from the building. Looking back Rand saw brilliant flames dancing in the second story window of the Parker apartment, stomping into soot and ash, furniture and photographs, quilts and clothes, Willow's ensnaring past.
Hand in hand they abandoned the cold, brick building, venturing down a road they'd never been.