Dancing in the Dark, Prompt #31
Title: Dancing in the Dark
Summary: Sometimes Allison’s victims refuse to let her go.
Prompt: #31 (second photo prompt)
Author: Sarah-Beth (memorysdaughter)
Rating: PG
Character(s): Allison, Scanlon, Joe, others
Spoilers: none that I can think of
Word Count: 671
Author’s Note: I wrote this while listening to “Poker Face” by Lady GaGa, and that became the soundtrack for this piece. If you want the full experience, you can turn that on while you read.
Dancing in the Dark
Allison has only known a few people who actually refuse to move on. Most folks, once she’s done helping them, they accept that they’re dead and they go wherever it is they’re supposed to go. They get the closure they need, and they let go. The few times someone has hung around, it’s because she got something wrong - because she was ready to let go when there was something she should have been paying more attention to. They tend to be the cases she can’t forget, the victims that stick in her mind, the ones that touch her on some other level than simply the psychic.
Rachel was one of those.
Rachel Anderson was a sixteen-year-old girl who had been kidnapped outside her school. In her “missing” poster photos, she reminded Allison of Ariel - blond and pretty, with an easy smile. Rachel could have been anyone’s daughter in those photos, except for the cochlear implants and her faraway, unseeing eyes.
For months after Rachel’s disappearance, Allison had dreamed in darkness, in mostly-silence, except for a few cue noises. She always awoke frustrated, pleading with Rachel, “Please - please give me more.” But she knew it was a worthless plea - how could Rachel give Allison any more than she was able to perceive?
Rachel’s mother spoke affectionately of her only child, as she straightened the Braille books on Rachel’s shelves or longingly stroked the sky blue dress she had purchased for Rachel to wear to her school’s formal dance, as though she knew it was a dress her daughter would never dance in.
Allison walked the streets with her eyes closed, trying to get closer to Rachel. She listened for the elusive sounds that Rachel heard - an ambulance siren, the backfiring of a car, someone screaming - and she waited for the tactile stimulus that had befallen Rachel on that last day, that last walk to school.
It never came. There were no answers. Months went by without a single lead.
Allison blamed herself, although she knew it wasn’t true. But if she couldn’t get a lead, then what was she doing wrong? Why had she signed on to protect innocents and rescue victims if she couldn’t even do that correctly? It was a conundrum that she could not solve, not even with her repeated low-stimulus dreams and continual sightings of the missing deaf-blind girl.
One night Allison awoke to the sound of soft music - something low and lyrical, melodic, with a thrumming bass line that resonated through her body. At firsts she thought it was a radio, someone’s half-forgotten nighttime tune-in, but then she realized that it was coming from the patio.
As she slid open the patio door, the world spun around her. Suddenly she was surrounded by light, glowing and pulsating, wrapping her up in its golden hug. She was dancing in the middle of an empty lane, streetlamps burning over her head.
And there, before her, in her beautiful blue dress, her long blond hair loose and hanging down her back, was Rachel, her hands outstretched. But the girl wasn’t lost, or reaching for help - no, far from it. She was dancing, twirling and bending under the starry, starry sky. Allison could hear her laughter, bobbing in time to the pounding bass line.
“Rachel?” Allison asked, uncertain if the girl could hear her.
“You seek answers, Mrs. DuBois,” Rachel said, a blissful smile on her face. “But what if the answers don’t actually exist?”
And then the deaf-blind girl spun away from Allison, dancing farther and farther into that golden haze of light, until it grabbed her up, sucked her away from the dream-world, until Allison awoke next to Joe, confused and somehow completely aware, the phone ringing in her ears.
It was Scanlon - a jogger had discovered Rachel Anderson’s body in the backyard of her mother’s boyfriend’s house.
“You seek answers, Mrs. DuBois,” Rachel said as Allison drove through the seemingly normal suburban neighborhood. “But I’m not here to give you answers - I’m here to teach you to dance.”
Summary: Sometimes Allison’s victims refuse to let her go.
Prompt: #31 (second photo prompt)
Author: Sarah-Beth (memorysdaughter)
Rating: PG
Character(s): Allison, Scanlon, Joe, others
Spoilers: none that I can think of
Word Count: 671
Author’s Note: I wrote this while listening to “Poker Face” by Lady GaGa, and that became the soundtrack for this piece. If you want the full experience, you can turn that on while you read.
Dancing in the Dark
Allison has only known a few people who actually refuse to move on. Most folks, once she’s done helping them, they accept that they’re dead and they go wherever it is they’re supposed to go. They get the closure they need, and they let go. The few times someone has hung around, it’s because she got something wrong - because she was ready to let go when there was something she should have been paying more attention to. They tend to be the cases she can’t forget, the victims that stick in her mind, the ones that touch her on some other level than simply the psychic.
Rachel was one of those.
Rachel Anderson was a sixteen-year-old girl who had been kidnapped outside her school. In her “missing” poster photos, she reminded Allison of Ariel - blond and pretty, with an easy smile. Rachel could have been anyone’s daughter in those photos, except for the cochlear implants and her faraway, unseeing eyes.
For months after Rachel’s disappearance, Allison had dreamed in darkness, in mostly-silence, except for a few cue noises. She always awoke frustrated, pleading with Rachel, “Please - please give me more.” But she knew it was a worthless plea - how could Rachel give Allison any more than she was able to perceive?
Rachel’s mother spoke affectionately of her only child, as she straightened the Braille books on Rachel’s shelves or longingly stroked the sky blue dress she had purchased for Rachel to wear to her school’s formal dance, as though she knew it was a dress her daughter would never dance in.
Allison walked the streets with her eyes closed, trying to get closer to Rachel. She listened for the elusive sounds that Rachel heard - an ambulance siren, the backfiring of a car, someone screaming - and she waited for the tactile stimulus that had befallen Rachel on that last day, that last walk to school.
It never came. There were no answers. Months went by without a single lead.
Allison blamed herself, although she knew it wasn’t true. But if she couldn’t get a lead, then what was she doing wrong? Why had she signed on to protect innocents and rescue victims if she couldn’t even do that correctly? It was a conundrum that she could not solve, not even with her repeated low-stimulus dreams and continual sightings of the missing deaf-blind girl.
One night Allison awoke to the sound of soft music - something low and lyrical, melodic, with a thrumming bass line that resonated through her body. At firsts she thought it was a radio, someone’s half-forgotten nighttime tune-in, but then she realized that it was coming from the patio.
As she slid open the patio door, the world spun around her. Suddenly she was surrounded by light, glowing and pulsating, wrapping her up in its golden hug. She was dancing in the middle of an empty lane, streetlamps burning over her head.
And there, before her, in her beautiful blue dress, her long blond hair loose and hanging down her back, was Rachel, her hands outstretched. But the girl wasn’t lost, or reaching for help - no, far from it. She was dancing, twirling and bending under the starry, starry sky. Allison could hear her laughter, bobbing in time to the pounding bass line.
“Rachel?” Allison asked, uncertain if the girl could hear her.
“You seek answers, Mrs. DuBois,” Rachel said, a blissful smile on her face. “But what if the answers don’t actually exist?”
And then the deaf-blind girl spun away from Allison, dancing farther and farther into that golden haze of light, until it grabbed her up, sucked her away from the dream-world, until Allison awoke next to Joe, confused and somehow completely aware, the phone ringing in her ears.
It was Scanlon - a jogger had discovered Rachel Anderson’s body in the backyard of her mother’s boyfriend’s house.
“You seek answers, Mrs. DuBois,” Rachel said as Allison drove through the seemingly normal suburban neighborhood. “But I’m not here to give you answers - I’m here to teach you to dance.”