One Deception

Chapter Sixteen

Written by Kenz (TogetherWeRise)

Chapter Sixteen

Rosalie

When I imagined where Miranda might be right now, I pictured a pile of shiny white bones scattered among the damp leaves and dirt on the woods floor. I didn’t try and picture a place where Miranda had escaped to, because I knew with undeniable certainty that the girl was dead; but the question I often wondered was where was her body? Her soul?

Perhaps a fox had carried her spine off to it’s den, and kept it there to gnaw the marrow out when it was hungry, or a stray dog had found her and buried her near a nice flower patch. For some reason, I thought that Miranda would like it if a fox had gotten ahold of her. So that was the image I had decided on, her bones being hoarded by a small, red fox. Her death in turn sustaining another, smaller life- and not just the life of the fox. Mine, too.

Sometimes Miranda came to me, except when I saw her now she was as she had been in the picture that the detective had shown me. Radiant. Hopeful. When we spoke, she was much funnier than she had been in the basement. She had a lot to say, which was surprising, since she had said so little in the time that I had known her alive. It was almost like we were friends.

“Why weren’t you like this before?” I had asked her once.

Miranda, who had been sitting on the windowsill swinging her legs back and forth like a pendulum, had shrugged delicately. “My mind and my body were weak. They overshadowed my personality.”

This had confused me. “Then why are you okay now?”

At that, Miranda had smiled brightly at me. “Because, Rose. This is my soul.”

And I liked that she was finally at peace, but something still nagged at me. Time; or rather, it’s passing. With every ticking second the death of Miranda Bennett got colder and colder. What where the chances that her death would be avenged now? Slim to nill.

This always made me angry. If the police had only just listened! I had told them everything. All they needed to do was make the drive out. They would have found the cabin, and the basement with the blood on the floor, and they would have found remnants of Miranda. But- that doctor, and the fame. Both the doctors nay-saying and the fact that One Direction was famous took part in her not being believed. 

How many other Miranda’s had there been after I’d left? I couldn’t stand the thought.

Now, I looked down at the restraints holding me fast to my bed and sighed. It was a weighted and yet soft sound, much like those that Miranda had frequently let out in the basement. To say that I understood her was an understatement.

The feeling of being trapped was heavy. Not the weighty kind of heavy, but the kind of heavy that blankets all of your thoughts and takes over your very being and filled your chest like you’d swallowed a gallon of water with one of those sponges that expands when wet. Even with the nurse on my side, it was all futile. All of my tireless efforts in vain. Sometimes, when I realized this, I wished they had killed me when they had the chance. 

Fact of the matter was, after what seemed like a lifetime of fighting against opposing forces and waiting for something big to happen, I had given up. I couldn’t win and this was a fact that I’d come to accept.

That had dawned on me perhaps only a few days after I won the nurses side, but my decline from all rational thought and reality had been swift. Everyone at the hospital had noticed. When staff passed by my room they would whisper behind their hands, “she’s finally gone.”