Taint (Formerly Claimed) Dark Midnight 1

Chapter 11

“Empty,” Miriam murmured to herself as watched her reflection play over the foggy surface of the bathroom mirror.  “I am not empty…”

With the back of her hand, she cleared a circle through the steam left behind from her shower, and eyed herself critically.

She frowned at the dark brown eyes staring pensively into the glass, the light brown hair that fell in limp curls over shoulders and the pale skin gleaming in the steam. 

In one word?  She could be summed up as…plain.  Maybe cute—but in a childish way.

Noting more. 

With a sigh, she pinched some color into her cheeks and tried her best imitation of a happy smile. 

Hi, she thought pulling her upper lip back from her teeth.  I’m Miriam and I am not empty.  I smile and act normal all the time. 

She tried to appear happy…

And didn’t even come close. 

The light didn’t reach her eyes, and the ‘smile’ came out looking more pained than anything. 

Reaching for a brush, she smoothed her hair back into a ponytail and tried again. 

Hi!  She thought cheerfully.  I am not an empty soul. 

This time seemed a little less stiff than before, but there was no life in it.  Her mouth looked odd stretched into a grin. 

The expression seemed…

Fake, Miriam thought disgustedly. 

There was no spark behind the eyes.  No warmth in it. 

For lack of a better word, she just looked empty. 

Annoyed, she tossed the brush onto the counter and just twisted her wet hair into a messy bun.  Then, she padded out of the bathroom on bare feet, wrapped in nothing more than a fluffy white robe. 

What the hell did Eliot know anyway?  She thought with a grimace.  He certainly didn’t know her.

She wasn’t empty. 

In fact, these days she seemed filled to the brim with emotion.   More than it seemed possible to bear without exploding. 

In fact, the only thing ‘empty’ around here…was her house.

The wide hallway was dark, full of shadows, as she wandered down to her bedroom. Through a crack in the curtains, she caught sight of a pitch-dark sky covered in a horizon of navy clouds from behind a window. 

Snow still drifted down in light batches.  If enough fell overnight, school might have been delayed or even canceled tomorrow. 

The roads were probably a mess, she realized, cutting out all possibility of her father coming home tonight.  A part of her couldn’t help wondering if Eliot had even made it to the hospital okay…

Stop, she scolded herself, shaking her head. 

Eliot was a creep.  He didn’t deserve any of her worry. 

But no matter how hard she tried to tell herself that, those soulless red eyes kept popping into her mind.

Constantly.

In desperate need of a distraction, she slipped into her bedroom, changed into a pair of sweats and dug some old homework out of her backpack.    

It was boring stuff, equations, times tables, vocabulary words…

But, time and time again she found herself drifting off stare into space, thinking of Lizzie Marexsson and her weird foster brother.