Miranda Read online

  Chapter 2

  All her life, Miranda had been haunted, wondering whether she was actually able to make any choices at all or just following a path already determined for her.

  I never understood why it mattered so much to her. From a practical perspective, it made no difference. She never did have an answer to my train analogy. We were the same as everybody else, just on a different track. She thought there had to be a logic error embedded in my comments, but she couldn’t find it. That just seemed to make things worse.

  There was one time when she thought she could prove things to herself. A time when she could absolutely without a doubt make a decision on her own that clearly went against her destiny.

  It happened during the time we were apart. That was the year she turned 25 -- the year she was supposed to see her sister for the last time until she was on her death-bed.

  She told me about it after we went back home that first night.

  “Oh, my God, you left everything. My shoes are still in the way.” She laughed and moved her sneakers to the side.

  She jumped into my arms and gave me a long hard kiss before looking back through our home again. The two years apart melted away.

  Just then, Doof came running in and went crazy, barking at Miranda, running around her, and then lifting his short front paws up to her ankles.

  “Oh, my little boy!” She squealed like a teenager and picked him up. He made small sounds like “burf” and sniffed her face, squirming in her arms like a colicky baby. After a few minutes, he calmed down. Miranda put him on the floor. He went to find a dog bed and licked himself.

  “The notebooks . . . ” She caressed the open one on the table in her room.

  All I had done in the past two years was to dust them a couple of times. “I never peeked,” I said. “Just the page that was already open. Tempted, but I thought as long as the pages were unread, you’d have to come back one day and erase them.”

  The open page showed a sketch of a girl, a teenager, with dark hair and eyes that were large and round. “That’s my sister, Ricki,” she said as she looked at the sketch. “It doesn’t do her justice.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Let’s have a glass of wine. It’s so great to see this place.” She gave me another hug. “I really did miss you, Michael.”

  I felt another tug at my heart and smiled weakly. “I have an empty bottle under the kitchen sink.” The pronoun “I” had slipped out without thinking. It was time to get back to “we.”

  The wine was made nearby. As I read the label, I vaguely recognized the name and thought maybe we should drive down to the winery soon to take back a bottle.

  There were two dirty glasses in the sink, and I took them to the table, where we each spit up a small amount and clinked glasses.

  “My sister.” She took a deep breath. “Last summer, I went east to Modesto. I’m not really sure why Modesto. There was a news story set there and I thought, ‘What the hell?’ I just wanted to go someplace new.”

  I’d never been there, so I didn’t have much to add.

  “Hitch-hiked,” she said. “I took a couple rides but it’s not that far, so it was pretty easy.”

  I nodded. I knew it wasn’t far. Maybe two hours. “What happened?”

  “It was a warm day, and I was eating an ice cream cone. Vanilla with little almond chips sprinkled on top.”

  “Sounds like you.”

  “She saw me. I was just standing on the street corner, licking my ice cream. She came up to me and started laughing and crying. She had the same kind of ice cream cone, almond chips and all.”

  I didn’t say anything. She was staring into the distance, remembering her sister.

  “Her eyes were so big and round. Hypnotizing. But, right away, I had no question about who she was. I felt a deep love for her, which was so weird, cause I had only met her that one time before, so long ago.”

  “Maybe somehow family -- ” I hesitated, not sure of the right words, “ -- somehow they transcend our differences.”

  “Well, anyhow, something happened. We were like old friends who saw each other every day. She was just great, even going the wrong direction. She was saying good-bye to me, of course. It was our last time together until -- you know. She was going to travel in Europe and maybe stay there. We made all the right kind of promises to keep in touch, but somehow those 55 years ended up passing before she found me again.”

  “Why didn’t she keep in touch?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t call her because I didn’t know her. My guess is she had no way to find me. After we parted, I went back to Oakland and it wasn’t long after that the rape happened and then I met you.”

  “So, she didn’t know where to find you?”

  “And I didn’t know I should have told her where I lived.”

  “Wow. At least now, you’ll see her again. It sounds like you were pretty close.”

  She nodded. “All of that’s good.”

  “But?

  “But I met her exactly when I was supposed to. It pretty much proved I had no choice in the matter. Even though I had consciously tried to avoid finding her, it didn’t matter a bit.”

  Three months passed.

  Doof and Miranda cuddled at every opportunity. Miranda and I cuddled at every opportunity, too. Having her back home was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.

  But, still, Miranda was restless. I could feel it in her touch, the way she stared into nothingness once in a while, even the way her smile sometimes seemed fake, as if her mind was busy thinking, but she knew she had to pretend to be there for me.

  Most of the time, she was there for me. But not always. Sometimes, I could see she was totally preoccupied when I walked into the kitchen unexpected. Her empty coffee cup sitting there would never be filled. Doof slept at her feet. An unnatural quiet filled the room with suspense.

  At other times she’d wake in the middle of the night and go sit in the bathroom for thirty or forty minutes. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I knew it would be the same old thing. She wanted freedom. True freedom, and she didn’t know how to get it.

  It was the thing that seemed to matter most to her in her whole life. She wanted a choice in something. Anything. One single decision that would be all her own.

  And finally she thought of one thing that would conclusively prove she had free will. I’m sure she thought about it for most of those three months. Maybe she had the idea earlier, but it couldn’t work without me as a witness, and so finding me again gave her the impetus to dust off her thoughts and consider her options.

  It was 1987. I remember reading news accounts of the World Exposition that had been held in Vancouver the year before and talking to her about us taking a vacation there the previous year. She acted enthused, but in retrospect it was clear she never planned to do that with me.

  July 5. The date I’ll never forget. We’d gone to sleep in the morning, snoozed comfortably, and made love when we woke up in the late night. As always, it was wonderful.

  She held me tightly after, holding onto me for almost an hour, silent. She might have been crying. I’m not sure.

  Our last time. Of course I didn’t know that then.

  I was feeling slightly woozy, so I knew we’d be getting out of bed to have a few beers or some wine together. Hopefully there’d be a few laughs to go with it, and not the difficult times with the “other” Miranda, the girl who snapped and turned morose way too often.

  This time, though, it was a middle-ground Miranda who shared the drinks with me.

  She wanted to reminisce. The wonderful holiday in Egypt before the terrorists, our romantic gondola ride in Venice. All the times we had gone over the bridge to San Francisco to find a small café or a restaurant to spend a great evening together.

  She reached for my hand. “I love you, Michael.”

  “And I love you, too, Miranda. I always will.”

  She nodded, choked up a bit of beer, and then s
he left to go to the bathroom.

  I was still thinking back to our time in Venice. Now that she had me thinking about that, I really wanted to convince her to come on another holiday with me. Vancouver. Expo 86 would be the start of a whole series of new adventures for us.

  That’s when I heard her groan and then a crash followed from the bathroom.

  For a moment, I froze, then I jumped up and ran to her.

  “Miranda?” The door was locked. “Miranda!” I heard her groan again. That was enough. The flimsy lock burst easily as I smashed into the door.

  My Miranda.

  She lay on the floor surrounded by a pool of bright red blood. She gasped and stared up at me, but I could tell right away that she was losing the fight raging inside her.

  She was on her back, legs spread apart, slowly moving, and right in the middle of her chest, a long sharp knife was skewering her.

  There was a second red spot just below the knife, where she had stabbed herself the first time. I had an insane admiration for her having the strength of conviction to stab herself, pull the knife out, and then do it again.

  That thought fluttered away instantly.

  “Miranda!” I kneeled beside her, not knowing what to do. Should I pull the knife out, or was it better to leave it in and go for help?

  “No,” I heard her whisper. “Let it alone.” Her voice was almost nonexistent. “You know nobody can help.”

  I grabbed the knife and felt her holding the handle. I knocked her hand aside and yanked the knife out. I could feel it grinding against her ribs as I pulled.

  Then, I pushed down carefully on the wound with a white bathroom towel.

  “It’s okay. We’ll get you fixed up.”

  Even as I said those words, I knew it was hopeless. I could see the life drifting out of her eyes and felt her last heart beat as I pressed the towel on her.

  “No!” I didn’t know what to do, so I shook her, tried to force her back to life. “Miranda, don’t leave me!”

  One last sigh. She was dead.

  I held her and cried and cried and cried.

  Her suicide note was sitting on the counter.

  Dear Michael:

  If you’re reading this, it looks like you were right. We have free will after all. This proves it. If I can kill myself, obviously my past is ended, and I’ll never meet Ricki again, never meet my parents, and never be born. All those events will be wiped out. Everything I was expected to do will all be undone.

  I will have done the only act in my lifetime that I know for sure was not predetermined.

  Don’t cry for me. This is what I needed.

  I love you. Miranda.

  When I finished reading the note, I looked down at Miranda again. Her body was gone.

  Chapter 1

  Doof and I were alone.

  Even the blood splattered on the bathroom cabinets was gone. Every bit of Miranda was taken from me.

  I think I was in shock. All I wanted was to know where she was. Wanted her to come back for me so I could call 911. That wouldn’t have worked, since the ambulance would already have arrived before she killed herself, but crazy thoughts sprinkled my mind.

  I thought I was going nuts. Maybe there never really was a Miranda -- maybe she was just a wonderful dream.

  But, of course, her wine glass was still there. Her books. Her sketches. I could even still smell her perfume hanging beside me.

  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t disappeared. Would her body continue to move back in time with me? How long could that last? How would the police deal with a body that sprung back to life just after she stabbed herself?

  Amid all the confusion that would arise, I realized it was just as well her body had disappeared and hadn’t left all the challenges that would have precipitated otherwise.

  This time, she’d left me for good.

  Not only me. Her parents would never hold Miranda as a baby. Ricki would be an only child. Somehow the world carried on as if she had never existed. But I knew.

  So did Doof. He came into the bathroom while I was sitting on the floor with my back leaning against the toilet. He sniffed the area where Miranda had lain and then looked up at me with questioning eyes.

  “Hey, boy, c’mere.” I held him and patted him, both of us staring at the empty floor.

  I think Miranda thought she was safe, that she couldn’t possibly succeed at killing herself. Instead, she proved she was wrong. She did have free will after all. I wonder if she had a split second of satisfaction before she died.

  We all have free will, I think. Some of us just choose to take the path of least resistance.

  The months passed, and I didn’t cry for Miranda. I wanted to, but all my tears had been used up when she left me after her abortion.

  The house seemed so empty, though. I watched too much television, drank too much beer, and went to work with too many gut-wrenching hangovers.

  I went to the sea lions several times over the summer and watched them playing together, remembering the times Miranda and I stared at them, entranced.

  Every few days, I’d see Doof walking around the house, just wandering, peeking into each room. I knew he was looking for her, instinctively wanting his mistress, whom he had yet to meet for the first time.

  One day, though, his pining for Miranda hit me. He hasn’t met her yet.

  “Doof?”

  I held him to me, staring into his big, woeful eyes. “How could you be looking for her, boy?”

  His eyes darted around the room, and I knew then that he was trapped in the same backward world I was. He did know her, because he was just like me.

  All his life, he had likely been lonely, confused, and scared half to death, not understanding so much of what was happening to him.

  I told myself all this, maybe just to believe we had more in common than we truly did.

  Soon enough, though, he stopped looking for her. He just stayed with me when I was at home.

  Doof was growing very young. His coat was a smooth, deep brown, no trace of the white that would cover his face in his later years.

  I put Miranda’s books and clothes into banker’s boxes and piled them into a corner of the den. I couldn’t stand the thought of giving them away. She still had all those un-erased notebooks.

  Summer turned to spring, then to winter, and before I knew what was happening, three more years were gone, and I was down to twenty-one years old. I had almost no money in the bank, since I hadn’t been in the work force very long. I wondered what would happen when I completely ran out of cash.

  Doof was just a pup, less than eight inches long

  One day, I looked at him in his little cardboard box. I had spread newspapers around him, because he was losing control of where to pee. He always seemed to know he did something wrong, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “Hey, boy.” I picked him up and he eagerly licked my face, all full of energy.

  I carefully took him out to the car with tears blurring my vision.

  We drove down to The Pet Store On The Bay. I gave him one last long hug before taking him inside and trading him for $300.

  The clerk in the store put him in a large cage, with several other pups. They were his siblings. He was the runt of the litter. He plopped down in a corner and watched the others suspiciously.

  From there . . .

  In another six weeks, he’d be with his mother. He’d crawl up into her womb and then disappear.

  When I got home I was truly alone, and I cried again. I felt little more than a boy, and I knew my time as an independent man was coming to an end.

  I missed my mother and looked up her number in the phone book.

  Prologue

  MY NAME IS MIKEY JOHNSON.

  I AM 4. I LIVE WITH MOMMY AND DADDY IN MODESTO CALFORNA.

  I NO I WAS OLD ONE TIME. I WORKED LIKE DADDY AND I HAD BEER

  MOMMY SEZ I SHUD RITE IN MY BOOK BUT I DONT NO WHAT TO SAY. SOMETIME SHE SEZ WORDS I DONT NO.<
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  I WISH MOMMY WAS MIRANDA CAUSE SHE LIKES ME. IM AFRAID OF MOMMY SOMETIME. AND I WISH DADDY DIDN’T HIT ME.

  I MISS DOOF. HE WENT INSIDE HIS MOMMY. I NO THAT’S WHAT I WILL DO TOO. I WANT MIRANDA.

  I WISH MIRANDA NEVER LEFT ME.

  Afterword

  Miranda is one of my favorite pieces of my own writing.

  The novella actually began as a short story. The trigger for that short story was a dream, where many of my weirder stories start life. I dreamed of a man who lived his life backward. That’s a cool idea, I thought. I hadn’t heard of a story like that before, which is what most appealed to me.

  I scratched out the story in early 2005. That version was only 3,000 words (compared to the 20,000 words here). Although I liked the idea, it wasn’t really working for me. I tried a few variations -- different points of view, different tenses, etc. It still didn’t work. I couldn’t put my finger on why until I enrolled in the first Borderlands Press Writers’ Boot Camp. I showed up to meet Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, Richard Chizmar, and David Morrell. Although we didn’t specifically discuss “Miranda,” Tom ripped my workshopped story apart (with his usual class!) and pointed out I was great at concepts but I needed a story to go with it.

  And bingo, I knew the problem with the short version of “Miranda.” I was writing about this guy who lives his life backward . . . but there was no story there, just a cool idea.

  A lot of time passed. I eventually went back and asked myself what kind of story should be embedded to torment poor Michael and Miranda. Once I knew that, the novella seemed to write itself.

  Thank you, Tom.

  Although Miranda and Michael are not based on any real people, Doof is indeed modeled after my own beloved dog. The real Doof was my constant companion when I wrote the story, but he died peacefully on December 31, 2007 at the age of 16. I still miss him terribly.