PREVIOUSLY…

The line went dead and Alice was left staring at the box Shane had left in the middle of her lounge yesterday evening.  She looked at the package that had her name on it and realised that as much as its potential contents scared her, she owed it to Dana to open it up.  She hadn’t thought about it enough from Dana’s point of view.  How hard it must have been to do what she had done.  She took a deep breath and picked it up.

The package was heavier than Alice expected.  She placed it in her lap and stared at it wondering about its contents.  She knew that there would be a personal letter for her from Dana but there was clearly other stuff in it too.  The writer was excited but nervous.  She was eager but terrified. She was….she was stalling.  Alice looked at the picture that stood proudly on her side table and searched Dana’s face for the courage she needed to go on.  Putting out that picture had been another step in her healing process.  In the days following Helena’s discovery of her shrine Alice had put away all of the pictures she had of her and Dana together.  The only picture of Dana that had remained in her apartment was one taken of the whole gang at Alice’s birthday dinner about a year before she and Dana even got together.

A few months after Dana died Alice had had a nightmare.  It was different to the one that she had frequently had in the preceeding months.  Could you even call a blow by blow replay of something that actually happened a nightmare?  Was a nightmare not supposed to be something fictional?  For the first few months that was what had filled Alice’s mind every time she slept – an action replay of that last day in the hospital all the details exactly as they happened and always the same brutal ending.  It upset Alice greatly that even in her dreams she struggled to remember the good times. 

Then, one night she finally had a dream about the happier times.  They were all sitting in the planet having breakfast joking and laughing.  Alice and Dana were both sitting on the same side of the table but Shane was sitting in between them blocking their view of each other.  Every time Alice moved forward to try and see Dana as she spoke, Shane would move too, obscuring her view.  Finally frustrated Alice had grabbed Shane’s shoulders and pushed her out of the way only to be faced with Dana sitting before her with a blurry mess where her face should have been.  Alice could hear her voice perfectly but no matter what she did she couldn’t get her face to come into focus.