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Miranda Winters slept fitfully, and woke with a start. For a moment, confused and disorientated, she struggled to comprehend where she was. Suddenly, reality hit her and she sat bolt upright. She was on the floor, on a dirty, uncomfortably thin, foam mattress, with a single, barely adequate blanket covering her. She turned her head and looked through sleepy eyes at the girl laying close by on another mattress. The girl; her name was Veronica, Mandy remembered, was still asleep. In the dark, half-light, Mandy strained to focus on the form next to her. Veronica moaned softly in her sleep, and occasionally her hands, and feet, twitched involuntarily, as though she was trapped in a bad dream.
Slowly, in all their terrifying detail, the events of the night before came back to Mandy. She was
