Flicker

She punched the sixteen frames up on the viewer not one of them showed another person. "Sorry Patricia there’s nobody there. At thirty two frames a second that’s faster than persistence of vision, there’s just no way."

"I guess I just dreamed it up then," Patricia said. "Still I wonder what it means."

"Well lets go get some pizza I can’t think on an empty stomach," Helen joked.

"Okay let’s go," Melanie put everything back as she found it and they left for the pizza parlor.

As they entered the door Patricia stopped cold in her tracks with the door half open. Her friends had preceded her and they came back.

"What’s wrong?" Helen quipped.

"Look," she stared at one of the many pictures of lost people taped on the door. There exactly at eye level was the face of the guy she had drawn. The name read Nathan Homes missing for two years, she recognized him they had gone to junior high together. She asked if she could borrow the poster and after dinner went to Dr. Smith with it.

"It’s what’s called confabulation, a common thing in dream research, imagining something that wasn’t there. Your subconscious stored the image of this guy you knew and put it on your white knight. Now why that happened would come out in several sessions. But I talked to your father and as feared he will hear nothing of you "having your head shrunk" as he calls it." Dr. Smith told Patricia.

"I still want to know what it all means." Patricia said as she stared into space.

Nathan stared at the pool again, nothing in this realm made any sense. He just wanted to go home.