Hi, guys. I'm limegreenwordmachine. I haven't written much for Death Note before, but that could change soon.
Here's the deal: this is the prologue to a story that is not quite ready for takeoff. I am posting this prologue because I have a vague idea of where this story is going, and I want to gauge interest and also to encourage myself to continue writing it at a reasonable pace. The story might become more defined in my head if I start posting a little bit of it. To be clear, posting this prologue is a commitment to writing this story. It is not a commitment to writing it all very soon.
If you're interested in seeing what the story is actually about, please follow it and give me a review of the prologue (doesn't have to be long). I'm hoping to get a solid outline and another chapter up fairly soon. Thank you for reading!
There is a husky voice at the end of the line. "I have instructions for you."
"Forgive me for asking," says Nate River, "but who are you to give me instructions?"
A chuckle. "You don't owe me anything yet, but you will soon. And following these instructions will be the last thing you can do to pay your debt."
Nate River sits, quiet and still, for several minutes. He is weighing his options, and it would not be surprising if the person on the other end were to hang up. Then the pause breaks. "I will make no commitment of any sort," he says. "But I want to hear what you have to say."
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Come on now, Sayu. Get up off the floor.
But I don't want to.
So you want to lie here until Mom gets home and panics and calls for help? It's not like you'll be able to explain to her why you're lying face down on the living room floor, you know.
I don't want to get up.
Pathetic.
Sayu doesn't reply to the critical voice in her head, preferring instead to remain planted on the rug in front of the TV, breathing in the scent of the powder her mother sprinkles in the carpet to make it smell nice when she vacuums. It's like lavender and vanilla. It's a little bit soothing, but not nearly enough to make her want to heave herself up and back onto the sofa. Maybe she can just suffocate herself by pressing her face further into the carpet. Being alive is so tiresome. Feelings are tiresome. Most tiresome of all is keeping all those feelings at bay.
But the voice of her childhood infatuation, Hideki Ryuga, blaring out of the TV reminds her that it is getting time for Sachiko to arrive home, and giving her mother a fright is neither kind nor sensible. Best to pretend she's done nothing more mentally strenuous than watch second-rate movies all day. Contemplating suicide is a no-no.
Sayu is damaged goods.
Violence, death, and violation have left her empty. Empty – numb – is horrible, but it's better than grief, right? Better than acknowledging the nightmares, the memories of dying fathers and ghost brothers and groping hands.
She should never have turned on the news. Not today, not four months ago, not four months and two days ago.
Ugh.
Forget it.
I'm going to bed, she thinks. I'm going to bed right now.
She does.
Sachiko Yagami finds her daughter lying on the living room floor, TV still blaring. She panics, but then recognizes the deep, even breaths of sleep and throws a blanket over her daughter and leaves a pillow delicately placed under her disheveled head.
../../..
Linda leans out of the window into the grime and dust of Thursday in New York. She almost lights a cigarette, before remembering she's given up smoking, and tosses the entire pack out into the street. "Free if you want it," she calls to a scruffy kid in the street, who flips her off in a friendly fashion.
She's never been a pack-a-day smoker or anything, and the smell still makes her hold her nose when it's heavy. She just got herself mildly hooked on the nicotine. Matt's fault. Gone four months and still leaving his grimy hipster fingerprints on everything she does. It's like he's haunting her.
What is she now, anyway? Artist. Resident of a decent apartment complex, clean enough. Making enough money in gallery showings to last her until her mid-thirties, at this rate, and she's barely twenty. The critics say stuff about "emotional depth," about masterful use of color and light, about hyperrealism and abstract concepts and technique to rival the greats. None of these critics seem to be able to understand that the work they are looking at is certainly that of a genius, but a twenty-year-old gum-popping genius who is phoning it in for the money until she can get her feet planted again. Which might never happen.
Of course, there are the portraits, but she never shows those to anyone. There are sketches of the boys – with bright red hair, collapsed against a wall puffing on a cigarette. Languid and lanky and lazy. With sunny blond hair – brandishing a Beretta and a gaze like ice. Hipbones, cheekbones, a jaw like cut glass. Then there's squishy little Near in his pajamas, forever an unsettlingly old twelve-year-old boy in the body of a skinny, stoic young adult. But nobody can see these fascinatingly real faces.
She collapses on the couch, face down. She's gained three pounds this week and she's craving crunchy peanut butter – like, all the time. She barely hears the door open.
"Linda?"
"Hey, Sammy."
"You don't look so good."
"I'm not feeling so good, sweetie. I gotta lot of work to do, but I don't really wanna do it."
"Well, do you wanna jam for a while? I was just bringing over some cookies, 'cause Mom said you might like some." He gives a toothy ten-year-old's grin under a net of crazy dark hair.
She should probably say no. To the cookies and the jam session.
"Sure, I want to jam."
Sammy is a masterful piano player, considering his age and experience, and it's a pleasure to see what he comes up with. The energy has drained out of her, so she decides on the light, easy sound of the ukulele. They break into a long, easy round of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which they have twisted and plucked to suit their tastes. It's almost unrecognizable but for their harmonized wailings about "skies of bluuuuue." We should form a band, Linda muses. We could sell out theaters all over. A second career.
"Do you feel any better?" He mumbles over a snickerdoodle.
"I think so," she says, pushing her sweaty hair off her forehead and lacking the heart to tell him that the type of low day she's having isn't really one that's going to just get better. You can't really tell a ten-year-old boy how it's four months exactly since Matt died, and how she just wishes she could grab his rumpled-up self and take a long nap like they used to, or that she hasn't put her mouth on anybody else's in four months and that doesn't feel right. These are grown up problems; Sammy doesn't need to know.
"Another cookie? I gotta go do my homework after this, though."
"Yeah, thanks, little man. Tell your mom I said hi."