Hey, guys. It's Mina Snowdrop. I was thinking about Hikaru this morning and I'm going to start my new fanfic called 'In the Shadowy Neighborhood'. So Enjoy!
The bluenette girl had lived in the city all her life, and yet she knew nothing about the Neighborhood, and that frightened her.
She was a worker and blader. In the morning she took a bus to her first job and in the afternoon she took another bus to her other job and then she took a third bus home. She knew every neighborhood those busses passed through. They each had a personality of their own. Old neighborhoods sometimes died, but new neighborhoods were born all the time. A bluenette girl knew them all.
Except for one. Her morning bus took a shortcut down a narrow, shady avenue with a decorative fountain every day. Here was a neighborhood of only a few blocks filled with large, furtive-looking houses and drooping willow trees and silence. Like all of the city's neighborhoods it had a name, but people rarely spoke it. In A bluenette girl's mind it was just the Neighborhood. She would give it no name more definite than that. She was afraid to.
She wondered why the bus passed through these few blocks; no one who lived around here would ever need to take a bus. Nobody ever got on at the stops in the Neighborhood, and no one ever got off. And she noticed that people never talked about the Neighborhood, even when she asked them about it. It was as if they knew not to. Who lives here, she wondered? Rich people, obviously; workers like her couldn't afford such houses. They were not mansions, there were few real mansions in this part of the world and none in the city, but they were still big, and expensive. But most rich people in the city lived in penthouses or sometimes in the painted Victorians on the avenues. Who lived in these secretive homes hidden on these tiny streets in this hilly hollow?
This question became even more pressing the day she noticed there were no people there. She'd never once seen anyone on the streets of the Neighborhood, or anyone standing in a doorway, or anyone moving behind a window of any of the houses. It seemed to a bluenette girl that whoever lived in the Neighborhood did not deign to leave their homes, or maybe it was just that they simply never left their homes during the day. Since she took a different bus home, a bluenette girl never passed through the Neighborhood at night. She became glad of that. It seemed whoever lived here didn't want to be seen by outsiders.
One day a boy at WBBA took a vacation. Ryo asked his assistant if she wanted to fill in for him during the morning. Tips were supposed to be better in the morning, so the bluenette girl agreed to switch her day and night shifts at WBBA. This meant, of course, that her bus route would be reversed, but that did not occur to her until it was too late. That first day she took her night bus in the morning, the streets looked so different with the sun up, so alive, worked her night job during the day, took her afternoon bus the opposite direction, she could not shake the feeling she was traveling backwards in time, somehow, and, finally, caught her morning bus at night. The dark streets of the Neighborhood, with all the long, clinging willow vines fluttering in the evening breeze, lurked ahead of her, and a bluenette girl realized that she had been dreading this all day.
She chided herself; there was nothing to be afraid of. It was just a street. But look at the faces of the other people on the bus: Yes, they were all afraid, though none of them would admit it. One woman, she saw, was even holding her breath. They crossed Sloat Boulevard and the first of the quiet houses. A bluenette girl avoided looking out the windows. She realized her heart was pounding and she had to force herself to breathe. The steady hum of the bus tires comforted her a little; it took less than a minute to cut through the Neighborhood. They'd be safe soon.
She found herself turning toward the window. She did not want to, but it was like an itch; the harder she tried not to scratch, the worse it got. She could not help but turn. Was it her imagination, or was the woman sitting across the aisle trying to warn her with sideways glances and half-hidden gestures not to look? She could not be sure. Heart pounding, she turned all the way and she looked into the darkness. She saw…
Nothing. Nothing except the same streets and the same houses as always, the same leaning trees and the same showy fountain. There was nothing strange or sinister about it after all, and she laughed at herself. How childish her fears had been. It was just a neighborhood for rich snobs who liked their privacy and were probably annoyed by the loud, smelly city bus that drove down their private little avenue a hundred times a day both ways.
In fact, now that she was not so afraid, she realized that it was really a pleasant looking little neighborhood. It was inviting. Only half aware of what she was doing, a bluenette girl rang the bell. Several people in nearby seats jumped; no one ever, ever rang the bell for a stop in the Neighborhood. But a bluenette girl just had. The driver glanced at her and then looked away. The caramel haired blader across the aisle was now, very clearly, looking at a bluenette girl, and she saw his shake his head a fraction of a degree, but she ignored him. Her feet seemed to move of their own accord, one in front of the other, down the short aisle and into the stairwell where the automatic door hissed open, and then she was outside the protective shell of the vehicle and setting foot, for the first time in her life, on the streets of the Neighborhood.
The caramel haired boy who'd tried to warn her stared down from a window, his face bleached and his eyes wide, but then the snap of the automatic door and the hum of the tires whisked him away, and a bluenette girl was alone. It was a warm night. There was no moon. A small breeze was, as always, coming from the direction of the ocean. The stirring of the willows was the only noise. a bluenette girl looked around; something was strange. The streets were deserted, as usual, but there was something about the houses. She realized there were no lights on in any of them. Every window was dark. The breeze turned cold and a bluenette girl rubbed her bare arms. She now felt foolish for getting off the bus and making herself late. She did not understand why she'd done it. And the old fear was creeping up in her again now as all those dark windows, like the empty eye sockets in a pile of skulls, stared at her.
She did not want to wait here for the next bus, so she started to walk. The top of the hill would be better, she reasoned. Safer. She tried to keep her eyes on his feet, but again she found she couldn't help glancing from side to side. She prayed for a sign of life anywhere, something to reassure her, but it was all darkness and silence. Nothing here looks lived-in, she thought, realizing that had been the disquieting quality of the Neighborhood all along. It was less like a real neighborhood as much like a museum display of how a neighborhood might look. No one who saw these streets for even a second would mistake them for the habitat of any living thing. This she had always known, deep down, even if she only just now knew how to articulate it.
She walked faster. It seemed to a bluenette girl that the hill was steeper than usual, all rich neighborhoods in the city were built on hills. Was the grade becoming more severe so as to slow her down? Absurd, she thought. Then the wind changed direction, blowing in her face hard enough to make her take a half step backward, like a hand trying to hold her in one place. The houses crouched on their lots, waiting for her. The windows were dark, the doors were closed, the—
She stopped. One door was open, on the little cream-colored house with the tile roof. It was wide open, in fact, revealing a dark hallway beyond. A bluenette girl looked around; still no one in sight. Why should this door be open in the middle of the night, she wondered? It did not look like anyone was home. A house like this should be locked at night; perhaps there'd been a robbery? Perhaps someone was hurt? Perhaps…
She was walking toward the door. She did not want to and she had not thought about doing it, just as she hadn't really thought about getting off the bus, but still, she was walking toward the door. The toe of her black high heels tapped the stone porch steps on her way up. Why am I doing this, she thought? But it was already too late; the door was open and she was inside. The house closed up around her.
A bluenette girl stood in the foyer. Though dark, there seemed to be nothing strange about the house. It was clean and furnished. There was a faint, underlying scent of mustiness but there was also a perceptible effort to cover it up. Everything was neatly in its place. Yes, it looked normal enough, she thought.
But it didn't look lived-in…
A flicker of movement caught a bluenette girl's purple eye. She saw that the front door had closed. Not all the way, just halfway, gliding on hinges so quiet it would seem they scarcely moved at all. It was enough to jolt a bluenette girl out of her reverie; I should not be here, she thought, and she went for the door, but something moved again. Not the door but something just outside it. There was a flicker and a shudder and a bluenette girl swore she saw something pale flop against the door frame. Surely that was not an arm? Surely flesh could not be such a color? Surely it was the dark and a bluenette girl's imagination that made it appear that a barely glimpsed, quasi-human figure with flesh like an earthworm crouched on the porch, shuddering and gibbering?
But then it was gone.
A bluenette girl backed away. She wanted to get out, but not that way. She noticed, now, that there was light in this house after all, the bare illumination of a candle flame in a nearby doorway. Instinctively she went toward it, wanting to huddle around the light for protection against whatever was in the dark. She pushed on the half-closed door and there was indeed a single candle flickering on a table. Four figures sat around it, four people in claw-footed chairs, four men and women whose heads turned in unison toward a bluenette girl and smiled as their yellowing eyes met hers. But a bluenette girl was not looking at the people around the table. No, she was looking at what was on the table, next to the candle. She was, she realized, trying to scream. No sound came out.
"We have a guest," one of the men said. His voice was neither high nor low, neither young nor old; it was a blank voice. "We were not expecting you. I'm afraid you've already missed dinner."
The bluenette girl could not move. She tried to run, but her legs were frozen. She continued to stare at the table. The man who had spoken balled up a red napkin and tossed it onto the tablecloth. "At least we can offer you the hospitality of our company. Why don't you sit and tell us a little about yourself. What's your name?" The man still smiled. His face was the color of chalk. A bluenette girl realized they expected her to speak but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.
"What's the matter with you? Can't you talk? Or are you one of those…unfortunates?" The man's bloodless lips sneered.
"Look at her clothes," one of the women said. "She looks like some common rabble off the streets. Probably came off of that bus."
"Do you think so?" The man peered at her. The two silent figures nodded in agreement with the woman. "Well, then since we've already eaten and since she cannot speak and since she is not the right sort of person, I suppose we have no choice but to throw her out."
A bluenette girl felt a hand on her shoulder. No, she realized, not a hand, just something cold and clammy that might be called a hand if you knew no better word for it. She felt something at her back, a shape that shuddered and shook. The man with the pale face smiled at whatever was behind the worker. "Just in time. Please show this person to the door."
The clammy hand squeezed a bluenette girl's shoulder. She did not want to turn around. Awful as what she was seeing was, she was sure that whatever was behind her would be worse. But whatever irresistible force first compelled her to get off the bus and then compelled her to enter this house, the same force, she was now certain, that lured any number of people into these homes each year, never to be seen again, this house was now telling her to turn around and look at her escort. So she did.
And then, mercifully, came unconsciousness.
In a way, nothing changed for a bluenette girl after that. She still got up at the same time each day, still went to her same job, still took the same busses and, yes, still passed through the Neighborhood each morning. She thought she would be afraid to, but she soon realized that the Neighborhood was not the same creature during the day as it was during the night. There was really nothing to fear in the Neighborhood by day.
Yes, in one sense nothing changed, but in a more important sense things were never quite the same again. A bluenette girl always thought she knew the city the way like she would have known a brother if she'd ever had one. But now the city seemed dark and alien, and she began to suspect she did not know it at all. Worse, she began to think she did not even want to.
It was not the people at the table who haunted his dreams, not their bloodless faces, or their long fangs behind sneering gray lips. Nor was it the shapeless, gibbering thing they called a servant. No, what haunted a bluenette girl was the memory of that bloodstained napkin on the table, and the remains of the nightly meal spread out on the red-dappled tablecloth. "We've already eaten," the pale man had said. Whenever a bluenette girl closed her eyes she glimpsed what lay on that table, and she remembered what was left of its face. And a bluenette girl knew that if she had come to that house an hour or perhaps even fifteen minutes earlier they would never have simply thrown her out, never have just laughed at her and let her go.
And now she understood why the Neighborhood was empty by daylight, and why it never looked lived-in. Because certainly the things that inhabited those houses could not be called alive, and they could not abide the light of the sun. But the city belonged to them, and they were its true inhabitants in a way that a bluenette girl never could be. In all likelihood, they had been here since it was founded. And would stay here forever.
So, What did you guys think? If you like this chapter, please review.