Errr, hey~ I'm alive...somehow. This actually took quite a while to write, I wanted to get the character design all laid out in my head before I started writing, lest I begin the tragic trend of some of my other attempts. This, I have to say, is my proudest work, and if it is suggested that it sucks, well, that's things to consult my inner mind about. A big shout out to Miss Punk Rock Kitsune for getting me off my ass and back to writing. I love you with the intensity of America's debt (lol if you get it; it's a big number)

Without any further ado, shall we begin?

I'm Your Puppet

From within a house; a house like any other, a young man sat alone. It was silent, save for the scratching of pencil lead against paper and the occasional murmur in pending thought. A letter was being written, just like every other Saturday evening. This letter would never be sent though. Well, not physically at least. This letter would go up to heaven, as it was always wished to. After all, the person he was writing to was in heaven, or so he assumed. This brought upon a question to his sleep-deprived mind: could you write letters to people in hell too? He placed his pencil down beside the paper in silent consideration. After a few minutes of random thoughts pouring into his open mind, he returned to reading over the letter, ensuring that each and every syllable was properly placed and ready to be sent (hypothetically, of course). He folded the paper, carefully slid it into an envelope, and licked it closed. After writing the desired names in cursive letters on the front of the envelope, he opened a drawer on his desk and placed it under a old picture frame. He hesitated to close the drawer again, but did anyway.

As he stood up from his chair with an exhausted sigh, he felt a random urge to peer out the window of his room. Could it be to look at the fresh snow that had been falling? No, of course not. He wasn't a fan of winter, let alone snow. Icy chills seemed to find extreme enjoyment in wracking his frail body with various colds and flues more than he could care to mention. Then...what was it? What compelled him to look? What would he look for? Was there anything to look for in the beginning? All of these questions rattled his brain and left unsatisfied. All the same, he opened the shutters and gazed into the night.

It was like any other night. The sun had set slightly earlier than before since the date was nearing the winter solstice, and stars were beginning to freckle the dark sky in sparks of light. Only a sliver of the moon was visible tonight, but it still managed to illuminate the ground with a cold silver glow. Snow had started falling over the pre-existing layers. It gave the surroundings a feeling of...grace. Never before had he thought there could be a scene as peaceful as this. His ever-quivering heart seemed to settle for the moment; a feeling that he accepted with open arms.

Suddenly, there was a movement visible among the snow-covered trees. Could it have been a rabbit? The thought lingered before it was pushed away. No, the silhouette was much too large to have been any kind of woodland animal. The boy continued analyzing the slowly swaying trees, waiting for another shift in the form. It came again, soon after the first. It was definitely human-shaped. A thief, possibly? That too was pushed out of his mind. What did he even have that was worth stealing? Outdated technology? A ripped couch? A loaf of bread that was clearly beginning to mold? No, there was honestly nothing that a thief could possibly want with him, was there? His mind would not leave him alone with the possibility of a confrontation... He closed the blinds, making more attempts to block out all of the ideas that popped into his thought patterns. The word "thief" was mentioned more than what should be comfortable, along with an equally ominous word: "dark".

'"Dark"? "Dark"? Why is this significant...?' He searched his mind, digging and digging through years of stockpiled memories only to find nothing that would give these two words any special meaning. It bothered him. Not a slight annoyance either; it was a drill that powered into his mind with every breath he took and every beat of his heart. At a point, he became so annoyed with this paranoia he stopped breathing in defiance, almost as a young child would. However, like a child, this only lasted until his lungs began politely asking for air. He fulfilled their wishes; the absence of oxygen didn't eliminate the nag on his overactive self-questioning.

With a deep sigh, he looked at the time. 1:18AM. Clearly not early in the evening anymore... Had he been writing or worrying for so long? He didn't even know anymore. He paced towards his drawers to change, trying to turn his thoughts away from questions that were being left unanswered and towards more restful topics, such as the solemn nothingness he was so accustomed to. But he knew... he knew that as hard as he tried, there would always be something there. This something would watch, observe, comment, and even interfere sometimes. He could never focus with it watching. That's why he hadn't slept well in the past 6 months; he couldn't un-focus himself from this entity.

It had all started around summer of this year. He had taken a trip to the beach with some of his classmates over the holidays. Everything was normal...that is, until they decided to tell ghost stories by the bonfire at night. Now, he wasn't someone to be frightened by these stories; in fact, they fascinated him. Many of them often accused him of being an occult maniac, but generally he would just laugh their comment off without much regard for it. Anyway, one of them began to weave a tale of a king and a thief battling over pieces of gold that were stolen from the thief's village. When that happened, however, all of the villagers (except for the thief, of course) were ruthlessly murdered. After years of waiting, the thief appeared before the king, and demanded that the treasures be handed over to him. The king refused, and an all-out war erupted. After months of fighting in a dead-lock, the thief became so impatient that he asked upon the strength of a dark god to help him win the battle. The god agreed, but only if the thief would give his soul to the god. Desperate for victory, he agreed to the request. However, the king had also created a contract with a god, and in the end, the thief was defeated. In spite of his failure, his hatred burned on and infused itself into one of the seven golden treasures he was seeking, along with the king in another. The pieces disappeared into the land of the country, never to be seen again. People who still remember the battle say that the war continues raging from inside these treasures.

After that, all of the others started getting freaked out a little. He, however, was completely enthralled. It seemed familiar though, but he knew that he had never heard a story like that anywhere before. It bothered him momentarily, but he had quickly forgotten about it. It didn't last long though. In the weeks that followed, a voice arose from the back of his, whispering his name. If he tried to respond to it, (humoring himself because he knew then and there that he had clearly lost his mind) it would slowly decrease in volume until he couldn't hear it anymore.

It stayed like that for a while. In fact, after enough time had passed, a pseudo-mental block practically muted out the voice entirely. That's how it has been for a few months in fact.

As he slowly changed into his pajamas, he kept thinking back to the shadowy figure he saw outside. 'It couldn't possibly be a...thief, could it?' With a loud sigh, he continued trudging along, lost in thought. Suddenly, a loud pounding at the door startled him. He jumped so high that he nearly tripped going down when the banging shook the house, but somehow he managed to stand his ground.

"Wh-who's there?" he called out, doing his best to hold his fearful stuttering. Whoever was at the door responded with more forceful banging rather than conversing civilly. He grew more and more frightened as time passed, but something was drawing him closer to the door.

"This is insanity. This is insanity. What am I doing?" he muttered as he neared the entrance. His mind was screaming at him to run up the stairs and bury himself in his blankets, but his legs were too busy following a silent hypnotic. No sooner did he come within a distance of a few feet from the door, the banging stopped and was followed by a single name, called out questioningly.

It was his name.

He froze dead on his tracks. The hairs on his neck stood up straight as a chill wracked his body. Nobody called him that. It was as of his name was taboo, even though he insisted that his friends could call him by it. Now, to still the beating of his heart he called out again.

"Who's there? How do you know my name?" The silence continued. "I-if you don't answer me or leave, I-I-I'm going to call the cops!" He was shaking now.

"Do... Do you not remember my voice?" he (he figured it was a man at the door since the voice pitch was lower) mumbled, sounding a little discouraged. He didn't know what to do at this point. Apparently they knew each other, despite the fact that he couldn't recall the other's name, face or any viable information on who this mysterious person on the other side of his door was. He kept drawing blanks until the voice spoke again. "Just...open the door, alright? You'll understand then."

This confused him. Why should he open the door for someone that he, for one, didn't know, second, knocked on his door at (as he lazily peered over his shoulder to look at a clock) 1:32 in the morning, and lastly never gave him reason enough to.

So why the hell did he?

The first thing he thought was 'Is this a joke?' The person standing in front of him looked almost exactly like him! He was, clearly, taller, muscular and more masculine (and by masculine he meant, well, damn good looking) but his eyes were a vicious shade of blood-red. They frightened him with the way they stared aimlessly while still making consistent contact with his own. He shuddered upon seeing him, and the man's eyes softened slightly.

"You really don't remember me at all, do you?"

He shook his head nervously. What was he, his long lost twin? Some kind of reality TV show where they replaced you with a look-alike? He could admit that the second option was far beyond the realm of "incredibly unlikely" and he knew that all of his known family was dead, so that one was out too. Then...who was he? The mysterious person smirked at his obvious confusion and crossed his arms. The smirk that seemed forever etched on his face seemed familiar as well, and he felt drawn towards it. With a sigh, the other grabbed his hands with force, yet unforced in the motion.

"I am everything that you wished for back then, Yadonushi."

'What was that supposed to mean?' he thought, flustered and panicky. The familiarity of it all chilled him to the bone as he raised his eyes for the last question.

"Who are you, really?" He tried to keep his voice steady, but it wavered of its own accord anyway.

"Bakura."

Suddenly, the world started spinning shakily. He lurched to the side and felt like he was about to vomit, again for a reason he could not muster. That man flinched in concern (was that what it was?) as the world faded to black.

A voice... There's this terrible, horrifying and beautiful voice calling out for me. Nobody else can hear it though. And trust me- I know because I've asked. And then I was even more ostracised from my friends... Are they really my friends though? Friends don't think that other friends are...crazy because they start hearing a voice, do they? I wouldn't know. I've never had any friends. People were always scared of me because of either my looks, or anything else they could possibly believe to be a flaw in me.

I could never understand them.

The continuous solitude was unrelenting. Each day at school was just another day to waste time learning useless information I would never need in the real world. As soon as I thought of that, that voice piped up and felt in necessary to put his two-cents in.

"'Real?' What is real, Yadonushi-sama? Is anything 'real' at all?"

As with every day at every moment, now was not the time for it to speak again.

"Can't you see that I'm busy? Go bother someone else for a change." I muttered to myself. The professor who was pacing about the room reciting various quotations from a source blatantly loaded with propaganda stopped abruptly and glared at me.

"What was that you just said, Bakura-san?"

A cold sweat ran down my back. He couldn't have heard me, right? Right? I obviously couldn't say that I wasn't talking to him, but rather to a voice that lived inside my head- that would be preposterous.

"N-nothing, sir. Just, ah, muttering to myself about your interesting lecture. Riveting in all ways."

A hard glance was shot at me from not only the prof, but the rest of the class before they resumed their activities. (Since apparently the prof will notice me telling voices to shut up, but is completely clueless to the others' texting, that makes me the bad guy.) The rest of the day was what would be 'normal'. Normal... what was normal again? What defines normal from abnormal?

"Two letters, and that is all."

At that point, I was ready to strangle this voice.

A/N:

That's chapter 1, the second is currently in progress. I hope you liked it, and please review~ For as you know... (as I quote myself quoting staarrri)

REVIEWS ARE LIKE PORN TO WRITERS, SO SATISFY OUR URGES!

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