I read Plainclothes by Airi Moriarty , which I recommend you read as well(The characters are wonderfully written) and this idea has been stuck in my head since Chapter 1. I had to get this out here. This will involve a full fledged romance, so if you aren't interested in this paring or at least an intense(?) romance between these two I suggest you stop reading here.
Enjoy.
Naoto sat at her desk in the Inaba Police Department. Normally this early in the morning she would be studying a case file, trying to find the big clue that would put the bulls-eye on the perpetrators back. With her face in her hands the only thing she was studying was the back of her eyelids.
Naoto was not comfortable around dead bodies.
It was an unfortunate fact in her life, and her career. No matter how many she had seen, no matter in what condition, their pale, nearly doll like, skin ran a chill through her spine every time. Their eyes, that were both staring and seeing nothing, stared straight through her soul long after she stopped sharing the same space as them. Which is why she always preferred the written autopsy report over the in person experience. Usually she could ignore this feeling, or hide it, long enough for the case to be finished.
But then there were the nightmares.
Most nights she was safe from them, could close her eyes and reopen them later with no substantial events playing out in her subconscious, but the nights that they do rear their disturbing head, a more common occurrence while on a murder case, makes the infrequency not much of a comfort. Even on the quiet nights, the thought that she'd be thrown into a horrific experiences again makes her lose probably 2 hours of sleep. And most of the 2 hours is her just staring, waiting, fearing her inevitable descent into the darkness.
The nightmares are always the same. She's opens her eyes and finds herself in a dark room, kneeling on the ground. She tries to get up but her feet don't listen. Everytime she tries and eveytime she can't get up. And everytime it always strikes the same feelings in her. Helplessness, she can't move so she can't fight. At the mercy of whatever waits in the darkness. Then the light turns on, a dim bulb overhead that only exposes a small radius of about a foot around her, and the nightmare really begins. First she hear them, a slow melodious footprint starting on the otherside of the room, then she smells them, the obvious smell of decay and of death. It's then she knows what, or who, it is, despite the fact that she should know due to it always being the same. The footprints gets closer and closer, until they stop just far enough that Naoto can't see their owner.
Then the wait begins.
This is one of the only parts of the whole dream that varies. It can be as generous as a couple seconds to a torturous length of what feels like hours. But during these waits there is something that she can just barley hear. It's loud enough for her to know it's there, but quiet enough that she has no hope of knowing what it's saying. Whatever it is causes a tremendous feeling of guilt strong enough to bring her to tears. She strains to try and hear what words the whispering voice is speaking, but the comprehension is just out of her reach.
Then the wait stops.
Out of the darkness screams, literally, a walking corpse. The corpse is always the most recent person she's seen in the morgue, even if that had been months ago. Their skin has now turned a disturbing grey, but their eyes is what pulls her attention. Their eye sockets held only a pit of black. She stares, frozen in fear, into the face of the victim. The corpse only bores down at her, but the ear piercing scream continues. The corpse isn't screaming, they're never the one screaming. It comes from the walls, an all encompassing shriek the sends despair down Naoto's spine. She moves to block her ears, and that's what set them off.
Where as before the corpse would simply stare at her with its charcoal eyes, her movement throws them into a rage. Their face contorts into one resembling a wild animal attacking its pray, and then their hands are around her neck. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Quickly she finds she can't breath, throwing her into a panic. She pulls at their hands, scratches at them, punches where ever she could reach, but they just keep squeezing. And the whole time their squeezing her vision is darkening. Breath, Breath! Her mind kept screaming to her lungs, and they try and try but they cant get air through her closed throat. Finally, after all her struggling, all her fruitless fighting, she succumbs to the growing darkness and closes her eyes.
When she reopens them she's in her bed. She shoots up out of bed and frantically grabs at her neck to check for hands, her mind so focused on fear all rational thought seemed to be nonexistent. After assuring herself that no unwanted hands followed her out of her subconscious, she brushes her face only to realize the same could not be said for her tears. A shower washes them away easily enough, and afterwards she dresses then eats, but not all evidence of her apparent emotional release washed away down the drain. The internal proof, the itchiness and the redness, the latter which was clearly visible, require a more internal solution. Luckily all it takes is two quick doses of eye drops before she can make her way out the door and off to work.
And that's how all her bad nights go. Or, that's how most bad nights go. Last night was different, different in that instead of having time to prepare for work she woke up to find that she had less then half an hour to shower, eat, dress and be out the door. She didn't have enough time to do the essentials and use the eye drops, so Naoto rationalize she could pass on the drops today; it wouldn't be that bad today.
Naoto was now regretting that decision.
She was regretting it while thinking of a plan to get through the rest of the day without opening her eyes. That plan was quickly scrapped at the sound of a coffee cup being placed on her desk.
"Hey, you look like you could use this."
And that's chapter 1. The over all plot will be Dojima trying to help Naoto overcome her nightmares revealing something in her past her mind locked away, eventually leading to a romantic relationship. A really trimmed down summery of the story but if you want to know where it's going that's it.
This is a test chapter to see if people are interested in this. If not then I probably won't be doing much more with this story, but I'll leave it here just in case. Anyway hope you enjoyed, tell me what you think if you want.