1
I was well acquainted with the wonders of the human mind by the time I died. My mother had lived her life toeing the imaginary line her mind had devised between stability and sanity, doing her best to raise me and my brothers in the process. My father had spent his life poking at the depth of emotion, never really understanding it. Having inherited the imaginary line from my dearest mother, I spent most of my life pushing the limits of my understanding of how my mind worked. Books, research, news articles… I had even made up my mind that I would make a career of it. I promised myself that by the time I made it into the workforce I would be the best psychiatrist that ever existed.
At this point I have no doubt that given a little more time, I could've made it happen. I was always a rather indifferent soul in life. I never really had any passion for anything or any ambitions, so when I did manage to give a fuck about something, I was unstoppable.
But it seems I'm getting off topic. I did that in life too, even got a diagnoses of ADHD for it. The psychiatrist was kinda unsure about it at the time because I was originally in her office for Bipolar Disorder, but even a good 13 years later those four letters stayed on my medical chart. I'd hate to see what my chart looks like now. It's possible that it doesn't look like anything, maybe the doctors throw them out after you die, but I'm pretty sure it's still there. Given the sheer amount of paperwork I'd been forced to sign whilst still alive I refuse to believe that it could thrown out so easily.
But the point is that I'm dead.
Well, that's not the entire point, but that hornet's nest is still being poked at. Thoroughly. With pain. And suffering. What I mean to say is that I'm supposed to be dead. Once a six ton semi truck hits a 150 pound you, there isn't much room for debate. In fact, there isn't any room at all.
Dead on impact. I bet you anything that phrase is scrawled across my medical chart in some sort of morbid sharpie font. Maybe red pen. That would be pretty dramatic. Not as dramatic as how I must've looked when the EMS got there, but close enough for an undying evil piece of paper.
I wasn't afraid when it came... death that is. I was plenty afraid when the semi decided to say hello. In fact, I had no idea it was possible for the human body to pump that much adrenaline in such a small person at one time. Well… Ok, I did. There's a whole bunch of stuff written about it in psychology journals accompanied with awe-inspiring stories of determined mothers lifting cars off of terrified children. I suppose I meant that I had no idea what it meant to feel it happening. For a bookworm who never went outside unless bribed, that alone really could've killed me. (There's a whole bunch of stuff written about that too, it's called "shock") But that's besides the point.
I suppose I should be getting to that, huh? The entire point. I'm trying not to. Partially because having to say it outloud makes my entire intellectual person cringe, but mostly because it isn't possible. It's not that I don't get it. Even a non-religious person like myself has encountered far to many theories about the afterlife (mostly by proxy). Heaven, hell, reincarnation, possession… whatever. It all equaled the same thing: dead was not dead. Death was something else. It was… the next great adventure.
I could've accepted that. I could have (with a little time and more than a bit of swearing) accepted that my deadness was not actually death. I mean, I was most certainly dead.(Hats off to the semi) And this was certainly not deadness... not that "death" ever had a concrete definition. I had always imagined death as an absence of life, so the feel of the hardwood floor under my feet and my clothes against my skin wasn't helping my denial.
So I was dead. Was. Yay me, poor me and all that. Sympathies all around. And now I'm not. Yay me, in-your-face unbelievers and all that. Glorious. Now. Back to the point. The entire point. The one I don't want to say out loud. The one I've been running away from. The one I am running away from. Rambling and running and running and rambling.
I'm sorry. I blame the insanity. I'm insane. I gotta be. I mean, my brain wasn't exactly the best piece of work when I died, but goddamnit… I was bipolar not schizophrenic! I was prone to odd mood swings and hoards of depression and randomly deciding that someone needed to be hit and just being weird, but not this shit. As screwed up as it was, my reality was perfectly intact. A little fractured maybe, but seriously, what the fuck is this shit? What on Earth did I do to deserve waking up in a delusion... like this? And, really, why her of all people? My brain couldn't have come up with something a little more me-friendly? I didn't even like Sakura Haruno growing up!
2
Screw my pride, I screamed.
Not the in-the-movies slasher film scream, not the dead-body-of-my-only-lover-sprawled-out-on-the-floor scream, not even the semi-truck-coming-at-me scream. It was the default what-the-fuck-what-is-this-where-am-I scream. Didn't even hesitate, didn't even have my eyes open all the way. In all seriousness, I blame the pink. My body felt far too heavy and my head felt far too light to understand what was around me or where I was, and there was pink everywhere. It had been years since I had been around that much pink, I hadn't even touched the color until I hit my 20th birthday and had officially gone out of my rebel phase. Before that the only obsession I had was when I was 6 or so, and that was all Hello Kitty's fault.
I had never imagined something so simple as a color could feel so foreign. I could only see it partially through my lashes, half blurred in the effort to get my eyes open and clear my fuzzy head, but that didn't stop the feeling of how wrong this was… waking up to a pink ceiling. My body felt heavy. So, so, so heavy, as if someone tied up ropes to my limbs coming from hell and pulled. Something rang in my ears coming dangerously close to the sound of a semis horn and metal on concrete and bone on pavement and there was all this pink and my body was so heavy and my head was so light and goddamnit I screamed.
No fucks given.
There was a moment where I couldn't tell the difference between me screaming at the semi to please stop please and me screaming at my (not mine) incredibly pink ceiling. It felt as if I was standing instead of laying down, except that I wasn't lying down anymore because my body had sat up and screamed and I felt very, very disorientated. For a second or two the world around me just spun a bit. My arms had braced me into a semi sitting position during my screeching fit, but I didn't know if they were going to stay there. Nothing seemed to be staying still. After a few more seconds the feeling settled, my head going along for the ride for which I was grateful. I didn't like the feeling of weightlessness it had or how hard it was to think. Unfortunately, the universe decided that the feeling had to go somewhere so now my body was light and shaking uncontrollably. Thank you universe. (Note: sarcasm)My arms didn't appreciate the gesture either.
While simultaneously trying to deny my heart's proposal to jump out of my chest and grant my lungs demand for more oxygen (and reassure myself that there was, in fact, no semi truck present in this little room I woke up in), I looked up. And down. And around. And behind.
"... You gotta be kidding me." I had never seen a room so pink before. Fuck pink, aside from a hard core goth, I never seen any room so any color before. It was everywhere. 6 year old me and my Hello Kitty obsession had nothing on this. The walls were pink. The curtains were pink. The dresser was pink. The fucking doorknob was pink. Who on Earth needs a pink doorknob?
Sakura liked pink.
I was halfway into shaking my head to argue that that was really no excuse and no one really needed that much pink in their lives when I registered who had spoken and froze. The room I was in was obviously a bedroom: small, simply furnished, horrendously pink… not many places to hide. None at all really. It was just me in the Kitty Chamber (as I unconsciously decided to call it).
You're not Sakura.
The lightness in my limbs solidified, tensing the muscles. My eyes ran over every corner of the room. Small, simple, abandoned. The bed I was on was positioned in the corner of room, near a sliding window. I moved to lean over the bed to look through it (hoping that this was not what I thought it was) but I was interrupted.
That isn't going to help you.
Whatever movement I had stopped. "You have got to be kidding me." My resident voice didn't answer, but I still felt like she was a bit smug.
Sadly, disembodied (possibly psychotic)voices were not new to me. No, I wasn't schizophrenic, I was bipolar… just with psychotic tendencies. No one but the doctors cared about the fine print. And maybe the government, but whatever. The point is that this voice was not my voice and I didn't like it.
Who are you?
Even having lived with one for over 7 years, I could never get over how something/someone with no actual body could do the most body-like things like laugh and glare. And roll their eyes.
That's the question, isn't it? Go look in the mirror.
And sound so wholey and utterly demanding. I frowned at the wall in front of me not liking the thought. Her and my voice would've gotten along well. Erza was always telling me to do things.
Any day now weirdo.
Oh yeah. They would've gotten along real well. On reflex I made to obey, but stopped as soon as I started. I hadn't noticed it when I moved to the window… but… I held my hands in front of me, curling my fingers and flexing my wrists. They moved like they should've, but they were so small. Taking my eyes off my hands and moving towards my feet, I realized that it wasn't my hands that were small… I was. My whole body was small and dainty and young.
How old am I?
Guessing ages was never my strong suit, but I couldn't have been more than 15. Were you supposed to de-age during death? I remembered only a little bit about the stuff spewed to me about reincarnation, but I was pretty sure you were supposed to start again at the beginning not at 15. My eyes strayed to the mirror across the room. First colors, now household items. Since when where such every day things so daunting?
This is going to take forever… Look at your hair.
Hair? My (small) hands instinctively moved to my head. It was longer than I had it before, but that was fine. I liked it long. It was soft too, well taken care off… I twisted a lock in my fingers bringing it up to my face wondering what was so important-
Pride be damned, I screamed again.
It was pink. My fucking hair was pink. The lock I put in front of my face was Bubble. Gum. Pink.
What the fuck is this?!
I scrambled up from the bed to the daunting mirror missing my longer older limbs. These small ones were so awkward and flimsy. Like chicken legs. Thankfully, the room was small (as I've said) so there wasn't much distance to make. I was prepared to see anything in the Mirror of Doom (as it shall be named): myself as the new life Barbie, a pink sour patch kid, an awful humanoid version of Hello Kitty as punishment for abandoning her when I was 7 (sanity was gone at this point)... anything and everything but what I actually saw.
No.
The unnamed Erza stand in started laughing evilly, another on of those human-like things that non-humans can do. I fell harder into denial.
NO.
Of course I recognized who was staring back at me. I had to. There seemed to be a law of the universe stating that every emotionally challenged weirdo in the world had to encounter anime at some point in their life, and Naruto was really, really popular. (Even more so when I found out my older brother was into it and I could piss him off by following it to.) And this… this person staring back at me that shouldn't be was one of the main characters.
NO.
The Erza stand in laughed some more. Yep. I could've sworn I heard the 'p' pop at the end, tilted with her mirth. And my name's Inner, not "Erza stand in". Rude. The disembodied voice frowned at me while I started pinching my cheeks and pulling at my hair. Light pain used to help my center myself when I felt out of my depth (the doctor made sure to give me a clear, detailed, and unbreakable definition of what constituted as "light pain"), but it didn't seem to be helping me much now. Maybe the theory wasn't applicable to delusions and hallucinations.
You're not hallucinating.
Says the voice in my head.
I pulled at my hair again, wincing at the pain. Certainly felt real enough… My hands went down the rest of my body pinching and pulling along the way. It didn't feel any different than when I was alive other than the smallness. In fact, it all felt very, very real.
I told you.
I frowned at her, watching it happen in the mirror. One of the main characteristics of a hallucination is that the patient believes it to be real. My frown deepened. It's actually a requirement for delusions.
You're impossible.
Leave me alone to my denial.
With growing irritation I had to admit that Sakura was… pretty. Her eyes were greener than I remembered them being in the show, and her hair was admittedly less pink. (A blessing if I ever saw one) Her skin was kinda smooth… and pale. And flawless. I gave a small huff, watching her lips pull apart. They were fuller than the ones I had.
My delusion is prettier than I was…
Not that I ever gave much of a damn on how I looked before (I didn't even own any make-up), but it still hurt. The only thing I seemed to have going for my previous life was my bra-size and that didn't really help me Here (as my delusion will know be known).
Will you stop that! You're not hallucinating!
My (her?) eyes flickered from the mirror to the room to the bed I woke up in and back. Not a hallucination… right. Thankfully the human/non-human interaction went both ways, so I didn't have to voice my disbelief. Just like Er- Inner! Inner didn't have to voice her anger.
Would you get a grip already?! We have the team selections this morning!
The head in the mirror tilted to the side a bit, a habit I never really had the chance to get rid of. "Team selections?" Sakura's voice was higher than mine was. That would take some getting used to. Not that I talked a lot.
Part of me cringed at that thought. 'Getting used to' something implied that you've already accepted that it had occurred. If Momma was here to see me even think about accepting something as crazy as this, I would've been in the psychiatric hospital before I could say 'but'. The bigger part of me was trying to remember what the hell 'team selections' were. It had been awhile since I watched the show. All I got was a vague image of Naruto and Sasuke kissing.
Y-you…! How dare you! Get that thought out of your head right now! Get it out of OUR head! Sasuke-kun would NEVER kiss that loser! We're the ones who'll get his first kiss! CHA!
I stared blankly at the mirror. She stared back. Oh dear.
Now get dressed! We finally passed the Academy exam, we are FINALLY shinobi, and this morning we are going to be on the same team as Sasuke-kun! Move it Sakura wannabe!
I stared some more at the mirror. The little bitch staring back was being ofno help with my psychotic voice. It was just me.
I am not psychotic! And my name is Inner!
Right. Of course it was. "Ah… Being a shinobi sounds like a lot of work… and suffering… do I have to go…?" Let it not be said that Here deprived me of my core personality. Just the thought of all the exercise that would be involved made me want to stay in the Kitty Chamber forever and ever. If memory serves me correctly, at some point a pervert makes Her (as Mrs. Bubblegum shall now be known) run up and down a tree all day.
YES YOU HAVE TO GO!
The non-human was yelling at me again and the Her was frustratingly absent. My room was pink, I was prettier than I was, flatter than I was, and was stuck in Here… with no way out. Well, no instant way out. Schizophrenics under delusions often come in and out of them on their own if they can, but otherwise they need outside help (hospitalization maybe) to get there. Not that I'm schizophrenic. Or was.
R-right! So you can't go anywhere, so why not go to team selections? Play along? It'll be better than here. Sasuke-kun will be there!
The look I gave the mirror was the one I gave my little brother when he said he wanted an Emu as a pet: amusement mixed with disbelief. For one, her argument sucked. For two, I can't really claim to be the psychology guru (give me a break, I died when I was 22 and it takes a lot of school to become a psychiatrist!) but 'playing along' with Here sounded like a horrible idea.
Though, on the other hand… My eyes swept across the Kitty Chamber trying to mentally calculate how long it would take for the pink to creep me out enough to cave. The estimation wasn't a very long number. My eyes went back to the mirror watching Her face twist into my half-lidded smile.
"Yeah…" It really was a horrible idea. "Why not?"
YESSSSSSS! Let's go!
I would come to regret this.