I distance myself from you.
I know I do. I know you get angry, I know you get hurt, I know you'll get sick of all this bullshit eventually. But I'll play my cards down to the last ace. I don't want to get closer to you. I made that mistake before.
Rezo. Grandfather. I allowed myself to get closer to him. To trust him, to love him, to let him guide me. To study under his eyes, to make him proud. Idiot! I was an idiot. In the end of it all, I was cursed. Trapped in this damnable body. Hideous, freakish.
But that wasn't the only thing. It hurt. More than anything...it was that betrayal.
Bastard. I hate him for that.
I'm angry, and bitter. I know that, all right? And so what if I am? Is there something wrong with that? You'd be like this too, if you'd been hurt the way I was. Do you know what it's like? No...you couldn't possibly comprehend. You couldn't possibly know...it was everwhere...I couldn't escape it.
Pain.
When I was changed, yes, the physical pain was unbearable. It tore through every limb and made the blood rush to my head. All I could see was red, then flashes of white. My skin started to burn, burn red-hot. I couldn't stand it. Then, when I thought the worst was over, the stones broke through the thick demon skin. I screamed and screamed, but no-one heard. And then it was over and done with.
I scrambled to my feet, aware of how much more I weighed now. I ran, clumsily, to the edge of the nearby lake. The person that peered back at me from those silvery waters raised his hideous blue hands to his equally hideous face, touching the stone protrusions in disbelief. And then the tears started. Flowing down what was now my face in a steady stream of misery and shock.
Then the utter helplessness set in. The emptiness. The realisation that I was truly alone.
It sounds ridiculous, I know. But in that moment, what I would have given for someone to reach over and hold me. What I would have given for someone's shoulder to cry on. But there was no-one. Not a soul. I was alone, and it was all my own fault. All my stupid fault for wanting to become stronger. For becoming obsessed with it. All my fault...all my fault. I can't help it. It's who I am. I don't care if it hurts, I want to have control. I want to have control over what's happening to me. And now...now I have no control! I can't control what I am, I can't...I just...I CAN'T!!!
Breathing hurts...thinking hurts. I try not to think of Rezo. I tried to block him out. Someone once said, during an endless cascade of conversations that drifted into one another, that reality was only what you believed it was. People who I didn't know existed didn't exist.
I thought about it...and then, I pretended that I had never known Rezo. That I was not related to him. That he didn't exist. There was a strange feeling in what the romantics call my "heart", an odd emotion somewhere between pain and euphoria. Somehow, while I lost myself in the recesses of my ravaged mind, I managed to convince myself that Rezo never did exist.
But then...I met you all, didn't I? You had to get in my way, Lina. You had to bring the pain back. You had to slap me in the face and I was forced to accept that Rezo did exist, I was destroyed, in body and soul, by him, and I was not going to let him get away with it. But I never got that revenge, did I?
So I stay here still, numbed by pain, shock, and disbelief. Still the same as I ever was. The darkness still twines around my neck and threatens to choke me. My throat tightening, my eyes stinging, the pressure constantly weighing down on my shoulders.
Breaking me.
And the only thing I can do is wait.
[author's notes]
Why oh why must I base all my writings on real
experiences? If I keep going like this, I'll never end up with
PMS again...
Dedicated to Kii-chan. Just because.