This particular story is quite the turn from what you usually get from me. Angsty and suicidal, I wrote this on a whim sometime last year. It was actually quite disturbing. Despite it's darkness, I hope you enjoy.
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I see it.
I see it.
It glows so brightly, it shines behind my eyelids in my sleep, pierces through the darkness. It radiates warmth so strong, it penetrates the coldness of my sheets and my skin and my heart. It never abandons me; it always dangles just beyond my reach, like a hook baiting a fish.
I've tried to reach it…too many times to count. The wires and tubes and bandages hold me tightly; they weave themselves around my limbs like vines, shackle me to the world like chains.
They keep me here, too, the white phantoms that hang over my bed. Their words slither into my ears; their frigid hands reinforce the sterile manacles that pin me down. I'm a prisoner in their world, so devoid of color.
They can't see it. How can they be so blind to such brilliance? They're cruel; they fight it like it was their lives hanging in the balance.
I wish they would set me free. I've realized it's up to me to escape.
A new light shimmers at the corner of my eye-I recognize it as a pair of bandage scissors: the phantoms are getting careless. I reach sluggishly for them with the arm not hooked to the bag suspended above my head. They've inebriated my body with the liquid that drips…drips…into my veins, but not enough. My fingers close around it, my prize, and I smile, the corners of my mouth twitch upward convulsively.
The light grows brighter, and I nearly have to shield the eye not covered by gauze. My smile widens.
"Tsuzuki-san…what are you doing?" That man, that horrible man who had imprisoned me here from the start. I recognize his deep, beguiling voice, so dissimilar from the high-pitched coos of the others. I see his eyes, cold and dark; they crinkle up in a chiding smile. No…he's reaching for the scissors weakly clutched between my fingers. "Now, what is this doing here, hm?" He chuckles, but I know. His words are venom.
He takes it from me again, my chance to reach the light. I slump helplessly against the pillow of my bed, my prison; gaze at him with my dead eyes.
My devil eyes.
I hear him mutter something in a much harsher voice as he exits my hell; the true voice. "That damned intern...how many times have I told him?" His footsteps echo in the air.
…
I reach into the edge of my bed and pull out the pencil; it had been laying in wait there for days.
I push the sharp lead into my wrist, scarred with jagged white stripes; cut the pale skin and follow the pattern of veins and arteries. The light glows searing warm as the red courses down my arm. My mind thickens, my vision dims. I feel it now. It reaches out to me, caressing my cheek, smiling at me and I close my heavy eyes.
I drop my little accomplice, and it clatters and rolls on the tiled floor, leaving a spotty trail of crimson in its wake. The red seeps onto the sheets, staining their white perfection. Noise hums in the milieu of my mind. Their frantic footsteps are a staccato beat, their fevered nattering a sweet melody.
They're too late. I've reached the threshold, and it welcomes me into its arms.
Death…why did they protect me from such a wonderful thing?
-owari