Bloodstains
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Kikiyama.
She could never be what the girl wanted.
Poniko knew she was just a shadow, a scrap of something that had been inflated with empty feelings, expectations but no way to act. She wasn't animated though she could think. The girl did not know this. All the people in this world were dumb or just spoke in riddles and rhythms. The girl scared Poniko sometimes, the way she looked at her. Sometimes the girl told her things.
"This is the most beautiful place I know. It doesn't have a Famicon though but I guess you don't need one, do you brush your hair when I'm gone? It always looks so perfect..."
Mindless chatter, though the girl trembled as if she had learnt this one sentence by repeating it over and over. Poniko blinked.
"I wish I could make you talk but I don't know how. What would you say? Numbers and sounds and all the horrible things-"
The girl was holding a knife now, running a hand along a braid, tugging on it and chewing her lip. There was blood on her hands.
"Couldn't you just say that you love me? Could you say that?"
Poniko knew she did not love this girl and never could. This world was a present from the girl, it was beautiful and safe, but the girl who gave it wasn't safe at all.
The girl plays with the light-switch and Poniko knows the girl is hurting herself over and over.
She is not heartless enough to feel sorry for the girl now.
She shouldn't have gone back to the castle, it always ended up with either horrorshow, the knife or the light-switch, as if to taunt her. Even in her dreams she couldn't make things better, why couldn't she imagine a voice for her?
Maybe the girl in the castle was sick, just there to hurt her and make her feel bad. A monster wearing her face. That made sense. Everyone respected and feared her in this place except those bird-faced bitches. She hated them. Their pigtails and smiles and party without her. She had wanted to stab them all until she realised they could play their own little trick on her. Now she just tiptoed around, hoping they wouldn't catch her.
She was pedalling herself away as fast she could on her bicycle and didn't stop until the snow was spraying up into her eyes, she jumped off and threw on her hat and scarf. She didn't want anyone looking at her, especially that useless Yukionna, and she wiped the blood off her hands in the snow. The marks looked like that...thing that sometimes took the blonde girl away...
Maybe if I gave her the name of...but she doesn't deserve it! She's nothing like her! She just looks and looks and feels bad for me...but she's safe in her castle. Her castle is a good place. I'll find a way to fix things, I know I can!
Poniko has been alone for a long time.
There is no change in light or season here, but there is a dead time, where the world she lives in seems to deteriorate a little. Poniko knows now that happens when the girl is awake and far away. As soon as she sleeps, her room stops melting, the scrabbling noises in the walls die away and she can hear the waves outside.
The girl has hurt her a few times. At first, it was a frenzy of blows and Poniko doesn't remember what came after but it slowed to a slow, deliberate plunge into her side and Poniko screams, slowly fading away. She knows she will come back and she is not afraid, yet she must scream.
The girl has stopped coming. Poniko does not feel the loss.
The days, if you can call them that, are becoming longer. The girl is spending more and more time in her dreams, she even sees the girl cycling around her castle. The girl seems to be looking for something, getting angry when she cannot find it.
Poniko knows the girl's name, the name she's given herself. Madotsuki. She doesn't remember how she came to know this, just that she knows. With this knowledge comes the burden of knowing a little more about her protected world.
Poniko is dreading finding out any more about the girl.
She is awake. She had fallen from the broom and like magic, a sweeping curtain, ended up on her floor. The cloud of dust from the floor makes her cough and she can see through the grime-coated window that it's midday, the sun a hazy spot in a clear sky.
She draws in her diary, ever since she started keeping it, her world has become stronger. She has become stronger.
Poniko has nice things, books that she can now open when the girl is asleep and they are slowly filling up with words. Jumbles that the girl, Madotsuki, wouldn't understand but knows by heart. Little fairytales that end up with blood splatters everywhere, princesses being saved by being ravished or worse. Some of the pictures...
But she has nothing else to do. She cannot leave and she knows that time is passing. She reads and reads until she comes to a book, bound in red and black, the story of Madotsuki. The story changes, sometimes Madotsuki is saved but more often Madotsuki is left alone and doesn't know what to do. She wishes she could stay in the dreamworld forever.
The girl hates the castle but loves it too, knowing that you can only hate something if you secretly love it, and she wants Poniko to love her back and hate her too, like the real one.
Poniko stops reading and for the first time realises the sadness of her own fate: based on someone so holy to the girl, Madotsuki, that she can never leave the castle. The real girl doesn't sound like someone she wants to be yet it's inescapable, her fate is to be the girl forever. Without a voice, she can never protest, never assert how different she is. How she is unique. How she could be the girl's real friend.
She is nothing without the girl. She is trapped by the girl.
Madotsuki can go back to the castle now, she feels like she has earned it. She has gone far in this world, collecting the eggs and dropping them in the Nexus. She's kept the bike to get around but she's nearly finished. She feels tired, so tired that her feet slip on the pedals and she struggles to keep her bicycle balanced.
She never remembered it taking so long to get here, the beautiful place she had made. It had sustained her through everywhere else - the gory, dirty parts - knowing that this was here. It was a shrine to all that was good within her and her most precious treasure was kept inside.
She enters and the blonde girl looks at her.
"You can read, can't you? You should nod if you can."
Poniko nods.
The girl is looking through the books, she looks unhappy and Poniko knows it's because she cannot read them.
"I'm sorry about stabbing you, if you remember. Nod if you remember."
Poniko feels herself nodding, many times.
"I'm glad you were kept here in this place. Maybe I should have talked to you more. You could have learnt some words...words to hurt me..."
The girl is turning away from her and Poniko wishes with everything that she could reach out to the girl, just touch her. The girl is leaving, Poniko hears her getting on the bike, pipping the bell as she pedals away. Poniko goes to the window but the girl is long gone.
The Madotsuki book is nearly filled and Poniko reads on, the book says Poniko's world and all the land beyond it is safe but the girl isn't coming back. Poniko is free to leave and she is the new queen, the ruler of this land. It is all a present from the girl.
Poniko shakes her head, she is learning all these new words, all these hateful and hurtful things. All the pain of loving someone with no return, wanting someone to just care. She knows now she was so empty before and everything is flooding into her, to make her more real than real.
The world beyond the castle is scary and Poniko isn't sure if she can cope with that yet. She isn't strong enough and she misses the girl already. She touches the door, shaking her head, too soon. Too hopeless right now. Those words have a ring of sadness that is more than her experience.
She climbs into bed and hopes the girl is there. She prays they have switched places and she'll find Madotsuki in a palace grander than this one. And she can teach her the words this time, the hopeful kind.
There are always dreams.