Well, I was planning to update my Return to Zero story this week, but this week happens to be Achievement Test week around here. So, after the math test that I took today, I had way too much time on my hands, and I somehow ended up writing this. Hope you like it~
Wide Knowledge of the Late, Madness
There had always been something a little off about Miku. No one could ever point it out directly, but it was a definite something. Her father liked to say that she had a screw loose. Her mother liked to say that that wasn't nice, and that Miku was simply "special". Miku did not understand either of their claims on her mental health, to be honest. If she did have a screw loose, why didn't someone just fix it? And wasn't special used as a compliment, rather than an impairment?
Neither theory made sense to her, but Miku preferred to think that she had a screw loose. It was fun to imagine that she did; that there was a thin bit of metal poking out of her head that needed to be screwed back into place. Sometimes the thought of this was just so funny that Miku would laugh at it aloud. Whenever this happened, her parents would look at her with pained expressions, their eyes filled with concern.
Which did not make much sense either. Once, when she had asked her mother about it, she was told that it just wasn't normal to laugh so much at imaginary things. But the cartoons on the TV were not real, either, and many a time Miku had seen people of all ages, grouped around the glowing screen, laughing hysterically. Wasn't that the same concept?
Now there was a funny idea. What if there was really a TV inside her head, projecting thoughts onto her eyes? Miku now had two funny thoughts to laugh at, which of course only worried her parents more. They just couldn't see the humor in imaginary screws and TVs.
It seemed to be just as her father had said. There was a screw loose, somewhere in the recesses of Miku's brain. It was not until the day she started screaming that anyone bothered to do anything about it, however.
Miku never meant to scream the way she did, it had just happened. She had been in her room, skimming through a reading assignment, when here eyes suddenly fell upon the phrase, "I want to leave." Something about this phrase was funny to her, and she had grinned, reading over it again, drinking in the odd humor of that one sentence.
Maybe it would be funnier if she said it out loud.
Still smiling, Miku opened her mouth and, very slowly, read the words out loud. "I want to leave." She had giggled at this point. She had been right, it was fun to say out loud. The way the words rolled off her tongue, the way her lips moved to form the words, everything about it was so incredibly entertaining.
So she said it again. "I want to leave." And again. "I want to leave." And once more. "I want to leave." Her pitch was changing now, getting louder and louder, until she laughed at the tickling rumble it made in her throat when she screamed. Over and over, she screamed out, "I want to leave," pausing only every few times in between to let loose loud peals of laughter. For some reason she was not able to see straight, her vision clouded, but that did not matter, because the screaming was just so fun.
And then she heard the telltale sound of shoes on the hard wood floor, and she knew that there were people in the room. She could not see them, however, but she did not particularly want to. What she wanted to do was to speak to them, to tell them to try this screaming, so they could see how fun it was. But more than she wanted that, she just wanted to keep on screaming.
So she did.
~*~
Miku did not remember leaving her house, that night she had discovered the fun in screaming. Nor did she remember making and outfit change. Yet here she was, dressed in a pale blue, baggy t-shirt and matching pants, staring down a bright, clean white hallway. There were doors set into the walls, doors and doors and doors, stretching on and on as far as she could look.
They were doors, Miku soon discovered, that looked very funny on their side. She tipped her head slowly, back and forth, and watched as the doors tilted right, then left, then right, then left again.
She giggled when the doors suddenly began to move towards her, and did not immediately realize that she was moving, not the hallway. A gentle hand was ushering her down the hallway, past the doors and doors and doors. Miku twisted her head around, wanting to see if her guide found the doors as amusing as her, but he was just barely out of her vision, and she could not get a proper look at him.
Instead, she found something new to look at. There were two figures huddled against one of the white walls, dressed much like her. Both were blonde and small, smaller than Miku at least. The first was a girl with a white bow perched lopsidedly on her head. As Miku watched, the girl's hands shot up to push her bow over ever so slightly, then fell back down into her lap, then shot up to fix the offending bow once more. Miku stared, mesmerized as the bow flicked back and forth through the air.
And now she had stopped walking, and her usher was now guiding the little girl blonde girl to one of the doors. Miku did not bother to look at her guide's face this time, however. She simply watched the bow flick back and forth, swish, swish, swish…
But the little girl's hands were no longer moving the bow, for she had clasped her hand onto the hand of the boy next to her. His blonde hair stuck out at odd angles from his face, and as Miku watched, he slowly opened his mouth, then closed it again. His action reminded her of a goldfish, and this was so funny that she had to giggle as the door swung shut behind the door children.
It seemed to Miku, as she continued her walk, one gentle hand still pressing her on, that those two were a bit like her in some way. The also seemed to like the strange pleasure in simple movements that most people did not understand. Those two had not been laughing, true, but it had at least been entertaining to her.
She wondered if there were more people behind the doors and doors and doors, more people that were like her.
Another door passed by, and through the small window of it, Miku caught a glimpse of a young man with deep blue hair standing just behind it, nose pressed against the glass curiously. He did not move, as the other children had. He simply stared out at her blankly. So she stared back, thinking that maybe that was what he wanted. But when she tried to stop so she could stare at him longer, the guide gave her a slightly less gentle push, and she continued her shuffle down the clean white hallway.
And finally, one of the doors opened for her, and she was led into a small, white room of her very own.
Not much past this was committed to her memory, just a tingling coldness on her arm, a sharp pain, and then nothing but sleep and darkness.
~*~
Step, step, step, step.
There were footsteps outside Miku's door, and she knew there were people going past outside. This reminded her of something but she was not sure of what, and she couldn't think, she was so tired, it was as though there was a thick cloud of sleep hovering about her head.
This thought roused a sleepy giggle from Miku, and her eyes snapped open.
Step, step, step, step.
The people were still outside, step-step-stepping past her room. Miku's own bare feet padded across the white tiles of her room, and she peered out of her window curiously. Much like the man she had seen earlier…another giggle, and now she could see two figures walking slowly down the dark hallway. When had it become dark? Had it been dark when she had entered? She could not remember, which was frustrating, and did not make her giggle, so she stopped thinking about it.
Instead, she focused on the two figures getting closer, closer, closer, and then suddenly she could make them out. The guide from earlier, face still mysteriously hidden, and beside him, the little blonde girl. Her hands hung limp at her sides now, but on her head still sat -
The ribbon! It flicked gentle back and forth with every step the girl took, swish, swish, swish. It truly was mesmerizing, and Miku's eyes flicked back and forth along with the ribbon as it bobbed past her window, off down the hallway of doors and doors and doors.
But at last, the ribbon floated out of sight, swallowed up by the blackness of the never-ending hall. In desperation, wanting to follow the ribbon, Miku's hand found the smooth metal of the doorknob, and then she was out in the cool darkness of the hallway.
Unsure of what to do with her sudden freedom, Miku's eyes latched onto a small movement that just might have been the ribbon, and off she went, down the dark hallway, past the doors and doors and doors. There was definitely something moving ahead of her, but it did not get any closer, and she could not tell if it really was the ribbon, but she could hope. As she walked, the part of her mind that was not focused on the ribbon wondered just how long this hallway of doors and doors and doors was.
Almost the second she thought that, a dim square of light appeared ahead of her as a door swung open, and the silhouette of the ribbon, carried aloft by the girl's head, disappeared through it. As the door swung shut with a bang, and Miku was once more plunged into darkness, she moved forward to the window. This door was higher than the rest of the doors along the hallway, but by standing on tiptoe, she could make out a shaky silhouette of what was happening inside.
The girl with the ribbon was being led onto a table in the center of the room. Slowly, she hoisted herself up onto the table as Miku watched the ribbon tremble. Perhaps in fright? But what was in there that had the girl so scared? Miku's eyes traced out the movement of the ribbon as the girl lay down on the table, still shaking slightly. And now another silhouette entered, this time one that Miku did not recognize. The second silhouette was carrying something very big in her hands, but it was an object that Miku did not recognize.
Suddenly, the object in the woman's hands sprang into terrifying life with a loud buzzing sound, the girl on the table screamed and the ribbon gave one final tremble, and then suddenly the ribbon, and the girl's head, were falling down from the table, out of sight for Miku.
Miku gazed sadly through the window, mourning the loss of the ribbon as the object in the silhouette's hands buzzed again and something else fell of the table. A limb, perhaps? She could not be sure, but with it, a small splatter of something dark and red appeared on the window, directly in front of Miku's face.
She watched as the liquid oozed slowly down the thick glass, spreading out and forming an odd kind of pattern. It almost looked like a flower. Miku smiled at this, glad to have found something new to entertain her besides the ribbon.
As the small red flower slid down the window and out of sight, however, Miku lost interest completely and began her way down the hallway, past the doors and doors and doors once more, back to her room.
Step, step, step, step.
There were people walking again, towards her through the gloom of the hallway. As she watched, another guide walked briskly past, beside the little blonde boy from before. As they passed, the boy turned to face Miku, and as her gaze met his own blank, lifeless eyes, he stretched his mouth wide in a leer unlike anything Miku had ever seen before.
But then he was gone, as was the guide, and completely out of interesting things, Miku turned the doorknob of her room and stepped inside once more.
~*~
Several more nights passed by in the clean, white hallway with the doors and doors and doors, each following the same routine as the last. Miku would slip quietly out of her room and down to the Door at the End of the Hall, peering through the thick glass of the window to see if any more flowers would appear. None did, although on one occasion she did spot the blue-haired man from earlier, his arms tied tight against his body as he struggled in vain against the bonds holding him back. From what, Miku could not tell.
Through this pattern, however, Miku was able to discover the general pattern of the white hallway. Every day, one new person would step-step-step past her room, enter the door at the end of the hall, and that was that. They did not come out. The two children had already been taken, as had the man with the blue hair and the dead eyes.
Following this logic, soon it would be her turn to enter the room that she had stared so longingly into all these nights, aching to know what lay beyond the glass and steel barrier that was keeping her out.
And then, one day, she heard no step-step-step outside her door. All night she lay awake, waiting for the sound that had become almost comforting, but it never came. Curious, she stepped out into the silent hallway, and then she realized what was wrong.
It was silent. There was not one single person in any of the other rooms. Usually if there was, even in the dead of night there were small, sleeping sounds, almost as though the whole hallway was breathing. But the rest of the people had gone, and she was all alone.
She would be the last to enter the door. It would be her turn at last.
"I am going to get my turn," Miku said, the first words she had spoken in a long, long time, and with these words, the feeling of words came rushing back to her, and she said again, "I am going to get my turn," just a little louder. Oh, how she longed to scream out the words, as she had done what felt like so long ago.
So she did. She screamed as loud as she could, "I AM GOING TO GET MY TURN!" Almost immediately, she broke down into a gale of uncontrollable giggling, and could not get past the first word of her new sentence. "I…I…I…" she giggled, slowly becoming quieter and quieter as the word around her began to fade, just like before.
Then there were the footsteps, just like before, and just like before, she could not see the people around her, but she knew they were there, and still she longed to teach them the fun of her new sentence, but she couldn't stop now, she was having too much fun.
Over and over, the words echoed around her head. "I…I…I…" as they lifted her off the floor. "I…I…I…" as they carried her down the hallway. "I…I…I…" as she was carried through the door that she had gazed through for so long, and at last, she was there. She was in the room that had eluded her for so long.
"I-"
~*~
"And you're sure you've fixed whatever mental problems they had?" came a deep, rumbling voice from a corner of the room. There sat a large, shapeless shadow, bright, glowing white eyes staring out across the room at the three figures huddled on the floor. In the midst of them stood a young woman, tapping a clipboard smartly with her pen.
"Yes, within about a week, they should be what you and I would call 'sane'", she said in a rather bored, business-like tone.
"Ingenious," the shadow murmured, face splitting into a wide grin as he looked down at the figures on the floor. "But, do tell, where did you come up with the idea to do these tests in the first place?"
The woman smirked at him and pointed to the first, a young man with blue hair sitting at her feet, wriggling uselessly against a straight jacket. "Well, this one was apparently homeless. We found him in a dumpster somewhere or other. Looking for food, just like a dog," the man's mouth opened wide as he stared up at her with a hungry look in his eye, sharp, canine teeth protruding from his mouth.
"And these two," she pointed one red, high-heeled toe at two blonde heads attached grotesquely to one body with yards of black thread, "We got from another asylum who didn't have room for them. When they first got here, they were inseparable. Afraid to be away from each other even for a minute."
"And that one," she now indicated a young girl with long, clear green hair. From the waist up, she appeared to be just an average girl. Her legs, however, tapered quickly from skin into pale green fur, almost like deer legs. "Her parents brought her here. As the father so wisely put it," the woman smiled as the girl reached up with one trembling hand to feel a thin, curving horn protruding from the side of her head.
"She'd always had a screw loose somewhere."
~*~
This one is longer than Dark Woods Circus. And that bothers me greatly. Argh.
Anywho, I kind of took advantage of the fact that Wide Knowledge of the Late, Madness is very repetitive in the story, as you can probably tell. Now, don't forget to leave me a nice long review. Or a short review. Any review is nice, really~