Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High Host Club.
The Face Blanket
She leaned her shoulder against the door jam for a moment as she tried to catch her breath. Lifting box after box filled with books, clothes, and other items to her new room was tiring, but she had finally stacked the last box on top of the dresser.
Her father had tacked up an old bed sheet to cover the window until the Venetian blinds were to be installed the next day. One could say that the bed sheet was truly unique. Covering the entire sheet were prints of the same five faces about 8x10 inches each. They were black and white lithographic type prints, a grotesque derivative of pop art rather than the celebration of an '80's pop boy band that it was supposed to be. She had never heard of any of the members of the boy band before, admittedly it was a decade before her time.
They had often used this particular bed sheet for picnics and as a drop-cloth if they ever needed to touch up the paint on the walls. Many times her father voiced his general dislike of the blanket's shabby appearance, but he always kept it for occasions such as this. Haruhi figured it must have been one of her own purchases. Perhaps the price was simply too good to pass up at the time. After a while, though, she had begun to adopt her father's moderate dislike toward the blanket. In reality this particular blanket was more than just an eyesore; it was a disgrace to the textile market if there ever was one.
Nevertheless, up it went; Ranka-san did not want strangers peering into his precious daughter's room.
They were moving into a smaller apartment. It was just the two of them now. They had lived in their previous apartment for the first ten years of her life. It was more spacious and more expensive; there was no real need to live there. In Haruhi's opinion, they should have moved out sooner. They really could not handle the extra financial burden of paying for a place too large for them, and secretly she thought the memories of their old place were too painful. For her father, of course. It took four years to convince her father to look for a new apartment, but they had finally found one that was both conveniently located and within their price range. They would move in the following month.
When moving day had finally arrived, Haruhi passed by her room as she went back and forth from the kitchen to the bathroom and back outside to haul in more boxes. Each time she could not help but glance at the printed faces grinning madly at her from the blanket. She was torn between the urge to stare at the faces until they offered her some sort of explanation as to their intrigue and the urge to quickly walk away while suppressing a shudder.
XXXX
By twilight they had unloaded the last of the boxes from the moving truck. The fridge was plugged in but obviously empty. Always prepared, Haruhi took out her grocery list and walked down to the store by the corner that was having a sale. She carefully selected the choicest ingredients she would need for dinner that night then stood in the check out line.
Haruhi waited patiently with her shopping basket as a clearly haggard woman in front of her in line ineffectually pleaded with a shrieking toddler by her side while simultaneously searching through her purse for her wallet. Haruhi tried not to flinch as the small girl continued to scream for sweets. The apparently long suffering woman finally conceded and placed several bars of chocolate into her shopping basket. Ordinarily, small children never bothered Haruhi, on the contrary she got along quite well with them, but this particular child had irked her to no end. Judging by the expressions of disapproval on the faces of the other store patrons, she was not alone. The woman purchased the items in her basket and left with her daughter.
By the time Haruhi left the store all thoughts of the irritating child and the face blanket had faded from her mind. The sky had grown darker. Haruhi quickly walked back to the apartment and began to cook dinner. She and her father ate in relative silence. Ranka began unpacking some of the kitchen and bathroom items after he finished setting up his late wife's portrait. She knew that would be the first item he would unpack. Haruhi knew how much her father still missed her mother and how difficult it was for him to leave the place where they lived together for so many years, but she was sure they had done the right thing.
Ranka knew his daughter was not inclined to express her grief in the form of tears or anguish, a fact which he regarded with some ambivalence. Haruhi's mother would not want her daughter to be unhappy on her account, yet his little girl did not seem to unburden herself at all. What he did worry about was if her grief was turned inward. He could tell his daughter was unhappy when she lost her appetite, she was already so thin. Tonight she had eaten enough of her dinner to satisfy him though; apparently the move was not as hard on her as it was on him.
Haruhi finished cleaning up after dinner and sat in front of her mother's portrait. She picked up the delicate frame to take a closer look at her mother's image. Haruhi placed the frame back on the side table and walked over to open a box in the kitchen containing glassware. She would get a vase for the flowers she had bought at the supermarket, temporarily placed in a plastic disposable cup, and keep it next to her mother's frame. She ran the tap on high as she filled the vase with water then tipped the vase over to spill some of the excess down the drain. With drops of water still trailing down the side, she arraigned the flowers and carried the vase over to the picture. She had not noticed the wrinkle in the hastily arranged rug in the sitting room, and just as she reached the end table she snagged her foot and stumbled forward. She managed not to fall to the ground, but the vase slipped out of her grasp and onto the table where it crashed into her mother's picture. The frame fell to the ground landing hard on the side then face down with a sinister crack.
Haruhi picked up the portrait avoiding the splinters of glass. A large crack divided the glass diagonally from which a spider web of fissures extended in all directions. Ranka rushed into the room after hearing the crash. He looked from the broken glass to the painfully indecipherable expression on his daughter's face.
"Haruhi! Is everything alright?" He paused for an answer that never came. "Haruhi, it's ok come away from the glass." Ranka awkwardly extended his hand to help her up only to have her ignore it.
"It's not ok," she whispered, eyes fixed on the broken frame, with a tone that would have come off as cold had it not been for the pain in her eyes and the slightest of tremors in her left hand.
"Sweetheart! It is, I promise. The picture is just fine and we can buy another frame tomorrow," he paused for another moment than spoke again. "Look, I'll clean up and you just go to bed."
Haruhi finally rose, put the frame on the table, and made her way to her room, not once looking up at her father. She flipped on the light switch only to see at the faces smiling manically at her from the blanket hung at her window. She regarded the blanket with a moment of quiet distain before turning off the light and climbing into bed. Sleep would not come easily to her though. The lamp light from the street below diffused through the threadbare patches of the blanket giving her room an eerie glow. She continued to examine the blanket with a sort of morbid curiosity. The faces were printed on evenly spaced rectangles superimposed on a pattern of grey swirls. The blanket had been hung loosely at the two top corners so that it sagged and bunched together in the middle adding to the distortion of the faces. Her eyes attempted to follow the confluence of swirls behind the mocking faces with little success, as they all seemed to converge into a veritable Gordian knot of grey.
XXXX
She was back at the store early the next morning browsing through frames of all sizes and prices. She picked out an appropriately sized frame and moved over to the shelves stocked with cereal. Much to her chagrin she spotted the little girl from the day before at the end of the candy aisle. Haruhi had no desire to be in her presence so she quickly backtracked over to the snack food section. Her eyes perused over boxes of fruit snacks and cereal bars. That was when she first heard it.
"Haruhi, don't…" she heard in almost a whisper.
She turned her head to try and find the source of the voice but she was the only one standing in the aisle. She turned back to the snacks stacked on the shelf and picked up a box of granola bars to check the nutrition facts. In a flash of black and white, she saw that the nutrition label had instantaneously morphed into one of the faces from that wretched blanket hanging in her room. She nearly dropped the box. Haruhi blinked, hard, only to see the nutrition facts on the box. She placed it back on the shelf.
"Haruhi, don't…" she heard once more. She was sure that the voice had said something afterward, but it was so soft that she hadn't the faintest clue what.
She walked back to the aisle stocked with picture frames only to find, much to her horror that every frame had been smashed in. The floor was covered with glass. Oddly enough she did not remember hearing any glass shatter. She took out the picture frame in her own basket, but instead of enclosing the standard grey and white printout specifying the dimensions of the frame once again she saw an image of the face from the blanket. She promptly dropped the frame which shattered upon impact. She hastily picked up the frame to examine the damage. This time the image was replaced with that of her mother's. She flinched upon seeing drops of blood tainting the broken frame. Haruhi saw the long but shallow cut in her left palm. She dropped the frame once again as tears began to gather behind her eyes.
"Haruhi, don't…" the voice called out once more. She whipped around in the direction she thought she heard the voice. She quickly walked toward the front of the store and stopped.
She looked up to see the small girl watching her from the end of the aisle. She child was half sobbing half laughing, her mother nowhere in sight. Haruhi took a step or two back and shut her eyes; she did nothing stop her tears from spilling.
"Haruhi, don't…" There it was again, those same words, now if they would only finish the thought.
Her father was gently shaking her awake. She widened her eyes and she took a good look around as she wiped her tear streaked cheeks with the back of her hand. She was in her room; she glanced over at the clock which flashed 10:32AM indicating just how much she had overslept.
"What did you say?" she asked her father.
"Haruhi, don't hide. If you're upset, you can always talk to me."
Haruhi shook her head and replied, "I just don't want you to worry." She lifted her eyes and stared once more at the blanket at the window. With a hardened look of determination she climbed out of bed and walked toward the blanket. She wrenched the blanket from each corner and balled up the fabric with both hands.
"Let's just throw it out." She said addressing her father. "It's so old and the pattern of faces is disturbing. I don't even know who this people are. I regret ever buying it."
"You didn't buy it. Okasan did. She bought it while she was in college."
They stood in silence while looking at the crumpled blanket in her hands.
The expression on Haruhi's face was unreadable as she folded the blanket and carefully placed it in the linen closet.
Fin.
AN: Please, Please, Please Review!!!!
This story was inspired by an actual blanket. Oh, and I've decided to stop updating Tearing Down the Façade.