A/N: Yeah, so. This was my submission for a horror writing contest, but with different names. It's a bit creepy or so people have told me. Enjoy!
Warnings: OCD Shirosaki, gore
Everything in this world is separate. Everything has its place. Everything and everyone; some things just get mashed together so I have to fix them so they can be separate again. I'm helping really.
The first time I heard about the separate things was on the TV, and the next was in a book. It explained how things went, how this went here and that went there. The only problem was it didn't explain how to fix the wrong things to be right things again, so I had to find that out for myself.
It was much easier than I thought it would be though. I was thinking how to do it when I saw this beautiful butterfly lying on the street in front of my house. Its wings sparkled with color as it lay, stark against the gravel. I picked it up and took it inside to the kitchen.
On the counter I looked at it again. It looked wrong, all different shapes and colors. So I fixed it, antennae went in this pile and wings went over here, then I divided the body so it would match too. The wings didn't match now, so I cut it up further until colors didn't touch and the butterfly was spread all over the place.
Lying in piles on the counter, it was separated nicely. But the red bothered me; it trailed from pile to pile, contaminating it, preventing the complete separation. I wiped it up but more spread. I didn't like it so I threw the whole thing away. Then I wiped the counter again, and the red was gone. I felt much better.
I decided that the problem with making the right separate was the warm red stuff that always came out when I tried to fix things. Like our neighbors dogs and cats and the squirrel I caught behind my house one day. The nasty, sticky, stuff got everywhere. It was all over the ground, in my neat piles, on me and my clothes. It was really annoying.
I realized after that, that the reasons my separations weren't working was because I wasn't doing it right. The red liquid was a thing too, so it needed to have its own separate place so it wouldn't get in the other places. The next time I let all of the red stuff out before I started to fix the main body and it worked much better. The red stayed in a container and not among the other stuff. It made me happy that I had figured out how to separate better. I was so smart.
Since I was so very glad at my achievement that I gave back the next fixing I did. It was my neighbor, Mr. Urahara. He's about eighty years old and has about a bazillion cats. I took two before but I don't think he noticed. The next cat I borrowed was a bright caramel color and I made sure to do the best I could do for her. I even folded the skin with the pretty fur facing out. After putting its newly separate and improved parts into their own clear plastic container, I sneaked into his yard at night and left them all on his doorstep. He'd have such a surprise the next day.
For some reason the police showed up, and went around asking questions. My mom told me the police were good people so I should be polite to them but they didn't ask me any questions. They stayed around in their shiny cars for a few weeks but left soon.
A few months later it was my birthday. I got a nice cake that was evenly separated on my request. Anything for the birthday boy, my mom said. She congratulated me and told me to make a wish. For my seventh birthday, I wished to be able to help separate more things. I blew out all the candles in one try, so it's got to come true!
Even though it was my birthday I was going to do a selfless thing, and for the first time, help a person. I hadn't before even though I'd read about it cause people are complicated and really hard to perfectly separate. But since I was older, I could do it now.
I knew these two girls who had been bugging me for a while, Ryō and Michiru; they were friends in my grade. They were both very nice but they had something that really needed to be fixed. You see, Ryō had blond hair and brown eyes, and Michiru had brown hair and blue eyes. That wasn't right. They needed to switch.
That night I got them both over into the woods. It was almost too easy. I called them both and said the other wanted to meet. It was funny how they showed up so confused, and then scared when they started talking. I was hiding behind a tree and hit Ryō over the head with a shovel I'd gotten from my garage. She collapsed and didn't get back up, and Michiru tried to run. She tripped though and I had ample time to get in position and swing the shovel again.
They were both much bigger than the animals I used before so it took some time to tie them up and hang them upside down from a tree. They were also heavier than I had expected. By the time I had arranged them to my liking, Ryō was starting to stir.
She started yelling despite my attempts to calm her so I jammed some of her shirt in her mouth to make her be quiet. I turned to Michiru, but she wasn't awake yet. I poked her with a stick and she swung a little in the air but didn't twitch. I frowned; maybe I should go get some water to splash on her? That always worked in the movies.
I sighed; I guess I could give her a little more time while I got ready. I dug out the bag I'd packed specially for tonight from a pile of leaves and started laying out my tools like a general laying out troops for battle.
First I got out the big buckets and carefully placed them underneath each girl. I was very exact on the location because they needed to catch all the blood so it could be stored separately from the other parts. Then I stacked the glass containers according to size, and for each person, so I could reach them easily. Finally I set down the knives on a black cloth. I had all kinds of knives for tonight; kitchen knives, carving knives, a pocket knife, and even an ice pick that I found up in the attic. Everything would have to be perfect tonight, so I really went all out.
I looked up from my preparations to find Michiru had woken up. Wonderful! We could get started now.
I looked at Ryō who wasn't struggling anymore, just crying. She looked weird with tears falling down her forehead and I told her so. She didn't think it was funny if her muffled shrieks were anything to go by. I stopped for a second with a thin blade in my hand. I hadn't fixed two people at the same time before, so this could get complicated. I decided to focus my full attention on Michiru first, and then move on to Ryō when I was done.
Smiling brightly at Michiru, I told her not to worry, that I was fixing her so she would be better, but she didn't seem very comforted. In fact, she was screaming for help louder and I didn't have anything to gag her with, so I drew a quick line across her throat hoping she'd stop all the noise.
She gurgled, then choked, then went still, all the while blood beaded along the cut then spilled down her face in a rush of liquid. Thankfully, it was all caught in the bucket, but Ryō looked horrified and was crying harder. I tried to ignore her and concentrate on what I was doing.
I sat and waited for some time, it surprised me how much blood was in a person, much more than in animals, though it looked the same as the first time I'd seen it. When the flow started to slow then drip, I got up and got the bigger knives to work with. Leaving her hanging, I made several cuts along her limbs, and began the process of peeling back her skin.
Folding it up like a blanket, I placed it in a container then set it aside. Now I opened up her abdomen with a long slash, so I could place the organs in their assigned boxes. The intestines were bigger than I expected so I made a note to bring a larger sized container for them next time. After that I completely removed her head and set it down carefully, because that came last. Muscles were stripped off the bone and the bones went into a separate pile. Most of the messy stuff taken care of, I turned to work on the head.
I puzzled over it for a second, because it wasn't really like skinning an animal, but I decided that yes it did need to be separated like the rest. Hair went here, and cartilage here. Scrape back the skull, carefully now, and we can put the brain among the other organs along with the tongue. Take the cleaned skull, and place it with the bones. I surveyed my work, and nodded at a job well done. Separated from Michiru into her rightful places it looked much better.
Satisfied with that, I turned to give Ryō my attention. She hadn't screamed for awhile even though she worked the gag loose sometime around when I was removing Michiru's spine. She'd been sick once, and that would be irritating to clean up, but overall she was handling this rather well. It made me curious.
She looked up at me and asked, "I'm going to die, aren't I?"
Not die, I assured her, just fixed into your separate places.
"Same thing," she said quietly, "Tell my family I love them."
I frowned, puzzled. How did she expect me to do that?
"Please," she asked.
I grinned at her brightly. Sure, I told her.
She thanked me, and then I slit her throat.
Maybe because I already had practice, but separating Ryō went much faster than separating Michiru. When I was done, I sat on the ground and pondered the glass containers stacked around me. Then, I took a box with brown eyes rolling around in them, and put it with the other pile, and from that pile I took a box of two cornflower blue eyes and placed them in the space the brown eyes had vacated.
I smiled and nodded to myself.
"Perfect."
The next morning I was awakened by loud screams outside the house. The lady two doors down had come out to get the paper and found a still heart in a clear box on her porch.
She was screaming her head off and it was really quite irritating. She kept wailing, "Ryō, my Ryō…"
I was looking at the whole thing through my bedroom window, so I saw when the first police car pulled up to the curb, and they lead the lady into their vehicle. Crowds were gathering, all trying to view the gift left on her doorstep.
I watched the car with the lady in it, until they were about to leave our street.
"You're welcome," I said. "Don't worry, I'll fix you too."
A/N: ….I told you so. Go on, be a pal, tell me how it was! Reviews are love!
