Disclaimer: I do NOT own Yu Yu Hakusho, nor do I own its characters.
Warning: Please consider the genre of this story, thank you.
The hours on the mechanical face ticked…ticked…ticked…ticked…ticked…ticked on by, day became night and darkness into light, and this was flaunted when the world peered in through the gossamer besmirched windows. Those days rolled on by into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. Time was king and it showed when ol' neglect settled in, creating a comfortably numb hidey-hole for those barred; for surely this place no longer served its purpose as a home.
More than two years had flown by since despair's homecoming, those years gone in a blink of an eye. The memories were nothing more than mere shadows, ink on life's pages, and those were the only traces that were left as the sands washed away all other likely certainties by every night's end. Everything was gone, everything but this place and the broken soul it harbored, and all he had were his fragments.
The color had faded from those avocado green walls, the fancy wallpaper stained by arcane splotches of yellow plasma. The dusky wood floors were sheltered in dust. The chambers were cluttered, papers and objects scattered all over the place. The trash nearly overflowed the bins, though not stacked all the way up to the ceiling.
A lone figure sat there upon the bed's edge, his jaw slacked, eyes glassy and his stare jaded. He gazed off into the gloom, at nothing in particular. His white overcoat, though immaculate or sterile, was wizened, while the knees of his trousers were dingy. And though his face was clean save for the stroke of stubble upon his chin, his ginger locks were long, pulled back, and had far outgrown that style he donned during the years up to his maturity.
MATURITY: the years before it made it seem promising, but now he could see well that it wasn't at all what it was cracked up to be. Nothing ever truly was what he thought, his hoary fantasies proven to be mere self-delusions. Happiness, he realized, was always feigned. And as for himself, he was painstakingly feckless.
When having snapped out of his dreary daze, he regained his composure and regarded his surroundings. He stood up, the soles of his boots knocking against the wood as he departed from the bedroom.
After having made it downstairs, he wandered almost aimlessly until having noticed the condition in the wastebasket. He collected the trash by having hauled it up by the straps and then tied the bag closed with a knot, and all afore he lugged it outside with him when going out to retrieve the mail. Outside, he disposed of the dreadful bag into its proper container by the curve, putting the lid on it prior to fishing a hand into the letterbox. He pulled out seven pieces and retreated back indoors.
He flipped through the posts, two of which were nothing more than spam, four of which were bills, and…a mysterious letter.
Staring at the envelope, the man noted how it was addressed to him but with no return dispatch, the sender seemed anonymous thus far. Upon further study, he discerned the paper casing to be worn, the ink on the outside fade as though the letter dated years back and, yet, somehow it was singed, the edges burnt, bounded and smudged in soot. There was something awfully eerie about this, even if it was clearly nothing more than inanimate thing. It was not like the letter was going to bite him any time soon, and the idea of such seemed far too illogical and asinine to be considered a possibility. Before he could open it, however, he consciously glanced up at the time and understood well that it would have to wait.
The redhead thoroughly washed and sanitized his hands while at the sink, numbly cleansing them up past his wrists, his sleeves rolled up ahead of time. As soon as he dried his hands with a disposable towel, he grabbed his belongings and marched to the garage.
He unlocked and slid into his compact SUV (sports utility vehicle), jumped the engine and stalled there briefly to allow the motor to warm up. With the engine humming, he shifted the gears into reverse and gently pressed his foot on the gas. The sensors on the garage door went off then, detecting vehicular movement before hoisting up to allow him passage to back out into the driveway. And once there, he yielded briefly and steered out into the road, shifted the gears into drive and drove off, adhering to the speed limit.
Peering down the thoroughfare, he narrowed his eyes at his settings. The conditions were perilous, the land itself insipid, and the atmosphere behaved as a white, vaporous veil.
"Shit! This miasma is as thick as…blood on a knife."
He leaned forward in his seat some, while he tightly gripped the steering wheel, and to the point his knuckles turned a bone white; his fingers were thin, almost meatless. To his bewilderment, he saw how vacant the streets were.
"…Kazuma…"
A voice, as faint as can be, sobbed from a close distance.
"…Kazuma…"
"…Kazuma…"
"...Kuwabara."
"Doctor…"
"Doctor… Doctor Kuwabara!"
His eyes widened in response to having been addressed so abruptly, having heard an all too familiar voice beforehand, and one of which withdrew his attention until he came crashing back from Neptune. When his sight came into focus, he recovered himself from gawking down at his latex secured hands, the rest of himself clothed in scrubs. In his right hand he held a scalpel.
He drew his attention upward, a blood bag being the very next thing he saw. The blood oozed, dripping down a long, transparent tube that lead down into a needle, a needle inserted and secure by surgical to the inner elbow of an arm.
"The patient is under, stable and ready for your next move."
He turned to the voice that emerged from his left, and to which then he stared into a pair mahogany pools both individually encompassed by almond-shaped offish white.
The nurse furrowed her brow in concern. "Are you alright, doctor?"
Shifting his eyes from her, his gaze swept around the room, and recognized the awkward stares he was receiving and from whom. There were at least six of them, and they were all gathered, standing around the operation table. His assistant shook his head, grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him over to have a word with him.
"Are you sure you can do this? You look out of it, been so since…" The man drawled off into Kuwabara's ear, then slid before him, having pulled down his mask to speak more clearly. "We could call in someone else?"
Kazuma paused for a moment, and mauled over the option as the heart monitor beeped monotonously from behind. He shook his head a moment later, perhaps having dug his grave rather than coming to a decision.
His assistant inhaled profoundly. "Listen, you need to get your head straight…" He threw in a cautionary response. "…or else you'll botch this up."
In defense, Kazuma scowled at him. "Since when have I ever messed up?" His dark eyes flashed as he leered. "What am I? …Doctor Death?"
He hated being doubted, all the more despised being undermined, and loathed being berated by those who held themselves to be far greater than he. Incensed, he wanted to bite this cocky bastard's face, and tear it clean off with his teeth and rip the flesh into tiny pieces so that not even the best surgeons could assist the little shit in looking normal ever again.
Why so much animosity? Simple, because for awhile that sycophant has had his eyes set on his career since day one.
The Ph. A. rolled his eyes, finding no hilarity in the situation, failing to identify the threat. "One mistake is all it takes." He reminded him. "Mess up and there will be serious hell to pay. No one will forgive you for that, you know it."
'Mess up and... No one will forgive you for that.'
Those words echoed through Kazuma's mind…
…And within a blinding flash, he slammed on the breaks.
The wheels on his SUV screamed, and then only wailed and sputtered when the vehicle nearly spun out of control.
Since when did he have such a lead foot, or a need for speed? He almost ran a red light on his way to…
Say, where was he going anyway? When he thought about it, his mind drew to a blank. All he knew was that he needed to be somewhere…somewhere important. It was clear to him that he was needed, gravely so, but as to where he was needed and what for—that itself eluded him.
He was not needed at the hospital was he? From what he could recall, he was currently on temporary leave.
Kazuma turned off the motor, unfastened his seatbelt, opened the door and slid out of the driver's seat to inspect for any possible damages.
He scoped about for any oncoming traffic, but observed none at all. To his surprise, the entire area was completely void of all life, even when…downtown?
…Where was everyone?
Something was not right about any of this, and the town itself was not at all recognizable. The vicinity was grungier than usual, vapid even, and the man-made structures stood like villainous silhouettes looming in from a distance. All the more maddening, the fog made it nearly impossible to see shite.
Other than his own, not a single soul was around.
Everything was so still, there was a silence that echoed in an ominous ring.
Kazuma hopped back into his ride.
"Fuck this place, damn Ghost Town."
Instinctively he reached to turn the key, only to fondle around on the wheel after his grip clasped upon nothing more than thin air. The key was missing, and the first clue should have been the ceasing of the incessant digging that always accompanied when leaving your key in the ignition point.
He glanced down on the floorboard, shifting around in the seat to see if the key had somehow fallen down there. After failing to detect his keys thus far, he jumped out of the vehicle and began checking under the seat, in the cracks, the built in coasters, and even in the door panel—though that itself was a ridiculous thing to do. The ginger even went as far as to check around and under the automobile, that is, he crawled around on his hands and knees for a measly two minutes…in vain!
There was Nothing, Naught-a, Zero, Zilch, or a Nil.
He turned up empty handed, and with no keys in sight he spat out obscenities. After surveying his surroundings with yet another turn, he climbed back into the SUV to retrieve his cell. Yet, once he slipped back inside, something bizarre caught his eye…and it was not his cellphone.
The mysterious letter from beyond…had appeared mysteriously in the front passenger's seat.
"What the fuck?"
Exactly!
Maybe the letter was alive after all? He certainly could not recall ever bringing that thing with him. Hmm, it being "haunted" sounded like a far more reasonable explanation than it sprouting legs and sneaking into his vehicle and then finally somehow crawled itself up into the seat while he was not looking.
He reached over to pick up the letter, but suddenly hesitated when fear crept over him.
Fear? Afraid? Afraid of what? What was he thinking? That superstitious attitude never helped him any at all in the past, so why would it now? If anything, he learned to face the issues ahead and head on, rather than dealing with them later when he "felt" like it. Had not life taught him that important lesson at an early age?
Fight? He always had "fight" within himself, for he did not and could not ever succumb to defeat.
'It was better to burn quickly and bright, than burn slowly and dull without a fight.'
This "iron man", no matter how feckless, was NOT going to be a slave to his fears, and so he fought.
The psychic took hold of the envelope and traced the sullied edges with his thumb, all afore he carefully tore it open. Upon reaching into the packet, he discovered a folded piece of parchment. He removed the paper from within its holder, and that the paper revealed to be smeared by dismal hues on a crude drawing.
Kazuma's eyes broadened, three times the size, while his rustic, orpiment (colored) orbs contracted.
Had he seen this before…somewhere…?
He drew this when he was six. The psychic could not remember why, when exactly, or for what reasons, but he knew he drew this and at that age, the greatest tipoff being that his name was written alongside the year on the back of the parchment. The recollection persisted to evade him.
The illustration was that of a building, an eerie one at that for the entire structure was painted black.
The structure was not the only thing that caught his eye, however, as there was a figure…a menacing character surrounded by a pool of red, and likewise covered in "bleeding" shadow. The being looked to be man yet beast yet nothing in between, and with a fearsome blade in hand he was cutting through space… The thing was cutting through dimensions.
The thing was cutting through dimensions, carving out the sky as IT peeled the blue back like skin from a piece of meat.
Kazuma coughed down at the drawing as a sudden blow of nausea went straight to his gut. His digits glossed over the thin layers of wax, and the paper's crisp edges stung his skin.
What a bizarre, disturbing piece of art. Did he really have such a warped mind as a child? Never mind that. Who in hell was responsible for sending him this mess in the first place? Was the old man playing some sort of sick joke on him?
None of this was making sense, not a single lick.
He shifted his awareness onto other details. There were these bird-like creatures in the illustration, though he was not so sure if they were genuinely birds. The firmament itself appeared shattered; the dimensional membrane was cracked like an opaque mirror only to be flayed away by a ghastly fiend.
What kind of child draws these sorts of things?
Oh, right. He drew it, he drew this…eyesore.
All the more unsettling was the monster's ability to cut through proportions, how it manipulated reality. …And with a blade? No, it was clearly a sword.
Kazuma's breath hitched when he discerned the familiarity.
Was this a prediction that had come to pass or is it one yet to be? How did he, as a boy, know that such a feat was even feasible? And who was the foreboding figure exactly?
It could not be him, it just could not be. Why? The entity looked nothing like him, that's why. What with the red hood with its overcast which shrouded its features, the gruesome grin, and the savage demeanor overall. There were no eyes on the guy, none drawn at all, just…blackness.
But was he so sure about that? How did he know he was not in denial? And—oh, yeah, did he take note that he could not see the being's face?
It all had to be a coincidence, or so he kept telling himself over and over for about five minutes until he managed to push the whole idea aside.
There was another thing about that picture, where the paper was littered with depictions of vaults and stones and all to which was fenced in by enormous bars.
This he had no difficulty following, perhaps even inclined to, due to the personal experience of when dealing with the dead. Whether it this was due to his keen psychic gifts, or the loss of life in the emergency room, death was always impending around him. He understood well that he could not escape death, as all people do. Death was inevitable.
After folding the paper in quarters, he stashed the drawing into his coat pocket and all prior to the search for his cellphone. He combed about in the vehicle for the device, including having checked the glove compartment and the compartment under the armrest, before it suddenly dawned on him— He had inserted his phone into the receptacle strapped on his belt, and had done so since before he had left his house. He reached behind him, on the right side of himself, and retrieved the mobile.
With the device in hand, he tapped the screen and lo and beheld that the service was without connection. Baffled, he did not understand as to how the location could be a dead zone. He was in what was known to be the busiest part of town, for crying out loud!
He swore acridly, but then swiftly fell into silence when his eyes beheld her face.
Yukina, his dear sweet Yukina…
She was his consolation in this mad, abysmal world. She was precious. She was a pure, melodious vision.
Inversely, his existence was flawed in comparison, his rind marred down to the marrow with battle scars.
He remembered the fresh scent of her creamy flesh, the silky texture of her watery "sea foam" hair, and the way she peered up at him with those crimson puddles of hers. He studied the fine details of her lips, noting how petite her mouth was, and how delicate the lines were. Her gaze reflected her innocence while those eyelashes laced kissed lids, beauty unspoiled…
…Violated. …Complicated, faceless, and broken. The ginger was undeserving of her, as he had been told so avidly by those who knew him.
Fate was cruel, as was life in general.
Having comprehended that it was only a snapshot, he sucked in a quivering breath. He pressed the power icon on the monitor and returned the mobile back into its holder, securely. And with the need for assistance in mind, he slunk out of the vehicle, locked the doors and began trekking.
...TO BE CONTINUED...