A/N: Alright....um...first of all, this story is in no way connected to my other RP story. Yes, it is Twister centric (but, dude, he is my favorite character and a lot of the refrences are better designed for his character). I don't know if I will write this story though, or if/when I will continue it. It all depends on your guy's reactions (REVIEWS!).
Anyways, this was inspired by Eerie Queerie! (great graphic novel, very cute! It's shonen ai, aka: boy love, boyXboy, though...if you don't like that thing...this one won't be...though there will be moments I should warn you about. When you find out what the story is about though, it'll make more sense...unlike that sentence.), Hands Off! (another shonen ai-ish graphic novel, so CUTE!), and a story I was forced to read in Spanish II honors about Doña Sebastiana.
This story is rated for GRAPHICAL descriptions of death, and maybe a little language (on Lars' part).
Summary: Twister Rodriguez has always been irrationally afraid of ghost stories, and extremely gullible when it came to the paranormal. So, for good reason, he avoided it all as best he could. That is, until his thirteenth birthday, when his life becamea ghost story.
ENJOY!
Ojos de los Muertos (Eyes of the Dead)
Prologue: En la Tierra de los Muertos (In The Land Of the Dead)
I had never seen so much blue. The sky, the water. So clear and blue. It was beautiful. I could feel the force of the waves, pushing me farther under. I could see everything, squeezing my eyes shut, but still seeing it all. The fish, the coral reef, the seaweed, the eels, the jellyfish, the kelp, the sandstone slabs, the curls of blood, everything. And then her.
Her face was pale, milk white. Smooth as ivory. Hallowed eyes and toothy lips. She wore a swooping hat, and a lavish velvet dress, lined with lace and silk ribbons in her brittle hair, a feather boa draped about her neck. Long white and black button up boots were on her feet, clacking as she pulled up in her cart beside me. A bow hung at her side, arrows plucked at her back. I had seen her face before, but I couldn't remember where. My heart was pounding, but I was not afraid.
"¿Tu sabe quién soy, el pequeño? (Do you know who I am, little one?)" she asked. I nodded.
"Usted es muerte, venida para eliminarme (You are death, come to take me away)," I answered solemnly. She extended her thin hand towards me.
"No, el pequeño. Tu no debe estar aquí. No es su hora de montar en mi carro. Estoy aquí tomarle detrás (No, little one. You should not be here. It is not your time to ride in my cart. I am here to take you back)," she replied carefully. I swallowed hard, reluctant to grasp the bone white, "No esté asustado. Tome mi mano, de modo que pueda volverle donde tu pertenece. (Do not be afraid. Take my hand, so that I may return you where you belong.)" I did as I was told. She was cold to touch, and I shuddered slightly, stepping forward beside her, "Ciérrese los ojos firmemente el pequeño, y no mire. La tierra de los muertos no está para que la vida vea. (Close your eyes tight little one, and do not look. The land of the dead is not for the living to see.)"
Once more, I did as I was told, feeling wind rush around me. Claws and thorns dug into my clothes and skin, desperately clinging, desperately attempting to hold me back. I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting to bring my hands up to cover them, so as not to disappoint the Lady Muerte, but unable to do so. It became too much, and finally, my lids parted slightly. And before me lay the land of the dead.
Such wonderments and atrocities all at once. Creatures of all shapes and sizes hopped around, fighting over morsels of meat. There was a dead tree, blackened like ebony, with human skulls balanced in the branches. Some were not skulls yet, but heads featuring decaying flesh where maggots and roaches crawled along feasting. The freshest one still leaked blood onto the trunk of the tree, splattering to the ground below.
One hobgoblin like creature picked up a silver eye, round with little red veins racing across the sticky pale white. He popped it in his mouth, holding it between his teeth as though it were his third eye, racing around until another larger creature rammed into him, causing the eye to slip down his throat. He gagged, coughing and hacking.
There was a woman, so pale that she was almost translucent, wearing a long white bellowing skirt. She was moaning, deep red crimson tears spilling down her cheeks. She lifted her skirts and broken children raced from beneath her. Their skin and faces cracked like porcelain. One child, a little girl, was missing the side of her forehead and I could see into the emptiness of her head straight to the back, and she looked out hollowly to me and screamed.
There was a long and thin man sitting on a dead stump, with a knobby chin, gray skin, and a black old fashioned suit. He had human hair tied about his long crooked fingers, and was spinning them around, playing cat's cradle and forming little Jacob's ladders. A short plump woman stood behind him, black goop trickling down from her mouth and nose to her chin. She would pull her hair out, long brown strands, and tie them around the thin man's fingers. Her throat was slit from ear to ear, and it would flail open with each movement she made. Part of her head was bald, and little sprouts of brown were already growing back a centimeter a minute it seemed.
Planted in the middle of it all was a huge wooden cross, of rotting brown. There was a fresh, bright red apple balanced at the top pier, and a man whose skin clung to his bones like sheets, was trying to climb up to it. He would reach the 'T' and find himself stuck, not able to go any further. His fingers would lose their grasp, and he would slide back down to the ground with a sickening thud, his arms and legs twisted and contorted into painfully impossible positions. For a moment he would lie there, limp, and then he would move, awkwardly pulling himself up and straightening his bones. He would look up at the top of the cross once more and lick his dry chapped lips, and begin climbing again.
I stared at that apple and it lit on fire, though the man and no one else seemed to notice. It blazed brilliantly, the apple melting like wax and dripping down the cross. And it was as though there was a fire in my eyes. I gasped, unable to pull my gaze from that flame, from that land, from the macabre scene laid out before me. I curled my fingers in Lady Muerte's skirts, burying my face in the velvet. It reeked of mothballs and fancy perfume, a comfortingly human smell. My eyes were stinging, scorched from the fire, and still ablaze. But I was finally able to close them once more, with the images of the dead still locked in my mind.
And she didn't notice as her cart continued forward. There was no way for her to know, that I had peeked at the land of the dead.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Twister lay awake on his bed, staring up at the ceiling blankly, his heart pounding madly in his chest. He made no move to turn off his alarm clock. He had been awake nearly three hours before it went off, and now he found the familiarly annoying sound a comfort. He was still drenched in sweat.
"Maurice?" a banging came at his door, "Maurice! ¡Despierte!"
"I am awake, mom," he whispered, but his throat was dry and his words came out hoarse and soft. She couldn't hear him.
"¡Maurice, tu será atrasado para la escuela! ¡Salga de cama! (Maurice, you'll be late for school! Get out of bed!)"
There was the sound of plodding, as Twister's mother retreated down the stairs. He frowned, throwing his blankets off his thin frame and rolling onto his belly. His muscles felt sore and his head was throbbing. Any other morning he would have told his mother he didn't feel well, that he couldn't get out of bed, that he was sick. But this morning, he wanted to go to school. He needed the normalcy, and he didn't know why.
Twister knew that dream. He couldn't recall ever having it before, but he knew that dream. It was all so familiar. As though it had all happened before. Déjà vu, he believed they called it. Part of it did happen before, he reminded himself. He remembered the chill of the water, shuddering. He'd only been three, but he still remembered it. Being pulled beneath the waves, the wisps of red surrounding him, the fish nibbling at his skin. He shuddered once more, crossing the room to get dressed.
The dresser was brown, wooden, and still in fairly new condition, reminding Twister of that cross. They were almost the same color. There was a vanity mirror atop it, latched in place and reflecting his parched image back at him. Twister knew who the woman was, in the dream. There was a postcard taped in the corner of his mirror, decorated with a mural done by Diego Rivera. There to the side stood the woman, or more appropriately, the Lady Muerte. Beautiful and fancily dressed, the female skeleton. There in all her deathly symbolic glory was Doña Sebastiana.
END A/N: I know, I know, you're all horribly confused...and if I do continue with this, it'll be riddled with lots more confusing things, tons of symbolism, and a load of flashbacks on Twister's part. But...ooo, he peeked! How could he peek? How could he? Would you peek? My favorite part of the land of the dead was the woman pulling out her own hair and tying it around that man's fingers so he could play cat's cradle with them. Did you guys like that?
Okay, since I'm probably going to get hunted down and skewered by my Recess fans for this one...I had to write it down! I had to get it out of my head before it overwhelmed me and I became nothing more than a zombie! Oh man...um...I am stuck on my Killing the Daisies story, and I plan on skipping the part I'm stuck on and continuing with the rest, so that when I finally get past being stuck, I'll probably post a lot faster. Spread the word.
A Dim Light in the Dark, I'll have to pause on (though I should tell you, Ricky is so going to get it if he doesn't watch his back. He thinks Twister is a pushover...), Legend of Bandit, I'll get up the next chapter as soon as possible...and...IN A BOX, I will not work on until I finish Killing the Daisies (SORRY LOVOVA)...I should probably be putting this on my bio...in fact...
Anyhoo...if you guys want this story to continue, you better REVIEW like mad. I think...hm...at least five, maybe seven REVIEWs will convince me, unless I get a really heartwrenching long REVIEW from one person...I know, I'm cruel.
Please excuse any grammatical and typing errors, and REVIEW, if you want to see more of this story.
THANKS FOR READING.
IT SNOWED! I live in the desert, snow is very rare, and snow sticking to the ground is rarer. BUT IT DID! It's white outside...well...patchy white. See you guys...I hope, it snowed here, so it's the end of the world.
I'm off to work.
