A Brush with the Unknown
A pained groan echoed wetly in the darkness as Mai woke up confused, on her back, with pounding headache. The ache was exacerbated by the most atrocious smell she'd ever encountered. She gagged. It was a combination of vomit, rotten trash, and expired meat, all thrown together and left to fester, forgotten.
Why I am I damp? She blinked sluggishly. Where am I? She blinked, unable to focus. She blinked again, rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, and blinked once more. Why was it so dark?
'Oh God, I'm blind!' she thought, jerking up into a half seated position, only to hiss in pain as the throbbing in her temples redoubled and she fell back with a splop. While waiting for the pounding to end, Mai realized she was being ridiculous. More than likely wherever she was just happened to be exceptionally dark. Super dark. . . Creepy, I can't see my hand an inch from my face even though my eyes are as wide as they can go, dark. But despite her misgivings about the lack of light, it helped her calm down just enough to finally realize how much her left side hurt when she breathed too deeply. Carefully, she walked her fingers up her side as she inhaled, testing each rib as she went. Given the number of accidents she'd had in her formative years, Mai was well versed in figuring out if her ribs were broken or just bruised. Thankfully in this instance, it was the latter.
I need to figure out how I got here. She thought to herself, racking her brain to figure out the last thing she could remember before waking up. Graduation. Michiru, Keiko, and I graduated, then went to dinner with their parents. They'd had a great time, and eventually split off on their own for dessert. They ate, talked, laughed, reminisced, cried, and swore to each other that they would maintain contact even though they were all going to different universities. They had even told ghost stories for old times sake.
Ghost stories! Mai bolted up from the cold hard floor again and quickly found a wall to lean against. Her head still ached terribly, and if she could see she knew her vision would be blurry. But the pain was dwarfed by the harrowing realization that one of her favorite ghost stories was real. She couldn't believe it; she'd heard it continuously throughout her childhood, and told plenty of times herself.
No, she told herself, trying to calm her rapidly beating heart again. It wasn't possible - some psycho was probably using the myth to scare and abduct people. It worked. There was no getting around the fact that she had indeed been terrified; frozen on the spot, unable to think, terrified.
Her fear help clear her head more, honing her senses, and she realized just how still it was; how alone she was. There was legitimately no sound other than her own breathing; nothing moved, no breeze, no skittering claws, no hum of machinery. Just - nothing. The completely lack of sight, the darkness pressing in on her had every other sense on high alert. Everything felt, smelled, tasted more intense.
"Keiko? Michiru?" Mai called out quietly because her head was still thrumming, and whoever took her was possibly lurking down here as well. Her call received no response, except for her echo bouncing farther and farther away. Was is worth it to risk moving? Whatever, no, she resolutely corrected herself, whoever had taken her hadn't restrained her, they had just left her in this puddle. Did that mean they were coming back for her, or that she wasn't worth the time?
Mai stayed put for a few moments longer, but being patient and still had never been her strong suit. And it really did smell rancid in this place. If she didn't get away from it soon, she would end up adding to it. Besides, at this point it was pretty clear to her that she was alone, the longer she stayed put the more she was a sitting duck. She needed to find her best friends and get out of there.
Gingerly, Mai got to her feet, using the wall for support, careful not to slip in the liquid while testing her limbs for sprains or twists, and taking shallow lungfuls of air through her mouth so as not to aggravate her side - and to avoid the smell. Honestly she was going to have to burn this outfit, which sucked, since good denim jeans weren't cheap - she'd saved for months to buy this pair. Thankfully, abduction notwithstanding, she seems to be mostly alright physically. Hopefully, Michiru and Keiko were unharmed as well.
Since it was still impossible to see, Mai kept her left hand on the wall, her right hand stretched to its fullest extent out in front of her to keep from smacking into anything and just started walking, taking cautious, slow steps to avoid tripping. She could only hope that she was going in the right direction. Several minutes passed before Mai really started thinking about the wall she was touching. It was coarse with equally spaced vertical and horizontal divots. It seemed a safe bet that the wall was concrete or brick, which only really told her she was still in a major city. Hopefully Tokyo? When moving her hand up and down, she could feel a slight curve to the wall, almost like an arch over her head, but it was so tall that she couldn't touch the top. It continued forward, never veering away from a straight line.
For a good thirty minutes nothing changed: Mai walked, her footsteps slapped across the floor, the room stayed dark, and the smell remained. Her breath came out in frigid puffs and she shook in her short sleeved top. Her damp clothes did nothing to help the chill. Eventually the fingertips of her right hand grazed another wall in front of her, and she stopped. Hesitantly, Mai turned her body and shifted her hands to continue on in the same manner; left hand on the wall next to her, and the right swept out and up, trying to locate the next wall.
There wasn't one. At least, not within the ten or so tentative steps she was willing to take. God, this place must be massive and really there was no way to know which direction was the right one. For all she knew she could be heading farther in, but for now she was just going to have to trust her gut. Despite the gnawing doubt picking away at her resolution, questioning if she should keep going this way, she planned to start again when her skin prickled.
The tiny hairs on her arms and back of her neck stood on end as goosebumps erupted along her body that had absolutely nothing to do with the already icy temperature. She pulled her arm back to her chest quickly, heart rate kicking up. Her breathing became faster. She froze.
Someone or something was watching her, looking for her, hunting her. It could see in this unfathomable blackest, while she was blind. Mai could feel her eyes widening in a vain attempt to take in more light, to see anything; it really was fruitless, there was none. Her head twitched back and forth trying to locate anything by sound; Nothing.
And then, as quickly as the oppressive feeling came over her, it was gone. Mai hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath until she took in several deep gulps of air to silence her screaming lungs, despite the pain. Resuming her cautious tactile exploration yielded little for several more steps before her left wrist bumped icy metal. A thorough once over with her hands determined she'd found a ladder. She explored a few steps passed it only to find more empty space before returning back to the ladder. Something told her up was where she wanted to go. Warily, Mai placed both hands on the rung at shoulder height and her feet on the bottom one. She bounced slightly to see how it handled weight. Nothing squeaked, moved, or gave any other indication that it was unable to hold her, so Mai began her trek up. The climb took a good chunk of time. Mai had never been great at judging heights or distances, but she had to have climbed at least a half a mile.
While she never went out of her way to exercise daily, Mai considered herself to be in relatively good shape, given she walked everywhere she could in order to save money. However, by the end of her ascent she was so winded she had to just sit. Again, she was forced to breath through her mouth as the smell was even worse at this level because of a sharp metallic tinge. God she was thirsty. Her mouth and throat felt like sandpaper, and no amount of swallowing reduce the feeling. If anything it made it worse.
Mai stiffened. Had that been a whimper? Keiko and Michiru! They could be up here being held captive; or hurt; or both! She quickly pulled herself up, using the wall as support.
"Michiru?" a pause. "Keiko?"
There was no reply. A slight breeze ghosted directly past, tickling her hair. Finally some minor relief from the smell. There had to be a door, a window, some kind of opening on the other side of this room. Squaring her shoulders, Mai began her trek directly forward. Or as directly forward as one could go without being able to see. Her right hip slammed forcefully into some kind of metal table, she stumbled stepping on something unidentifiable with a firm squishy consistency, and twisted an ankle when she slipped through a puddle.
She did eventually manage to navigate the room and was lucky enough to find the door. Her numb fingers found the left side trim and a metal flip switch simultaneously. Using both hands, Mai grappled with the large U shaped handle a bit before it gave in to her shoving, flipping up. Gradually the lights above her began to flicker to life, clicking on and humming in series starting above her and continuing on from where she'd just walked, finally allowing her to see.
She desperately wished they hadn't.
The minimal lighting revealed a cavernous man-made tunnel, wide enough and tall enough for a good sized house to fit without touching the walls or ceiling. There was a door fairly nearby, and the tunnel spanned away from her for miles in the either direction. But, even though the lighting was dim, the dark staining in this section was exceptionally visible and easily identified as blood. Some old, the deep burgundy of red wine taunted her, and some new, one spot was a vivid scarlet still dripping from the wall, but most assuredly gallons of blood had been spilled down here.
What really roiled her stomach were the bodies of several young women tossed aside in various states of decay. The young woman closest to her was the least terrifying. She lay on a table made up like a bed, this woman almost looked like a fairy tale princess in a stunning if poor fitting blue gown. If it wasn't for the large bruises ringing her neck, mottled greyish-green skin, and pure look of panic on her once beautiful, now slacking face Mai would have thought she was sleeping. She'd been down here awhile, based on the smell. Did no one miss her? Report her absence? Nothing? There hadn't been anything on the news about one missing person, let alone four!
The worst of the group was farthest from her, and though she hated the idea, knew she would probably get sick from the sight, Mai was inevitably drawn in. The bruising was much more vibrant on this body. Judging from the way her limbs were splayed out, it was a safe bet that the young woman had been hurled about, aggressively beaten into submission, until she stopped moving. Her shirt was missing. It had been flayed away away from her body, scattered without a thought, allowing for easy access to the girl's back. Disgustingly, with surgical precision, someone had cut away her skin starting at her left hip, following up her side to the top of her shoulder, across the shoulders, and then back down the right side. The monster had folded it down over her legs so that the red, oozing muscles combined with it to look like a morbid, grotesque, vibrant cloak. Her stomach clenched, and her throat constricted in an effort to keep the contents where they belonged.
She'd stepped on her hand. Oh god, she'd stepped on her hand! Slipped in their blood. She turned from the poor woman and threw up, the loud retching and splashing echoing around the tunnel.
"Mai?" Came a soft feather light whisper of her name.
"Michiru?" Mai's heart leapt as she pivoted, wiping her mouth. She was grateful for any reason to keep her eyes away from the last woman, eager for some sense of familiarity, and desperate to see her friends safe in this wretched place. There was nothing.
Where was she? Mai wondered as her eyes quickly danced about the tunnel, looking for any sign of one of her best friends.
"Would you like the red cloak or the blue cloak?" was suddenly breathed into Mai's ear. She whirled around with a shriek to tell Michiru off for scaring her, only to immediately twisted away from whatever had snuck up on her because there was no way in hell that was her best friend. She fell, landing hard right in a pool of blood. It was quick to saturate her clothes, coat her skin, absorb into the hair at the back of her head.
"No thank you;" Mai spoke as calmly as she could though the visible tremors shaking her body belied her fear. "I don't need a cloak."
Honestly a coat of any kind would be great right now, given she was wearing damp jeans and a short sleeved top. Great for sunny summer weather, not so much for damp, cold, creepy tunnels. But given she knew the story of Aka Manto she had no plans to accept anything from anyone who looked like that.
Mai hurried to her feet, and took in the figure before her. She was tall, extremely so for any race, at least a foot taller than Mai's 5'3", wearing a floor length woolen black cloak, so long that it completely covered her hands and feet. Unusual for a summer day, but an excellent choice for down here. She also seemed to be wearing some kind of black mask, with a curved pointed nose like a beak. What were the chances that this was just a really odd, slightly terrifying homeless woman?
The woman cocked her head to the side, confused, as though she had never before been refused, and was unsure how to proceed. Or she understood that Mai had to be cold in what she was wearing and was wondering how she could refuse the offer. She glided one step closer.
Mai stepped back, instincts screaming at her to keep a as much distance between them as she could.
"Would you like the red cloak or the blue cloak?" She asked, only this time she sounded just like Keiko. Before Mai could respond, the woman's voice changed, becoming deeper, masculine. "You'd look exquisite in red." It breathed reverently, moving towards her again and reaching one hand out to touch her face. It had claws, claws. Where there should have been fingers, razor sharp curved talons protruded from the knuckles, crusted with dried blood, and the skin was graying and withered.
Foolishly, Mai slapped the hand away before it could make contact with her face.
She was backhanded so fast her eyes didn't even register movement. One moment she was standing in front of it, the next she was flying through the air towards the door, her cheek smarting from the pain. Her body hit the ground with a rather anticlimactic thud, and there wasn't time to completely rise before that hand was closing around her throat, hauling her up and pinning her to wall.
"That - was - rude." It haltingly hissed at her, as though it wasn't used to speaking much, squeezing her neck for good measure. "Choose. Red or blue?"
"Neither;" Mai wheezed out, attempting to pull the creature's claws away from her throat. Small cuts on her hands started oozing blood where she tried to pry them away. One wrong move and she'd be in trouble. "I don't need one."
"NOOO! You - must - chose!" It screeched in her face. "I - will - have - my - satisss-faction! CHOOSE!"
It threw her again when she chose to keep silent. Not as far as the last time, but with enough force that Mai couldn't get her lungs to accept air for several long moments. She rolled over, anticipating another attack, only to find that the creature - no person, it had to be a person, monsters weren't real - pacing a distance away, muttering to itself.
"Have to . . . answer . . . why?!"
He seemed to be stuck having the same conversation with himself. Great. She was dealing with a masked, delusional, serial killing, homeless man hopped up on drugs. Mai took the distraction and haltingly crawled towards the door. Every now and then she'd glance back to make sure she wasn't attracting unwanted attention. Which is why she completely missed going around one of the random loose pipes littering the floor. Her right hand smacked it more forcefully that she realized, and sent it clattering loudly over the concrete floor in front of her. She slammed her eyes shut in fear at the noise.
She opened her eyes as it came to a stop, looking over her shoulder, then clambered to her feet when the man's head whipped in her direction. With no more distraction she'd need to move quickly. Perhaps she could make it to the door before he got to her; it wasn't that far. But even as she took those initial steps, glancing back, he was already sprinting towards her, unintelligibly howling. The fear inspired by being stalked like this had her changing course. After some frantic scrambling, Mai finally snatched up the jagged, rusty metal pipe and brandish it as threateningly as possible, while letting loose a battle cry of her own. She felt completely ridiculous standing with her legs spread, swinging a metal pipe, but she hoped being armed would be enough of a deterrent. It wasn't; he kept coming, taloned hands reaching for her.
She screamed, closed her eyes, and continued to wildly wield her impromptu weapon in a final desperate act. If she was going to die, at least she wouldn't go down without a fight.
THWACK!
The ringing metallic hit echoed throughout the room followed by a rustling thump. Cautiously, Mai opened one eye; then the other. She blinked several times in an effort to confirm what she was seeing.
Somehow one of her wild swings managed to strike him directly across the temple quite hard, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. Breathing heavily, she slowly inched towards the body, trusty pole still in hand, to confirm if he was or was not still alive. She stopped when she could see his back rising and falling shallowly. A breath of relief left her at the realization, and the pipe clattered to the ground when her body relaxed. As terrified as she was, she didn't want to kill anyone.
Upon closer inspection she tensed up again.
Where was the blood? She was no Yagi Kanae, but she had enough upper arm strength to swing that pipe to at the very least knock him out, if not draw blood with how sharp the broken pipe was. And head wounds bleed; profusely. Mai had enough first hand experience to know that even the smallest knock to the head, if hit in the right place, caused a lot of blood. Against her better judgement she crept closer. The urge to vomit threatened to take over again, but before Mai could process what she was seeing the eyes snapped open.
She ran, hoping it was disoriented enough not to follow her, but something told her she wasn't that lucky. Her hunch was quickly proven true, when swift footfalls echoed down the hallway after her. How she'd created any distance between herself and that monster was a mystery, but she wasn't going to let up now. Left, right, two more lefts, another right. Ignoring the stitch forming in her side, Mai continued to follow whatever it was that was guiding her. She'd always trusted her gut instinct and it had never failed her yet. She tried to block out the image she'd seen before it woke back up but it kept popping back up, and all she could think was 'not real, no very real. Not human, monster, not human.'
"The red cloak or the blue cloak?!"
Mai tripped, a squawk of surprise burst past her lips, as she went sprawling out in the hallway. The bitter, vengeful vehemence in the bellowed question chilled her to the core. How could something be so hateful? Why wouldn't it just leave her alone? She pushed herself up, to run faster, desperately trying to push through the jelly feeling in her legs and ignore what felt like a twisted ankle.
Oh thank God!
A sliding steel door came into view as she ducked through another random hallway that emptied into a small room. It was different from every other door she'd seen in this abominable place, it had to be an exit.
It didn't look rusted or dilapidated. In fact it looked well maintained and frequently used. So when she threw herself into opening it and nothing budged, she let out a sob of frustration. It must be locked on the other side.
'This was it' she thought as she halfheartedly banged against the door, crying. This was how she died. Not even eighteen yet, hadn't seen the world, and she was going to die because of a stupid door.
Mai quieted her crying and pressed her ear to the door. Was that -
"Heeeelp!" Mai screamed when she realized there truly was someone on the other side of this blasted door. Slamming her fists against the door and yelling several more times, Mai didn't care that her throat was going hoarse and by making noise she was drawing the - whatever it was towards her. If she could make it out by drawing their attention she would; stalker be damned.
She stopped screaming when she heard muffled voices on the other side of the door, trying to tell her something but it was difficult to make out.
From the hallway behind her she could still hear it calling out "THE RED CLOAK OR THE BLUE CLOAK?!" as it searched for her and through the door what sounded like a man throwing himself bodily against it, before all noise ceased.
The sudden lack of noise was far more disturbing than the repetitious screeching. Straining to make out any potential sound, Mai was finally able to understand a deep voice command either she or someone else to move away from the door, when she heard the soft whisper of cloth from the other side of the room. She whipped around to see the cloaked figure cautiously waiting. It seemed just as confused as Mai was but the odd buzzing noise from beyond the door; torn as to whether it should retreat or come at her.
Mai had about thirty seconds to ponder the strange electrical sound coming through the door before several things happened at once. The creature charged, she threw herself into a corner to dodge it, and the locked steel door she'd just tried to escape through blasted off its hinges with the sound of a vigorous thunderclap and soared through the room twisting and somersaulting about itself, spiralling towards her assailant, moving as easily as a leaf through a breeze.
Bright, dazzling, beautiful sunshine filtered through the hole where the door used to be and Mai still crouched in her corner was forced to squint, throwing up her hands to shield her eyes after so long in the gloom. Dust motes danced in the light.
An unearthly anguished scream pulled her attention from trying to see out the doorway back to the more pressing situation at hand and she jumped to her feet. To Mai's great surprise, the - thing - was scrabbling to get out of the daylight. She squinted at it. What on earth. . .? Mai gasped, eyes widening in shock. It was burned. From what little skin was visible, angry red pustules were welting up at an alarming rate. It would seem that her attacker had an aversion to light. In another blink it was gone; back to the dark, horrific tunnels it had just chased her through. She was safe.
With a sigh of relief, Mai turned towards her rescuers. Which, of course, was when her knees decide they didn't work anymore. Because nothing could go her way, now could it?