LOSE EVERYTHING

A Bleach Short Story

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DISCLAIMER: Bleach & its characters belong to Kubo Tite.

RATING: T/ R(18)

Dedicated to lye_tea. Whose Bleach_Contest site on LJ brought out some of my best writing in years.

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When the alarm clock bursts into its looping echo, I allow light to enter my eyes.

Instead the morning outside the window is lacking any proper hue. The sky has a dark, watery swirl to it. The sun looks like a sour peach, made pink by the discoloured sky. Even the birds are not screaming. Something's missing here.

I stand in the piss-coloured light and yawn. Nonetheless, I decide that I will (still) go to school. Whether or not the sky's lost its mind, school will still persist on, surely.

I change. I step out to the street. People mouth away at the sky, poking fingers at it in the presence of other people. As if with their pointing they can puncture the mixed-ice-cream colour above and make it return to its lazy blue. Mostly, though, everyone limps to work. There's less traffic than usual and whatever cars on the road move slower than the clouds. From across the low sloping foreheads of houses, a solid arm of concrete lords over the skyline like a middle finger towards heaven. It wasn't there yesterday.

At school, no one talks about the sky, the birdless morning, or the new piece of blockish architecture visible from the classroom windows. Everyone's still discussing who's dating whom, what she did behind the canteen last week, what I did to Kurosaki on the third floor the week before – In class, people mute their conversations as I walk by. Then resume them when I pass. Their words crowd behind me, like a bullet aimed at the brain.

I take my place at the apex of four empty desks. Nearby Mizuiro has his face glued to his desk. And Keigo watches me, with his eyes curled into a blank stare. His arms fall loose over the curve of his hair. He says hello. I reply with the customary greeting:

"Any news of –?"

Keigo does not even bother to shake his head. His eyes clump together at the topmost ridge of his nose. He sighs. He responds with the customary answer.

I let my back sink into my seat, my feet sweeping out to touch the far legs of my table. In front, the teacher explains yesterday's lesson with the enthusiasm of an air stewardess reciting safety rules. Keigo begins to admire the gravy-like texture of the clouds. He acts as if nothing's wrong with the sky. Mizuiro stirs, looks at me and retreats back to his position, face-first on his desk. Their usual hyperactivity has descended into a stone-struck stupour.

"Why are you two so tired?" I ask.

Mizuiro doesn't budge. But Keigo waits a full moment before answering: "Eh. Homework."

"There isn't any to be handed in today."

"Revision then."

When he turns to me his eyes shuffle, his arms twitch, his eyes descend away from my gaze. He throws a glance at Mizuiro. When he realizes I'm still staring at him, he appears to talk back. But I cut him off:

"You were at Urahara-san's shop last night?"

His eyes fall further away, either in guilt or acknowledgement or something else.

I am not angry. Just curious: "Does Urahara-san have anything to do with what's going on outside?"

"No. But he said –"

Lightning whips across the quadrangle outside, canceling Keigo's voice. A low, dull boom drenches the classroom and the corridors outside. It strains at my ears, tugging at it, until – finally – the echo subsides, with the crack of falling glass.

Mizuiro face breaks away from his table. The teacher tries to silence the class. All around, the air is charged, soaked with a warmth so intense it seems to compress into my forehead.

"Are you feeling this?" I ask the two of them.

Someone outside the class screams. Then, a smattering of rapid steps and the deep pulse of something coming down the corridor. More breaking glass. More lightning dances outside the window. And when the sounds subside, the door explodes from its place. Three figures – monsters – march into the classroom.

"Can you see – can you –?" Mizuiro points. Keigo nods and tries to force open the window at the same time. It confirms everything that I had suspected: they can see, too.

But many of my classmates can't. So when one of the monsters – hollows, definitely – flings himself forward and punches the teacher through the whiteboard, they scream and rush out of the class. But a hollow obstructs the only exit, and it chucks all of them back into the classroom.

The hollows' voices resonate through the classroom, with the heavy tone that sounds similar to an announcement from the principal's office: "Dear humans, we've taken over this town. Please remain in your seats. Or else –"

The largest hollow raises a ridiculously large arm layered with an assortment of spikes. He machine-guns them against the walls. Glass showers down. A large pencil-sized spine lands square in between my outstretched legs. Another nails itself on my desk.

The class lies sprawled in terror. Mizuiro's face is so close to his hands he looks like he is praying. Keigo is still trying to crawl out the damaged window. Some of my classmates have been hit. But most crouch behind slabs of furniture, away from the front of the classroom. They know there's something there; they just can't see what it is.

The hollows shriek, joyfully. One goes outside, and soon more screaming erupts from down the corridors. The remaining two survey the class, the fearful students and the mess they've made. They run their tongues to wet their lips. Fat lips. I know already before it happens what they're thinking.

The larger hollow presses its shoulders together, and then from the wreckage picks out a student. It's Ryo Kunieda of course, with her long hair, advertisement face and tight curvy body. She looks stunned as the hollow drags her off her feet and out the room; when her eyes swing by mine they are as round and large as targets. Still, the hollow pulls her along and they disappear into the corridor. I hear the sounds of her being pushed, battered and pounded against the wall, and her animal-like whining. When the hollow is finished, it escorts her back into the classroom, her uniform messy and buttoned wrongly, her eyes puffy and red.

The second hollow starts to look around the class. For a tense second, everything seems to suspend itself as spiritual energy blankets the air like excessive humidity. And then, wanting to spare my classmates further agony, I decide to get to my feet.

Both Mizuiro and Keigo yell at the same time, but when the hollow nears, they shut. The smaller hollow sizes me up. He still towers a head above me. He has an almost human-like shape: with a snout for a face, skeletal joints twirling around the place where his shoulders should be and bloated muscles all over his body. He stands on two of his many feet and smirks. He gestures at me to exit the classroom. He pants as I move to leave, as if he can't wait for me to lose everything. The girls begin to whisper. Not at me, but to reassure themselves that they haven't been chosen.

Once free from the classroom, I remove my tie. I let it trail in my outstretched arm like signpost giving a direction. Then goes my shoes. Barefoot I keep walking down the corridor, up the stairs and into the science laboratories. The hollow pursues me. He keeps pace, every now and then breathing humidly against my neck to remind me that he is still present.

I lead him through the first in a string of adjoining rooms full of science equipment. Amongst the Bunsen burners and boiling tubes I lose my coat. Later, I lose my blouse. He mashes it into his mouth. The cold burns against my shoulders. I press my fists into knobs and quicken my steps, my feet slapping against the concrete floor.

Next I leave my skirt, my bra, all last bits of clothing/ He inhales at these like he is surfacing from a long stay underwater. When I plow through the equipment storeroom, I hear him growl audibly behind like a hungry stomach/

Now, naked, I lose pieces of myself I have left embedded in my skin for as long as I can recall, parts of me that have long been hidden from the surface: broken teeth, clipped varnished nails, stomach bruises from all those years at the dojo, soiled menstrual pads – they fall in fragments, crumbling like dislodged rocks from a cliff. The hollow pauses. He eyes the discarded items. But then I feel his eyes jab into my retreating back, and he still follows.

I have only started to shed this outer skin, like the crust of an unhealed laceration. Now: a twisted ankle, a shattered nose, loose bandages, dirty socks, snapped pencils, torn wristwatches. I hear the hollow behind me murmur in disbelief.

The more chunks from my body I lose, the lighter I feel. My feet seem to fall into a dance, a rhythm, like walking on water.

In the largest laboratory, I traverse the tables like a windblown piece of curtain, leaving for my attacker the darkest, deepest parts of my self. A blood-soaked uniform, crushed tangles of hair, a glossy picture of Kurosaki so smeared with fingerprints that his face has been rubbed out, a failed incision across the wrist, the collection chorus of other girls' slandering – As I get lighter and lighter, I practically move on the air. Now the hollow hesitates to enter the room.

I lose the centre of my being, the very dregs of me wash out from the point where I have punctured my soul. Firsts kisses, groping boys' hands, wet condoms, Orihime's smiles, Kurosaki's compliments – a torrent of saliva webs, crystallized tears and salt-encrusted streams of sweat. And finally, as I float towards the ceiling on an almost beautiful weightlessness, I lose my face.

It clunks to the floor, as if a fixture from above had come undone. The hollow searches around for me, his eyes doing leaps within his face. So I turn to him.

Now he has to look up. And he howls at the sight. He tries to flee. But I, the greater monster, swallow him whole instead. And as he disappears, the entire room aligns itself. And I'm standing in the middle of the laboratory, clothed, my hands slick with sweat or tears or mucus.

I return to the classroom. There are no more hollows. The sky is restored to its normal colour and the teacher is lecturing about binomial theorem. As I enter the girls turn their faces, the teacher frowns –

And Keigo, sitting beside a broken window asks: "What happened to your face?"

NOTES:

Original draft was written in Jan 2010. A year and some minor edits later, this is up of for anyone who is still interested.

This will probably be the last Bleach story I will upload, edit or write.

02.03.2011