The Family Curse
Author's Note
I know it's been a while since I've written anything...but it's not like I have fans or anything...or even many readers. This is my first horror-fic with a little something for the fangirls thrown in (*cough* NaruHina *cough*), so be kind. I'm going to use this first chapter to gauge interest, so if I get none then I let the story die. Read, enjoy, review etc etc.
The funny thing about the future is that it's never what you expect. Someone might be on their way to work and be run down by a bus. Some may find this preferable to going to work. That someone may end up with an insurance payout and never have to work another day in their lives. My point is that life can take us far from where we expected to be (eg not to work), and this story is a perfect example...a story about an unassuming boy without a clue where life was headed.
Naruto Uzamaki's cheek was cold. Considering it was rested against the cold iron of the bus shelter, this was not all that surprising. Then the wind picked up, twirling the falling raindrops like silk into the bus shelter. Now his cheek was cold and wet, which is also unsurprising since it was raining. This left Naruto rightly less-than-impressed with the concept of a bus shelter which failed to actually shelter anything except possible resentment at its lot in life.
He sat there, garbed in all the finery an orphan's allowance allowed, which had soaked in an impressive amount of moisture over the past half hour. A half hour of waiting which had yet to yield a bus, which was very nearly a half hour late. Naruto waited some more and his mind drifted, like that piece of rubbish in the puddle, which bobbed with every raindrop that disturbed the surface. There were an awful lot of puddles, he reflected, probably due to the pockmarks of use and neglect.
Naruto looked down at the one forming from the drips that belly-flopped from the rim of the roof down into a crevice that had been left by shoddy road repairs. He caught his reflection in the dim half-light of the rain clouds, and frowned. He yawned, and watched the whisker-like marks on his face curve. At his age boys usually lost the chubby rounded aspect of their faces, leaving them with something of an adult face. He was still waiting for his body to realise it had a face to change and get its butt in gear. He made faces at his reflection, who incidentally made them back. If his face made him look immature, he may as well act the part.
His game of 'Look how long my tongue is' was interrupted by the sound of a bus engine roaring up the street. Naruto rolled his eyes and stood, throwing a sarcastic sweeping gesture its way.
"Where the hell have you been!?" he yelled. The bus hit a road-crater full of water on its way past, dousing Naruto's flaming annoyance with a stagnant wave of street-water. The briny taste of it hit the back of his throat and his stomach flexed. He doubled over and vomited a watery mix of breakfast and street-water into the gutter, wincing at the bitter tang left in his mouth. He was now well and truly soaked and, he decided, unlikely to get any wetter so he walked the rest of the distance to school.
The people he walked by probably noticed a particularly distressed youth travelling against the crowd with his head down, soaked, shivering and possibly crying...but it could have been rainwater running down his whisker-marks.
Something sat on the rooftops coldly observing the crowd. Something that really shouldn't be there. She, if she could be described as a she, watched Naruto make his way to that mundane building he nearly always went to, with all those darling children. Sheka reigned in her appetite and focussed one liquid-yellow eye on the blond as he pushed against the flow of pedestrians. She waited there, watching with her many liquidly-yellow eyes with sharp, slitted pupils. Her dark, tangled black locks danced in the breeze, casting strands over two of her eyes. She brushed them back with tentacle-like fingers. Her lanky body consisted of only red-white striped limbs, like something half-way between striped stockings and tentacles. She had no torso, just a long tube connected to her striped limbs, which eventually led to her oval head. Sheka's fingers curled and writhed with excitement. It would be soon. Very soon.
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People stared and some sniggered behind their hands as Naruto dragged himself down the lino corridors, leaving a snail-trail of rainwater. Despite being soaking cold, his cheeks flushed with heat and resentment. He looked like a pathetic idiot, trudging down the hall with his blond hair plastered to his head like a swimming cap and his clothes sticking to him like a cumbersome shell of cloth. His shirt chaffed where he'd been hit in the ribs during training. He felt someone touch his shoulder. Hinata Huga stood behind him, wringing her hands and looking at him with warm grey eyes.
"Naruto! Um...I...what's wrong? You're wet...I mean, what..." she mumbled awkwardly, occasionally looking up but avoiding eye contact. His eyes made her thoughts swim.
"I'm fine Hinata." His flat tone made her hesitate. As she fumbled for what she was going to say, someone in the crowded corridor bumped her from behind, sending her sprawling forward. She grabbed for the nearest thing, which happened to be Naruto's tracksuit. He fell forward on top of her, blushing red. They were practically face to face. Hinata felt Naruto's heart beat against her lungs, and she felt the flex of muscles as he lifted himself off her, clearly embarrassed. If her father found out he'd lock her up. She stuttered an excuse and walked away, hoping the incident didn't reach her family's ears. Naruto eventually walked away in a daze as the memory of her perfume and skin set like stone in his mind.
It was late afternoon. The shadows cast by the final rays of the sun stretched across Naruto's like bars. The stalls and performers of the market had pretty much left for home; only a few stragglers remained, hurriedly packing and tying. Robberies and vandalism weren't all that uncommon in this district, and no one wanted to be outside after dark. He felt a prickling between his shoulder-blades and walked a little faster.
The boy began to walk a little faster. This suited Sheka fine. She was bored of moving so slowly and longed for the disjointed platforms and jagged pillars of home where every stone glowed red-hot, but her life wouldn't be worth living if she didn't complete this last task. She scaled one of the buildings as the boy dipped out of view, then stood atop like a perverse gargoyle.