Hey everyone, I'm back again… Sooner this time, with another new fanfiction. I'll update Angel Eyes soon, but I have another one of these to write too. This is a sidestory to one I'm beta-ing and roleplaying for called Stuck In The Middle With You by Rachel Balsdon. It's Near's past in that, and Near is female in this. Contains paedophilia, mutilation, rape, murder, psychological fuckery, abduction, starvation… It's a horror, what do you expect? Enjoy… Or well, you know.
I don't condone any of the actions in this story, it's purely fanfiction, and any thing that results from it are none of my responsibility.
The man slipped another 50 pence coin in my hand.
"Here you go, my pretty girl."
I smiled, clutching at it happily.
"Thank you, Mr!"
He smiled, touching my hair.
"Why don't you go spend that on something nice, but don't tell mummy, or we won't be able to play together anymore, and you'd miss that, wouldn't you?"
"Yes Sir."
He turned me around, running his hand down my back before pushing me lightly.
"Run along then, and remember, be a good girl and we can have lots of fun together."
I did, skipping off to the tuck shop.
"Miss, why isn't Yuri in school today?"
The teacher hushed us all down, and I noticed tears in her eyes. "Miss..?" I tugged at her sleeve, wondering why that question would've made her cry. "Are you okay, Miss?"
"Please, Nadia, sit down on the mat. Everyone else too, sit down on the mat, we're going to have a class assembly this morning." We sat down in a circle, all facing the teacher.
"Children, I need your full attention, alright?"
"Yes Miss." We chorused.
"Yuri won't be coming back to school. She was taken away by a very bad man."
We all gasped, whispering starting straight away, dark excitement flooding the room.
"Quiet down children! Quiet! Now, I need to talk to you all very seriously, and later at home time, there will be a letter to take home to your parents."
We stared up at her, wondering what else she could have to tell us.
"Children, you all need to be very, very careful. You must not, no matter what happens, go anywhere with anyone that you don't know. Okay?"
"Yes Miss."
"Good. Does anyone have any questions? No? Alright, go back to your places and get your math workbooks out."
Yuri became a school rumour, and nothing else to us. While we did miss her, we were only six or seven, what more was there to do?
There were police cars around the school, and we got interviewed about when we'd last seen her.
At home, mummy made sure I never went anywhere alone.
"Nadia?"
"Uh-hu?" I hummed in reply, too busy focusing on the castle I was making in the back garden sandpit.
"Oh… Good, you're here. Mummy was worried. Come inside, okay sweetie?"
I rushed to her, grabbing her apron and getting dirty handprints over it.
"Honey, why don't you go play in your room while I finish dinner?"
Mummy bent over so I could kiss her on the cheek, then turned back to her cooking, and I went to my room, wondering why everyone was so scared. I kept thinking that Yuri would come back, right? What else would happen? She had to come back.
After playing for a bit, I wanted to go see when dinner would be ready. I ran down the stairs, and almost into the kitchen door, wondering why it was closed.
I could hear Daddy talking, why was he home already? Shouldn't he still be at work?
"…Another one… Yes, her year again… That school, too. No suspects yet but-"
"Mommy?" I called through the door, and Daddy stopped talking.
"Oh, Nadia. Hello princess." Daddy kneeled down and I ran to him and hugged him tightly.
"Daddy! Today at school, we drew flowers in art, and Miss said mine was the best, and she put it up next to the whiteboard, and gave me a sticker, see!" I told him in an excited rush of half-jumbled words.
"That's great! Why don't we go draw something for Mummy while she finishes making dinner, okay?"
"Aren't you supposed to be in lessons, Nadia?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then why aren't you?"
"Because you told me to come see you, sir."
"Good girl."
He petted my hair, stroking down my side to the top of my skirt.
"Good girl…" He repeated, trailing off as if he means to continue.
"Sir? Why did I have to come see you?"
He smiles kindly, his hand back to stroking my shirt. "Because, my dear, your mummy told me to look after you, and teach you out of school a few lessons."
I accepted it easily, why would he lie? He was so nice to me, he bought me sweets, and gave me little bits of money. Why wouldn't I have believed him?
"What are you going to be teaching me, sir?" I asked as I moved my hand down to play with the hem of my skirt.
"We're going to be doing some special P.E lessons, but first, I need to teach you how to get the right composure to do them correctly."
"Com-pose-ur?" I asked, messing up the word as I said it for the first time.
"Control, my dear. If you don't have enough control, you could get hurt, and I really would hate for you to get hurt." His hand moved to stroke my hand that was playing with my skirt.
"Oh, okay. What do I need to do, Mr?" I smiled, and he put his finger to my lips.
"None of that, my dear…"
"Children, we need to have another class assembly! Everyone sit on the mat. Everyone, on the mat!" Teacher told us, and we obeyed.
"Class, last night Naomi disappeared on her way home. She won't be coming into school for a while, and the police will be interviewing you all again this week. Does anyone have any questions?"
Again, no one did. After that, we all went back to our lessons again, with the police taking people out to interview them every now and then.
We were all sure she'd be back next week, or the week after, or even the week after. It wasn't for at least a month that we figured out she wasn't coming back.
Miss told us all once a week in class assembly to never, ever go anywhere with someone that you don't know.
The teachers whispered to each other, and we caught and shared random bits of the conversation we overheard, whether we understood it or not.
It was then that we started wondering who would be next, while we were young, we weren't stupid. Even at six and seven, we could recognise the pattern of it, even if we didn't understand what it meant.
"How would you feel if we took you out of school for a bit, and got you a tutor instead?"
"Shannon, that's ridiculous, you can't do that just because of this. We can't afford a tutor, and she'd miss her friends."
"Eat your carrots, Nadia, they're good for you. Roger, we can't leave her in school with everything that's going on…Aren't you worried?"
I poked the carrots with my fork, wondering what exactly the slimy orange vegetable would do that was so good for me.
"Don't wanna leave school." I said, sulkily. Why was everyone fussing about this? It wasn't like anything would happen to me.
"See, Shannon? We've brought her up right, she'll be safe." Daddy patted my hair and I smiled up at him for taking my side.
"You know, Roger, that isn't very sensitive. What about the children that were abducted?" Daddy sighed and said sorry.
"I'm worried about this too, but she'll be fine. Now, didn't you make cake for if Nadia ever finishes her vegetables?"
I quickly hurried up to eat them, trying to taste them as little as possible, at the promise of cake. Mummy's cake was the best ever, and I didn't want to miss it!
"Oh, dear, my father is coming over next weekend, so perhaps we could have some of that wonderful trifle you make for dessert?"
"Now, Nadia, you know how bad smiling is for you. I'm only doing what's best for you."
I quickly hid the emotion, not wanting to misbehave for someone that treated me so nicely.
"Sorry sir."
He stroked my shirt, undoing the buttons slowly.
"Sorry doesn't do anything, you know. I'm going to have to teach you how bad emotion is."
Had what I'd done been that bad that he was forced to punish me?
"I hate having to do this to you, but you've been a very bad girl, and you have to learn that. We can't have those emotions getting in the way, can we?"
"No sir." I looked at the ground, feeling angry at myself for being bad, but pushing it down, to not show it.
The man pulled my shirt off, stroking my bare skin.
"Good girl, now put this in your mouth, and suck it as hard as you can, okay?"
I did, it wasn't that bad just to suck something and be forgiven, right?
"Children, I need to remind you again. Do not, ever, ever go anywhere with strangers."
We'd just been told that another of our classmates had gone missing, it became a pattern that every month, another girl would go. It began to get really scary, thinking that one day, you could just disappear forever. This time, Misa had gone missing just after her mummy had dropped her off for school. The children whose parents could afford it were taken out of school, but not many could. We didn't really understand it still, but we knew to be scared, to be wary. Teachers and parents talked about the school closing for a short while, but things continued on how they were.
We'd use it as a playground tease:
"You're gonna be next 'cause you didn't do your homework!"
"Nu-uh! You will 'cause you pushed Lola over yesterday!"
"What if we all go?"
It wasn't until Heidi said that that we thought maybe it wasn't just after some of us for things we'd done, like the rumours said, but all of it.
"A-All of us? But our Mummies and Daddies wouldn't let that happen, right?"
"Maybe it's a monster! Maybe it takes us away and eats us!"
We all shrieked, was that going to happen to us?
"Maybe it's a ghost that goes inside us and makes us run away?"
Another chorus of squeals, until one of the teacher's came over to us.
"Girls? Are you okay?"
"Yes miss!"
"Miss! Do you think that there's monster going around stealing us all away? Are we all going to disappear?"
She looked shocked by what Lola said.
"Now, children, that's a horrible thing to say. You're all going to be fine, there's no such thing as monsters."
A few days after she disappeared, I was interviewed by the police again.
"When did you last see her? Did you see her in the morning when she was taken to school?"
I thought about it, had I seen her? I didn't think so, but perhaps I had, and forgotten about it.
"I…I don't know. I saw her at school the day before…"
A police lady sat down across the table from me. "We need to know if anyone has been talking to you. Anyone you don't know that's approached you, or tried to get you to go with them?"
I thought about it. Had anyone? I hadn't been allowed out to see people, and when I did go out, Mummy or Daddy made sure I stayed right by them and didn't do anything else.
"No Miss."
"Are you sure? No one is talking to you that didn't before? Even a teacher or a family friend?"
I thought about it again. I couldn't think of anyone. I just came to school, and went home with Mummy or Daddy immediately after, and stayed at home.
"No Miss." She wrote something down, and nodded to a policeman.
"Okay, you can go back to class now, thank you."
There was another month, then in the middle of March, it happened again.
"Kiyomi didn't come into school this morning!"
"Maybe she's ill?"
"Maybe her parents made her stay home?"
"Maybe she had to go to the doctor?"
"Maybe she's on holiday?"
We all tried to avoid what may've happened, coming up with almost every other idea that could've happened.
It wasn't until the next day that the teacher sat us down to talk about it. "Children, Kiyomi disappeared last night on her way home. She won't be in school for a while."
While we were all happy that we hadn't been taken, we all felt a chill of horror from what could've happened to her, but none of us knew enough to understand it properly.
The teachers whispered to each other when they thought we weren't listening.
"…Yet another, poor girl… Haven't found them yet, so there isn't much chance… Still no suspects…"
"…Always so quiet and… Stop there being another?... Hoping to find at least the bodies of…"
"…Can't understand why anyone would… Sweet, innocent children… If they never get caught?
Where were they? Surely they'd come back eventually… Right?
"Of course I'd never let anything bad happen to you Nadia, I care about you. Could you turn around, my dear?"
I turned around, holding my arms over my head like he told me before. "Good girl… You're so perfect, so pale and emotionless… A little doll, my doll."
I smiled at the encouragement, but I did wonder why I had to take my clothing off. What could he want that would need me to not be wearing anything?
"Sir?" I was careful to suppress every bit of emotion before facing him. He smiled in a way that made me want to run, but I stayed there. I needed to be good.
"Yes, my nymphet?"
I felt myself blush at the nickname, hoping he wouldn't mind. "N-Nothing Sir."
He walked over, stroking my hair, then kneeling to stroke down my body.
"You're so pretty, Nadia, such a pretty little girl."
"Nadia, you need to get in the car, the bad man is going to come and get you if you don't! Quickly, my dear!"
I squealed and got into the car, scared beyond common sense. But he was so nice to me anyway, of course he'd be keeping me safe.
"Good girl, I'm going to take you somewhere safe, okay? Safe away from everything. Away from the bad people that want to hurt you." He got in the car and started it, and I watched the familiar streets go past, wondering who there would hurt me, and where we'd have to go to be safe. "My nymph, my pretty doll, my nymphet…"
He whispered all the way there. We got to a grey house just outside town, and he got out, and helped me out the car. "We're safe here, my pretty little girl. Come on, follow me."
And I did, into the house, and he showed me around the grey house, only it wasn't grey inside. There was a green carpet that went in all the rooms except the bathrooms, the kitchen and one of the upstairs rooms.
"You're going to stay in here, okay Nadia?" He showed me a completely white room, all the carpet was white, the walls were white, everything in the room was white. "You aren't, no matter what, allowed to go in the rooms down the hallway, okay? You can go in all of the downstairs room, and your room, but never in the ones down here, okay, my pretty nymphet?"
"You're so pretty, my emotionless, beautiful, perfect nymphet. So pure, so perfect…"
His hands ran across my body, grasping my ribcage and pulling me around. "Good girl… So beautiful…Stay still…" I did, I stayed as still as possible, as quiet as possible, as I saw him get undressed. I stayed quiet as he rubbed himself against me, pulling my mouth open and making me suck. I stayed still as he pulled my arms above me and bound me, and spread my legs. I stayed quiet when he ripped through me, even though everything I was begged me to scream, fight, anything. He kept talking to me, starting with whispering up to shouting at me, and all the time, I stayed quiet.
"Nadia, pretty Nadia… My pretty nymph… My nymphet! My doll, all mine… So perfect! So pure… Oh, Nadia… My nymphet! Nadia..!"
Then he left, giving me a set of white pyjamas and telling me there was a shower across the hall if I wanted to use it.
I just changed into the pyjamas, too tired and too hurt to care about the liquid dripping out of me.
The next day, he left for a while. I entertained myself with things he'd left out for me. Mounds of dice, packs of cards, endless amounts of puzzles.
He left almost every day, and left me alone when he was here. He kept teaching me to not use emotion, to stay quiet, to be good. When I was good, he'd reward me by testing me. When I was bad, he'd make me suck him. I didn't understand why, or what any of it was. I did want to go home, after a while, but he kept telling me that I had to stay, or the bad man would be after me.
"Nadia, my nymphet… You can't leave. The man is still after you. The bad, bad man that will take you away forever. You have to stay here with me until its safe."
One day, when I'd been here… About a week- I couldn't tell any more, I wanted to see behind those doors. Curiosity demanded me to look, so I did. I waited until he'd been out an hour, then went to look.
The first room I looked in was another bathroom, there were dark stains across the floor and walls, and in the bath, there was also something shiny in the bath, like glitter, or special paint, maybe.
The next room I looked in had another bath in it, and the whole room was freezing cold. It had a blue light making everything look much creepier than it was. The whole room was blue, it was a bedroom, aside from the bath in the corner, and the cold. There was an odd smell in the room that seemed to be coming from the bath. I edged closer to it, and screamed. Eyes. Staring up at me, scared, parted blue lips and icy grey skin. I screamed again. This had to be a dream or something. It had to be. It scared me more that I could recognise the girl. Naomi… I backed out of the room, catching my breath. I had to look in the rest of the rooms. Even if I didn't want to, I had to. The next room had a layer of grass, like it was outdoors. In the middle of the room there was a tree that looked far too tall for the ceiling. It looked like another bedroom, but all in green. I saw something hanging from the tree, and screamed again. This had to be a dream, or a trick or something… Misa's hair almost covered all of the rope around her neck, and she was naked again. The rope twisted slightly, turning her, and I ran out the room; not wanting to see her face, scared as I'd never been before. I slowly peeked into the next room, seeing silver lighting, walls, bedroom furniture. It smelt worse in here than any of the other rooms. The whole room had glitter sprinkled around it, covering the walls, but as I looked around the room, I saw something hanging from the ceiling. I forced myself to look at it. Yuri, covered in glitter… Rope tied around her to keep her hanging evenly. There was dry blood keeping the glitter on, flaking off and sending sprinkles of glitter to the floor. Still, the most horrific thing was the glass in her back, cut into wings. I backed out of the room, trying not to throw up at the horror and smell.
Even though I didn't want to, I forced myself to open the door to the next room. It was yet another bedroom, but this time in fiery orange. The room was heated almost too much to stand, and it smelt terrible, worse than the last, which was almost impossible to believe. The floor was tiled, so much that it looked scaly. It was so hot it almost burned my feet just to stand on it. I followed the smell, even though everything told me not to. I screamed, louder than I had before. Kiyomi... Her shoulders stopped where her arms should be, but they weren't there… They had to be… They couldn't just… Not be… Her legs were sewn together… I almost threw up again, but since I hadn't eaten, I couldn't, my stomach heaved painfully, and I doubled over. It wasn't until now that I realised how long it was since I'd eaten.
"Nadia? Where are you, my nymphet?"
I hadn't realised how long it'd been, and I'd been so caught up in this, I hadn't noticed him return. He was climbing the stairs, and I knew I had to move, but moving seemed an impossible task. Fear filled me, so much that my legs stiffened up, and I couldn't breathe.
"Are you in your room, my doll?"
I forced myself to move, dragging myself under the bed, lying painfully flat against the burning tiles. I wondered how many of the others had been so scared, had known what would happen…
"Nadia? Have you been a bad girl? Are you in one of the forbidden rooms?"
He didn't sound angry, but I was scared. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't make any noise. The doors along the corridor opened and closed, I shuffled back in my hiding place. It seemed like hours, but also only seconds until the door opened. I saw him walk over to the corner Kiyomi was in.
"Hello my dear, my beautiful Kiyohime…"
I wondered, when he found me, would he cut me up? Would he hang me? Drown me? Or would he find a new way to kill me? I was going to die, and there's nothing I can do… I let out a tiny squeak accidently, and even though it was so quiet, it was enough for him to find me.
"Nadia… Pretty doll, why are you hiding from me? Why don't you come out and see me?"
Even if I wanted to, I couldn't move, but he picked me up, pulling me out of my hiding place.
"You've been such a bad girl, I'll have to punish you for it now. You know that I hate to do that, don't you? You know I hate to not be nice to you, my porcelain nymph?"
All the days melted into one continual time of sleeping, and waking. At first, I'd sleep uneasily, my stomach hurting from not being able to eat, being awake most the time. Then I slept more, getting tired much easier, not being able to move. He'd come in regularly, and stroke me, tell me how pretty I was, and he'd do it all again, rubbing against me, then ripping into me so painfully that I should've- would've screamed. I didn't, I couldn't afford to use the energy, and he'd already taught me to be quiet, to be still. It stopped hurting so much as I got sleepier, and everything just numbed to grey and white. Sometimes I'd only wake up when he was wiping me down with a wet towel afterwards, sometimes I must've slept through his entire visits. Every day, he'd tell me how much closer it was, how beautiful, pure, doll-like, I was.
Then he stopped coming to see me. He stopped coming upstairs. Stopped making any noise. I wondered everything, in the short time I was awake. Was he leaving me to die now? Was he still here? Was he… Dead?
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't help the tiredness that constantly overtook me now. I couldn't fight the need to sleep so badly, I just gave up and gave into it, letting everything else fade out.
Somewhere through the blackness, a constant bleeping woke me up, breaking through the sleep and forcing me to wake. I mumbled something, a jumble of letters that I didn't even understand. Urging it to turn off so I could sleep more, sleep forever. Suddenly, a rush of voices invaded my mind, all crashing into each other.
"…Awake…Fetch Dr…. Parents… Stabilize…."
I groaned, trying to open my eyes, and eventually succeeding, even though all I could see was a mass of fuzzy colours. I closed them again, everything too bright, and fell back into the blackness of sleep,
"…Sure she'll be fine. She was awake yesterday for a few moments, which is a good sign that…"
"…Lucky that she survived. Another few days, or even hours and she may not have even been alive when they…"
"…Daddy will be here if you wake up, Mummy needs to go home to sleep for a…"
Parts of sentences woke me up, before I went back to sleep almost straight away. Doctors, nurses, my Mummy and Daddy.
Then I felt myself waking, almost like falling into a swimming pool. Everything felt slow, too much effort. I called for my Mummy, but it came out as a dry whisper. Suddenly, doctors and nurses surrounded me, voices and colours blurred into a confusing mass of grey nothingness. But it wasn't black nothingness, it was life.
It took me a year to be able to do everything normally. With physiotherapy, psychotherapy and behavioural therapy every day I didn't have time to do much. It took me at least half a year to be able to walk again, and even after that year, I couldn't eat properly. Eating around groups of people still made me nervous. Everything seemed grey, and for a while, it really was. My entire world was shaded in grey for about three months after I woke up. I fainted at the slightest things for a while also, and twitched constantly. After that year in a hospital, it was like home to me. Going back home was strange. I still walked with a slight limp, and needed a cane for any longer amount of walking for another year after it happened. The only things that never returned full was my emotional capability, and that I never felt comfortable eating. The man behind everything was never found. I'd overheard my parents talking enough to know about him. He was an egotist with a God complex, and wanted to turn us all into mythical creatures.
I'd spent days at the library finding every creature, matching it to my memory of the person. Naomi had been a Naiad. A water nymph. I still felt nauseous thinking of her naked blue skin, her black hair fanned out, and her eyes looking at me… Terrified and wide with shock. Yuri suspended from the ceiling, covered in glitter with those glass wings penetrating her skin, was a Yosei. A fairy. Misa had been a Meliae, or a Manna nymph. The tree had been an ash, or Manna, tree. I wondered, had she had her eyes open in fear like the others, or had she not known what would happen until it did? I don't think I would've been able to guess Kiyomi's without him saying it near me. Kiyohime. A snake spirit. That would explain her being sewn and hacked up… Nausea filled me again when I'd thought of that. I was going to be a nymph. Just a pure nymph, white and beautiful, apparently. He'd killed us all in different ways, unintentionally, I think. The case was called 'The most horrific crime in the last 100 years.' Book and movies were made about it, psychological studies, and documentaries. I'd been interviewed for it all more times then I could remember. I threw myself into my studies as soon as I could, avoiding the horrific thoughts by covering them up with knowledge. My father determinedly spent every weekend going through the huge stack of games he'd bought for me, to stop me thinking of the past. He looked after me almost entirely, as my mother got extremely depressed, and had to spend quite a bit of time in an institution. He started smoking quite heavily, but never let it get near me. He'd always wait until I was far enough away so that it would not bother me too much.
It wasn't until I was eleven, five years after the event when things finally died down. My family and I decided to have our names changed. I was no longer the pretty and unfortunate Nadia that everyone knew; who had endured so much yet still found the strength to tell everything she knew about the crime, whose information eventually lead to the unveiling of the motive behind those horrible events I was just plain Near. I'd chosen it myself. Near River. Near, for my near escape of death. Near to remind me how lucky I was to be alive. My parents became Halle and Stephen River. They homeschooled me, partly because they were worried, and partly because I wanted to be. I didn't want anyone to recognise me. I was still small, pale, and looked very much like I did all that time ago. My name had never been used in any documentation or media about the crime and my face had always remained hidden. As long as I was still a child, there was always a chance he'd come back to finish what he'd started. We moved several times, eventually settling in a quaint town in the south east of England. It was my hope that when we moved there that I might be able to forget my past and finally find some happiness. By the time I was fifteen, my mother had recovered quite well and my father began to cut down on the smoking. I had a feeling things were going to go well from now on.