Part 1 Chapter 2: My dream

My name is Akira Suchi. I am the Head Servant of Lord Byakuya's house, the Kuchiki clan. This is my dream, no, was my dream, and to be even more accurate, this was not my dream, but was my nightmare. My nightmare of not my past, but of a past. I don't know whose. I simply know two things: that I am not in this dream, and that this dream is true, that it happened. Don't ask me how I know the latter; it is pure instinct. I am writing this down, by the way, so that I can look back at this if there is ever a time that calls for me to come back to this vivid sleep induced vision. Here is what happened, through the eyes of the owner of this incident-

I felt nothing but confusion as I walked down something that was not even worthy of being called a street. No, a better term would be a path, or, if you're wishing to push the limits of politeness to an extreme, a quaint lane that lay between two tightly fitted rows of innumerable, indistinguishable cottage sized homes, or, for use of a better term, shacks. I tried to recall the name of this place, the name that the man in black and white had told me when I'd first arrived from… I couldn't truly recall where. Matter of fact, I couldn't really recall anything at moment save for a handful of seemingly meaningless memories. A warm smile, a sunny day, a picnic… happy things.

These memories, although probably truly meaningless, were precious to me, as they were one of the few things I had. Those memories, the clothes on my back, and the girl, the sweet little baby girl in my arms with shocking black hair and rosy cheeks whose name and place in my life I could not truly remember but rather could recall by instinct, were all that I had. I had to peek through the swaddled cloth that protected the girl, whom I remembered as my sister, to see her face. I had to remember her, had to be sure that she was real. Although I had been in this place for no more than two days, I could safely say that she was now the sole joy in my life, the one bit of hope in the eternal forest that was to be my grave. …Perhaps that last metaphor was a bit melodramatic. Yes, while this place wasn't exactly a paradise, to say that it would be my grave was probably going a bit over the top.

I continued walking down the path. I wasn't really sure as to where I was headed, but I did know what I was looking for; permanent shelter, a way to make some money, somebody to fully explain to me where I was and why I couldn't remember anything from my apparent past. I say 'apparent' because I wasn't even all that sure that I even had a past; perhaps those short, blithe memories were just some thing that my mind had come up with all on its own.

I reassured my grip on my baby sister; being a baby, she was perfectly light, but even her measly weight managed to tire out my arms as I carried her. While shaking my head, as though trying to mentally nock away the strain from my limbs, I noticed a large rust brown, flaky blotch on one of the many shacks. It didn't look natural, like it had appeared over time. Rather, it seemed as if it had been painted on there by some person. As I walked past it, I noticed a horrible stench radiating off of from its more lightly shaded, apparently newer center. It smells like something died, I thought to myself. Perfectly horrid. I quickly walked past it, not wanting to take in the smell any longer.

I suddenly heard a terrified scream that seemed to shriek through the air like a missile.. I jumped, unprepared for the clamor, and almost dropped my sister. My sister, Rukia… I quickly re-ensured my grip on her. The cry had come from a shack with thick vines growing up its walls, located almost directly to my right, nearly perfectly beside me. Instinct told me that I ought to heed the scream as a warning, and to hurry on my way, but another feeling called curiosity quickly tossed aside my instincts and took over. The end result of this brief clash of thought and gut feeling had me slowly stooping beside the half draped window to the house and peeping inside to see whom had screamed, and for what had caused it. The sight…

The very sight of the scene was hideous, disturbing, gory, wrong, …agonizingly sad to look at. Inside lay the bodies of two young teenage girls, sprawled on the floor like rags. Blood ran down through their faces, their clothing, their bodies. One of the girls' mouths was still open, emitting a dead scream. I couldn't help but assume that that girl was the one I had heard.

While I was feeling terribly sorry for these two girls, I still had the safety of my sister and I in mind. These girls had been murdered, and within the last couple of seconds judging from how long it had been since I'd heard the screaming. That much was obvious. I couldn't see their killer through the window, so he had to be somewhere else, still very close by .That was definitely not good thing. This person, whoever they may be, still on the loose within the area.

Suddenly that rusty splotch on the wall had new meaning. God knew whom this murderer's next victim would be. It could be the next person I came across, or maybe some stranger that I was destined to never meet… or perhaps myself. Or, God forbid, my sister. I shuddered and clutched Rukia closer to my chest. I swear, I will never leave this child out of my sight.

I took one last glance through the window. The two girls hadn't moved, but had I really expected there to be any chance that they'd survived? But there was something slightly different about the whole scene. There was another pair of eyes there. Deep set, black eyes belonging to a dark silhouette standing a little ways away from the bodies of the dead girls.. Murderous eyes; the eyes of a killer. Those eyes bored into the core of my being and told me one thing and one thing only; you're next.

I held back a scream and turned and ran back through the direction I'd been coming from. I ran and ran, with no intention of stopping. Only one thing passed through my head as I streaked down through the God forsaken streets. I recalled it as being the thing that the man in black and white had said to me when I'd first arrived, the thing that I'd been trying to remember earlier : "Welcome to District 69. Watch your step. It tends to get rough around here."

Thanks for telling me.

End of the first dream journal entry.