The bell continues to chime in B flat minor as I walk to the office. It takes me much, much longer than it should as I don't have my glasses. The black signs that should show me the way are blurred in meshes of tangled fluorescent light. I finally arrive, eagerly pushing open the solid oak door that keeps me from my destination…
It opens much more easily than I had previously expected and inevitably slams into the face of a poor bystander. A shattered face bleeds crimson liquid; the torrents almost synchronizing to the screams of unseen women. I can't tell who it is I hit, and my first instinct is to flee, maybe to some intangible paradise, but…as usual, the other man strikes first.
A pale hand grabs my arm, yanking me in violent compulsion into the office. It smells like blood and a doctor's office. A hospital? Oh god no. Not again. [There's a chill in the air. Stretchers are lined up. The smell of iron lingers. Bodies. They are taking me. The snow is turning the color of the merlot in the backseat. Help.] Now a chair is sliding across the floor. Four sets of heels are clicking. Maybe five. There is a mesh of color, faces, or monsters over me, like mountains. It is now I realize I am on the floor. Or am I in the sky? In an intense feeling of vertigo I realize I may just be flying. I may be an angel, soaring above all these faces. Yes, rising up into the soft white clouds, finally free from this life. The coldness of the high altitude at which I'm at is making my body go numb, but now there's a feeling beyond that. All turns into the intense darkness I have yearned for all my life. Death. Finally here to take me away from…
In my silence there's a noise: pizzicato on strings? It's enrapturing, but alas, it is not what I would think angels would play. It's sort of like rock, but it's steady, gripping, and uncannily familiar. Here, in this place, the limbo between our world and the next, I find myself agitated. Bothered that I cannot place a melody, a melody that should not even exist in this utopia. Just as I am about to be finished by the razor-sharp edge of insanity, a baritone voice joins in with the chords. Of course, it had to be The Stones.
A red door, painted black. Why? I am dying, and yet, here goes some maniac angel playing a what… sitar? This can't just be a dream.
There's another light. A face, eyes looking into mine.
A guy is in my face, he's leaning over a blue sitar that must have been the source of the noise before. His features are kind, his blue eyes filled with worry, and yet I can't help but realize he was with the man who tortured me earlier. Behind him stands something in a smock, that aside from the facial hair I would have to guess to be the school nurse. She (maybe he) walks away nonchalantly as soon as she sees I'm alright. The man however, (much to my resentment) stays seated in a chair next to where I lay. Smiling, he extends a hand.
"Demyx.."
Shock. Pure shock. This man. Is introducing himself normally? After all the extremes his friend went to making a first impression this is all he has? Maybe you can't tell who a person is by his friends.
I struggle to make my arm move, its numb, and past that, its sweaty and stuck to the cheap fake leather of the nurse's bed. Finally it does, and I weakly place my palm in his. A far cry from a manly handshake. "Ze-" I start, but his other hand silences my lips.
"Yeah, I know, the whole school knows, 'Sexi Zexi' Axel's new play thing. You're lucky he's not the one you smashed. The worst he's doing now is pissing off Roxas and spreading shit about how cute your screams were-"
"What?" My head aches, okay, maybe he is that guy- (Axel's?) friend. He's talking so fast, it's almost as bad as the smoke. Now, finally gathering enough strength to get up, I examine him more closely.
There's a bandage on his forehead, which I can't help but to think is my fault. His hair is blonde, but cut shorter than the rest, his arms are laden with black jelly bracelets (Is that the kind- if you break-) And he's wearing a (somewhat tight) Stones tee. His sitar still sits in his lap.
"Anyway" Wow, he's still talking. "I was thinking, and I guess it would be safer for you if I walked you to your next class. Axel can get pretty obsessive with his made-up fantasies. And Roxas. Well let's just say he's not euphoric about their breakup. It was bloody. Roxas is sort of shallow too. Believes anything." He grimaced, as if he was remembering something. Axel. Roxas. Names and faces began to click together. Demyx. The only person who has yet to show me kindness.
He's now asking for my schedule, which, after forgetting in the chaos where I put it, I take out of my pocket. He smoothes out the wrinkled paper carefully, and as he examines it and explains to me for the first time what this all means, I feel a spark. Maybe little compared to suffocating in smoke, but it's there.
Sighing, and with a look of pain something in me wishes to erase, Demyx stands. "Zexi" He muses. "You really are out of luck, your next class. Is Phys Ed with Axel."