I sat on the floor of my bedroom, holding my head in my hands as I leaned back against the bed. The madness that consumed the world faded with every passing year since Lord Kishin's death, but spells of insanity wormed their way through people's minds like a parasite every now and then. The pockets of madness that used to physically change the air had thinned until madness became a consistent, if thin, veil constantly surrounding the people of the world. The influence of the Kishin's "rule" wasn't so easily discarded, but life was considerably better than the version I heard about in his history class.
I twisted the heel of my small, 8-year-old hands over my ears, willing the screeching to stop.
"Go away," I weakly commanded the madness-induced shaded person crouching in front of me. It sat on its haunches, looking at my hunched, cowering form the way a scientist looks at its subject. No part of its body was strictly identifiable. I knew from experience that if I tried to focus my eyes on any one part of it, the body part under inspection would shift like an amoeba. It never consisted in one shape, this humanoid object in front of me, but it always took one form.
The figure tilted its head and smiled, sending shivers down my spine. I begged it to leave me alone. As the pleas fell and fell onto non-existent, and therefore deaf, ears, the hope that maybe, just maybe, it would leave this time this time this time slowly began to fade. Tear after tear marked paths down my face as I slowly drowned further, further, further in the invisible eyes of the thing's gaze. With every plea, the creature's smile widened. Everything about it -the predatory gleam of its sharp teeth, the fact that gray specks danced across its surface like static, the fact that it seemed content to watch the 8-year-old boy in front of it- seemed wrong and horrible.
I could see it clearly. The way the creature reached its hand out, almost tenderly, to take hold of my face, caressing it once. Then, suddenly yet with jagged precision sending a shaded, static thumb into my eye socket, twisting its hand in a practiced motion, effectively removing the liquid covered crimson orb from its place. I screamed as I both saw and felt my right eye fall, bouncing slightly when its path was stopped by the still connected nerve. Now, I could see both the creature's toothy smile (the lone feature of its otherwise blank ovoid face) and my right pant leg. It didn't help that the hanging eye was swinging –back and forth, back and forth- gently from its nerve, adding onto the need to vomit from pain with a layer of motion sickness. I was forced to watch as the hole in my head dropped, dropped, dropped dark red onto the jeans to my eye's left -now it's right, now it's left again. The scent of iron filled my nose as a small drop ran down my face and right below my nose before settling between closed lips, leaving a trail of slimy, liquid crimson along the way. The creature smiled as it-
I gasped, the frightening scene previously playing in his mind snapping away from me. I rapidly began blinking to prove that both fiery-colored eyes, now extinguished in a flood of tears, were still safely seated in their sockets. Attempting to scoot away from it only made me realize me back was pressed so tightly to the bed that I would probably find red marks later. The shadowed figure's grin spread further.
"Please, just go away," I continued to beg. Making a run for it wasn't an option, the creature crouched between me and the door, and there was no chance I could overpower it, so all that was left was to sit and hope it'd go away. I knew it wasn't truly there.
But it was hard for me to remember that when it's digging its nails into my stomach, drawing blood immediately. I heard my 8-year-old voice cry out before the creature put a hand over my mouth. My crimson eyes watched, wide with horror, as the creature lifted it's bloodied hand up to its own mouth. Even its voice was filled with uneven tones and static as it shushed me and my whimpering. His already bloodied hand clawed at my stomach, leaving valleys of blood and bolts of pain in its wake, until all the skin and muscle was peeled to the side in tan and red and black mounds. Glistening, steaming organs, dark red with blood and life, became visible, causing me to shriek into the muffling hand. Static fingers delved into the glossy, moving mass of tissue, creating a sort of squishing, squelching sound. I almost fainted from the feeling of the foreign object moving, searching through my organs, but the sheer terrors of watching something first reveal and then search through my insides had paralyzed me too deeply for something as blissful as sleep. The creature closed its hands around what I assumed to be my stomach, and pulled, creating a trail of interconnecting organs as they were ripped –one after the other- in a line out of me with the sound of tearing tissue and more of that intolerable squishing. The being opened its mouth to reveal a tongue as sharp as its claws and-
I shuddered again. I knew my internal system was probably still intact, and if I could stop blinking, I'd check, but the prospect of another horrifying vision kept the ruby orbs from either remaining open or shut.
"You can't win, Soul Evans." It's voice, ranged from a terrifying bass to an ear-splitting soprano that reminded me faintly of the way I wrote and played music, taunted. "They'll find out what you are, and when they do, they'll do far worse than anything I'm capable of." I straightened as sudden anger, rising from the pit of my still-intact stomach, solidified every muscle it touched until it spat from my mouth.
"Shut up," my 8-year-old voice warned with newfound courage.
"How disappointed will your parents be, huh? Finding out their star child, the one meant to carry on the family business, turned out to be nothing more than a-"
"I said shut up," I spat. The thing's grin became a teasing, menacing smirk.
"They'll drag you through town, parading your disgrace, until you're on the same stage that stupid woman was on last year. No one can love someone like you, after all you are an abomination, but that's not even mentioning the hurt and betrayal in your grandmother's eyes." It leaned forward, until it was inches from my face, "How betrayed will your dear, old Grammy be when she finds out all that love and compassion was wasted on you." Its smirk became feral as its tone grew malicious, "You'd be better off dead. Stupid, waste of space, Weapon."
Before I knew it, a black scythe sliced through the creature; it's body dissipating upon contact.
It was never there, I reminded myself as I stood, panting, over the spot where it hadn't crouched. I forced myself to calm down as all earlier traces of fear dissolved with the static figure.
It was only then that I realized my grandmother had entered the room.
She stood, gaping at her 8-year-old grandson from the doorway, her hand held up to her mouth in shock. My eyes widened, and the curved blade retracted into my right arm again. Grammy always appeared by my side whenever madness tried creeping in my head. She was the only one I knew who tried to help me through the sudden outbreaks.
"I'm sorry," I breathed in her direction as new tears began pooling at the corners of my eyes. This was the part where she tells the police on me. I'd seen just last year what happened to those convicted of breaking the anti-daemon laws. I knew what would happen to me when Grammy fled the room, screaming at the abomination that was her grandson.
That's why I startled slightly when she slowly and quietly shut the door behind her before kneeling in front of me and hugging my small, sobbing frame.
"Shhh," she comforted, "there's nothing to be sorry about. You haven't done anything wrong."
"B-but I'm a I'm a I'm a," I couldn't bring myself to say it, and the flowing tears made talking for me difficult.
"Most people don't remember what it was like before that Asura became Lord, but I do. Weapons and Meisters weren't killed or shunned. Those Meisters who found Weapons usually helped people by getting rid of those who'd hurt the innocent. Both of them were good guys," she began, "what you've got is a gift, not a curse."
It took me a few minutes to stop crying, but my grandmother's words helped.
"But…" her tone became cautionary as she took me shoulders in her hands and pulled back to look into my eyes. Her blue orbs were serious, "listen carefully. I know you know the price for this gift of yours." I nodded my head, images of a blonde woman flooding my mind. "Good, then I don't need to explain to you how important it is that you never, under any circumstances show anyone this form or tell anyone what you are. The Evans' family has no trace of Weapon or Meister blood in it, so no one should suspect you, but I need for you to promise me that you won't do anything to make anyone think otherwise."
I had promised. To this day, my grandmother was the only living person who knew my secret.