Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
- Edgar Allen Poe
2 - The Ghost of You
~here's your gore warning~
"Hello again, Asuka. How are you faring today?"
It's was a rainy day. The dreary, cold atmosphere intensified inside a dimly lit office, a place where you're coaxed and prodded into spilling out your most dark and painful thoughts and emotions for the judgment and observation of others.
"I'm fine." she said in a cold tone, she laid down on to the therapist couch, looked up to the wood ceiling she could hear the patter of rain falling relentlessly unto the roof of the building, "I got the strange feeling again, it happened when I bumped into this girl on my way to homeroom, I thought I heard her crying...when I got a better look at her it seemed like she was fine, but I asked her what was wrong out of habit, she said 'Nothing, why?' and I said 'I thought I heard crying just now', she explained to me that she had been crying earlier in the bathroom, said that today was the anniversary of her sister's death. And before I could even say I was sorry..."
She rubbed her bright blue eyes from underneath her glasses and sighed.
"I knew it was a car accident. I knew the whole event inside and out in the span of only a few seconds, I could see all the people walking into the wake, holding beads in their hands. I could see her corpse descending into the fire, them picking her bones from the ashes, I could smell the flowers and incense over her grave, I could feel her tears running down my face."
She gulped down the knot in her throat,
"I could feel her sisters panic, being inside that car when it crashed into another one, when it rolled off the side of the road. I could feel her bones breaking, as if they where mine, I could smell blood and smoke, I could hear screaming..."
She looked over to the man, hoping beyond all hope for some compassion, understanding, a tear trailing down her face, but his eyes were cast downward, writing down something.
Asuka knew that the man would give no real comfort, no explanation, how could he? But it helped just being able to talk about it, the fact that he couldn't tell anybody about what was being said gave her a sense of freedom.
Asuka was dying, a cancer eating away at her from the inside, a terminal condition. Her parents sought the help of a psychiatrist when she fell into depression and grief, she was going to school like everything was normal per her own request. She did it not for her own sake, but for her brothers. It was futile, in a matter of days she would need to be hospitalized, she knew it would really sink in then what was happening, but like any dying person, she wanted to hold onto happiness and normalcy as long as she could.
"These are merely figments of your mind Asuka, you are feeling connections to others tragedies because you yourself are living a tragedy. You need to strive to live these last days in peace Asuka. You need to give yourself that much."
His words seemed empty, like when you say a word over and over again and then it doesn't sound quite right. You could hear it in his voice, the strain and exasperation, the waiting for her to die.
"I guess."
This went on for the next half and hour, back and forth talking of life, what it is to be alive and the inevitably of death, she stayed quiet for the most part.
"What's the point of this' she thought, 'trying to accept death just makes me more angry about it"
She looked over the shoulder of the man, still talking, and saw the clock. It was two minutes past their session end.
She stood abruptly, the doctor looked up wondering if she was suddenly emboldened by what he was saying, but then frowned "Well, Doctor it seems like our time is up, I'll see you the same time tomorrow?" she bowed curtly and walked towards the door.
"Asuka I'm going to be frank with you." he said and she stopped frozen in her tracks. "You are dying, and no matter how much you push it away or deny it, it's happening, right now. If you keep running from the inevitable you won't be ready for it when it comes."
Her hand shakes as she grips the door handle, it was the first time the man seemed like he cared, with his blunt truth.
"You are a strong young woman Asuka, anyone can see that, and it really is hard to believe that anything could kill you, but when that moment comes and you're looking into the blackness of death, what will death see looking back at it? A scared girl or a strong woman?"
A static filled silence, tragedy buzzing in the atmosphere like a lost signal.
"Both, I think." she walked out the door with no intention of ever coming back.
She was walking briskly past a nurse when her shoulder was touched, the young nurse trying to give her some papers.
In a wink, like a movie inside her head, Asuka could see a young women curled up in a dark room, rocking back and forth with something sharp inside her arms it seemed, because the women was bleeding.
And then it felt like she was moving, like a camera moving in on a actress, who she distantly recognized to be the nurse, zooming in on what she was holding. The woman loosened her hold so that she could look at what she was clinging too, and it was a broken picture.
A picture of a young man, now covered in the woman's blood, and something that filled Asuka with dread, was that the glass had a crack going straight across his forehead.
In a flash she was in some black wasteland, filled with industrial looking machinery. In the distance she could see what seemed like the same man in that was in the bloody picture, he was looking straight into the pale white sky.
Her eyebrows scrunched, she peered up at the same spot in the sky, seeing nothing she looked back at the man. She jumped back and squealed when he was looking straight at her, having covered the distance between them in the span of a few heartbeats.
"W-who are yo-?"
It came so suddenly that she couldn't even register to scream. Out from the fog came...something...a wire? an electrical wire it looked like, it had sparks flying out from it, it made a loud ear piercing whooping sound as it made contact with the young man's head, slicing the top of it downward and took his left eye as well in its wake.
Yet he still looked at her. He looked at her with that one eye, what was left of his face expressionless, she barely noticed the blood sprayed on her face.
"Asuka."
Her eyes went so wide she could feel the muscles of her lower eyelid flex, face full of tears and blood.
"Yes?" she said, but she could barely hear her own voice, it seemed distorted somehow.
"Tell her to stop burning the sage."
She cocked her head. "W-who?"
"Michiyo."
"The nurse...?"
"She's a nurse now?"
She nodded her head, this exchange getting more and more disturbing.
"Well then...' suddenly a sweet smile, it left a sour feeling in Asuka's heart. 'Tell Nurse Kojima that Soujiro says to stop burning the sage"
"O-okay..."
"Promise?"
The whole expanse stilled and went black, sucked into itself like a vortex, the ghost along with it. Then like breaching from the cold heavy sea into the world above, she found herself laying on the floor of the clinic, being held and caressed by the dream woman.
"Oh thank the lord, she's awake Miharu! Asuka-chan you gave me a fright, you passed out for like fifteen minutes!" she exclaimed checking her vitals and brushing the hair out of her face.
"Nurse Kojima?" she asked with a strained voice.
"Yes dear?" she said sweetly.
"S-Soujiro says to stop burning sage..."
The nurses face fell and Asuka was saying things like she was on auto-pilot.
"I saw him in the dark plane. I saw his last moments, He told me to tell you to stop burning the sage." Asuka face went downfallen
She got up and walked away from the nurse about to burst into tears, screaming for an explanation.
"How do you know him?!" she screamed as Asuka ran out the door and down the street.
"Answer me!"
She didn't. She ran all the way home. Her feet beating hard against the street she ran until she made it too her apartment complex, ran up the stairs, burst into the house and sat herself on the floor next to the door and wept.
After a long rest in her dark room, her mother came and left a few times to ask her how she felt, giving her affectionate caresses and hugs, but she stayed silent.
She crawled out of her bed, and instead of going downstairs for dinner that she could guess was done since she could hear their clinking plates and chit chatter, she opted to go out on her roof, which was easy to get too from her bedroom window though not very safe.
"But why would I worry about something like falling to my death?" She said to herself chuckling a bit. "I mean other than people thinking I killed myself, that would be a bummer."
She looked up at the sky, the clouds incessant. The sky was an inky blue with little stars making themselves known from behind the veil of gloom and she mused that she liked their tenacity.
"Hey sis..." came a voice from her window.
She looked down to her little brothers Kaito's bright face and smiled, crawled over to the window and sat right over it so she could hear his voice.
"Hey, kiddo..." she said.
"Pfft, who are you calling kiddo, 17 is far from grown up." they laughed, even though it was unfortunate, it's funny how good kids are good at laughing when things are bad.
They sat in companionable silence, the he sighed.
"It's just gonna to be too weird..." he said.
She looked over to him still smiling, but shadows occupied most of his face, so she couldn't see the serious look he had. "What will?"
"When you're gone..."
It almost seemed for moment that someone had pressed the pause button, even Asuka's heart jumped the time gap. A silent moment for recovery and analysis at what their life was becoming.
"I guess it will be..." she tore her gaze from her brothers, to look up again at the stars. "but I think you'll get over it" she chuckled as her brother climbed up the roof and nudged her.
"This isn't funny!" he scowled, "Aren't you..." he gulped and looked away like he was about to say a swear word in front of a teacher.
"Spit it out, Aren't I what?"
He jumped, then with a grumble he said..."scared?"
She made a silly face like she was thinking really hard, tapping her finger against her chin, then shrugged.
"Not really. I mean what's to be scared of?"
Kaito gasped, "but aren't you afraid it's going to hurt?" he asked, "and well you're still a teenager! Aren't you scared you'll become a ghost?"
"What?" she said, bemused. "W-Well, they say when you die young you can't accept it, out of the unfairness of it all spirits become bitter and can't let go..."
"That's not scary..." she sighed "That's what I am hoping for..."
He look down at her and smiled shyly. "If you do turn into a ghost, will you promise to haunt me?"
"Sounds like a date" she lifted her hand her to his face, and he took it and gave it a hard shake, resulting in a yelp from Asuka.
"Yeah...I'm ready for you death."
"Another Candle just went out, Count." said Watson, a tiny mangled corpse butler, with his scratchy corpse voice. "It just went out, it's been dimming this past month it seems. A fifteen year old girl, quite sad. She's in the book formally sir."
The Count himself looked over to the large arrangement of flickering Candles, spotting the candle in question, smoke rising from the wick.
"That candle had a very bright light..." Remarked the count.
"Indeed, a very white light too, I've spotted the flame turning black as well, what do you think, Count?"
"Hmm..." the Count scratched his invisible chin. "Black flame...like Tsuzuki...?"
And then, so suddenly it made the undead men jump, the candle burst into ferocious flame so big it scorched the ceiling, then it shrunk itself down to a small black flame with a snapped whip sound.
"W-what just happened Count?!" Watson said from where he fell, by the base of the stairway which led into the endless Hall of Candles.
"I think Mr. Watson," he said giving the little zombie a hand back to his feet,
"We have a new employee..." he said, he sat down at a small table and looked his mansion yard outside with a grimace at the falling snow. Watson looked up at his master, disquieted.
The count sighed, "I hope she doesn't mind snow..."
A/N: hey whats up so I finished revising this about 24 hours after I finished revising the last chapter and if that's not steady progress then I'm a tutu wearing buffalo and I just got accepted into the Russian ballet.
So anyway, this chapter was a bitch to revise, because there was a lot I didn't like about it, not anything with the actual story bothered me, just the way I wrote it.
Revising this story has been a lot of cutting out the excess more than adding anything new and that's especially true in this chapters case, but there were dazzling moments when bits and pieces of story would make themselves known in my head, where what was already written down clicked with what I planned for further on in the story and it was really exciting to write.
I really like this character Asuka with her cool 'Shine'-like powers and bullheaded but patient older sister type attitude. I'm excited to write her interacting with the others, and what dynamic her powers will give to the story, it's like I'm discovering her for the first time.
I really hope that these chapters still have that 'something' that had people interested before, I really tried to take what I thought was the 'heart' of the story and take away what was unnecessary and plug in what I thought was good and made a more solid foundation for the rest of the story.
In the end this is half an unfinished story that was written 5 years ago, and half a new story I'm coming up with now, it's bound to be a little different, but better in the long run and I hope you enjoy the ride, wherever it takes us.
Thanks for reading and bye for now :)
5/24/2016 11:32 AM