chapter four
it turns your words to plastic
When the girl turned around Roxas' first thoughts were not, as one may expect, disgust. He barely even batted an eyelid.
Like every true horror movie fan Roxas knew there was always build-up, tension and suspense, and hadn't every single one of those drifted around after him as he searched the park?
He knew something was afoot the moment he woke up, the moment he felt it necessary to put his shoes on venture outside, the moment he saw the girl on the park-bench. That was when it really hit home that things were not all as they seemed.
Why would Naminé – hell, why would anything that wore a dress as short as hers – be outside at that time, especially when the park was rumoured to house maniacs and perverts and paedophiles and the like?
Coupled with the fact Naminé was actually meant to be A) at a party, or B) asleep, it made the whole thing all the more suspicious.
So Roxas was not particularly surprised when the girl turned and he noticed – it was sort of like a sixth sense, really, a side-effect of watching horror films. Eventually your brain learns to skim past all the blood and gore and immediately latches onto the important plot points – that the girl was dead.
And that was it.
There was no "oh my God! Should I call an ambulance? What should I do?!" with Roxas. He just took it in his stride as though it was the most normal thing in the world.
Tears would come later when the whole thing had been fully processed, but as of now he just…
Didn't care.
And he knew that she must be dead. Undoubtedly dead.
Nobody, least of all a frail young girl, would have been able to survive with those painstakingly neat gashes and knife-marks in criss-crossing spider patterns along far too pale arms and legs, one even spreading across her face from the bottom of her eye, across her nose and down to the chin.
She'd have bled to death.
She already had.
The skin was raised around the marks as the land did in an earthquake, crimson lines trickled steadily from her eye and – oh my – Roxas stood corrected. There was no eye anymore.
The baby-blue had been popped out the socket, maybe by invading fingertips prying where they were not needed with far too much pressure. The gaping back hole, coupled with the one remaining baby blue, was frightful, yes, but Roxas had seen it countless times before.
The skin that had been stripped from her left arm and left to hang down in tatters did nothing to make the contents of Roxas' stomach empty to the floor. The exposed muscle and splintered bones protruding out at every angle imaginable the boy only noticed on a quick cursory glace. Her pronounced lack of fingers on her right hand (more of a bloody stump where the pesky appendages had been severed clean off) seemed only natural.
He'd seen worse.
No, the one thing he noticed straight away was how pretty she still looked – yes, despite her empty eye socket and the marks across her face, she still looked beautiful.
Maybe only to Roxas (he doubted others would be able to witness her new appearance without having nightmares for weeks) but she was still, in his mind, pretty.
Very pretty.
The second thing he noticed was that her blonde hair, dyed red at certain parts and awfully messy as it flipped over one her shoulders, was wet. In fact, all of her was wet – crimson water dyed with blood trickled down from her bruised lips, empty eye, wrecked arms, down her dress…
Her dress.
The third thing he couldn't help but notice, and perhaps the most disturbing of them all.
It was bright red.
"Naminé?"
"Hmph. You're no fun, Roxas," the girl snorted lightly, a twisted smile playing about her bashed-in face. "I thought for sure you'd be disturbed over this but oh no – stoic and uncaring as usual. Like with the horror films, you know? They were damned scary but you'd just sit there asking me to pass you the coke. Hmph." And here the girl stuck out her tongue (Roxas not really surprised to find it was a bloody lump of veins, many of which had burst. She was also missing several teeth).
"Eh… Nami? What's wrong?"
"Hmn… Well, lesse. I'm missing an eye, my face has been mauled, my arm has been pulled open, I don't have anymore fingers, I think my ribs are broken, my dress has been ripped, I'm missing several teeth and my tongue has been ripped apart. Pick any one you want. They're all pretty good."
"But Naminé, who did that to you? Somebody at the party?" asked Roxas, never one to beat around the bush.
"Eh… You could say that, I suppose," the girl mumbled in response, seeming more content to talk about her vast multitude of injuries like a child in the playground showing off scars acquired after a game tag than who actually inflicted them upon her. Her eyes – eye, Roxas mentally corrected himself – seemed to grow wider, mouth twisting into her thinking position as she placed her remaining hand under her chin.
"So when who did it? You're… You're not trying to protect them are you? Anybody who did that deserves to be bea-"
"Look Roxas," Naminé cut in hastily, "I don't want to tell you. I'm sorry, but if I did… Well… I don't want to pin any more deaths down to me, right? I'm afraid you're going to have to find out for yourself."
Roxas sighed.
"Hey, I know life sucks. I'm living… Well, I'm proof of that. Come on, smile!"
"If you find all this amusing you're a very morbid person."
"If you don't find this in the least bit disturbing then you're a very morbid person," Naminé beamed, her injuries seeming to pale slightly at the beatific look on her face. "I think you need to go back to bed, Roxie. Everything'll seem better in the morning!"
"Why are you so cheerful about this?"
"Eh. I fail to conform to narrow-minded stereotyping. And inflicting self-harm'd be pretty stupid considering I won't be able to feel anything, eh? And I'm not sure if there's an inch of my body that hasn't been broken, bent, burnt, stuck through with a knife, drowned in a pond or thrown down the stairs. I don't think my input would make much difference."
Roxas couldn't help but smile, ever so slightly.
She was still the same old Naminé.
a.n: think whatever you want about nami's 'ghost'. i thought it was fun writing her as happy, though :3 it was also fun writing about roxas not really caring, because in most fics like this its all "OMG NUUUUU". it amused me slightly how little either of them actually cared – but the emoness will come soon. as long as some more horror. i promise ;3 and finding out who the killer/killers was/were ;3
investigation starts next chapter. or perhaps the next one after that x3
skitts xx