Chapter 2; A Liar's Love
Written by: Mars

"Lavender's green, Lavender's blue,
If you love me, I will love you.
Let the birds sing and the lambs play;
We shall be safe, out of harm's way."

- And so the rose wept silently as she fades away.
The sun promised rain but did he fulfill her wish?
From the way she lies dead, it's a given he didn't;

Writer's Note;

- Sorry for the delay, I had a hard time writing this chapter. It's no excuse, I know, but I'm sorry.
I hope you like this chapter, I tried my hardest. Hopefully the other chapters written by myself will be better than this lame thing.
Anyway, enjoy!

It's funny really, how one moment a seemingly innocent thing can turn out to be the moment you had feared the most. The mess hall was filled with hungry eager workers that had awoken from their sleep-like state. Some of the people turned to look but most of them simply brushed me off as nothing. I didn't mind this treatment however and to be rather honest, blending in with the crowd was my favourite thing to do. It felt as if you were there and yet you weren't at the same time. My dislike for crowds derived from my early days of being a child. After all, that is when you're most vulnerable to what you like and dislike when you're an adult.

Back on earth, the crowds were much worse than they were on the Ishimura. Earth had a lot more room than a planet-cracker ship about the size of a giant cargo ship back home. Back to the point, I was around the age of nine during the Christmas season and was shopping with my mother while Hanz and my father were elsewhere doing their own things. Being the child I was, I let go of my mother's hand and wandered over towards a toy store to look at all of the wonderful things they had. Carelessly, I had forgotten all about my mother due to the fact I was consumed by these little trinkets. Not too long after losing my mother, a strange man with glasses had found me gawking at the toys and tried to take me away from it. Realizing what he was trying to do, I ran into the crowd of people while screaming for my mother to come and help me. For ten minutes straight, I ran to and fro in that hot and sweaty crowd to have only people ignore me. Thankfully, Hanz had found me. Never again did I leave my mother or my father for that matter and from that day forward I had an irrational fear of people and toy stores, not to mention old men. That had been a long time ago though, twelve years to be in fact but even to this day I'm afraid.

Gradually however, I slowly lost that fear but it still hung around. Toys and toy stores don't bother me but once I had a dream that tiny toy soldiers came to murder me. Those on the other hand, must be burned on sight or I will have a panic attack. As for older men I try to stay away from them too. Especially if they have glasses, they mustn't have glasses.

In my short life time I had come to fear most things that I had come in contact with. For example I was afraid of fish and water. The reason I feared fish also took place in my early childhood and it came hand in hand with my fear of water. When I was five my father took my older brother Hanz and I for swimming lessons out in a lake beside our summer cabin. One end of the lake was murky, deep and full of weeds while the other side was crystal clear and sandy. My father, being the man who always strove for the hard things in life, decided that the deep murky end of the lake was most suitable for his toddler children to learn to swim in. My brother Hanz had no problem learning to swim in that end. It was like he had been born in the water but myself on the other hand, was obviously nothing like him.

I had been too afraid to set even a toe in the water but my father urged me to go in. Hanz had always been my parent's favourite child for he was good at almost everything they threw at him. The only thing he wasn't good at was reading and writing but soon enough, he mastered that as well.

As Hanz was swimming in the water, he begged me to try it with him but I disagreed until he began to call me names. Feeling ashamed already, I decided to man up and go in to the water up until my knees skimmed the surface. It was the most exciting feeling that I had ever felt considering I had always been too cowardly to do anything before. Just as I was feeling accomplished however, I began to feel things swimming around my legs. I was too panicked and spooked to even attempt climbing out of the water so in the end my father had to come and rescue me by simply picking me up out of the water. Later that night he explained that it was just the tiny fish touching me and that they wouldn't harm me and little was he aware; he only made me afraid of the water more. Even to this day I don't eat fish and try my hardest to avoid water.

There are many other things I'm afraid of, like ice cubes and mirrors. Both are the most traumatizing of my childhood and they're too hard to explain why exactly I fear them. So let's just say that ice cubes have to do with choking while mirrors are the main reason I have a few scars on my knees and forearms. Other than a few other scary ass things, my life has been pretty good up until this day obviously.

Today had been a pretty good day until I saw Dino standing in line. Dino and I share a few things in common: we like breakfast, share the same taste in music and both get scared easily. At the time, I had forgotten how scared he actually gets.

Marching my way over towards Dino, I decided to tap him lightly on the shoulder and say hello. It didn't occur to me that I had caught him off-guard until he literally threw his entire breakfast at me. The plate narrowly missed my head but the drink and knife on the other hand, just so happened to cut and drench me. The sound of the plate cracking and breaking as it hit the cold floor caused nearly everybody around us to stop and stare while both Dino and I had been shocked by one another's presence. My cheeks flushed almost immediately, especially considering I stuttered a shy apology to Dino.

"D-Dino! I…I'm sorry…"

"No, I'm sorry!" He exclaimed as he began to pick up the dishes "I over-reacted, I'm sorry Crina!"

"Oh Dino, I know you don't like being startled…I'm the one who's sorry…" I replied as I too began to help.

"Crina, I'm sorry. Don't blame yourself for this mess…" He replied with his head down.

"You're both sorry; now both of you can clean up this mess together." A stern but kind voice said behind us. Looking up from my place upon the floor, I noticed Annabelle and Justus staring at us. By now everybody else had gone back to their food while the four of us were still either standing or cleaning. Due to all the quietness between us, we had gotten the job done rather fast.

Over the next twenty minutes or so we all had gotten our food and sat down to eat at a table as far away from that spot as possible. It wasn't that bad, up until I had realized I had forgotten to shut the door in the lab. It wouldn't have been that much of a problem if it hadn't been the door that led straight towards one of those creatures we had been sent to study. Upon realizing this horrible mistake, I quickly ate my breakfast and then excused myself from the table. Slipping away quietly and calmly, I managed to make it past one of the doors before I frantically began to run. The things were mostly dead, or the ones we would pick up anyway, so it shouldn't have gotten anywhere. The lab wasn't too far away and I had been thankful for that but I wasn't completely off the hook yet.

The lab was practically empty and it was better that way at this point. Most of the doors on this ship were automatic sliding doors except for the one door in which encased the creatures in. This door was slightly old fashioned, with a door handle for that matter, and it locked just in case something terrible would happen. On the flip side of this wonderful contraption, I would sometimes forget to check it to make sure it closed properly. This is what would happen when you were pampered with wonderful science, you forget the more primitive side of you.

So, as life would have it, it was open just a wee bit but thankfully not all the way. Checking behind my shoulder to make sure no one had followed; I then waltzed in as if nothing had changed. Staring down at the strange fleshy thing upon one of the metal operating tables I began to reach for it but before actually touching it however, I remembered that I needed some protective gloves and my trusty scalpel. You couldn't be a doctor's apprentice if you didn't have the right tools! As soon as I had my gloves on and scalpel in hand, I went back to my former action. What I needed to do was continue to take a sample of the flesh so Annabelle could proceed to study it. After all, we were supposed to study these things and find out what exactly was going on and how to either cure or prevent this malicious infection. Either way, I had to continue this strange process.

Quietly, I dragged the tiny little blade across one of the shoulders and began to separate some of the deformed flesh from the body. As I cut the creature however, it bled slowly. It was weird considering the victim had been dead for quite some time from what I could gather. My eyes studied the specimen before and watched as some of the scarlet got onto me. Wiping the blood off of my clothing, I then noticed some of the liquid upon my left arm. Cocking an eyebrow slightly, I went to go wipe it away until I noticed that it infact wasn't just blood but an open cut on my arm. Touching it a few more times I then realized something:

I was mixing that things blood with my own.

Suddenly panicking, I dropped both the knife and the piece of flesh and listened to the sound of my heart thumping quickly. I couldn't have possibly have been that foolish, right? I didn't just do that, did I? But other thoughts soon plagued my mind: how did that cut get there in the first place? Will it get infected? Will I get as sick as this poor soul before me? There were simply too many questions that I had begun to flail about. Running from one end of the room to another, I couldn't help but become even more panicked and to the point where I began to cry. I had felt sick to my stomach from all of those thoughts. The feeling of dizziness swept over me and I didn't even notice the little stand full of operating tools just in front of me and they soon became a victim of my clumsiness. Studying the shiny steel upon the ground, that feeling of sickness sucker punched me right in the stomach. I needed to find the door, and fast.

Ignoring the fallen tools, I then ran towards the door. Instead of reaching for the door handle I expected it to slide open like most of the other doors on this ship. Not realizing this false mistake due to my paranoia, I then ran right into the door. I too, was now a part of the floor. A state of shock then replaced that feeling of sickness as I rubbed my head, once again not realizing that the blood was still upon my hand. Once more, I repeated the same process of running around and panicking.

It had been only a few seconds after picking myself up off the ground before I ran towards the door again. This time reaching for the door handle, I didn't expect it to open so suddenly. Once more, I had been hit with the same inanimate object but I myself didn't open it. Flying backwards towards the floor again, I then heard a calm voice ring out concernedly

"Hello? Is anybody in here? I thought I heard something falling in here…"

"O-Otto? Is that you?" I questioned as I looked up at him. The man's gentle green eyes caught mine and his lips then curled into a small smile. He then stared at me with a bit of confusion but then reached downwards to help me up instead. Before taking his hand however, I took off my gloves and threw them towards the ground. I didn't want him to go through the same mistake I had. Before a few more words had been exchanged, we were then out of the room and into the little research area. He then proceeded to question me.

"Crina, what exactly were you doing in there?"

"I was…doing my job that I had to do." I responded as I picked at the little cut.

"Without your hazard suit?" He questioned as he crossed his arms infront of his chest.

"Even if I wasn't in there, you weren't wearing yours either!" I responded quickly as my cheeks began to flare crimson from the embarrassment. He only shook his head causing his dirty blond hair to fly about but it was then accompanied by his laugh. He was a very strange man when it had come to emotions. Sometimes it seemed like he was mad when really he wasn't. Not to mention the times when he was mad, you couldn't tell because he would get deathly quiet even though he was generally always quiet. Still, he wasn't mad this time from what I could decipher. Otto then began to look for something and quietly, I questioned him as to what exactly he was looking for.

"Otto, what are you looking for?"

"A bandage for your arm of course. We can't just let you bleed like that." He responded without returning his gaze to mine.

"What do you mean bleeding? It was fine just a minut-…ago." I began but soon cut my words short the moment I had noticed it. I didn't even realize that it really was just gushing out the flood. The wave of panic once again took hold of me as I stared at all of the red that was flowing from my arm. However, the panic was soon washed away when Otto's calm aura seeped over to me as he began to clean it up. My eyes then trailed over to his face and I studied it: calm, cool, collect, just the way Otto always was.

Otto was a twenty-nine year old doctor who had come to Ishimura for a reason unknown to even Doctor Annabelle. Though the reason all of us were here was because we had to study what exactly was going on around here. People were getting sick for no reason and half the time they would end up looking like that thing back in the room over there. We were strictly forbidden to enter that room without our hazmat suits just in case we too would get infected. Suddenly, I began to express my concern about this little ordeal.

"Otto…you won't tell anybody that I went in there without my suit, right?"

"As long as you don't tell anybody that I forgot mine." He responded with a small smile bending his lips.

"Alright." I said as he put the finishing touches on my arm. It had fallen quiet between us but I didn't mind it. Once you got used to Otto's quiet ways, it ceased to bother you. I for one would know this considering I had always been too afraid to be alone with him. At first it was awkward but then I just got used to his quietness. However, I once again broke the silence between us.

"Uh…Otto?"

"Yes Crina?" He responded.

"I just wanted to say thanks…for helping me that is…" I replied as I looked away from him.

"You're welcome but Crina, I think there's something you should know." Otto replied and my heart began to speed up as my stomach fluttered. I was utterly speechless but I only made a 'hm' noise for him to continue. My eyes once again found his and they seemed to hold a certain strangeness to them. Wondering what exactly he wanted to know, I questioned him further.

"What's wrong? Is there something on my face? Is it more blood? Oh God…"

"Oh it's nothing, nevermind." He said as he waved his concern away. Did he just lie to me? Quite suddenly however, that feeling of butterflies in my stomach began to kick harshly. That dizzy feeling engulfed me and my head spun, what was going on? With the last and final breath I took, I whispered to him.

"Get Annabelle, please."

Suddenly, I then began to vomit a strange bloody red color all over him and fell straight towards the ground. With my last few moments of consciousness, I couldn't help but feel sorry for Otto. After all, who wants bloody vomit all over them?