Chapter 6

"WHAT'S WROOOONG????"

It would be so nice if I could run. Run, run, run, and never look back. I wish I didn't exist, that I could just run away from my body, from this town, from my mind, from myself. Tearing down the street with only the hiss of my blood in my ears, I'm not able to go as fast as I used to. Through nearly blinded eyes, I can see spaghetti-string legs winding around each other, back and forth, trying to go as fast as they used to. I feel like a gazelle getting chased by a cheetah, an invisible cheetah that wants to make the gazelle suffer beforehand, so that it can fully enjoy the final kill.

You can tell I'm upset when I start waxing poetic. Seriously.

My body keeps getting heavier, and my eyes are starting to feel very drippy. I can't see, I can't hear, I can't feel, there's only me and my thoughts, me and my thoughts. It's horrid. I can only hear my own mind go around in circles, revisiting the same unanswerable questions with new ridiculous answers.

My mom thinks I was in a coma for two years, and I can't find anyone who remembers the Spirit World. Kuwabara still only sees me as Yusuke Urameshi, top punk of Sarayashiki Junior High, and he's graduated from junior high already. He's the same dumbass punk he always was. Shizuru doesn't have any psychic spirit powers, and she's afraid of me.

And Keiko…

I stumble suddenly and fall flat on my face, glued to the pavement of Ookami Street. Maybe I'll just stay glued here. What would be so wrong with that? I could just lie here, lie here, lie here, never getting up, just staying low, listening to the thoughts that won't come out, wishing I could die, dying…

"What's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong…?" I start mumbling, babbling, full of rage and hate and confusion and sadness and confusion and sadness and rage and pain and confusion and oh, it's all gone wrong, it's all wrong, there's nothing I can do anymore, there's no point in trying, not if Keiko's lost her mind too…

I raise a fist and beat it on the ground, feeling flecks of granite embed themselves into the side of my hand. I try to scream. Nothing comes. It becomes a rhythm…beat, wonder, beat, wonder, beat, wonder, beatwonderbeatwonderbeatwonder…

I can hear a horn blast in front of my body, momentarily distracting me. I raise my head a little to make eye contact with a huge blue Bud Lite truck. What I wouldn't kill to be in that truck right now. Raising my head a little further, I can see a balding driver looking down on me with an odd expression, one of mixed disgust, fear, and worry. I guess he must be confused to see a random kid in too-short green pants lying facedown in the middle of the expressway, which he is beating as though it's the pavement's fault that his life is such a mess.

Join the club.

Enjoying a moment of odd clarity, I roll over to the side of the street, cutting up my skin with all the pavement stones, my mind working furiously. As thinking has never been my strong point, it's bound not to help much. Not when it revolves around cigarettes and booze.

As I'm dragging myself on my butt to rest against a nearby building, the truck rumbles past and the driver gives me the finger. But it's what's on the other side of the street that really grabs my attention.

It's a girl, and she's staring intently at me; and it's not one of those normal stares where you just happen to slap your gaze on somebody by chance. It's like she's looking right through me. I give her a nasty look and try to look away, when I see that I can't move a muscle at all.

It's oddly familiar.

With a burst of recollection, I realize that it has to be her, the very same girl that was there when I was going to kill myself in traffic. It's gotta be her, with those blue eyes, those weird eyes. The memory comes back to me, in a hazy way. I'd been so ready to kill myself after I hadn't been able to get through to Keiko. I was so ready to throw it all away. In slow motion, I'd seen the car coming up the road, and I'd taken a step out into the street to end it all. And something made me turn my head and see that girl right next to me. And I couldn't end my life. And it wasn't like I didn't want to end my life, it was that I literally couldn't. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything.

I've never in my life been able to not do anything.

Not unless there's a demon involved, that is.

I return the girl's stare, equally as hard, scrutinizing her. She looks human enough, but she has to be a demon. She has to be the one that ripped me away from the demons and brought me here. She brought me here so she could kill me slowly, so she could destroy me inside and out.

She mouths, "What's wrong?" and then turns abruptly down a nearby alley.

Just like the first time. She froze time for me, just me, asked me what was wrong, and then she vanished.

But not this time. This time, she's not getting away.

I stand up, wincing with the pain but with a newfound purpose. I trail her, cursing my inability to sense her inevitable demon energy. I turn down the same alley, which is still packed with people. In the throng, I can't see her anywhere. Grabbing all small girls by the hair, looking into their faces, and earning yells from their mothers and fathers proves to be fruitless. I get more and more worried as I continue down the alley.

It's a dead end at the back of the alley, with only a couple hundred bags full of trash, none of them big enough for a girl to hide in. I start digging through the pile, seeing and feeling nothing but old banana peels and candy wrappers. I search for who knows how long, before cursing myself and my stupidity.

I turn to leave before I catch something out of the corner of my eye. A little dart of black. As I turn to look at it, I see nothing but old soup cans.

And I remember. I saw a shadow, a little finger of blackness, right next to the casino when I tried to go in. And when I looked, I could see nothing. Staring at the exact spot, I see it again. The shadow, flickering and waving at me in a very ominous way.

Could the girl and the shadow be the same thing? Watching, waiting, always ready to spring?

Are they both the invisible cheetah????

I edge toward the little flickering thing, tensing for whatever danger might await. I have no spirit power, so I can't win, but I have to at least know who she is before I die…

For some reason, I become acutely aware of how pinched my feet are in my shoes. I try to shake it off and get still closer.

I nearly scream when she appears out of nowhere, out of the shadow itself.

Somehow, she looks more terrifying now. Her already pale skin has turned a luminous white, so white that she's actually shining out of the darkness. And those eyes are burning so hard, right at me, staring and holding me in place. She's not, she can't be human.

I try to move, and I can't.

I see that she's preparing for a fight. Her teeth are bared, her fists are clenched, and her eyes are small electric blue slits in her face. But she's also either afraid or enraged. She's shaking all over, quivering with some emotion that I don't know.

She whispers it again, but not as a question rather than a statement.

"What's wrong."

Nothing is said for a long moment, while I stare at her eyes, her blue eyes, wondering why exactly I was so stupid to believe that she wouldn't just freeze me again.

Her girlish voice suddenly rises to a feral snarl.

"What's wrong indeed."

The alley, the town, the world around us melts into darkness.