Characters and plot belong to their rightful owners.
Vanity
Time goes by, smothering all the little cracks like plaster smoothes against rough brick.
There's a faint smell of fire in the distance and thunder rumbles a long, continuous stream of sound just above the darkened clouds. The earth is cold and dark, the grass seeming more depressing than it should; vibrant and painful against the starch and jagged of granite, row upon row as it foretells the suffering of the living and the lives of the dead; like a knife severing nerve-endings – it's painful.
The soft knocking of wooden wind chimes drift on strong currents; howling wind as it rushes by, screeching mournful melodies through ears of the yet-living.
Questions flit through the air; unasked; unanswered by a steady wall of black, twisting and churning like bitter inconsequential: thorns of ebony. They're stains against pale skin.
Death is knocking at the door.
-
"The interesting thing about death," it says, the letters looping and curving in perfect soliloquy, "-is that it's a double act." He snorts in derision, noting with clarity that it is, in fact, something that sounds like it would come from that perfectly rouged mouth.
There's a flash to his left, and he blinks himself back into reality, running a hand across his forehead and over his eyes as the reality sets in. The sound of hushed voices, muted by distance and deference, reaches his ears, and he tunes it out until it becomes just a dull buzzing in his ears.
He takes his time reading the letter, taking in every line and stroke that composes and mars the paper's white complexion. It's a dark meaning, full of cynical musing and mocking insincerity. He feels sick as the last letters catch his eye. They stick out like a sore thumb, and a lump forms deep in his throat, constricting his breathing and making him dizzy.
"I'm not sorry." It says.
He leaves the apartment building soon after, his mind taken with errant thoughts and ponderings and he doesn't realize when he's bathed in the startlingly cold November air.
"Sir, sir! What's your statement, sir?"
"What was your relationship with the involved party?"
"How do you think this will affect the surrounding community?"
"Do you plan on taking action against other such affairs?"
He doesn't register anything as he pushes through the crowd of people with cameras and microphones and notepads towards his car, the letter crushed firmly in his hand.
He wonders what it's like being all alone. Isolation must surely be a dreadful existence.
He's never the same after.
-
Images swarm his mind.
Images swarm his mind and invade his memories, making it impossible to think. He drowns the voices and thoughts and memories in a pool of liquid amber: scotch whiskey and tonic and anything else that will get him drunk enough to forget, although, he's never quite drunk enough to mute the nagging voice in the back of his head that whispers obscene, dark words to his conscience.
Night is an unwilling nightmare in which the same scene is played over and over again. There's no rest for him.
In desperation he leaves his apartment for the first time in days, unclean, unshaven and reeking of booze and depression. He visits the grave, a mad look in his eyes that frightens the other grave-goers.
"Maybe a lover?" They whisper behind his back. He ignores them and takes another swig from the bottle of whiskey he brought along just for this occasion. It's a bitter-sweet feeling, this wondrous insanity of his.
He stays overnight, slung halfway across the grave, bottle three-quarters empty on the rough, uneven ground, just beginning to show the new forms of life; small, green shoots of grass determined to spring through the ground, despite the chill in the air and the quickening of winter.
He smiles bitterly, remembering their last conversation – how she told him of how she had burned her socks because they didn't match, how she had only crunched the hard candy because it annoyed him, how the muscles in his jaw rolled when he was frustrated and the tick in his hand when he wanted to write something down, but couldn't. How he was attractive.
His eyes drifted down to the paper tied down to the front of the grave with a small pebble, decorated in smears of dirt and soil that he somehow hadn't managed to leave behind. His eyes fell to the last line, and he chocked.
"I'm not sorry." It said.
With a sobbing roar, he doubled over on the headstone, and the sky split open like a knife had sliced through the clouds. Torrents of rain came down on his prone form.
His tears mixed with the rain.
He was driven to insanity.
-
"I'm crazy." She said. There wasn't a hint of doubt in her voice, and Sesshoumaru was torn between shock and uncertainty. He opened his mouth to reply, but no words came, so he closed his mouth, tasting bitterness on his tongue.
They were silent.
Leaves danced on errant breezes, slowly drifting to the ground to rejoin their kinsmen of orange and red and brown. The sun smiled down on them, decorating the ground in patches of sundrenched yellow, tattooing her grandfather's grave a picture of alabaster and daylight.
Kagome's eyes were dull and lifeless, despite the way the smile curved her lips; sad; ironic.
"I was in love, once, you know." She declared suddenly, destroying the perfect silence.
"I know." Sesshoumaru replied, and he did know. Her mother had met with him, upon his insistence (though Kagome didn't know, and he was determined to keep it a secret from the woman), and relayed that which was not in her file to him.
A bastard and a drunk. Both had stolen her heart. Sesshoumaru pitied her – it was no wonder she was "crazy", as she put it.
"Oh." She replied distantly, pushing a lock of ebony hair behind her ear with shaking fingers. "I'm crazy." She repeated, and he twitched, crushing his molars together, waiting for her to explain.
There was a pause before she spoke again, her voice rough with expression that didn't quite reach her face. He studied her profile from the side, eyes tracing the angular nose, strong jaw and dark blue eye, framed by dark lashes, free of makeup. She was pretty without makeup.
"I was in love, once – he was rough and uncouth and had no manners to speak of, but I loved him all the same. We met at a party – he'd just broken up with his girlfriend, and I..." her voice took on a scornfully amused tone as a dry smile took her lips. "I had been dragged there by a friend – one of those ridiculous clichés that you read about but never believe. I wanted to be rebellious, you know, so I went along. He told me he was single and we hit it off real well – so well, in fact, that he proposed to me.
"Naturally-" she snuck a look at him from the corner of her eye and the side of her mouth tugged upwards in a crooked smirk, her eyes sparking with mischievous delight. "-I agreed, being in love with him and all. Momma didn't like that much, so we went off and eloped. Planning everything, though, was Hell. Finding and booking a priest to marry us wasn't as easy as we'd thought it would be. The witness, though, offered willingly enough...."
Kagome hummed softly, her sentence trailing off as she stared at her grandfather's grave.
Sesshoumaru knew what was coming. He'd heard different versions of the gruelling sketch from her friends and family. Hearing it from her, though, was a different story. Sesshoumaru found himself swept up in her tale, entranced with her voice as it wove a story through his mind like a web ready to ensnare a bug. The emotion was real enough; he felt as though it was tangible: all he had to do was reach out and touch it for it to spring to life like a character out of a book.
The wind whispered through the almost-barren trees, the branches scraping together. Krrch! Krrch! Krrch!
A crow screamed in the distance.
Kagome's voice brought his attention back to her, and the rest of the world faded around them until just the two of them remained. Him, a lonely bachelor with nothing to go home to, and her, a broken doll with no one to love her anymore.
"It was nothing fancy, the wedding – him in ripped jeans and a damn tee, and me in sweatpants and a hoodie, nothing special to speak of. I honestly loved him... if he had asked me to go to the moon for him, I would have. I didn't think I could live without him. At that time, he had become something like air to me – without him, I probably would have died. Or, at least, so I thought. In any case, it didn't seem to matter that I would have ripped out my heart and given it to him if he had so wanted, because just when he was supposed to recite his vows, he left the alter and boycotted with the witness – at the time, my best friend. I later found out that she was his ex and that they'd broken up the night of that party. Naïveté goes a long way in this world, I've found.
"Anyway, I was heartbroken by his infidelity towards me. After that, I started taking pills and drugs: anything that was offered to me, really. I was a real mess. That's probably when I first started having the hallucinations." She shrugged noncommittally, as though she had been talking about the weather rather than the events that lead to her mismanaged lifestyle and corrupted mental state.
Sesshoumaru would have snorted if it had been in his manner to do so. It was so like her to take something so devastating and turn it into something ambiguously detached and approachable, almost friendly, even.
The sun had long since started its descent and now sat low in the sky, just lingering above the horizon, shooting rays of orangey-gold colour to rub the world goodbye in lieu of goodnight before the moon hoisted itself upwards to take its place in ever vigilant watch.
The last vestiges of warmth kissed his cheek before the cool, ebbing wind replaced it with a chill more befitting to the season. It was late October. He didn't want to get caught in the late, the nights having become colder and colder over the passing days, and without a warm jacket – only having brought a sheer windbreaker – he felt the nip. Still, he stayed, too engrossed in the truth to care.
Street-post lamps flickered to life, shuttering between light and dark before finally settling on leaving pools of yellow to dot the ground and blot out the creeping shadows. Soon it would be totally dark.
Kagome didn't move.
"At first they were random," she started again. "Just fleeting images, mostly incoherent and hard to make out, but they became more and more focused as I got deeper and deeper into the underground of drug trafficking. Eventually they became clear, and I found myself in a sea of characters I never thought I'd meet in a lifetime. It was more than I could have hoped for – adventures more wild than I could believe, monsters more creative than reality, and friends more loyal than dogs." She paused, smiling secretively. Sesshoumaru felt he was out of the loop of an inside joke, but didn't comment.
"That world, whether of my own making or that relating to the drug I don't know, became my home. I spent as much time there as I could; stuffing myself with hallucinatory prescriptions until I couldn't think anymore. It was the only place I could escape to where the pain of heartache didn't reach me, and, at that time, it was true. My world. My reality." Kagome wrapped her arms around herself, looking longing. Sesshoumaru wondered if she wanted to go back.
Probably.
"The abyss sucked my soul until I couldn't think. I was captured – entranced. A well, a forest, a village, a monster, a team of good guys and bad.... A hanyou, a monk, a little fox kit, a demon slayer and a miko. I was a sister, a friend, a tutor, a healer, a mother, and... a lover." She stumbled over the word. "I was fake."
Kagome fell silent, and Sesshoumaru thought he saw a tear fall from her eye. With the failing light and her back to him, however, he couldn't be sure.
Quiet, interrupted only by the chirping of late cicadas, rolled through the graveyard, heavy and suppressing. Sesshoumaru scarcely dared to breathe, lest it snap Kagome out of her reverie and prevent her from continuing with her story. She was nothing now. Just an empty casing, revealing all of her secrets to the world.
Sesshoumaru could tell that he was long forgotten to her now. He'd keep her company until she was done, though; greedily sucking up the story she spewed to him. To her grandfather and, perhaps, herself. The story was meant for no one, and at the moment, he was nobody.
Sesshoumaru felt lonely, cold, despite her presence.
"Then I met the second love of my life. He was handsome and smart and charming and everything a man ought to be, and for some unfathomable reason, he fell in love with me. Slowly, the hallucinations faded until they were completely gone and I had stopped taking drugs and prescriptions and pills all together. He was my saving grace in that respect, luring me out of the dark and back into the light until I was a proper human being again. I went to rehab and saw a counsellor ever Tuesday and Thursday, and I got better. The depression went away and I could think and function properly again....
"I fell more and more in love with him every time we met, his chivalry swept me off my feet and won over a little more of my heart until all I lived for was that special time we talked or saw each other. He came from one of those prestigious families, y'know? A real gentleman, real strict with religion and manners, he managed to dazzle my family, and before I knew it, we were engaged and living together. He'd go to work in the morning, call precisely at twelve-ten, come home, eat supper with me, have a drink and then we'd go to bed.
"I was a fool, but I was content. Things went like that for a while, but then he ran into trouble at work, staying out later and later until sometimes he'd come creeping in at three in the morning. His charm gave way and he became testy and was constantly in a bad mood, refusing to talk to me unless it was to make demands or order me to do something. The calls stopped coming at noon and I stopped making supper for two.
"At the time, I had hoped it was just a phase – a work related thing that he'd get over soon enough and return to my side the refined, chivalrous man he was. That didn't happen. Instead, things got worse to the point that he stopped coming home: staying out all night, and when he did come home, he always smelled of booze and perfume. His moods were worse than ever.
"The first time he hit me, I managed to convince myself that it had been merely accident... that he had moved to pick something up and accidentally hit me instead. The next time he hit me, it was harder to convince myself, but not nearly as hard as it would become later on in our relationship. The bruises and cuts hurt, of course, but my 'love' was stronger than the pain and I somehow got through it – liquor played a big part, but I managed."
Kagome smiled humourlessly, tightening her hold on herself, her hands fisting into the overcoat she wore, mercilessly twisting the fabric beneath her feeble, womanly hands.
"And then it happened. He came home in a storm, drunk and out of his mind, half crazed in his binge, accusing me of things I hadn't done, saying how I was unfaithful and had betrayed him.... Something in me snapped at that and made me... so mad!" Her voice was thick with emotion, on the verge of breaking as it wobbled with self-compassion.
She inhaled unsteadily, gulping down the air audibly and swallowing once before continuing.
"I was crazy then... I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe it was the accusation of disloyalty that got to me, or maybe it was the continuous strain of mental abuse that made me snap, but God did it ever feel good. The kitchen knife was just there, glinting... begging... and I did it. I killed him. I got off when my lawyer pled insanity on my behalf. It's not on my file, but I killed him, and I don't feel regret towards my actions. As far as I'm concerned, I did myself a favour."
Sesshoumaru suddenly found her hands not so feeble. They were the hands of a woman; of a killer.
"After that, I got really involved with drugs again, despite the rehabilitation and therapy I was going through at the time. Despite our hardest attempts, I still got my hands on drugs and retreated back into my fantasies, once again returned to my little world in which good battled evil and demons and monsters were real, where I had friends. It was as if they never existed – my ex-fiancés and problems – it was just us." She fell silent again, and Sesshoumaru exhaled slowly, releasing the breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding.
That was the end.
What a desolate existence.
Sesshoumaru shifted his weight, glancing at Kagome's stiff back, at the quarter-full and waxing moon and Kagome's back again before trying to make out the figures on his watch. Nine-fifty-five.
Sesshoumaru exhaled again, pulling his coat up to his ears. Realizing just how cold his hands were – his fingers frozen and probably half blue – he rubbed them together, a futile effort to circulate blood to the poor appendages and bring warmth back into them.
He was in the midst of blowing warm air onto them when Kagome spoke again, a full ten minutes after she had fallen silent.
"You were there." She said, turning her torso half way and peering at him from the corners of her eyes. "You were there, in my hallucinations."
Sesshoumaru stilled, unsure of what to say. He had been in her hallucinations? He wondered if he had been a human or a beast, a youkai, to her eyes. "Hn. Is that so?" He asked uncertainly, amusing the thought of being a devil.
"Mmmn," she hummed in acquiescence, fully turning to face him so that her back faced the grave she had come to visit. The anniversary of her grandfather's death. One year. They'd been standing there for five hours, he calculated in his head, refusing the urge to cross his eyes and stick out his tongue. His limbs were stiff.
"You were the great and mighty Demon Lord Sesshoumaru Taishou, Prince of Dogs, son of Toga, Inu-no-Taishou, and the leader of the Generation of the Strong." She eyed him up and down slowly, and he fought the urge to shift self-consciously. "You were much more handsome as a demon, though. Much more aloof, less human. Much taller." She teased, some small part of mischievousness back in her eyes, though only a fraction of what he had seen earlier.
Sesshoumaru huffed good-naturedly, disregarding the barb by wrinkling his nose. "And the others? You mentioned other characters in you long, rambling monologue."
"Well, excuse me for answering all of your questions." She replied haughtily, turning her head away from him and crossing her arms in front of her chest. A moment later, though, she turned back.
"They were real. The hanyou-" she murmured a name, too low for him to hear. "-your deceased younger brother played his part, while, similarly, your father was 'Toga'. The others..." Kagome shrugged one shoulder carelessly. "They were random people I'd seen around, I guess. A corporate leader, a celebrity, random orphans... people like that, mostly." He sensed something deeper, but didn't push for information.
"Anyways," she said all of a sudden, drawing his eyes to her form. "It's getting late, and I'm cold, so I take my leave." Kagome turned around, clapped her hands twice and said a final prayer for her grandfather before turning to face him once more. "Goodbye, Mister Taishou." She said, her tone turning serious again – almost sad. "This is the last time we'll meet." She smiled without real cheer and corrected herself. "Well, for me, at least. Have a good life, Mister Taishou." And she walked away, leaving Sesshoumaru staring after her. "I'm not sorry." She said, but he could have been mistaken. After all, she was already far away, and he didn't have super hearing, like the mythical youkai were said to.
Sesshoumaru, too, said a prayer for the deceased man beneath the headstone and hurried out of the graveyard, yearning for a cup of coffee and pondering on what he had learned of Higurashi Kagome.
-
Flash!
Ms. Higurashi Kagome
Miss Higurashi Kagome, 24, died last night at what coroners estimate 12:00 o'clock this morning in her home, having committed suicide. Doctor Miura Aoi, Higurashi's private physician, explains that years of mental deterioration took a great toll on the young woman and eventually drove her to taking her own life. After abusing both drugs and alcohol on more than one account after seeking rehabilitation, it is widely believed that Higurashi had lost her mind to insanity. The victim was found in her own bathtub, surrounded by rose petals and electrocuted. The body has been laid to rest at Nenzuru Cemetery.
-
(So, in the end, she killed herself and drove Sesshoumaru to insanity. Well, inspiration finally struck and I got this down in one go, thank the French Toast. I probably wrote this chapter fifty times before scrapping everything and writing it another fifty times before I came up with this. Nenzuru means "to pray silently" in Japanese. Thank you for reading Vanity! – Incomprehensible)
