Warning: If you enjoy meat, and want to continue enjoying meat in the near future, note that this chapter has the potential to turn you off meat. Enjoy! :D
I am fourteen years old when I begin to regularly take supplementary vitamins. As of recently, I refuse to allow my diet to consist of more than tea, baked goodies, confectionaries, certain fruits, and sugar cubes.
I've been a vegetarian ever since I saw my first set of detailed autopsy photos. I haven't been able to eat corn since I saw the grinning skull of a teenager who had been buried underground for three years. I cannot even consider consuming pasta, especially spaghetti, after seeing the matted blonde hair of a beaten and asphyxiated seven year old girl. Cheese has the odor of something that is rotting, and a similar texture, I should imagine. Salty foods taste of tears, and bitter ones of blood, so those are off the menu as well. Certain spoons are also strangely, bloodily metallic, so I make sure that Watari buys me an extremely large supply of the good ones, just in case they ever stop being produced.
Watari has tried on numerous occasions to get the reason for my pickiness out of me, but I've also heard him and Roger conversing about the state of my mental health on numerous occasions, and I cannot afford to be sent to the insane asylum.
Sometimes, with my teenage mind, which is ever so prone to creativity and exaggeration, I wonder what would happen if I did decide to talk to Watari about my problem.
I imagine him coincidentally deciding for us to have a sit down dinner together, just as my resolve to come clean strengthens. We will be seated at the table, the lights dramatically dimmed. Watari will smile at me, then lift the mysteriously covered silver platter gleaming in the center of the table, revealing a glistening chicken.
My eyes will glint sharply to his, chin raised petulantly. "I'm a vegetarian," I will remind him flintily.
Watari will sigh and return my childish, brilliant gaze with an aged, intense one of his own. "I've had quite enough of this, L," he will declare, absolutely exasperated. "You cannot continue to so thoroughly deprive yourself of important vitamins and minerals." I will shake my head persistently, even as Watari picks up a knife, ridiculously large and shiny in this fantasy, and begins to slice into the roasted fowl.
But I will not be able to stand the sight of the razor edge cutting into the steaming tissue, still tinged with red, emotions screaming out of the incision, reminiscent of the last few seconds of terror before the grim reaper descended brutally on this innocent creature. My head will whip to the side, bangs obscuring the majority of my face as I shield my eyes from the horrific sight that is Watari blithely serving dinner.
"What is the matter with you?" he will demand, pausing in this massacre of the bird's corpse.
"Nothing," I will mumble into my shoulder, determination's knees locking and feet faltering.
"Alright then." Watari will serve the slice onto my plate and I will bravely peek out at it from behind my wispy black locks. This will, of course, turn out to be a terrible mistake, and I will be immediately assaulted by waking nightmares.
Moist lower lips quiver; enormous eyes glisten with tears, unshed and petrified; blood has rushed out of plump faces, sweet and soft; chubby digits clutch at comforting cloth, whether in the form of a security blanket, or a velveteen stuffed animal, or the nightgown of a mother, sometimes trembling as well, but other times frozen with death.
Maniacal grins stretch and crack lips closer to ears; shaking and dilated pupils seek out victims with the accuracy of a sniper rifle; gaunt skin clings to cheekbones, hollow cheeks shadowed in the barest glimmer of light; eager fingertips taste metal, in the form of a butcher knife, or perhaps a pistol, or a machete, or the chillingly clichéd chainsaw.
Mouths frantically gasp oxygen out of the air, pleading for one more moment of life, or yearning for it all to end; eyelids flutter shut, or squeeze tight to escape reality, or maybe are never given the chance to close at all; expressions will never again be allowed tranquility, and will be forever locked in a dying scream; all religions coalesce into one at the end, conflicting deities and ideals and histories failing to matter anymore, because nothing matters when you are about to die, because no one wants to die, but there's nothing anyone can do to escape death, except possibly to pray to any god, all the gods, even if they don't exist, just in the desperate hope that something will be better after this.
My gaze tears from the slab of meat up to meet Watari's, which are suddenly very worried. In my imagination, I utter this next line with the utmost gravity, which will later astound me, because at the time, I don't even consider how humorous it sounds: "I refuse to eat meat. It creates the sensation of seeing dead people."
After this, the scene always plays out differently because I cannot imagine how Watari would react if I ever told him this. If I'm in a particularly sentimental mood, we collapse into tears together and he counsels the monsters away. At other times, Watari transforms into an uncaring beast who, with Roger's assistance, locks me up in a padded room with shock treatments and a straightjacket. Even more frightening is when I imagine that Watari simply stares at me for a long moment, then blinks, adjusts his glasses, clears his throat, mumbles something about preparing something else for dinner, and nothing else changes.
Sometimes I think of this in place of sleeping. Then I wake up and go catch criminals, many of whom I can't help but notice are barely less human than I.
Author's Note: Thank you, beta chibi-hime123!
Wow. L has quite the messed up diet. I don't eat meat or corn either, after dissecting a pigeon in science class (i.e., being in the same room as other people who were dissecting a pigeon; I could barely watch, let alone do the actual dissecting). People thought I was acting absolutely ridiculous, but it was quite a traumatizing experience! D:
I have finals this week, which includes FOUR essays to write, as well as monster decks of history and biology flashcards to study, and a Calculus test that is going to confuse my pants off. Sooooo, while I will do my very very best to get chapters 12, 13, and 15 written on schedule, I cannot absolutely promise to have them done in a timely fashion. I will do my best though! --determined--
Reviews = encouragement = completed chapters :D