11: Family and Mnemosyne

Shinji Yamaoka lay in bed, back in his apartment. He cannot feel anything, every sensation a blur. He heard talking but the words fall formless and blank on his consciousness. A shadow covered him, a figure stood out of the corner of his eyes. It crouched and brought him up and with his glazed eyes he recognized the figure as Shinro. She opened his mouth and put meat into it which she helped him chew, yet he swallowed instinctively. He can barely see somebody else out on the balcony – no, more than one, two, one of them shorter than the other. Shinro laid him back down gently and put the blankets back over him. The silence engulfed him as Shinro's shadow disappearanced and the light from below blinds his aching eyes.

"You're sure he's okay?" Uea said.

"He's stable, that's all that matters."
"Okay, but...well it's not like we can help him much. Shouldn't he be in a hospital?"

"And what of us, of me, I can't have more heat on me than I already do – I'm practically smoldering as is – and you have some birds after you too."

"Birds?"
"Doves. Whatever. What I mean is that'd just bring suspicion, which neither of need."

"You're right. I just… are you sure you should be feeding him that stuff, he was stuffed with it when we found him."

"Yes, but it seems to be working on him, so it's better than nothing...you and I aren't docs or nothing so it's all I can do."

"Uh-huh… also, what of her, that corpse you brought here...it'll smell bad soon, what do you plan on doing with it?"

"She fed him his own kind...we get stronger when we eat our own, so if he feeds into that side of himself that's growing in him now, he may get better. I need to get stronger too..."

"You may lose yourself...I don't know what will happen to him."

"Me neither, but I have to try."

"All right, okay."

"You sure it's okay she's here?"

"Oshino's fine, she's used to this type of thing.

A distinct memory came to him after all this, when he had been barely aware of anything around of him, when it was all obfuscated into something more akin to dreams. He was put into the tub, the shower head came on and the water was cold, but there was warmth on his back. He felt a soft breath on his nape. Then he saw Shinro reach over and adjust the water's temperature to warm. He was naked. As was she. She washed his back, then his arms and legs, everywhere. To her, he was completely invalid, and in a way he was, so she washed him from head to toe without comment or noise. She finished then stood up and washed herself in front of him, utterly ignoring his half-open eyes that watched her wash.

When she was done she brought him out and dressed him and put him back in the bed, bringing him another piece of meat. It tasted different than he remembered, maybe it was hamburger meat, he hadn't had it in such a long time now that it was hard for him to tell – he knew, for a fact that it wasn't human flesh, the taste of that was too intense upon his memory for him to ever forget – so, what was it that she was feeding him? He didn't know. Then again, he never was one for eating anything beyond cow and the other regular meats: chicken, turkey, ham, etc. He finished the meat she brought him, having no alternative for his meal, and, truth be told, he found it rather delicious in its own way. He would not mind having it for as long as he was incapacitated.

He didn't need to look at his leg to know it was gone. Same with his hand. It was strange though, now and again, they'd harbor horrible pangs and twinges without warning and without cause. They were gone, both his arm and leg, he knew, but yet as if some sort of specter cursed him, both his missing hand and foot brought pain terribly upon him in intervals that would make him want to groan and cry, but he could do neither. Whenever this happened, he felt a pinch on his side and then everything – not just the pain – would go numb. He'd fall into the numbness and not be able to think clearly for a long while, just in a white silence that made it so his mind and memories mingled into a weird mass that was fogged by the unfeeling sensation he had.

"Thanks, Uea." Shinro said.

"No problem, consider thanks for not killing me and her."
"How'd you get your hands on morphine anyhow?"

"I have a contact in the hospital, they can give it to me every now and again. But not too frequently, otherwise they'll be boiling water."

"So, this will be the last for a while?"

"Yeah, but it should be enough for now, and plenty than enough if you're doing your little plan."

"I am."

"Who's getting more, you or him?"
"Him. He needs it more, he needs to heal."

"Right. Well, I'll be going."
"Wait. No hard feelings right? I'm sorry about what I had said to you and Oshino."

"It's all right. I understand, you got to protect your own, just like I got to protect mine. And now, since your threats are now null, I have no reason to be angry really...anticlimactic."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't want to leave her alone would you, she's still just a kid."

"A human kid. She'd probably be better off if I did die. Then some foster home could take her in and give her a good family. Humans aren't meant for our world, Shinro. Both of us aren't exactly normal. Our friends, or I guess loved ones, should be ghouls, not our prey. It puts us, and them, in lots of danger….sorry, never mind, I shouldn't be giving a sermon about this."

"It's okay, I understand. But you also understand my reasoning too right?"

"Yes...but our feelings are different about this sorta thing, you've got romantic feelings, mine are more familial, paternal. And you haven't needed to spill blood, human blood, to get yours. I did."
"I'm not judging you for that."
"Thanks. But I'm my worst judge, honestly, by my morals I should already have gotten the death-penalty. Which isn't quite as elegant as the human version. Least not nowadays. Maybe in France during The Revolution. But not now, not today."

"Okay, well, see you soon I guess. Stay in touch."

"I will. Bye."
"Bye."

Memories come unbidden to everyone, and it was no different for Uea, Mariya, and especially for Shinro. Shinro felt her past more every day. She would feed Shinji, wash him, change him, and during all this his broken body would recall her bygone tragedies unwillingly to her. Run. She remembered that word most vividly. And she did run. The word came to her regularly now, for Shinji's sorry state reminded her of the she lost everything. For years now it had become a moribund memory, but now, suddenly and without reason, the memory sparked back to life, scorching her mind and psyche with its scalding images. Mother, father. No! Death is a gift for you ghouls, you should do well to learn that, girl. Or perhaps parasite is more fitting? You must die, now. But she didn't die, of course, she was here, now, tending to Shinji as best she could.

Mariya stayed up without consent into the early mornings of tomorrow. The ceiling above her a canvass for her retrograde mind. Bodies. So many, she thought. She remembered once, after having been called to check on a house across the city, she found a family. Torn apart, not by divorce or emotional instability or any other woes that take most families in the modern day, but instead the actual physical tearing – what came to her most intensely, night by night, was the girl. You could hardly tell it was a girl, hardly tell it was human. Just the remains, just the bones and sinew and blood and marrow. All that was left was...was… The head. Yes, she saw it now, the malformed skull stretching the plaster of the ceiling as it tried to break through the room's roof, a maggot fell onto her face and she winced and looked away. The wet trail that was on her face she thought was the slime of the larva, was instead her tears.

"Annya," she said.

Mariya grabbed the pillow out from under her head and held it to her chest and ultimately her face. She fell asleep, half-smothered by the pillow.

Uea's only memory was of always being alone. She was abandoned on a thoroughfare. She was with her mother and her father at one moment, but in the next they were gone. Vanishing into the crowd. Ever since then her remembrances of her family life faded slowly and surely. Weeks passed and starvation set in, she wandered the streets without direction, drifting from one place to another. Until a kind man asked her who she was and took her into his home. He was a loner, in a meager one-story dwelling. It reeked of cigarettes, of alcohol, and of a myriad rotten victuals. The man himself smelled terrible himself. She never learned his name, she only stayed one night. She left him with his chattels, but not his life. He likely tasted terrible, but with a starved tongue, anything was magnificent. She leastways made it quick. He may as well have died in his sleep, for in his death his eyes remained shut. The kind, putrid man was the first human she had killed and she thought of him often. Was I wrong to kill you, she asked herself in bed, staring at the lines interlinking in the skin of her palm. She placed that palm onto Oshino's sleeping body, covered in several blankets; all the ones they had, Uea was fine in the cold. I've been in it so long, Oshino, it's fine, take them, I don't need them. She reflected on her past with Oshino. Murder, it lay on my mind like cinders, however the burn-scars they leave tell me nothing. Until I met you. I am wrong. Ghouls are wrong. I'm sorry, Oshino. If I should call you that...that's not your name. But that name, the one you had before, is that befitting of you now, are you the one who I met in the apartments? Or are you something else, something changed. For months you wept and mourned for your mother, the grief of bereavement so taken to you that you mayn't have been sane, the lethargy that took you. Then one day you were fine, you stopped crying. You stopped crying. You stopped feeling. You called me Mama. But without telling me why. You speak simply now, even though you spoke normally before, eloquently even. What happened to you? What have I done?

Each of them eventually succumb to sleep. The first always being Shinji. He needed it. And he got plenty. His dreams came and went, or sometimes never arrived. He'd shut his eyes to the dark and open them to the light, all in an instant. But when he did get dreams they were strange, odder than any that he had before: He dreams of everyone he knows, loved-ones, family, friends, acquaintance, etc; all of them would surround him and say how proud they were of him, of how they loved him, then each would give a hug or kiss. When they were done they'd surround him again and clap and say, "You're so strong Shinji, none of us could do what you do." Then right as their mouths shut, they'd become limp and fall and a horrid stench hit him, making him vomit. He'd hear laughter, all of their laughter in his ears, and they'd be melting then, their bones and tissues becoming blood and covering his feet then coagulating. He tried to move but the blood was like cement, and then a face looked out from the endless blood, a face familiar but blurry, and it was only at the moment just before he awoke that he recognized it: Kirika.

He awoke in a gelid sweat, bolting upright and holding his chest. He looked down and noticed that he held his chest with his missing hand... He pulled the blankets from his legs and saw that he had both now. He got up and looked around and began walking towards the bathroom when someone exited. "Hey, Shinr..." The bloodied face of Kirika looked at him with a grin, simpering as he lurched back. His leg rotted and he lost his footing, falling back onto the bed, Kirika sped towards him, arms outreached, he raised his hand but that hand rotted and fell apart as she lunged at him; the last thing he sees is her sanguine visage, mouth unhinged and maw-like, coming towards his face.

When he's finally freed of his dreams, he's not in bed. He's in the bathroom again. He felt the warmth of Shinro's breasts at his back. The warm water flowing and pattering against his head. The fear goes away but an uneasiness takes its place. Despite his fear from the nightmare he did not awake with a startle. He didn't even open his eyes. They were already open when he awoke. He didn't know if that was the right word for it, awoke. He wasn't sleeping, it felt like that at least. For even in his dreams, he could feel the film of reality impinging upon it. He wondered about this, and wanted to tell Shinro, but even though he had his face back, his tongue, his teeth – even the ones he lost from before the torture – he cannot speak, his mouth won't let him; not even a hem or hum or grunt. He was paralyzed in a way that no medicine could fix.

She put him back to bed. He shut his eyes. The numbness took him. His memory was foggy. He couldn't remember anything beyond the past few days. Only with visuals could he make out what was real, what had happened. When he saw Shinro he remembered their relationship, their friendship, how he had found her that night. In spite of his fear from that night lingering inside him, which was now more intense since the incident with Kirika, he still loved Shinro. He wanted to say it aloud, he tried to move his lips, or thought about it, thought of love, the word love, and he kept thinking about it. But it never came out, no matter how hard he tried. So he lay in silence, in the dark beneath his eyelids, hoping with every tenuous fiber of his soul that he had sweet dreams, or no dreams. Shinji Yamaoka, an insomniac, fell asleep that night without knowing that the nightmares he dreams of, were only the introduction to his experience with horror.