Author's note: Sorry about the confusion. When my main character is confused and is the narrator, I suppose it's pretty hard to avoid confusing the reader as well...

9

The old apartment my mother and I used to share hadn't changed from the day she had died. The dishes from dinner the night before still sat in the sink, her bed had been left unmade, its blue sheets that I still used back to their usual dark navy vibrancy. Though how I could see her bed and still stand in the living room should have been impossible. There was a wall in-between me and it. And yet see it I could, along with my pink, My Little Pony comforter and a slew of stuffed animals. Then my eyes would flicker, just like when they seemed to shift while I was looking at Gene, and instead of our bedroom, I looked at the old fat tube TV. The glass coffee table framed with chipped brass legs. The old green couch.

I stepped around the corner to see the room again, only to find another door across from it. I opened it, expecting to find the closet, but instead found an entire other room. I hesitated, looking at the other two doors which were open enough for me to see the bathroom and bedroom, then stepped through.

It had the same stained, old baby blue carpet that needed to be replaced. Blinds covered the window, painting the room in stripes of sunlight.

I made it out as I focused on its bits. There was a short leather couch. A brown and black dressed full-sized bed. A tall, heavy wood dresser, one that looked as though it came from the era when furniture was made to last lifetimes rather than the next few years.

"Oliver?" Even as I spoke his name, I could make out the tribal African masks on the walls. I thought I could smell his leathery musk.

He lives with us? In our closet? Our…really big closet…that had grown a window.

"Mai."

The sound of the voice made my heart jump. I twisted around.

Takigawa stood in the doorway, his face tragically long.

"Why would you lie?" he whispered.

But before I could think of what to say, or even remember what he was talking about, he slunk back into a darkness that had encroached on the rest of the hall.

I followed after him, driven by the need to explain, what, I didn't quite have a grasp on.

Just to find myself standing once more in the living room with the green couch, which had grown to curl around the wall like a massive multi-sectional beast. The tube TV had shrunk.

And Chance leaned against the wall next to the front door.

"Are you ready?" he asked, giving me his wide, beautiful smile—the one that made his brown eyes glow and spoke of the beautiful man he'd be once he grew into those lanky limbs.

"To face the end," he said.

I blinked and his face seemed to age, to change, but then I blinked again and it was the same broad, bright smile.

And he lifted a black handgun. The same one I had used to save him. Professor Davis's gun.

Fear, as I had never known, froze my insides as painful as the worst brain freeze and knives.

I lifted up my hands, but the fear closed off my throat with an iron fist.

"Someone seeks to judge you," he said, cocking it. The click sounded like thunder. "They want to see the true you."

"Are you honest?" Takigawa sat up from a corner of the elongated couch I had somehow missed. The tiny tube TV must have hidden him.

"Are you friendly?" Chance straightened from the wall. "Are you good?"

A gong came from the kitchen, and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the sink tip down from the counter to spill the dirty dishes onto the old linoleum. Mismatched chinaware crashed against forks and knives.

The ivory walls darkened to a congealed light brown, turning the light from the living room window to a sickly yellow.

Why were they doing this? Chance? Takigawa? Why them?

But then I knew. Because I had broken them. On looking more closely, their faces transformed. Chance's broad white smile, which had always been so friendly, turned to a painful grimace beneath too large dark eyes. Takigawa's tragic expression grew to a ghoulish mask, the groves around the corner of his mouth cutting out past his jawline, his eyes narrowing.

Pow. Lightning, thunder, bursting through my chest. I stumbled back and onto my knees, blood pouring from the new hole between my breasts.

I didn't expect the pain, and yet, there it was, skyrocketing with my frantic heartbeat and pouring out with the blood onto the baby blue carpet.

"That stain will be hard to get out," said Chance, his converse sneakers appearing in my vision. "Your mama doesn't have the money to deal with it."

"This place's owners will get angry," said Takigawa, and I saw his brown shoes in my vision as well. He had crossed the living room like a thought.

The hard end of the pistol pressed against my head.

"Are you lonely?" asked Chance. "Are you strong?"

My arm swung up, knocking the pistol aside a breath before it let loose another world-shattering pang. Darkness reached out from the brown walls and broken kitchen for me, followed by the warped mask of Takigawa and the lengthening smile of Chance. I backtracked, but slowly, as my limbs grew heavier and heavier from blood loss. My entire front had become painted with scarlet.

I twisted about, stumbled, fell, and settled for crawling back towards the rooms. I had three choices—mine and my mother's bedroom, the bathroom, or Naru's room?

With an agonizing amount of effort, I lunged towards Naru's room and kicked his door shut behind me. I moved to lock it, but my body had run out and the darkness encroached ever closer, the tendrils of black wearing the African tribal masks from Naru's walls. They hovered over me, unreadable.

I sucked in a breath and listen to the air suck and smack against the hole in my chest.

"Too bad…he's not here…" they whispered.

"Lonely…" echoed Takigawa's voice from the other side of the door. "Through her own fault."

"That's not very strong," said Chance's. "She'll bleed out any second now and then we can take her. I asked her if she was ready."

"Not very honest," said Takigawa. "So, not very good, in the end."

"Doesn't really matter if she's friendly at this point."

I couldn't move at all. It was a complete wonder that I could see or think at all. I knew I was dying. I knew I was dead. The only thing I waited, for now, was the shift, the transition, to the other side. Tears coursed down my face as I thought of the man who this room had been made for, if I could still see it. I had wanted more mornings waking up to have breakfast with him. I had wanted to see what it would be like to make a home with him filled with people who loved me. I had wanted to try out one of those twenty things to make his ears change color during class. Such an unshakeable man looked irreproachably beautiful when embarrassed.

Something blue streaked down from way up high in the blackness. It fell down to me, reaching with hands I could only make out as light. As it came upon me, more of the figure became clear, but I didn't recognize the young man who landed beside me without so much as a flinch of his knees. It was as though he hadn't landed at all, but just appeared. All I knew was that his face looked so odd to me without a smile. His must have filled the whole room…I had seen it, once, maybe?

"Mai, hold on," he said, his voice like a whisper from a distance, yet each word reaching straight to my core.

I looked at him, drinking in the kind face. His presence warmed my dying body. Yes. I had been lonely.

He had black hair like him. Like my love.

Calmed by the light he shed on me, the iron claws of fear let loose around my throat and I tried to reach out a hand to him.

"Are you taking me?" I asked.

"It isn't your time," his frown was impossibly fierce for such a warm presence. "Someone is trying to bring you here before it, and to darkness and misery. They're trying to drag you to where they are in hell."

"Hell exists?"

He nodded and tapped the side of his head. "It's all about perception. Hell is a state of being, Mai. Not a place."

And with those words, it came back to me in a rush that made my flat, motionless and bloodless chest suck up in sudden energy.

"Gene!"

Finally, he smiled, and I saw him. I saw him. But he looked completely different from when I had seen him before. He didn't look like Naru at all, though it was obvious they were related. Even as I thought this, I tried to pick out what I thought so, and couldn't. It was still obvious they were twins, and yet the boy I looked at could have never passed off to be Naru, at least, to me.

"It's working," he said. "You remembered. Come on, now, listen. You should hear him."

His warm hands slipped under me and sat me up with ease. The hole in my chest didn't flow, only oozed. There wasn't much blood left in me.

But Gene had slipped about me, propping me against his chest and wrapping his warm arms around me.

I listened hard. I could hear a murmuring, but from where, I couldn't tell.

"Gene," I breathed, blinking up into the blackness kept back by his light. "Why are you here? Why do you talk to me? You…you don't know me."

"Ah, but I do," his thumb brushed down my cheek. "Didn't I tell you I wouldn't abandon my family?"

My stomach clenched. "Oh no, don't tell me we're secretly related."

He laughed out loud at that.

"Never fear, Mai dear. Noll is perfectly legal to marry. No," his thumb brushed me again. "I just know. There's no one else in this world Oliver would open his heart to then you. I can already see it in him, in his intentions. You're as good as my sister already."

Warmth, hot like the fire Naru breathed into me with his kiss, flooded through my being.

The murmuring had grown louder. I could make out voices.

"There he is now," he leaned me back, slowly and ever gently. "Father's coming for you. It's okay, now."

A light was coming down from where Gene had come from, far above.

I bit my lip and shivered, missing his warmth. A dying body was awfully cold.

"But I hurt people," I pushed out. "I'm not good. I'm not…happy."

"And you are deeply loved all the same." His warm fingers brushed around my face and through my hair with a tenderness I had only felt in a memory I couldn't quite catch. Somewhere long ago, when I was still so small and treated so preciously.

The darkness shrunk away. The African masks, which had been fading while watching, fully turned away now, shying from the light. With it came warmth that scared the remaining pain throbbing in my chest.

"You are loved," Gene continued to murmur. "You are cherished. You are strong. You are precious."

Each word brought a new strength to my limbs. The whistle in my chest vanished. New breath filled my limbs and the light grew ever brighter.

"You are good."

My eyelids flew open. I hissed and raised a hand to the light shining in my face, even as feeling returned to my body.

"Mai!"

Squinting, I made out Naru's face, pale to the point of gray compared to the lightning-like visage of his brother. My eyes adjusted and I saw his blue eyes shivering on my face, along with the worried frown of Father John Brown.

"Naru?" I croaked. Then shivered. "Damn, it's cold."

The next thing I knew I had been yanked up and into his arms. My legs fell off what I quickly found was a church pew and would have fallen knee first, except Naru's arms around my torso kept me upright.

He pressed his face into the curve of my neck.

I gasped as several bones cracked. "Ack! Prof! Prof, slow down! What's going on? What—"

"You were cursed, Mai," said Father Brown, who had ducked around Naru to meet my face from behind him, a hand on my head, his other on Naru's back. His freckles stood out like flecks of chocolate against his pale skin. He didn't look much better than Naru had. "I've seen nothing like it. I-I'd only heard stories…"

Now that I thought about it, my forehead did feel suspiciously wet, and I couldn't recall having ever put on a necklace, especially one that would dig into my breastbone this bad while being hugged. Owe.

But as Naru took a slow, ragged breath, I couldn't find it in myself to pull away, no matter how uncomfortable it was. So I took the time to steady myself by taking in the familiar surroundings of the city chapel where Father Brown presided. There was something infinitely calming about the sweeping stone arches and the angel painted ceilings.

"I…I didn't do anything, uh, super wacko…did I?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know all the details—"

"Stop," cut in Naru. "She doesn't need to know."

There was something. "Um, I kinda do? Student of the freaky, victim of said curse, my body."

"Let me rephrase myself," he pulled back, making me shiver from the onrush of cold. His eyes shining, and his lips thin. "You don't want to know."

I blinked. Shivered. "I didn't try to ninja rape you, did I?"

Father Brown laughed, but Naru did not. He didn't even try to smile.