Chapter Two: Parasite
I was almost one-hundred percent certain - without much doubt - that the father of the baby I was stuck inside was Satan himself.
He had horns.
Freakin' horns!
They were big, brown, ram-like horns that curled over the top on both sides of his head where they spiral halfway down the slope of his cranium and prematurely stop just before hitting the spinal cord of his neck, effectively freaking me the heck out when I first laid eyes on him. The first time I saw him through the opening of these infant's eyes, I eternally screamed. Then the baby that my consciousness was stuck inside started to cry.
It was biologically impossible, anatomically inconceivable, to have horns as large and as bulking as this guy was sporting. Now, I was never a very religious person, and despite my most recent circumstances that had me stuck inside the subconscious of an infant child, I found myself earnestly believing that this man with bright eyes and a heart-warming smile that was carefully holding the aforementioned baby in a kitchen in his cradling arms, probably about to feed the kid, while cooing words of love and adoration - was undoubtedly bent on world domination.
It was the only logical explanation I could come up with in my crap-filled situation I'd somehow found myself in.
"Who's my star child sent straight from heaven? You are! You are my sweet little Veda."
The baby cried.
The crying was mostly in part due to my influence over the child's emotions. Even though the child couldn't incontrovertibly comprehend my matured emotions at a fundamental level due to little advancement in brain activity that would conspicuously come with age (obviously), she could feel the purest forms of anger, sadness, fear and happiness that emanated from me. With that said, once in a great while the baby's emotions filtered through to my own subconscious, competently eradicating my own emotions and replacing my most seasoned emotions with her innocently uncomplicated ones. Especially when the mother was around, the elation that radiated from the baby could not be trumped by anything I may have had been feeling at the time. It was too pure. But I also hadn't tried to push the child's emotions away when that feeling would encompassed the both of us. It was a feeling I could easily drown myself in and I'd allowed it to do just that whenever the occurrence came about. Which was often.
When I first came to true consciousness - and by true I mean when I regained all my memories - I was too stunned to feel much of anything. Like I had mentioned before, I was never religious. I wasn't an atheist either, I entertained the idea that there may have been an afterlife and all that jazz, but I'd never let myself think too deeply into the matter, so I'd never got past the 'if' and 'may'. If I'd died and I'd ceased to exist then so be it. However, I'd never got further than that.
Now ... now I didn't know what to think.
Was this punishment for not believing a God - a higher power? For not living a life of strict faithfulness and belief; governing myself to ritualistic observances of faith?
Was I to live the actual vocation of mortal damnation, forced to watch a life of another while residing only in the subconscious without anyone knowing I was there? No longer influencing the world around me but forever shackled and condemned to watch through the eyes of another?
I didn't know how to act or how to properly react, to the situation I was in. I was at a loss of - everything. All I could do was watch.
And watch I did.
But as the days passed, the more I started to feel.
"What did you do now, Hisoka?"
The mother's voice filtered through all the hysterical crying, and the father's concerned yet pleading face pivoted up in the direction the sweet but teasing voice came from.
The father's bottom lip jutted out, displaying an overly exaggerated pout, his pupils expanding with wryness but animated when they fell on his wife's approaching form. One thing I noticed in this world I forcibly watched from the sidelines, everything was way too exaggerated - even when it came to the actual physical features of the father and mother and the other people I'd only occasionally seen: everyone's eyes were way too big, too expressive.
They all looked like real life cartoon characters.
And, I think the father was Asian (his name certainly was Asian, but we still all spoke in English)? It was hard to tell, but his skin-tone was more of a yellow-tan to light-peach you'd see in East and Northern Asians, but his eyes were huge though slightly slanted….
...and maroon.
A dark red/purplish color that could only derive from a place far, far below the earth's surface in the very pits of hate and bloodlust and...
"I don't know what I'm doing wrong, Rose. I'm holding her exactly like Doctor Perry"-Doctor Perry was a purple haired demon, too, with sharp manic teeth that I hated with a deep rooted passion-"Instructed me too and she still cries!" the father whined, tears sticking to the corner of his eyes. His eyes sought mine/the babies with a plea for mercy, mock tears streaming down his face.
Like I said: over exaggerated and a complete and utter farce.
A slender pale hand came into view that took hold of the father's shoulder, and behind his shoulder popped the mother as she looked down at the child and me with her warm, hazel eyes that always had me pausing in my endless internal thoughts. That familiar warmth enveloped me and the child giggled in unadulterated happiness that I soaked in like a dry sponge.
"See, she's laughing. You're just being a big baby." She pinched the father's cheek making him pout even more. The mother walked around his side so she could peer down at her child while still maintaining a grip on the father's shoulder. Then, she laid her head against his shoulder and ran her hand behind his back to his other side in a half hug.
"She's so perfect," the mother sighed her adoration, her eyes the ever glowing honey-dew I always see her don when looking upon her child.
And me.
This woman was beautiful, through and through.
She must have been tricked to marry this demon.
"So perfect that she hates her low-life father," the father, Hisoka, pouted yet again, jutting his lip out in his over exaggeration of a sullen look.
What a princess.
How does Rose not see that this thing was a total fake!
"You're not 'low-life', idiot," the mother, Rose, teased while pinching his nose. "Stop saying that, especially in front of the baby." So said the woman who called her husband an idiot in front of said daughter.
She smoothed her pinching hand over his chest, flattening the wrinkles out of his blue collared shirt. "Keep it up and her first words will be 'low-life'."
"Then why else would she cry every time I hold her without you around? It's like she scared of me or something."
Understatement of the year goes to: Hisoka, the wretched father-demon!
Rose reached up with her pinching hand and stroked the little scruff on Hisoka's chin while leaning forward to run her cheek against that very scruff. "Yes, you're so scary, you'd make for an excellent villain, honey."
"That's not very nice, even if you are playing around." His face suddenly became rather serious, something I never seen him wear before and it had me a little surprised, to say the least. So much so that I reigned in the difference with a critical eye. "You know how I feel about that."
And what was 'that' he was speaking of? He'd never mentioned a 'that' the two months of my true consciousness.
Rose turned her head and pecked his cheek, both in comfort and a request for forgiveness. "But honey, your ravishing skills could-" She continued that sentence by whispering into his ear and Hisoka's serious frown turned to a wicked grin instantaneously.
I internally blushed at the implications and the baby grew deathly silent, watching the exchange with innocent, unschooled eyes..
"Well," Hisoka replied with smugness in his tone that had me slightly mortified in what was to come, "in that case go ahead and call me a villain all you want." He let out a small laugh then continued a little more quietly, probably taking into account that he was holding his daughter and what he was about to speak was something no child should hear from their parents, and that included me, "But only in the bedroom and only while I'm-"
Rose hit him hard in the chest while laughing, much to my thankful embarrassed horror at hearing that. "Not in front of Veda!"
Hisoka snorted. "Not like she can understand me, we can talk about sex all we want and-"
Another smack, but this time harder. "Stop it! I don't want her to catch any of your weird perverted tendencies!"
"Perverted? You're the one who who mentioned the bedroom first!"
"But I was quiet about it!"
I watched the exchange with amusement, albeit with hesitation about hearing anymore bedroom talk, watching as Rose showered her husband with playful affection and how Hisoka returned with just as much fervor. In its own way, seeing this was heartwarming. It made my bleak existence a little more meaningful; it was a welcoming distraction.
Even if Hisoka was most likely the deceiver of humans and meant to bring us all astray to eternal damnation (much worse than what I was going through) - it was still a rather heartwarming sight, even if it was a mockery of the real thing.
And it was all so familiar.
Jason.
My last moments I remembered before I found myself in this strange world was with Jason. Those last few instances that I could still remember I would never forgot.
How could I forget? He did ask me to marry him that very night…
The moonless sky sparkled with an array of stars that lite up the night sky like motionless fireworks. The constant flickering of the stars had me believing in my younger years that they were dancing; showing off to anyone who had the pleasure to look upon them in their nightly ventures.
A meteorite shower was predicted to hit the earth's atmosphere that night and any time a streak of a shooting star blinked across the night sky, the hand holding my trembling fingers squeezed lightly, reminding me time and time again that I wasn't alone.
That I was never going to be alone ever again.
I couldn't remember ever being this happy before.
When another shooting star streaked across the sky I let out a sigh of comfort, smiling at how perfect I felt at that very moment.
I felt the blankets shift underneath me and I looked to the right to see the man I loved on his side, staring at me with a gentle smile on his cleanly shaved face. His blue eyes dance with mirth as he regarded me with a smile that had me returning the gesture with just as much enthusiasm. "Tell me, Lily, what are you thinking right now?" When I opened my mouth to speak, he gently ran his large hand over my cheek and slid his thumb over my lips before I could say a single word. "The truth, Lill. I want to know what's truly on your mind."
He pushed his thumb against my lips, flattening them and wetting his pad before he slid it away and laid it flat against the curve of my chin.
He knew me so well.
My smile warmed as I turned a little so I was halfway facing him, now lying on my trembling arm. "Nothing special," I teased. "Just thinking about how perfect everything is." And it was the truth. He made me feel loved. He made me feel-
"I feel at home," I admitted. "I don't want this moment to end. I"-I wetted my lips, looking straight into his baby-blues so he could see what I was about to say was indeed the truth; was my very heart speaking for me. "I love you, Jason." Tears of my own happiness sprang to my eyes, leaving a trail of the shared joy he brought into my life that I would forever be indebted for. "You are my villa, Jason."
Those very words meant the world to me, and if I said that to anyone else it would sound outlandishly ridiculous, but I knew Jason would get what I was trying to convey. He always had a knack for understanding my most comical ways of phrasing my true feelings for him or at any given situation, really.
After everything I'd been through, I'd never spoke words truer than what I had just spoken then.
I had a hard time admitting how I truly felt in most circumstances, even to this man that I loved dearly. My - mother was forced to put me up for adoption at a young age and I grew up under the system until I'd turned eighteen, so when you hardly interacted with grown-ups that had more stable emotions while growing up, your own emotions become stumped. Unlike most kids that grew up under the same lifestyle as me, I didn't resort to drugs or alcohol to fill in that gap of loneliness and to dull my own self resentment. I'd sought to better my education and put all my time and energy into bettering my life and making goals I knew I could accomplish if I'd just put a little bit of that elbow grease most adults talked about in their retirement years.
Growing up under the system, you didn't have a lot of free rain of expressing how you truly felt, so when I'd accepted to be this man's girlfriend, I'd held great trepidation inside myself as well as my heart.
To put it simply: I was afraid.
I was afraid that I wasn't capable of giving the love and devotion that made up a healthy relationship. I was frightened that my own self-doubts and insecurities would push Jason away after I'd grown to love him, leaving me alone to dwell on the what-ifs after all was said and done.
I'd seen so many of my friends fall into that rhythm of what-ifs that I'd learned from their own mistakes and made sure that I wouldn't succumb to the same fate.
But when push came to shove, or the undeniable force of never giving up that was now my boyfriend, I'd finally said yes. And what an adventure it had been since then. He'd made sure that I knew how deeply he'd cared for me, and he'd gave me time to grow accustomed to the new lifestyle he'd presented me with. Soon enough, with every loving new obstacle he had me endure, it no longer came as a surprise to me. I'd easily grew accustomed to the new lifestyle only he could have ever had shown me and it'd only made me love him even more with each passing day.
His smile only showed the love I held deep in my heart with each passing day and minute for this man. "I've waited a long time for you to say that," he, himself, admitted, before I felt him shift, lifting his right hand to show me a little black box he now held between our bodies. "And now that you admitted to the feelings I've harbored for so long I can finally ask you this one simple question, Lily"-he opened the box, and inside the velvet clad box held a single diamond ring atop of a beautiful platinum band-"Will you marry me?"
I didn't even hesitate when I answered him with fresh tears streaming down my face. "Of course I will, Jason Thompson!"
And then we made love under the shining, shooting stars and that night I will forever remember it being the happiest night I would ever endure.
But after that… well… I was with that… thing… That thing I thought was the galaxy itself and its entirety.
I thought a lot about what that thing said to me. I am your novelist. My characters - intertwined by fate and purpose - you are my vessel.
You are my vessel.
My vessel.
...
He was watching me.
Or he was inside my own subconscious like how I was inside the child's. Watching. Waiting. Feeling everything that I felt. Hearing everything that I was thinking.
Judging my every thought.
A subconscious inside a subconscious.
If that were true, this was one messed up version of Inception. Was my spinning top endlessly spinning? Unable to break free and send me back to the reality I'd once come from? Back to Jason...
Or was this all just a dream? An endless loop that I would eventually break free and would simply just wake up?
That thought alone was tantalizing, but I knew I was only trying to fool myself. To make my unendurable reality more bearable.
Or maybe this was my own version of King Sisyphus most maddening eternal punishment, to endlessly watch in the shadows of another life and when the tantalizing hope of escape would come to the surface, be pushed further into my tunnel to stand watch over another life, unable to do anything but observe for all of the years this life would live.
And once she dies, what then?
If this life I resided in died - would I resume my life back with Jason? Or would I move on to another subconscious, forever intertwined with rebirth into a new life.
And then there was another question I only asked myself once, but when the thought arises, it scared me so much so that the child started to cry even while the mother held her in her arms. Not even the warmth helped in the momentary weakness that beseeched me as well as the child herself.
Why did I accept this reality?
Other than the utter sadness that I probably won't see Jason ever again, why didn't I feel crushed? Feel an all consuming hatred for the life I was now forced to undergo for however long some messed up deity wanted me to endure?
Or is this what people called being in shock?
I did not hold any resentment to the child or to the parents that loved that child and brought her, and subsequently me, into this world. I did not begrudge that thing that left me in that tunnel when he dismissed me into a void of nothingness. I did not care that I couldn't feel any part of my body nor anything like a gentle touch or the soft caress of a breeze other than the pleasing warmth the mother resonated when she held her little girl.
I just didn't care.
Or I was in too much shock to fathom a care.
At the time, I couldn't comprehend what that said about my character.
So, I stopped thinking about the whys and consequently wondering about my sanity with a bit of hysteria and focused on the present reality instead, effectively distracting my wandering thoughts before irrational delirium became a relevant problem.
And watched I did.
A week later, I discovered more about this world than what I ever thought was humanly possible, and it shed a new light on the father of this child I subconsciously knew was the truth but never entertained the thought due to my own irrational fear. To say I was ever frightened of him had me feeling a tad bit of shame and embarrassment that I instinctively thought the worst of someone based on looks alone.
I was wrong; I'll admit that.
This was the first time I was ever on a walk outside the house that didn't involve being hurriedly strapped into a car seat and taken to that weirdo doctor! I was actually going for a walk - or push since this kid wasn't close to being a one-year-old yet and walking wasn't even an option when this kid couldn't even drag her own butt across the ground as of yet.
So, being pushed in a stroller was the next big thing! Granted, my excitement was a little overly-exaggerated considering that going for a walk wasn't anything mind-boggling, but when you'd been cooped up inside a house with overbearing parents while in my position, going out for the first time in over two months was an achievement that had my nerves burning with enthused incitement.
Of course, the parents fussed over if I- I mean the kid - should wear a jacket or not considering there was a breeze outside and were tentatively wondering if the kid would get cold or not. Caring parents. All I could say about that. But after Hisoka finally tightened the last strap around the pudgy body of the infant, he smiled at her and cooed at her bubble-making.
"Are you making bubbles, my sweet little Veda?" When the infant continued to make even more bubbles in response, he gushed even more that I was now drowning in his ever endearing fatherly nature. He reached inside the stroller and gently pinched his kids' cheeks, giving me a clear view on his black punisher shirt.
So, comics existed in this world?
"You're so adorable I could just gobble you up!"
Please don't. Oh, please God don't...
"Is she all set?"
And the mother to the rescue!
"She sure is! Come look at how cute she looks in her cute little Barney jacket."
Wait, there was a Barney in this world, too!?
My mother head popped into view, her golden locks falling down her face and near the kid's little feet and over her blue sweater clad shoulder that only accented her beautiful blonde hair. The child instantly giggled and I easily soaked in the warmth the mom emitted.
Both parents gushed at how cute their kid was, once again congratulating each other on how perfect they made her and just how perfect she was in general. You know, the usual parent talk.
To tell you the truth, there was only so much gushing I could handle, and I was pretty sure my bucket was almost full of the sticky, gooey substance and was on the brink of overflowing.
Finally, we were off, after they checked my straps for the fifteenth time before leaving.
The father pushed me and the mother walked by his side while holding tightly to his arm, and with them walking in the back, I had a grandiose view of everything that came my way with no limitations.
And what a grandiose view it was.
The baby screamed when the first kid that walked past had menacing dark bat wings that had me balking in fear.
And when another walked past my stroller and had an actual fish head.
You read that right: he had an actual head that looked exactly like a fish - carp, to be specific.
The mother would try to calm me down by walking backward in front of the stroller, and it worked for a good amount of time that she would resume walking next to the father behind the stroller and out of my view, but then something else would freak me out and the kid would start to scream again...
"Maybe we should go back," Rose suggested.
I tried to agree with her but all the kid did was fart.
The only logical explanation of this world was that I somehow wound up in the future where hell now walked the earth...
"But we just got started? Just give her a little time, she's just not used to seeing all these new faces."
"It's all these new faces that has me worried. Have you noticed that she only cries when the ones with physical Quirks walks into her view."
...What's a quirk?
Hisoka paused. "You're right." He finally realized after a beat. "Maybe that's why she's so scared of me? She's scared of my horns?"
"Probably."
Wow. Savage.
I was still having a hard time understanding what a Quirk was. Could they not be so vague, please?
"That hurts, Rose. That really hurts."
She laughed softly. "She doesn't understand what she's seeing, Hisoka, she's only a baby. You're over thinking things again. You need to remember that I had her in my stomach for nine months and in those nine months she recognized my voice even before birth. And when she finally came into this world and seen me for the first time, she naturally latched onto me. The way I look, even if it's a little blurry, and to the way I smell. She also probably associates me to her feedings, too." She chuckled at that. "Her instincts are purely juvenile, when she grows older she'll love you just as much as I do."
"But I don't want to wait till she's older!" Hisoka whined, like usual. "I want her to love me now!"
Rose giggled again at Hisoka's expense, probably resulting in another overly abundant pout from him. "Give her time. She will. You just have to trust me."
There was a slight pause before Hisoka said, "Are you sure it isn't my horns?"
"I'm absolutely positive."
Positively wrong.
I guess that old saying about moms always being right wasn't, well, right.
But, how would she know any better? I mean, it probably wasn't common that their child harbored a soul from another universe after all.
Or maybe it was. Maybe everyone had someone like me inside them?
Well, that was a creepy thought.
"Besides," Rose continued, "even if she was scared of your horns she'll have one rude awakening in a year or so." She chuckled.
"What do you mean?"
"You haven't noticed?"
"Noticed what?"
We stopped moving and Rose came into view to the right of me with Hisoka following soon after on the left. Rose reached forward and swept-what I assumed-the baby bangs away from her forehead.
"See." Rose smiled while retracting her hand, giving me the view of her glorious motherly smile with the father standing next to her, his hand on his knees and was giving me his usual confused stupefied look. "She has her father's horns, too."
The father's eyes grew wide and then the baby started to scream.
She was screaming because I was projecting my own horrified fear onto her with no control on my part.
I was the antichrist…
Oh God, Oh God, OHMIGOSH!
"Shh, honey, it's okay, you're okay," Rose cooed as she stroked the baby's left cheek, showcasing her motherly smile once again. It started to work when the baby cries died down, and all that was left was the warmth from the mother and a couple of snotty sniffles.
"She has snot running down her chin," Hisoka drawled, staring at the snot as it made its way down. "You should, uh, probably clean that up."
And out of the mothers pocket, she pulled out a small rag and handed it to Hisoka. "Here you go, sweety."
I'm the antichrist!?
"What? No way!" A look of disgust crossed his face as he stood up at his full height with his arms crossed. "We agreed that I wouldn't have to deal with her boogers unless I absolutely needed to!"
The mother sighed in clear exasperation, her face showing mock annoyance. "You're such a baby sometimes. It's your daughter's boogers, they contain the same gooey substance yours does, nothing new or more diabolical than your own."
"They're boogers, Rose. Mucus mixed with everything that she breaths in through the air, and then more mucus. And then some more mucus after that. Green mucus. Green disgusting mucus. Why do babies boogers have to be so… so… green?"
I was still too horrified to comprehend that Satan was troubled by boogers, apparently.
Rose finally reached into the stroller and whipped up the mucus her kid managed to get all over her. "We get it already: you don't like boogers. You're such a baby sometimes, you know that? It shouldn't matter when it comes to your child, Hisoka."
"It does matter. Mucus matters. Green, disgusting mucus matters, Rose."
"Baby."
The father didn't reply with a pout like he normally would, but I didn't really notice at that moment because I was having an eternal screaming conniption with the revelation that I'd have to witness this kid devouring the souls of the living when she grew older...
"All set. Good as new," Rose cooed. She reached her head into the stroller and kissed her child's nose before retreating back out of the stroller with her warm, motherly smile. When she turned back to her husband, she finally noticed he had his arms still crossed and was staring at the ground with an intense look in his maroon eyes.
"Hisoka? Is there anything wrong?'
The father blinked out of his reverie and looked back up at his wife before giving a slow, yet small, smile. "It's nothing. Just thinking."
"Penny for your thoughts? And don't say it's nothing again. I know when something is bothering you, Hisoka. Just tell me what it is." She turned her mother charms on dear-old father.
Hisoka's eyes traveled to his kids, a flash of wistful resignation crossing through his maroon irises.
"I was kind of hoping she wouldn't get my Quirk."
I perked up when he said quirk. What did that mean?
"And what quirk were you hoping she'd get?"
The father shrugged. "Her own, I guess? A cool Quirk. One where she can become an awesome Hero with? ...I dunno." He shrugged again, then he turned his head and scanned his eyes away from his wife and kid as a look of thoughtful contempt overtook his features. "Maybe she could have gotten her great grandmother's Quirk."
He wasn't be specific on which side he was speaking of, but based on how Rose reacted, I could easily take a gander.
The mother visibly stiffened, her shoulder tensing from the verbal confession the father bestowed upon her. From both of their reactions, this line of thought had a troubled backstory that both parties were aware of, despite one being the actual barrier of said backstory-I was betting on Rose being the barrier-and it wasn't a story that could be easily swallowed in one sitting.
"That Quirk," she spoke slowly, accentuating each word with careful ease as if she was talking to a child that had done something terrible, "drove my grandmother to insanity. Why would you"-her hand flew up to her forehead where she laid it palm down in a sign of sudden distress-"why would you want your only daughter to go through the same torment that ultimately drove my grandmother to her death?" Rose sounded utterly horrified at the prospect that her husband would wish this Quirk thing upon his only daughter, something that even had me shocked into complete bewildered silence as I watched the spectacle continue.
I was too dumbfounded to make even one rational thought, to dissect what was being said with a critical mind.
My mind was momentarily overloaded with all the new information suddenly thwarted on my unexpecting mind that I almost didn't catch the next sequence of their conversation.
"That's because she didn't seek any counseling for her Quirk," the father reasoned, now staring at Rose with a analytical eye. "If she had someone guiding her I bet-"
"No!" Rose bellowed, making a couple of kids look in their general direction from the sudden outburst. It even had me flinching from the intensity of it. "She's perfect the way she is, Hisoka! Having your Quirk is a blessing. Why would you want our daughter to become a hero and to have a Quirk like my grandmothers that could potentially lead to her going insane? Just like grandma? Why would you wish that upon your own daughter!? You saw how grandma was before she passed! She was insane; talking nonsense and threatening anyone who came near her, even me! The granddaughter she loved with all her heart when she was still sane! Why would you wish that, Hisoka? What are you-"
Before she could finish her distraught tirade, Hisoka had his arm around her, holding her close to his chest as she let out a strangled sob. She was crying, and to hear her let out small whimpers of distress left me speechless beyond compare. I didn't know what to think.
"Shh, it's okay Rose, sweety, it's okay. I'm sorry, so, so sorry," the father beseeched, the emotional toll of her outburst clearly heard in his softly spoken words. "I wasn't thinking. I know and am sorry. I won't mention it again. I swear. It won't happen again. I didn't mean to sound so heartless."
I could only see a side view of their position, and at the angle of the stroller I had a hard time making out the father's face, but Rose's eyes, I could see tears streaming down her cheeks as she clutched to Hisoka, easily forgiving him for his earlier confession. To see such an emotional response from the two had me coming out of my earlier reverie as I watched the two hold each other with such passion and emotion.
To say that I was finally seeing the bigger picture was an understatement.
I still couldn't fully grasp what they meant by a Quirk, but I was starting to understand the fundamentals behind the word. From what I could gander, a Quirk was an extra something someone had. From what Rose said earlier about the child being afraid of physical Quirks, it was easier for me to deduce that Quirks were something extra this world had against my own, like extra abilities or something along those lines.
And that my father had a Quirk that gave him horns and maroon eyes? Which made me take back my earlier statement-to a certain degree-that the father was actually Satan bent on world domination, but a father who had a Quirk that gave him the appearance of evil incarnate itself.
...okay, now I felt bad for making the baby cry every time he came within the vicinity of what I could see. No loving father deserved that treatment I forced onto him from his own baby girl. But could I really blame myself for the way I acted? Or was I being selfish for trying to rectify my subtly horrendous actions in a way that would only make my psych feel better by allowing my pride to take a substantial hit?
I should have guessed as much, however, when I kept happening upon these unusual people. Instead, I thought the worst. I wasn't one-hundred percent sure that I was right in the first place, but hearing Rose's and Hisoka's conversation did make sense, to a certain extent; or I was just trying to make an excuse again by finding any reasoning to shed a mending light on my otherwise bleak and selfish thought process that resulted in a temporary anguish for someone not deserving of such treatment.
I felt like a little monster. And for the first time since my true consciousness, I truly felt like a parasite.
Author's Note: 5 reviews, 7 favs, and 24 alerts!
I want to thank animagirl, 9thDimen, Eneflin7, SassySizzleMonster, and rhynnablue for the reviews that made me work on this chapter and get it to you as quickly as I possibly could!