~* Darkness Rising, Silence Falls *~
A Digimon 02 Fanfic by Bandit, ©2000
Chapter 3- Darkness Deepens, Never Wake A Sleepwalker
~*~*~*~
"Whew, am I glad that day's over!" Sora exclaimed, as she and Mimi slammed the door to the Takenouchi's apartment and dropped their backpacks on the floor. "Spring break, here I come!"
"Oh, yeah!" Mimi agreed, flopping onto the couch. "For the next week I am taking turns vegging out and hitting the town, dressed to kill. How 'bout you?"
"Sounds good to me!" Sora laughed, grabbing the remote and joining her best friend. "Except, there is no way you are making me wear pink. That clear?"
"Clear as a bell," Mimi said with a devilish grin, sounding the very opposite of her crest. Sora pretended to ward her off with crossed fingers, scooting away from her. Mimi scowled and threw a couch pillow at her friend, who reciprocated with the bean-bag chair lying next to the sofa. Mimi yelped and clawed it off of herself, throwing it to the floor. "Yikes! That thing stinks!"
Sora grinned. "The cat sleeps on it."
"Aaaghhh!" Mimi wailed, trying to wipe cat hair off of her shirt and failing miserably. Suddenly, she frowned. "What cat?"
Sora chuckled and clapped her hands. "Kichi! C'mere, girl!"
A small gray-and-black-striped tabby face peeked out from under a chair. Mimi's moaning turned to squealing as she went into the infamous I-See-A-Cute-Thing Mode that girls like her are so well known for.
"OhmygoshohmygoshohmyGOSH! Sora, you did not tell me you got a kitten! It is the cutest little kitty on the planet! It's better than Tai's cat any day! Ohmygosh, I wish my parents would let me get a kitty like that!"
Sora laughed as Mimi dove onto her stomach on the carpet, reaching under the chair for the kitten, which had been frightened into hiding by her high-pitched squeals.
"Come to Auntie Mimi, kitty! I won't hurt you!" Mimi wriggled out from under the chair, scowling. "She won't come. Am I that weird?"
"You're scaring her, Mimi," Sora chuckled. "And you're kind of scaring me, too. Try sitting still and wiggling your fingers where she can see them."
"I don't see how that's going to help," Mimi sulked, but tried it anyway. She shut her eyes and hummed quietly, sitting cross-legged like Sora told her to. After a few minutes, her eyes flew open as she felt something soft batting at her socks. "Oh!"
"Shh!" Sora hissed as Kichi skipped back, her pupils the size of saucers. Mimi shhed. After a minute or two, the kitten came back, investigating Mimi's socks, then climbing up into her lap and settling down into a contented ball of fuzz. Mimi let out another squeal, more quietly this time.
Sora grinned. "See, she likes you when you're not grubbing around on the carpet screaming like a pig with its head stuck in a bucket."
Mimi made a face at her friend, then giggled. "Oh, look, she's getting up."
The kitten yawned hugely, stretched, and began to climb out of Mimi's lap. Mimi reached out and scooped her up, cuddling her to her face and tickling her under the chin. Kichi began to purr, waving her paws in the air. Mimi was completely blissed out. Sora watched, pleased that her new pet and her best friend got along so well.
Opening her big green eyes, the kitten spotted the glowingly red beads of Mimi's necklace. Her interest piqued, she began to bat at them like she'd done Mimi's socks. Mimi and Sora laughed.
"Look at that," Sora quipped, "she's got good taste in jewelry! I'll have to find her a collar like th-hey! What happened?"
"Ow!" Mimi yelped as Kichi let out an angry squall and bounded out of Mimi's arms, scratching her as she fled to hide under the sofa, staring out at Mimi with huge frightened eyes. Her little body looked like a gigantic puffball, the result of every hair on her body standing straight out. Mimi put a hand up to the necklace, her eyes nearly as big as Kichi's.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think I just saw your necklace zap my cat," Sora said slowly, sounding confused and suspicious. Mimi blinked, trying to think of a way to rationalize what had just happened.
"Huh...it got me, too, when I put it on. I think whatever it's made of must collect static electricity, or something. Must be scary for such a little kitty."
Sora nodded, willing to accept this explanation for the large red spark that had jumped from the necklace to the questing paw of the cat. But for the rest of the day, Kichi refused to come out from under the sofa, and shied away from Mimi whenever she saw her.
"I don't understand it!" Mimi wailed for the fifth time as Kichi scurried to the opposite end of the couch, hissing and spitting. "She liked me perfectly well two hours ago, so why is she so scared of me now?"
Sora shrugged. "She's probably afraid she'll get shocked again. Don't worry, I'm sure she'll forget all about it by tomorrow."
"I hope so," Mimi said sadly, plunking herself down on the couch with a sigh.
"Actually, I'm surprised she liked you so well. She's really shy; that's why you didn't see her since you arrived yesterday. She's probably been lurking around just like she is now, watching you and deciding what she thinks of you."
"If you say so," Mimi murmured, leaning back and hugging herself. Since that weird thing had happened to the cat, she'd been feeling...strange. Kind of sick, a queasiness at the pit of her stomach, and floppy, as if she'd stayed up too late the night before and needed sleep.
Sora had gone cheerily into the kitchen, and was now putting a TV dinner in the microwave. "Mom left a note saying she's at a meeting with the consultant for the shop and won't be home until late. You want chicken or beef?"
Mimi sighed again. Groaning, she heaved herself to her feet. "I don't feel much like dinner right now. Can I heat mine up later?"
Sora paused, and stared suspiciously at her. "Are you getting sick?"
"Hmm?" Mimi said, still standing by the sofa. Sora set the TV dinner down and hurried over, looking concerned.
"You look kind of pale. And tired, too. Maybe you should lay down."
"I'm fine," Mimi protested as Sora tried to lay a hand on her forehead for her temperature. "I'm just tired. It's probably the jetlag. I think I need to go to bed now."
Sora blinked. "It's only five-thirty. And you were fine yesterday."
"It just took its sweet time to set in, that's all," Mimi yawned. "I'm serious, Sora, I feel really tired. I'd better turn in for the night."
"Whatever," Sora said, still not convinced. "Your decision...I guess. So, should I leave your TV dinner in the fridge, in case you wake up hungry and need a midnight snack?"
Mimi shrugged. "Sure, if you want to. I don't really care. G'night, Sora."
Sora stared at her friend's retreating back as she headed to the guest room to sleep off her 'jet lag'. Something doesn't add up here, she thought. Mimi loves to eat, and I've never seen her be put off her food by a little thing like jet lag. For that matter, I've never seen her get jet lag! There is definitely something rotten in the state of Odaiba Heights...
Mimi slid out of her school clothes and into her pajamas like someone in a dream. She left the necklace on, without any real reason, or any real excuse. Pulling back the covers of the bed, she dropped into bed like a stone, and curled up with her teddy bear hugged tightly to her stomach.
"Something's wrong with me," she whispered to the air. "And I don't know what. I hope I'm not getting sick... But I don't really feel sick, not like I ever have before. I just feel...different. Strange. Bad strange, not interesting strange. I don't like this...I don't like it one little bit." Sighing deeply, she yawned and settled into bed, wanting to go to sleep and sleep off this...this jet lag. It's funny, she thought as she felt herself drifting away. I can't remember ever getting jet lag...
Something deep inside the stones of the necklace seemed to glimmer, as though it were laughing at something.
Then, steadily, the glimmer began to pulse, strongly, like the embers of a dying fire being stirred back into life, and then to glow...
All three of the stones lit up, with a dull, gleaming light, a slick, dark-red light that stained the skin of the sleeping girl and the sheets around her in bloody puddles. Something seemed to quest out of the center stone for a moment, something wispy that wound incense-like around her face in a parody of innocent curiosity, and slithered away back into the stone in an instant, like a slurped spaghetti noodle.
The glow dimmed to a softer, less intense dullness, a waiting sort of light, and seemed to be doing nothing more.
Time passed, and lights turned on and off in the rest of the apartment. Sora ate dinner, still nervous somehow, showered, and went to bed. Her mother did not arrive home.
The clock struck midnight.
And the jewel-like beads lit up in a sudden flare of murderously crimson light.
Without opening her eyes, Mimi stirred. Her hands moved on the coverlet, and then pushed it clumsily aside. She sat up in bed, her eyes still closed, and got to her feet, standing barefoot on the soft blue carpet, made dusky midnight-colored by the shadows in the dark room. Padding silently across the carpet, she made her way out of the room, and into the hallway.
Reaching the living room, she paused as if looking around, though her eyes remained tightly shut. The light from the necklace lit the room, making it look like a murder had taken place there as the gleaming pools of red luminescence lay puddled across the furniture.
There was a hiss from under the sofa. Something not belonging to Mimi twisted the corners of her mouth up in an ugly smile.
He had found what he was looking for.
Mimi looked around herself. She was back, in the place she'd been in before. The desert of dust and rounded hilltops stretched away in every direction. It reminded her of something...of a painting she'd seen when she was a little girl. A painting that had always frightened her, a dull brown painting full of dying, droopy clocks and a twisted tree and a thing that looked like a dead horse with a gray blanket thrown over it, with another of the eerie clocks draped over it... It had been drawn by someone famous, that painting, but it had always given her goosebumps, somehow. Something was wrong with the world in that painting...
Just like there's something wrong with me, Mimi thought. Maybe the answer to my questions is here... Getting to her feet-she'd been sitting in the fine brown dust, and her pajamas were smeared with dull brown-she set out across the barren landscape, devoid of dying clocks and dead horses, yet still eerily like the painting that had given her the shivers, so long ago. She tried to remember which direction she'd gone the last time she'd been here, but her footprints had vanished, inexplicably, into the windless plain. For all she knew, she was miles from the last place she'd showed up in, here. This place seemed to have no boundaries. Still, she knew she had to find that rush of color and sound again, or she might be there forever...
As she reached the base of a hill, she suddenly felt an invisible something! slam into her, horrible, making her double over for a second in nausea. A soft brown light swam against the insides of her eyelids for that second, as her eyes squeezed shut...then the sick feeling, the rolling nausea, the pain that was somehow above and beyond the physical kind was gone, leaving only a terrible weak, wobbly feeling in its wake, as though she had seen something unspeakably repulsive and wrong happen and hadn't quite recovered from the sight yet.
Ohh... Mimi wailed, falling to the dusty ground in a cloud of dust and hugging herself. Something...something awful just happened... She felt like crying, like throwing up, like curling up and sinking into the ground. Help...please...help...
Something was pulling on her, tugging at her. She tried to wrench away, but it pulled harder, whispering her name. No, not whispering it, shouting it...shouting it!
She tried to open her eyes, but they wouldn't. She was floating away...
Sora's eyes blinked open suddenly as she burst from sleep, sitting up blind with terror and clutching the bedclothes to her.
"No! Go away, leave her alone! Leave me alone!" she screamed, still half trapped in her nightmare world. "Mimi!" Suddenly, she became aware of the room around her. She took deep breaths, trying to calm down. It was just a nightmare, she assured herself, hugging her stuffie and swallowing repeatedly. Just a dream. Dreams aren't real, so there's no reason to worry...
A faint sound from out in the hallway caught at her ears. Glad for the excuse to get out of the room, with its cloying echoes of the nightmare lurking in the corners, she slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the doorway...just in time to hear a soft, choked cry. She whirled-and saw Mimi standing behind her. The girl's eyes were squeezed shut, but as she watched, they flickered open for a split second in an expression of utter pain and terror. The sleepwalking girl let out a whine of fear, high and almost inhuman. Then, her eyes fell shut again as she crumpled to the floor in a heap.
"Mimi!" Sora cried, kneeling next to her friend and shaking her. I knew something bad was happening...I knew it! A flicker of her nightmare ran through her head-Mimi, standing on the front steps of the school as a huge shadow loomed across the pavement toward her...then a flash of red light and a scream. Her face was so white... "Please wake up...please!"
Suddenly, Mimi moaned and curled into a fetal position. Sora shook her friend harder, taking heart. Mimi's face twitched, twisted into a frown. Without warning, she sat bolt upright, missing smashing Sora's nose off by about a centimeter.
"Help!" she shrieked, her eyes wide open now in fear. "Help me! Please..." She realized where she was, and relaxed as suddenly as she had awakened. "Ohhh..." she sighed, wilting with relief. "Don't let me go back there..." Sora hugged her.
"You had a nightmare, Mimi. It's okay now. Nothing can hurt you anymore. It's just a dream."
Mimi looked up at her friend with eyes as sincere as her crest had ever needed her to be. "No, it wasn't," she whispered. "Something bad happened. I felt it."
Sora frowned. "What? You..." Her voice trailed off. "I did too," she breathed, suddenly afraid. "Mom?" she called, standing up. "Mom! Are you home?" She took a few steps toward the living room, squinting to see in the dark hallway. Mimi came to her feet, shakily but surely.
"Don't go in there!"
Sora paused. "What?" she said, looking at Mimi as though she'd grown an extra nose smack in the middle of her forehead. "Why not?"
"I...I don't know," Mimi mumbled. "There's something bad in there. I dreamed it...sort of." Sora rolled her eyes and started toward the door again. "Please, believe me! It's dangerous!" Mimi insisted forlornly. Sora just reached for the doorknob, swinging the door wide.
A minute passed, and nothing happened. Sora gave Mimi a superior look, a little too smug to be very pleasant to look at. "See?" she said, grinning as she reached for the light switch. "I had a nightmare too, but they're not real life, Mimi. There's nothing-"
Her voice dissolved into a scream as the light flicked on, exposing the furry little body sprawled in the middle of the rug.
~*~*~*~
A Digimon 02 Fanfic by Bandit, ©2000
Chapter 3- Darkness Deepens, Never Wake A Sleepwalker
~*~*~*~
"Whew, am I glad that day's over!" Sora exclaimed, as she and Mimi slammed the door to the Takenouchi's apartment and dropped their backpacks on the floor. "Spring break, here I come!"
"Oh, yeah!" Mimi agreed, flopping onto the couch. "For the next week I am taking turns vegging out and hitting the town, dressed to kill. How 'bout you?"
"Sounds good to me!" Sora laughed, grabbing the remote and joining her best friend. "Except, there is no way you are making me wear pink. That clear?"
"Clear as a bell," Mimi said with a devilish grin, sounding the very opposite of her crest. Sora pretended to ward her off with crossed fingers, scooting away from her. Mimi scowled and threw a couch pillow at her friend, who reciprocated with the bean-bag chair lying next to the sofa. Mimi yelped and clawed it off of herself, throwing it to the floor. "Yikes! That thing stinks!"
Sora grinned. "The cat sleeps on it."
"Aaaghhh!" Mimi wailed, trying to wipe cat hair off of her shirt and failing miserably. Suddenly, she frowned. "What cat?"
Sora chuckled and clapped her hands. "Kichi! C'mere, girl!"
A small gray-and-black-striped tabby face peeked out from under a chair. Mimi's moaning turned to squealing as she went into the infamous I-See-A-Cute-Thing Mode that girls like her are so well known for.
"OhmygoshohmygoshohmyGOSH! Sora, you did not tell me you got a kitten! It is the cutest little kitty on the planet! It's better than Tai's cat any day! Ohmygosh, I wish my parents would let me get a kitty like that!"
Sora laughed as Mimi dove onto her stomach on the carpet, reaching under the chair for the kitten, which had been frightened into hiding by her high-pitched squeals.
"Come to Auntie Mimi, kitty! I won't hurt you!" Mimi wriggled out from under the chair, scowling. "She won't come. Am I that weird?"
"You're scaring her, Mimi," Sora chuckled. "And you're kind of scaring me, too. Try sitting still and wiggling your fingers where she can see them."
"I don't see how that's going to help," Mimi sulked, but tried it anyway. She shut her eyes and hummed quietly, sitting cross-legged like Sora told her to. After a few minutes, her eyes flew open as she felt something soft batting at her socks. "Oh!"
"Shh!" Sora hissed as Kichi skipped back, her pupils the size of saucers. Mimi shhed. After a minute or two, the kitten came back, investigating Mimi's socks, then climbing up into her lap and settling down into a contented ball of fuzz. Mimi let out another squeal, more quietly this time.
Sora grinned. "See, she likes you when you're not grubbing around on the carpet screaming like a pig with its head stuck in a bucket."
Mimi made a face at her friend, then giggled. "Oh, look, she's getting up."
The kitten yawned hugely, stretched, and began to climb out of Mimi's lap. Mimi reached out and scooped her up, cuddling her to her face and tickling her under the chin. Kichi began to purr, waving her paws in the air. Mimi was completely blissed out. Sora watched, pleased that her new pet and her best friend got along so well.
Opening her big green eyes, the kitten spotted the glowingly red beads of Mimi's necklace. Her interest piqued, she began to bat at them like she'd done Mimi's socks. Mimi and Sora laughed.
"Look at that," Sora quipped, "she's got good taste in jewelry! I'll have to find her a collar like th-hey! What happened?"
"Ow!" Mimi yelped as Kichi let out an angry squall and bounded out of Mimi's arms, scratching her as she fled to hide under the sofa, staring out at Mimi with huge frightened eyes. Her little body looked like a gigantic puffball, the result of every hair on her body standing straight out. Mimi put a hand up to the necklace, her eyes nearly as big as Kichi's.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think I just saw your necklace zap my cat," Sora said slowly, sounding confused and suspicious. Mimi blinked, trying to think of a way to rationalize what had just happened.
"Huh...it got me, too, when I put it on. I think whatever it's made of must collect static electricity, or something. Must be scary for such a little kitty."
Sora nodded, willing to accept this explanation for the large red spark that had jumped from the necklace to the questing paw of the cat. But for the rest of the day, Kichi refused to come out from under the sofa, and shied away from Mimi whenever she saw her.
"I don't understand it!" Mimi wailed for the fifth time as Kichi scurried to the opposite end of the couch, hissing and spitting. "She liked me perfectly well two hours ago, so why is she so scared of me now?"
Sora shrugged. "She's probably afraid she'll get shocked again. Don't worry, I'm sure she'll forget all about it by tomorrow."
"I hope so," Mimi said sadly, plunking herself down on the couch with a sigh.
"Actually, I'm surprised she liked you so well. She's really shy; that's why you didn't see her since you arrived yesterday. She's probably been lurking around just like she is now, watching you and deciding what she thinks of you."
"If you say so," Mimi murmured, leaning back and hugging herself. Since that weird thing had happened to the cat, she'd been feeling...strange. Kind of sick, a queasiness at the pit of her stomach, and floppy, as if she'd stayed up too late the night before and needed sleep.
Sora had gone cheerily into the kitchen, and was now putting a TV dinner in the microwave. "Mom left a note saying she's at a meeting with the consultant for the shop and won't be home until late. You want chicken or beef?"
Mimi sighed again. Groaning, she heaved herself to her feet. "I don't feel much like dinner right now. Can I heat mine up later?"
Sora paused, and stared suspiciously at her. "Are you getting sick?"
"Hmm?" Mimi said, still standing by the sofa. Sora set the TV dinner down and hurried over, looking concerned.
"You look kind of pale. And tired, too. Maybe you should lay down."
"I'm fine," Mimi protested as Sora tried to lay a hand on her forehead for her temperature. "I'm just tired. It's probably the jetlag. I think I need to go to bed now."
Sora blinked. "It's only five-thirty. And you were fine yesterday."
"It just took its sweet time to set in, that's all," Mimi yawned. "I'm serious, Sora, I feel really tired. I'd better turn in for the night."
"Whatever," Sora said, still not convinced. "Your decision...I guess. So, should I leave your TV dinner in the fridge, in case you wake up hungry and need a midnight snack?"
Mimi shrugged. "Sure, if you want to. I don't really care. G'night, Sora."
Sora stared at her friend's retreating back as she headed to the guest room to sleep off her 'jet lag'. Something doesn't add up here, she thought. Mimi loves to eat, and I've never seen her be put off her food by a little thing like jet lag. For that matter, I've never seen her get jet lag! There is definitely something rotten in the state of Odaiba Heights...
Mimi slid out of her school clothes and into her pajamas like someone in a dream. She left the necklace on, without any real reason, or any real excuse. Pulling back the covers of the bed, she dropped into bed like a stone, and curled up with her teddy bear hugged tightly to her stomach.
"Something's wrong with me," she whispered to the air. "And I don't know what. I hope I'm not getting sick... But I don't really feel sick, not like I ever have before. I just feel...different. Strange. Bad strange, not interesting strange. I don't like this...I don't like it one little bit." Sighing deeply, she yawned and settled into bed, wanting to go to sleep and sleep off this...this jet lag. It's funny, she thought as she felt herself drifting away. I can't remember ever getting jet lag...
Something deep inside the stones of the necklace seemed to glimmer, as though it were laughing at something.
Then, steadily, the glimmer began to pulse, strongly, like the embers of a dying fire being stirred back into life, and then to glow...
All three of the stones lit up, with a dull, gleaming light, a slick, dark-red light that stained the skin of the sleeping girl and the sheets around her in bloody puddles. Something seemed to quest out of the center stone for a moment, something wispy that wound incense-like around her face in a parody of innocent curiosity, and slithered away back into the stone in an instant, like a slurped spaghetti noodle.
The glow dimmed to a softer, less intense dullness, a waiting sort of light, and seemed to be doing nothing more.
Time passed, and lights turned on and off in the rest of the apartment. Sora ate dinner, still nervous somehow, showered, and went to bed. Her mother did not arrive home.
The clock struck midnight.
And the jewel-like beads lit up in a sudden flare of murderously crimson light.
Without opening her eyes, Mimi stirred. Her hands moved on the coverlet, and then pushed it clumsily aside. She sat up in bed, her eyes still closed, and got to her feet, standing barefoot on the soft blue carpet, made dusky midnight-colored by the shadows in the dark room. Padding silently across the carpet, she made her way out of the room, and into the hallway.
Reaching the living room, she paused as if looking around, though her eyes remained tightly shut. The light from the necklace lit the room, making it look like a murder had taken place there as the gleaming pools of red luminescence lay puddled across the furniture.
There was a hiss from under the sofa. Something not belonging to Mimi twisted the corners of her mouth up in an ugly smile.
He had found what he was looking for.
Mimi looked around herself. She was back, in the place she'd been in before. The desert of dust and rounded hilltops stretched away in every direction. It reminded her of something...of a painting she'd seen when she was a little girl. A painting that had always frightened her, a dull brown painting full of dying, droopy clocks and a twisted tree and a thing that looked like a dead horse with a gray blanket thrown over it, with another of the eerie clocks draped over it... It had been drawn by someone famous, that painting, but it had always given her goosebumps, somehow. Something was wrong with the world in that painting...
Just like there's something wrong with me, Mimi thought. Maybe the answer to my questions is here... Getting to her feet-she'd been sitting in the fine brown dust, and her pajamas were smeared with dull brown-she set out across the barren landscape, devoid of dying clocks and dead horses, yet still eerily like the painting that had given her the shivers, so long ago. She tried to remember which direction she'd gone the last time she'd been here, but her footprints had vanished, inexplicably, into the windless plain. For all she knew, she was miles from the last place she'd showed up in, here. This place seemed to have no boundaries. Still, she knew she had to find that rush of color and sound again, or she might be there forever...
As she reached the base of a hill, she suddenly felt an invisible something! slam into her, horrible, making her double over for a second in nausea. A soft brown light swam against the insides of her eyelids for that second, as her eyes squeezed shut...then the sick feeling, the rolling nausea, the pain that was somehow above and beyond the physical kind was gone, leaving only a terrible weak, wobbly feeling in its wake, as though she had seen something unspeakably repulsive and wrong happen and hadn't quite recovered from the sight yet.
Ohh... Mimi wailed, falling to the dusty ground in a cloud of dust and hugging herself. Something...something awful just happened... She felt like crying, like throwing up, like curling up and sinking into the ground. Help...please...help...
Something was pulling on her, tugging at her. She tried to wrench away, but it pulled harder, whispering her name. No, not whispering it, shouting it...shouting it!
She tried to open her eyes, but they wouldn't. She was floating away...
Sora's eyes blinked open suddenly as she burst from sleep, sitting up blind with terror and clutching the bedclothes to her.
"No! Go away, leave her alone! Leave me alone!" she screamed, still half trapped in her nightmare world. "Mimi!" Suddenly, she became aware of the room around her. She took deep breaths, trying to calm down. It was just a nightmare, she assured herself, hugging her stuffie and swallowing repeatedly. Just a dream. Dreams aren't real, so there's no reason to worry...
A faint sound from out in the hallway caught at her ears. Glad for the excuse to get out of the room, with its cloying echoes of the nightmare lurking in the corners, she slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the doorway...just in time to hear a soft, choked cry. She whirled-and saw Mimi standing behind her. The girl's eyes were squeezed shut, but as she watched, they flickered open for a split second in an expression of utter pain and terror. The sleepwalking girl let out a whine of fear, high and almost inhuman. Then, her eyes fell shut again as she crumpled to the floor in a heap.
"Mimi!" Sora cried, kneeling next to her friend and shaking her. I knew something bad was happening...I knew it! A flicker of her nightmare ran through her head-Mimi, standing on the front steps of the school as a huge shadow loomed across the pavement toward her...then a flash of red light and a scream. Her face was so white... "Please wake up...please!"
Suddenly, Mimi moaned and curled into a fetal position. Sora shook her friend harder, taking heart. Mimi's face twitched, twisted into a frown. Without warning, she sat bolt upright, missing smashing Sora's nose off by about a centimeter.
"Help!" she shrieked, her eyes wide open now in fear. "Help me! Please..." She realized where she was, and relaxed as suddenly as she had awakened. "Ohhh..." she sighed, wilting with relief. "Don't let me go back there..." Sora hugged her.
"You had a nightmare, Mimi. It's okay now. Nothing can hurt you anymore. It's just a dream."
Mimi looked up at her friend with eyes as sincere as her crest had ever needed her to be. "No, it wasn't," she whispered. "Something bad happened. I felt it."
Sora frowned. "What? You..." Her voice trailed off. "I did too," she breathed, suddenly afraid. "Mom?" she called, standing up. "Mom! Are you home?" She took a few steps toward the living room, squinting to see in the dark hallway. Mimi came to her feet, shakily but surely.
"Don't go in there!"
Sora paused. "What?" she said, looking at Mimi as though she'd grown an extra nose smack in the middle of her forehead. "Why not?"
"I...I don't know," Mimi mumbled. "There's something bad in there. I dreamed it...sort of." Sora rolled her eyes and started toward the door again. "Please, believe me! It's dangerous!" Mimi insisted forlornly. Sora just reached for the doorknob, swinging the door wide.
A minute passed, and nothing happened. Sora gave Mimi a superior look, a little too smug to be very pleasant to look at. "See?" she said, grinning as she reached for the light switch. "I had a nightmare too, but they're not real life, Mimi. There's nothing-"
Her voice dissolved into a scream as the light flicked on, exposing the furry little body sprawled in the middle of the rug.
~*~*~*~