Author's Notes: Finally back to doing this.
Thanks to Riley S (see what happens when I follow your advice? I'm a month and a half late), Lakshmi, Rhea (ha, I made it so glaring obvious), mya (I'm thinking of having that inexplicable magic in this, nothing definite, just like waking up and it's five years earlier or something along those lines), nightshadow, CreatiStar, Miya.
Disclaimer: CCS is not mine, but think of the possibilities if it were.
Dark Fantasy
Chapter 3: On the Rails
Syaoran inadvertently sent an elbow into the nearby commuter. "Excuse me." He pushed his way through the crowd, the mass of people so tightly packed that he found breathing nearly impossible. Each step painstakingly wedged between the shoes and feet of others, all obliviously unaware of his dilemma. "Sorry, excuse me." The scenery rushed by, a streak of green and gray across the plastic windowpanes. He pressed himself close to the connecting door, feeling for the handle, the mob of people behind him shifting around, their heat and presence an overbearing suffocation.
A scratchy grating slide, Syaoran found himself between cars, the howling of the winds and rattling of the tracks beneath him. Jolting up and down, the clanging of the safety chains, the momentum of barreling down the lines and slowing approaching a hill. Leaning against the linking chain, he gratefully took a quick rest, againt the rules as it was to ride between cars. He gulped a deep breath, prying open the next car's door, stepping through into a tangle of limbs and newspapers. Sighing, he began to weave his way forward up to the next car, an achingly slow plod.
Dark, lights flying by, the cavernous snarl of echoes. Syaoran gripped the chains tight, the train taking a sharp right curve, the tunnel around him lit for a moment, a splash of concrete before roaring back into murky uncertainty. The speed slackened, brakes screeching shatteringly, the bucking of the metal carcass. Syaoran hurried into the last car or rather the first. People, gray faced and unfeeling, standing, sitting, sleeping and reading, all filled to the brim, packed so close that one breath might burst the bolts on the car. Angrily, anxiously, with a heart that seemed to pound relentlessly in his head, the rush of blood like a vicious river in his ears, Syaoran squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't speak, jaw locked together, his mind screaming out curses, pleas, incoherent sounds. And from that chaos rose one thought above all others, rising and exploding. 'I wish everyone would just disappear!' The train lurched suddenly to a stop, the brakes wailing with their insane shrieks, the jerking thrusts of the train throwing him hard against the door. The lights snuffed themselves out like candles.
Syaoran turned in the dark, complete stop, silence. A dim work lamp glowed down the tunnel, its rays too faint to do more than alert Syaoran of its presence. Flickering like arrhythmia, the florescent bars overhead lit up, descending illuminating needles pricking empty seats, empty floors. Everyone was gone, the eeriness of sudden solitude loud. Syaoran looked around disbelievingly, each seat wiped of any evidence of ever being used, the gums and sticky stains gone, floors polished of their scuff marks, the Plexiglas windows buffed of its scratches and gouges.
He spun in a full circle. There were only the lights overhead and the emptiness around him. Looking down the aisle, through the doors, through the next car, another door, another car, another door into the endless miles of train. He tested a foot, scuffling along the floor with an impossibly loud grating sound. Cringing he walked faster, each scrape running into the next, a continuous white static. Syaoran felt a ridiculous B rate horror movie atmosphere around him, the mix of the rough brushstrokes his feet made, the seeming emptiness around him, everything too angular and sharp under the fluorescent gaze. But nothing leapt out at him.
He was midway through the train when his patience failed, his strides too unnerving, the horrible extremes of dissonance to silence without the small gradations between them that prepared one beforehand. He broke in a fierce run, the regular thumps of his feet actually intelligible over the static side effect of movement. Rows and rows of plastic seats, stainless steel rails, yards and yards of tile flooring. Panting he reached forward, yanking the partitioning doors open, another carriage. The increasing rapidity of his breath fell into pattern with his legs, black square windows flying by like stripes, seats dancing, the eclectic pattern of the floor approaching being left behind.
He stopped short, nearly falling over in his residual momentum, sudden silence again thick like smoke. The blackness of the tunnel stretched away from him though the last door's window. There was no guide light, no sight of the tunnel walls, no twin rails. Sweat dripped along the side of his face, dampness seeping into the cuffs of his shirt. He looked down at himself, the first notice of his clothes. The rough fabric of his white lab coat rubbed against the backside of his palm, his striped tie that pointed like an arrow, the bottom half of a stethoscope dangling freely from his jacket's left oversized pocket.
His watch dial suddenly glowed green on a bed of black. Syaoran looked up, the lights again dead without warning. The wall signs fluoresced neon green. 'Pull cord if there is an emergency.' 'Do not run on the platform.' 'In case of fire push button for assistance.' It was a ridiculous notion but this was an emergency. Syaoran pulled the cord, a thin chiming somewhere behind him. He whirled around at the sound of a door opening. "Sakura?"
Sakura blinked, clad in the conductor's uniform, cap hastily jammed on her head. "Yes, sir. Is there a problem?"
Syaoran opened his mouth, but sucked in a breath. He loosened his tie, shrugging off his coat. The temperature was rising, quickly, uncomfortably. The heat grew like afternoon shadows, intensifying with time. "The heat."
Sakura nodded. "Could be a fire." She reached over to her right and neatly pressed the fire button.
Syaoran felt his body sag, the energy to stand too expensive. The artificial smell of cherries wafted around his nose before he slumped to the floor.
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Syaoran rolled over, a bout of coughing overtaking him. He opened his eyes, the last moments of his dream replaying like an aerial movie. Clearing his throat a last time, he looked to his clock, a minute to spare.
A splash of icy water jolted his nerves, the caress of the cold inviting and invigorating. He sighed heavily, leaning on the counter on his elbows. Without reprieve, the dreams came almost every night, each so vastly different. Some happy, some sad, some frightening. And yet none of them made any semblance of sense. Syaoran snorted at his own thought. Of course they wouldn't make sense; they were dreams. Sakura was always in them, always playing some part, but why? Shaking himself thoroughly, he brushed away the thoughts, taking up his keys and heading toward the train station.
He couldn't shake the feeling that everyone would disappear and that the train would screech to a sudden half, landing him in the endless void of his dream's tunnel. But nothing happened and he alighted at his stop, taking the stairs down two at a time. The best thing, he decided, was to just try and forget, the same strategy that he struggled to employ the past month. He pushed through the hospital doors, mind purposefully blank.
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Syaoran grimaced with the distaste of his vending machine sandwich. "You know it's sad when vending machine food is better than the cafeteria's."
Tomoyo nodded, scooping a spoonful of Jello out of its plastic container. "Yeah." She swallowed, folding her hands on her napkin, watching Syaoran avoid eye contact with her. "Well?"
"Well?"
"You said you wanted to ask me some questions…"
"I do." He sighed, putting down the triangular half of his sandwich. "How do you know if you're going insane?"
Tomoyo fixed an inquiring gaze on Syaoran's face, semi-smile twisting her mouth. "Finally went off the deep end have you? Too bad I bet on last month."
Syaoran sighed, returning a half-glare. "It's not a joke. I'm having dreams, strange dreams."
"Really? Strange dreams? Then there's no time to waste; we must have you fitted for a straight jacket right away."
He fixed a full glare this time, propping his head up with his left hand, elbow deep into the ham sandwich. "These aren't normal dreams. They're not exactly reoccurring, but they always have the same person in them. And the scary thing is I don't know her, I mean, know her really."
Tomoyo's mouth went flat, face masked by her professional sympathy. "Hmm…interesting. Is she a friend?"
"No; she's a patient, not even mine. It's the last victim of that crazy serial killer they play on the news, the 'beach murderer' or whatever they like to call him."
"Her? The one that's still alive? In the coma?"
"Yeah. It's crazy, but it's always her in the dream, doing something, playing a part. And I have no clue what it all means."
Tomoyo pulled out a pad from her coat pocket, a pencil materializing from the depths of her hair. "You know I'm supposed to be psychological consult for patients not doctors. But I guess I'll make an exception this time. When's the last time you had this kind of dream."
"This morning. The last time before today was two or three days ago. It's been going on for the past month."
"I see. What was this morning's dream about?"
Syaoran furrowed his brows in the effort to remember the dream exactly, finally making his way through the narrative after a few false starts. "I was in this congested train, shoving people out of my way. It was hot and stuffy and I felt like I was going to die. It was so hard to breathe and they were all so close. I just wished they'd all disappear, and they did, in a blink of an eye. Then the whole train was empty and I started to search for people. And every time I moved, it was so loud like something grating. Um, like if you magnified the sound of a hairbrush being pulled through tangled hair? Then I was in the last car and the lights went off again and I pulled the emergency cord and she came out, dressed like the conductor."
Tomoyo scribbled a quick word into her pad. "Kinomoto?"
"Yes, there she was and everything around me got hot like fire and she pushed the intercom button on the wall, but it was already too stifling. I must've passed out and then I woke up."
"Anything else? What's the last thing you remember?"
"Uh…cherries? I smelled something like cherries."
Pencil scratching across paper. "Have you had this dream before? In a train?"
"I don't think so. They're all different. What does it mean?"
Tomoyo looked up from notes, puzzled frown set on her features. "Frankly, I don't think they mean anything. From a psychological standpoint, we only start to attribute desires and meanings to dreams when they're reoccurring, but you said yours aren't, except for this girl. But I'm sure they're not anything to be worried about."
"Great. And I thought all psychiatrists gave at least some useful advice." Syaoran straightened, a large dent appearing on his sandwich.
"Hey, we counsel people with real problems. You' re probably dealing with too much stress lately. Take a vacation, get plastered, do something relaxing." A quick look at her wristwatch. "Crap, I'm late." A small wave and Tomoyo was weaving herself around the cafeteria tables.
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Syaoran held back a yawn with the ease of years of practice. The night shifts were always a time of boredom, stalking the empty halls, rechecking patient files, signing off procedural forms. He leaned a little more forward over the counter of the nurses' station, his ballpoint pen scratching out prescriptions and comments. 'Warfarin, 10 mg daily. Ultrasound for coronary clotting.' He closed his eyes, the sweet sickly scent of cherries passing over him for a moment, but disappeared as suddenly as it came. He sighed and let his feet take him down the hall, turning the corner into the other wing.
He stopped at the door, twisting the handle slowly despite the knowledge that no one inside would really hear anything. The room was large, cavernous to anyone that lived in a city apartment, curtains crisscrossing the room in makeshift walls, even if no one could make any complaints over lack of privacy. He picked up the nearest chart, skimming the information. No change. Slowly his eyes rose off the metal clipboard to the prostrate figure on his right, the carelessly drawn striped curtain shielding the upper half of the patient beyond from view.
There was Sakura, asleep, unknowing of what passed around her. Around her were the remnants of visits. The chair pulled near the bed, the fresh flowers, the small pile of cards on the bedside table, her right hand open and extended. He took the empty seat, watching with empty emotions, denied curiosity and wonder. It was strange for her to be looking so alive in his dreams yet be so faded in real life. He wondered if she knew what was wrong with him, if that miraculous answer were trapped in her sealed mouth. With a nervous glance, he slowly took her offered hand, closing his fingers over the numb warmth. No movement. "What's going on, Sakura?" he whispered. The only answer was the steady jumps of the muted heart monitor, peaks rising and falling, just like her chest.
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Author's Notes: Whew, done. Does anyone know what that cherry smell is?