Author's Notes: I'm really, really sorry for the late posting, but this whole month's been really busy and confusing and yeah… Just wanted to apologize.
Arigatos to CherrySakuraGirl (hehe, I might explain the cherry smell in the last chapter), Riley S (thanks!), Miko@--Elley, Miko (maybe, it's a good idea though), starquestor, mya (sorry, but I thought I bugs was a nice image), Meruru-chan (wow, that's quite possibly the nicest comment I've got in a while), nightshadow, Miya, Rhea (all those questions…maybe I won't answer them =P), Aurora, Opehlia Winters (hehe, thanks for reviewing), Ti'ana (yes, that's what I'm going for. Is she really there or not? Hmm…), bishounen lovah.
Disclaimer: Now if CCS was mine, it'd still be on TV wouldn't it. But since it's not, it's safe to conclude that I have no share in its ownership.
Dark FantasyChapter 6: Pockets Full of Posey
Syaoran watched the TV channels flick by with a yawn in his throat. He'd been like this for the past week, sunk into the couch and watching TV. No job, no patients, nothing to do but dream and wake up in cold sweats. The mix of late night talk shows and nightmares wasn't appealing to him, slowly driving him up the wall with each passing day. His apartment was a mess, clothes strewn about, dishes piled high in the sink, his regular semblance of organization abandoned days ago.
All there was now were those flashing images that ran through his head like an album of photos flipping by without stop. There one second, gone the next with only the barest of impression of what was there to begin with. And she was always there, half amused, half enigmatic, with her monosyllabic answers and her detached air. She wasn't real but she felt like she was, somewhat. Syaoran rubbed his darkened eyes, searching for the distracting pain of a million phantom colours bursting into life behind his eyelids, anything to stop her face from haunting his every thought.
She wanted something, he was sure of it. These were no longer coincidental reoccurring dreams. Tomoyo could say all she wanted about subconscious manifestations of hidden fears and desires, half garbled by her MD in psychiatry and professional pedagogy, but Syaoran knew better. This meant something, something that really had nothing to do with him, a chance connection somehow. And now Sakura Kinomoto was in his dreams, standing there, sitting there, talking, laughing but always wanting…something.
Syaoran pulled his eyes open again to stare at the informercial. The late night broadcasts did nothing to prevent him from falling into the trap of sleep. He reached blindly for the coffee mug somewhere in front of him, but his limbs had become leaden and refused to move. He let out a weary groan, laying back on the couch and keeping a thin sliver of attention at the screen through half lidded eyes. The pull was getting worse, and denying it would only hasten the precipitous end. There seemed the inexplicable snap of electricity as he sank away from the world of reality, but then again, it may have just been the beginning of a dream.
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The world unfolded before him, a gentle sloping hill into the meadows and dips of the natural countryside. The blue, cloudless sky moved with him as he swung, up and down, the dandelion fields below bobbing with his motion. The wind blew briskly around him, whistling and swirling about the gentle slope of the mound. Syaoran looked down the hill, rolling into a green that seemed to stretch on for eternity. Square plots of wheat rolled in the wind like a liquid sea of grain.
And he kept swinging, the strange faraway nostalgia of the rocking motion, lurching, his stomach pressing back into his spine, then reeling forward as the whole world dipped and reeled with him. All the while, the short squeaks and creaks of the rusted iron chains developing a rhythm around him. It was intoxicating, the simple childish act, the explosion as he went up, the heart pounding drop.
Higher and higher until almost horizontal in the air, the world sideways slanted around him, the fields going vertical, the blue sky like a vast column stretching on forever. It was then that he noticed something in his vision, a little innocuous house uprooted and put on its side, slowly returning right side up as he fell. He hastily ground his heels into the soft earth, scraping a few times until the swing had stopped.
The house had an old fashioned feel to it, the kind of green wooden slats, off-white broken picket fence, nearly disassembled tractor. The more he looked at it, the flatter it got, a sepia tone sliding and colouring his vision until suddenly he seemed to be confronted by only a photograph of what used to be a three dimensional house. He could even barely make out the slight gloss on the paper.
Syaoran turned around puzzled, bringing his gaze in a full circle. The collage was everywhere, bits and pieces of gold tinted photographs all stuck together and overlaying each other. The proportions skewed and glued together haphazardly, things magnified, others shrunk. And with a blink, it all disappeared, leaving Syoaran to look again at the blue sky, the faraway farmhouse, the gentle rolling fallow fields of weed grasses, swaying. "What's going on?"
"What's not?"
Syaoran twisted back to face the swing, Sakura swinging lightly in his vacated seat. Her loose dress fluttered around her knees, hair pulled into a ponytail, but still flying everywhere in the wind. She had her eyes turned upward, watching the sky. "You're here as usual…"
She turned her attention to Syaoran, smiling a quirk of the lips. "And you sound very enthused about it…"
"Don't I?" Syaoran studied her, trying to find that evidence of life, but came up empty like all those times before. She was like a shell, looking for all purposes like a mannequin, making small conversation, never giving an answer, never knowing one. "Where's here?"
Sakura shrugged her shoulders. "The country? It's nice." She swung a little higher, with a consequently shriller shriek of the chains.
Syaoran frowned and turned back toward the house. The little square in the distance that suddenly rushed up again to lay flat against his nose, the gold gray shadows across the porch and quick fleeting glance of a coppery face behind the dusty window pane, bristled and gone. Another blink, and he found himself on a dirt path, winding across the countryside, up a hill and disappearing behind the gentle mounds ahead.
"Makes you want to take a picture, ne?" Sakura's voice was smooth, drifting by Syaoran's side.
He turned to her, looking at her body curve with the wind and the hills behind her. "Yeah, like postcards."
Sakura nodded, starting to walk down the dirt path, leading the way. "Come on Syaoran, the weather's perfect for a stroll."
He nodded dumbly, falling into step beside her, noting the scenery amble by. The field around them dropped gradually down to the farmhouse they had spotted from the hill. The house seemed fractured to Syaoran, broken into sections that didn't seem to fit right. The chimney rose huge and disproportionate from the center of the roof as the front door screen lay off its hinges in a slanted shrinking gradient. Everything had coppery hue. "The house is wrong."
Sakura gave him an inquisitive glance. "No, it's not." She caught his eye for a moment, and smiled suddenly, as if on cue.
Puzzled greatly, Syaoran turned back to the house, stumbling back as it stood normal again before him. The right proportions, the faded green slats, the perfectly rectangular door. He rubbed his eyes ineffectually. Everything was still the same, rustic and real. "What happened?"
Sakura gave him another appraising look. "Is something wrong?" She put her hand against his forehead, tilting her head to one side and frowning. "You don't have a fever…"
Syaoran fought against the flush as he jerked away from her palm. "No, I'm not sick, I'm fine."
She didn't look convinced, but shrugged her shoulders anyway. "Let's take a look around, ne?"
They walked slowly around the house, treading across the patchy lawn and taking in the brown stained wooden walls and the dusty fogged windows. Syaoran's neck bristled occasionally, and he could almost swear he'd catch bare glimpses of a face in the darkened windows, but nothing was ever there.
"Look, a little garden," Sakura said suddenly.
Syaoran looked at the enclosed space, noting the sad state of the garden, if it could be called that. It was probably a child's play garden, a few seeds scattered around and forced to grow. Straggling yellow flowers thrusting up from the dark soil, half crushed under some animal's foot, half choked by matted grassy weeds that wound in between them. "It's not much to look at." He expected Sakura to say some half thought remark but found her silently staring off toward the swing topped hill. "Sakura?"
She shivered and turned a strange eye to him. "It's late; we should get back."
Syaoran followed her gaze, staring up at the navy orange sky, streaked with struggling sunbeams. It just seemed like a moment ago when the noonday sun had beat down like a heat lamp. "It's night already…"
Sakura nodded and walked toward the wheat fields behind the house, crushing the remaining yellow flowers underfoot. "Let's go."
"Where are you going?" The twilight orange haze brushed along her face callously, carving out hollows at her eyes. "The fields, it's shorter if we cut through them."
Syaoran merely followed her, entering the maze of giant stalks of wheat, bushy heads that shook overhead. "Do you know your way around?"
"Of course…"
It was dark inside the field, shadowy and silent. Syaoran walked quickly behind Sakura's dim back, trying not to trip on the rocks and exposed roots and debris along the walk. The rows of wheat scoured his neck as he tried desperately to dodge them with no avail. The rough feel of wheat hairs across his cheek, the gentle rustle as the wind trapped between the maddening rows fought to escape, the gathering darkness that pooled at his feet like an inky mist. Turns and twists and lengths, all leading to seemingly more rows. "Sakura?" There was no reply, except for a nearby rustle. "Sakura?"
"Syaoran?" Her voice floated towards him, drifting, coming from everywhere at once. The rustling became more violent, circling around Syaoran.
Syaoran squinted hard in the fading light, making out the wilting wheat. He cautiously picked up his pace, heading toward the rustling. It moved and stopped intermittently, a soft scraping sound then silence. "Sakura?"
The crackling stalks broke into a furious pace, again encircling him, but winding in closer.
Closer.
"Sakura?"
He could feel it upon him, his body screaming to run, the heavy burdensome descent of danger. Sayoran took off blindly into the maze, ruled by fear, tripping and stumbling. Groping, grabbing, panting.
The rustling matched his speed, alternating sides, round upon him and crunching.
Crunching.
Syaoran flung himself faster, racing, diving forwards. The rustling around him had stopped, another blanket of silence enveloping the field. A single cricket chirped somewhere off to his right. "Sakura?"
He walked slowly, parting the leaves from his eyes. His heart flooded his ears, breath like the raspy pants of a winded runner. And all around him was the silence.
Silence.
Every nerve told him something was wrong, overwhelming him. Something was coming. Fear swarmed him as the sixth sense of danger shook him. He jerked around quickly just in time as a shadowy figure dive out of the wheat cover towards him.
Syaoran stumbled backward and all he could feel was the laugh, echoing in his mind, the flashing heat of something sliding across his right arm. In the moonlight, the stranger's face was vicious, clown like, red streak across his cheek, something sharp in his hand. Shadows gouged out his eyes, the wide mouth baring sharp teeth, and all Syaoran knew was the fear.
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Syaoran sprang up off the couch, trembling uncontrollably. The face kept a firm hold over his mind, sending waves of cold down his spine. His skin rose in armies of goosebumps, still recalling the panic. He moved to rub his arms in an attempt to dissipate the bumps but found himself smoothing a warm liquid along his right forearm. As if on cue, the pain rose in his arm, a searing kind of burn. Syaoran gingerly rolled up his sleeves, staring disbelievingly at the red smear across his skin. Above his elbow was a neat cut, diagonal and deep. He froze to the spot as the blood ran in a small river down his bent arm, gathering at the point of his elbow and dripping onto the glossy cover of a magazine…
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The figure twisted out of sleep with a quick violent breath. He forced himself to his feet, dragging across the cold concrete floor to the large blank canvas at the foot of his bed. The moonlight shone in through his one window, a square of white light bathing his supplies. He smiled satisfied as he bent down to pick up his palette knife, a streak of wet red across the chiseled bottom. The smile rose farther as he wiped the tool off across the canvas, smearing the liquid over the sheet in a rough sketch of a barn.
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Author's Notes: Hmm..so that's it. I was going for scary horror stuff, but I'm no Stephen King. I think things are starting to settle into place. I'm hoping I can write the next chapter relatively on time. And please review. Tell me how I'm doing.