"Kaede!" An insistent, glum voice rung through the room, alarming said women out of her duties.
Kaede glanced up at the petrified nurse in the entry of her administrative office with an inquisitive judgment. Kaede was in the middle of her work ethics that needed to be done, and would have rather lived without the sudden entrance. She put her pen down to get full attention of the quivering ginger-haired nurse who was latched onto the office's doorknob to steady herself.
"What is it, Nurse Onryou?" Kaede spoke as if she had not a care in the world.
"It's Miss Kagome!" The nurse bawled, puffing for breath. "She's pulsating violently—our doctors don't even know the cause!"
"Dear God, where is she located?" Kaede shot up from her desk, darting next to the Nurse Onryou already half way getting her pallid lab coat on.
"She's in her room—sleeping!"
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I ' m F e e l i n g F i n e. . . A Homicidal Fairytale . . .
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Black.
She was falling.
Falling for what seemed like an eternity…
Down a rabbit hole…
"And so you were expecting me all along weren't you, girl? That hideous thing that only appears in kids dreams!"
Pearly teeth glinted in the dark edges of the mind. Blood dripped from those very fangs like they were born to. Ragged taunting scorned the mind, burning like an inferno to the soul. The fiery soul with the being had, lie dead on the floor of black and white. Black and white. Oh the soul-clenching black!—Red over white like blood on the snow.
Blood on the stone—nail clawed stone.
"Guess what, girl?"
Bones. The sound of crushing bones, and children screaming in torment. Those kids dying a slow death by the hands of someone she did not know. Bones. Shackling against pulsating flesh. Flesh being no virtue to the living dead. The living dead rising and falling within the waves of everlasting gruel, that it kept you on your toes. No warm flesh to support this being, this being of bones and crypt.
She did not know where she was. She did not know how to breathe. Breathing was not an option to the terror of being trapped.
Trapped within her mind. The mind—sucking her body into a world of horror. The over all result, she never figured. Not having to predict her nightmare's future—for it never seemed to have a beginning.
Nor an end…
She could not have guessed what was happening… But in many ways then one, the dream consisted of ecstasy. The drug that keeps to in motion of your surroundings not failing you for an instant.
An instant, it never failed to send the blood coursing through the veins. Adrenaline of being awake. Alive by nature with no one to stop you.
The bones shackled with laughter that was dry on ice. It could not be identified to the ears, but you could sense it through taste—Through taste of the eyes.
Kagome blinked.
"I'm baaack…"
Screams. The only sensible mania that escaped the confines of her raw throat.
Sickening yellow eyes open to the size of saucers but didn't stop there. They grew and grew, until Kagome was over whelmed with a sub-zero sensation, disappearing into the pupil of cawing darkness. Fear ripping her flesh like blades to prey, claws to meat.
Pain.
Insufferable pain that never let you forget your nightmare's mistakes.
Bats of the wing, from the depths of hell keep the nails to the claws from happiness dwell. No happy in a color. No happy with a dream. Dreams were never happy. You forget dreams... which never make you happy. Happy has no path, no way to live. It was no alternative to living in the corner.
The corner of the mind.
White.
Smiling sallow.
Whiter then the White Hell itself… She must have done something bad… Something to deserve to be blinded by the glints of blades in that damn white light. Blades rocking gently back in forth from the ceiling in a bizarre frequency, keeping Kagome alert.
Flickers.
Crimson flashes lit before Kagome's very eyes.
The flashes lasted only instantly, and there did she see a figure.
No ordinary figure—It was a figure that skulked. No shape of the figure was precise.
The white comes back.
Flashes lasting longer, now. Only in the flashes can the figure be witnessed creeping ever so slowly towards her. You see naught in the white, but the blades. The darkness approached quicker as the form disappeared from in front of her…
Right by her ear, it smirked it's sadistic grin.
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"Kaede, what do you think is happening to her?!"
"Quickly, child! Call the medics!"
"Yes Kaede!"
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The white never came back.
Kagome crept slowly away from the creeping cat that had no flesh. No meat to support it's body, to keep it running alive.
Blood slid from the fangs that were now coming into view.
"Wh-what is it you w-want from m-me?" Kagome's voice piped up from her corner that she had unknowingly backed into.
The dim rinsed the cat in sinister waves like oil with water. The only thing seen was it's broad, yellow orbs of fright. It tunneled into her soul, as if predicting her own future. As if she were a key to unlocked a buried secret.
"Speak none, Kagome." The arctic voice of the feline, that vicious feline, inculcated. Shrillness of it sent shivers down Kagome's spine; ever slowly the voice reached her ears like scrapes slowly gliding down a chalkboard.
"How did you—" The ebony-haired girl gasped, more frightened then ever.
"Speak none, Kagome." It injected, bitter reaching its patience to a minimum.
"…" She pressed herself against the wall, or so she thought was a wall, fearing for the worst.
Movements of the feline were felt within hidden. It positioned itself farther away from the ample-eyed lass, somewhere else in the room, it lie.
"It is not so the matter of what I want from you," The peculiar fixation chuckled from adjacent to her, "But more along the lines of, what I need from you."
Kagome found this odd. She was here because she was needed? She was never needed! Nothing was good with Kagome! In what would she be needed for? She could barely tie a shoelace anymore. Now, she figured, she was going to die by a damn cat! Next it's going to ask her rob a bank. Then to eat that cash. Or maybe, even to kill an empress! Jolly!
This just had to be one big joke on Kagome didn't it? That's right… leave her with the egg in the face at the end, then ridicule her of her own idiocy. She wasn't about to buy a cockamamie story about how she might be needed. She was never needed.
Not then, not now.
Kagome tried to find the owner of the voice, but found it useless. It was too dark; she couldn't even spot her own hand in front of her face.
She groaned internally. Stuck in a room with a carnivorous animal. Don't put her in a tiger cage, but with a talking cat from a nightmare. Now she remembered why she hated Buyo.
"What is it you need from me?" Kagome asked, mocking the welfare of the phenomenon feline with the bad temper. Not receiving an abrupt answer, or a feeling of a near presence, she thought it might have been a bad idea to mock something that can chew on your lungs with a smile on it's face.
A sudden growl emerged from behind her, as she felt the 'wall' no longer there… but a rib cage of a snarling animal, instead.
"You are very lucky you are necessity to me girl, or I would have cleaved that pretty head of yours clean off your shoulder blades from the neck up." That didn't sound too good. Kagome made a mental note not to fight with the… whatever the hell the thing called itself. She gulped. Almost as if the animal heard it, it smirked broadly grinning it's bare incisors.
"Now listen, and listen good," It continued in a low instructing nature. "I have a proposition for you. You will say only one word to verify this proposition, and one word only. It is, 'yes'. Is this clear?" His upbeat tone cascaded sinfully around the aura of Kagome's ears before settling into her brain.
"No… It's not…" The chocolate-eyed girl spoke slowly.
The feline frowned, "And what is there not to understand? I'm practically force feeding you this information, Kagome." Emphasizing her name reminding her that he knew more then she would ever give him credit for.
Kagome gazed into the darkness with a hard expression, "I was never needed… Why would I be needed now? What is there for me beyond what lies behind your voice? What is this… 'mission' I'm going on—if I'm going on." She corrected. "I don't need to be here… This is only a dream. A figment of my imagination. Now if you'll excuse me, I--" She stood up from her seat only to be knocked onto her rear again by a swift gust of wind.
"That is where you are mistaken, Kagome." A breeze behind her leapt from over her head by rapid movement. Before she knew what was going on, those two fear-provoking yellow eyes bored into her auburn ones. "There is a world out there that no one knows about. A world that has locked away secrets…" He hissed.
"Don't you ever wonder, Kagome, where all of your nightmares depart? Where all of the most discarded fears go to in order to force people commit homicide, or even suicide? Don't you imagine?" Kagome blinked. Now that she thought of it… She never wondered about that. Figuring she had enough horror to dish out to 20 lifetimes, she wouldn't really care.
"No…" Kagome said, unsure of offending the animal or not. She didn't want to remake that scene again, that's for sure.
"That is the problem… No human does. What they don't know is that there is a world within your mind that very few of your species is acquainted with. Dark darker then black, blood that runs many colors, and where imagination is only the beginning." Kagome's brows furrowed in concentration, trying to absorb all this new information.
"So what you're saying is.. You want me to be apart of--"
"This world." He concluded for her.
Kagome's eyes widened significantly, "Why would I?"
The eyes narrowed, taking a step backwards. "That is where we began. It is simply a matter of a yes or no response. You say yes; you propose to stay within this world by 10 o' clock sundown. You say no; you forget you ever saw me, and continue living the dreary life that will slowly eat you alive."
She seemed to accept this proposal. Anything would be better then the life she was leading with no purpose, no principle. Even if it meant facing her own fears… Nothing would be worse, she figured.
"Well, what is the question?"
His bone quaking chuckle filled the room before his voice became low, agile and serious, "The question… The question is are you willing to jeopardize your life in hopes to cure another's?"
Wha. . .? Kagome felt like her mind was shrinking until ultimately it would become the size of a key chain. Her confused façade must have given her worries away because the creature appeared to be purring in shackling frustration.
"To be in this world you must be willing—willing to go through with the most gruesome fears ever imagined. Ever thought up of… Ever dreamed of… And you must be on the verge to reconcile with a world you never thought existed, but somehow knew was there. A mission that no ordinary girl can last a mere 10 seconds in." The creature made a swishing movement with one of its tails that so leisurely caressed Kagome's neck with its razor-like bones.
The atmosphere slowly mellowed into a gloomy silence that bungled the mind's eye with fears that someone—something was in there in the dark out to get her.
"That's it… Fear, Kagome." It taunted. "The more the merrier, as they say."
All in the meanwhile the auburn-eyed girl choked on her own words that have not yet been spoken. The lexis of understanding not quite bringing up her courage to speak, and chaining down her ways to correspond with customs other then through her mouth. She blinked, holding her breath before turning her gaze to the impatient glare of the feline's mischievous eyes.
"You mentioned…" She trailed off, her courage spiking within itself, not fearing to talk to this mysterious being. In some bizarre way, it was comfortable. In some… very bizarre way…
"That I was 'no ordinary girl' to even be here. You also said that I was… going to be on the mission… why do you avoid the question when I keep asking what mission I'll be on, anyways? Why exactly am I here?!" She let her voice be over control of her brain, not quite understanding with what she is saying before it divulged from her mouth.
"No need to raise your voice, I'm right here…"
"Tell me!"
"Very well, girl." The spine-tingling voice heaved, sounding very irate to the girl's stubborn behavior. He seemed to be settling down within bittersweet time prior to interacting with the human again (much to Kagome's impatience). Yet any ordinary human, she wasn't.
"You are no ordinary girl, Kagome, this I know." It spoke after a few moments of eerie hush. "You have been chosen out of the tens of billions of humans to be here. As to why you are here will only be portrayed in the future if you're wise enough to chose it."
At those words slipped off his sandpaper tongue, an unknown incandescent illumination filled the room . . .
Revealing the most hideous beast sitting haughtily on a white spotted crimson mushroom. Wearing a placid frown, he swished his two bony tails rhythmically like they had minds of their own. If not for a sudden mysterious wind clamping Kagome's mouth shut, she would have screamed until her throat bled. The feline's eyes narrowed as he down-gazed the girl who was trying to open her mouth with her frantic hands.
Inwardly—secretly—the vile creature smirked at the effect he had upon frightening the girl. Even if she was the solitary key to the future of his domain—his once pleasant home. . . Even if it meant being a good little kitty for the remainder of the little time she had left for the moment beyond in this petrifying nirvana.
"Do not try to remove the vigor, it is no use," He purred leisurely. Kagome noticed how the male feline's ribs vibrated inharmoniously when he spoke. Those damn eyes weaving through her essence like a bullet to underdone flesh.
She caught her breath when the creature glimpsed at the ceiling, which twirled around a pool of heliotropes, ceruleans, and splashes of burgundy in a vivacious modus operandi, then stared back at her with a calm unreadable face.
"You're time is up, little girl. You have 24 hours to make a decision that will effect both your life, and billions of other's." His voice chanted. Leaping elegantly off the crimson mushroom, he strode over to his forth-coming charge grinning like a madman after prey. Kagome scooted farther back into a solid wall as he gained closer and closer to her fidgeting form.
He suddenly stopped. Glowering down at the lass who was too choked up in misbelieve to even utter a single word, he crooked his neck to view her eye-to-eye taking mental note of how used to him she was getting. This was definitely a plus.
The lights flickered on and off. Every distinct object, foreign and decipherable, started to blur with paramount annoyance.
Everything but Kagome.
The feline never left his pose when he noticed even himself start to warp into single etches of the imagination.
"24 hours. . . To devise the most important resolution you, and anyone else in the entire universe will ever have to make. When you have decided. . . Just. . Doze off." She could hear him chuckle darkly as his shrill form could barely be made out from his former appearance as the most vile thing to ever walk to the earth.
Kagome shot up quickly.
Her questions were not answered! Her mind was not as ease! She could never sleep knowing that she'd be facing something she never even wanted to see, no matter how 'important' she might be to it! Anyone!
But in the best position of that, she had not a clue who she was talking to. . .
She fumbled forward, swishing her fragile—yet deadly—hands at him not wanting to be left within the dark alone. With one last call to him, she reclaimed her voice from the unspoken realm it had wandered to.
"Wait! How will I know you the next time I see you?! Who are you!"
Seconds passed, as hush became a virtue to the once frightening room that now represented one of unadorned white—whiter then bleach would ever make it. And like that—
He was gone.
Kagome hunched her shoulders and sigh devoid of grace. Her nightgown crumpled, her form dull and still. But something was not right with this place. . .
"Call me, Kirara."
Head snapping up, eyes going wide then bloodshot from the sudden echo of the familiar mordant voice. It shook the room without mere hesitation when two life-sized eyes of polished bronze opened up to see the girl scream in mortal fear from shock, but over all, fear.
It charmed the room as the feline's chortle gradually filled the extent with taunting mirth.
Then everything went white.
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"Ms. Kaede! Ms. Kaede! She is stirring!"
The aged women spied from her ramification to her shuddering patient. She peered with her one eye down at the girl when suddenly like rising from the dead, her patient assembled herself into a sitting position and did the one thing that almost everyone present in the room didn't quite expect. . .
She screeched like a bat out of hell.
A nearby nurse who was working on a remedy to sooth her when she woke, dove to the teen girl's bed and gagged her with the bed sheet—which to say in the least, helped none too many. Kaede's eyes widened at the nurse's unorthodox method to shut someone up. She came from behind and smacked her up side the cranium with her herbal potions book, making her frown before she backed off away from the bed where the doctor's patient lay.
Kaede sat at the edge of Kagome's bed. The movement made Kagome jerk away frightened. Kaede noticed this, and internally made an agreement to console about her late derision.
Kagome huddled up into a ball, silently praying that it was all just a bad dream.
It was just a dream.
It was just a dream. . .
But just when she thought nothing could get any worse. . .
Little did she know, nothing would ever be the same again.
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But now to dwell on subject, this chapter reminds me of sonnets from the wits of Edgar Allan Poe with a twist of the Matrix suspense and just an allusion of Monkey Bone. To me, that is an endearing mix, say not?
Though I can't even think up a proper summary for this story. . . I shall write on.
Thanks to those who are reading, I hope you can review even if it's one word. But to those of you who have been reading, and wonder what exactly the cat from Alice (but in this story, shall be called Kirara) looks like, there is a URL in the "Paused Works" of Amande and I's Bio that shows a picture of what I am talking about. Just so you know what gave Kagome's nightmare's.
Please review.
Later days.
Noting that life is not bad on a bagel,
Hirari the 9th Goddess Of Maple Syrup
