A stench filled the room, thick and hot, the smell of alcohol and nicotine, assaulting his nose. The light above him was hazy from the constant smoke wafting from the living room. He'd long since become accustomed to the smell, but that didn't mean he liked it.
The smoke was thick enough to clog one's brain, making reading, studying and even concentrating of any kind nearly impossible. The scent itself had once given Gaara a heady feeling, as if the stench leaked in through his orifices and invaded his brain, making it as smoggy and hazed as the room he sat in. The clear white light bulb above him burnt yellow and the smell clung permanently to his clothes, worse then the mildew between the tiles in the bathroom. He probably breathed the equivalent of a pack a day from just living in the same house as that man.
Gaara didn't have a door to his room. The door was actually still there, but only the bottom hinge remained intact and the noise that came from his attempting to close it – not to mention the wrath of the one hearing the noise – wasn't worth the trouble. So Gaara's room didn't have a door, and he'd become accustomed to the smoke, at least as much as was possible.
He could hear the TV blaring in the other room, some male voice going on and on about the weather. The loud sound of his father snoring leaked over the TV and Gaara took a strange comfort in that sound. He preferred it when his father was sleeping, because he couldn't hit in his sleep.
The bruises on his legs were healing over slowly, having changed now from red marks to dark black and blue with a bit of green spotted here and there. He'd had bruises before and he knew about how long these would take to disappear, another week at least. So until that week was over he was resigned to wearing pants and doing his best to avoid behind noticed by the teachers and counselors at his school. The last thing he needed was for them to call home and give his father another reach to pick up that old worn-out belt.
His schoolwork was laid out before him, but he wasn't paying attention to it. It wasn't that the assignments were hard, or really even challenging, there was simply just a lack of motivation for everything. He didn't care about equations or names or even the pages that he was supposed to read for the next day's quiz. All of that wasn't important to him. Instead he was engaging in a forbidden activity, the exact reason why his back was faced to the door and he was listening to the occupant outside so closely.
In his hands, Gaara held a thick book from the school library. It was considered reference and not something that would have been checked out, but he'd managed to sneak it out in his backpack, by using one of the emergency doors in the back where he knew the alarm was broken. Stealing usually wasn't his thing, but at his school all the books one checked out were kept on record, and he didn't want a book on ghosts and the paranormal showing up in a letter in his mailbox.
The only way to survive his father was to give him the least amount of reasons and motivation to be angry.
The book in his hands was currently turned a chapter on precognition and visions of the future. Gaara scanned the pages with a bored expression, passing off each passage as complete and total bullshit. He'd scanned nearly half the book already, and nothing seemed to fit his particular case, nothing ever did. The ghosts and images they described always had some ethereal feeling to them, as if coming directly from the pages of their own religion, and leaving the rest to be passed off as illusion or insanity.
Ghosts and spirits were things dressed in white that floated through walls, wailed and tossed plates across the room. Sure, things like that might exist, but that certainly wasn't the creature that was standing in the corner of his room, next to his bed, watching him with her grotesque smile. She wasn't in the book as a ghost or spirit and she certainly wasn't a demon.
The chapters on precognition also presented the same set of problems. Nearly everything that was reported to this book, and the others Gaara had glanced through before snatching this one, all related it back to religion. A message sent from a God or an angel and there was always a family member or a close friend involved. Not a complete stranger like the boy from the next school. Gaara had known the boy for two days, so that didn't fit.
Gaara closed the book with a soft sigh of frustration and tucked it under the blankets, laying back over it. He frowned and closed his eyes, replaying the image in his mind. He'd lived with the apparition in his room for enough years to not really care about what she was. What concerned him more was the images he'd seen around Haku. That was something he'd never experienced before and it worried him. It wasn't that he overly cared about the feminine looking boy, but rather was thinking more of a long-term sense.
If he saw things like that around Haku, would he start seeing them around others?
"Maybe I am really insane."
Nothing fit. Nothing in the book fit and all the others he'd glanced at seemed to only be repeating the same information split into smaller volumes. None of it was a help and in the end he actually was more in the dark now then he'd been before he'd gotten the notion of actually attempting some half-assed sort of research.
From what he read the precognition image should have had something to do with family. But Haku wasn't family and he really didn't care if it had anything to do with his father. And his mother was dead. So then what else was there?
Gaara rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes, resting his head against the pillow. He heard the soft whispering sound of her moving around the room, still watching him, and passed it off in his mind as unimportant. His head hurt, he was getting a headache from the smoke and trying to concentrate too much on anything. The light above him shone a bit through his eyelids, bathing his inner mind in blood red as he drifted off into a troubled sleep, the smoke invading his mouth and nose.
Sleep usually didn't come that easily in his father's house, but today it seemed to flow right over him like a thick suffocating blanket. The dim lights and sounds faded away into darkness and a silence that was so dense it seemed to scream in his ears. Gaara barely even heard his own soft moan before he was lost in the sensation of falling through the air, with no end in sight.
The atmosphere was cold, the kind of temperature that wasn't necessarily on your skin but rather still made you shiver, because you knew more cold was coming. He could feel the darkness, pushing in around him and yet it was light, the darkness that struck in the dead hours of the morning, just a breath before the sun rose, where there was only silence to be heard. Not even the birds or animals were up this late.
It certainly wasn't a time for a person to be awake.
And yet, in front of him, he could see the blurred image of someone walking down the street, hugging the small pools of the street lamps as he crossed the sidewalk. The image was hazy, as if the smoke had some how followed him into the vision while the image strobed before his eyes, as if he were constantly blinking to focus. He could make out the washed out colors and the shapes in the darkness, but it looked more like an old watercolor painting hidden in the back closet then an actual scene outside. Details were a thing that could only be wished for, they weren't there.
Still, even without the details, he could make out the scene. He recognized the lay out of the trees and the shape of the houses, standing silent in the back. Tucked behind them, like a well-guarded treasure, was the community library that stayed open nearly all hours of the year, doubling for resources for the city and the two schools within the vicinity. The road before him, in the image, seemed to be one of the few leading to that library, which twisted and turned around, leading them to the center of town.
The one in the image was walking slowly, steps careful and watchful. It took time, but eventually the light washed out blue of his clothing became recognizable and he discovered himself to be watching the boy from the afternoon before, a modest pile of books tucked under one arm as he walked home.
Haku had apparently spent the night studying and was now heading home to catch what little sleep he could before school the next day.
A sick and dry feeling crept into his stomach as he watched the image flash before his eyes like an old film reel. Why was he seeing Haku? He'd never had a dream like this before.
Feet crunched over the pavement and a small turn led to a shortcut across a couple lawns, squeezing between two fences that almost met and created more of a tunnel then a passageway. The secret shortcut brought him out to an alley way and a group of boys who seemed to actually be waiting for him.
He couldn't hear the words, but he could tell they were speaking, their washed out images animated in the lack of light. The scene before him resembled more of a shadow puppet show then anything else, but it was no less effective to his mind.
Books crashed on the ground, a backpack dropped and sliding a few feet away. One of the shadows in the darkness was shoved between the boys and he didn't have to think too hard to know that it was Haku. Sounds blurred together and the entire image seemed to spiral down into darkness, the world plunging out from under him as his body suddenly couldn't tell which way was up or down, and all images or feelings to latch onto for balance disappeared.
Visions began flashing in front of his eyes, their intensity blinding him painfully, as if they were physical blows.
Books crashing to the ground, louder this time, the binding on one breaking and popping as it landed open, the slight early morning breeze causing the pages to rustle a bit before settling down.
A punch to the gut, sending the victim leaning over, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath, momentarily forgetting his surroundings to the pain.
A yank of hair, pulling at his scalp and forcing his head back of with a cry of pain.
Tearing filling his ears as clothing is ripped and buttons pop away.
Being pushed back and forth between three bodies, unable to keep footing and unable to regain balance before being shoved to the next, waiting to land hard on the pavement.
Jeers and comments filling the ears, each one painful as the boys laugh, teasing and hurting.
Cries for help, swallowed by the night and their own yells, disappearing and buried so no one could hear them over the other noises.
A moment of freedom, struggling and breaking free to stumble forward in a panicked attempt to escape…
Only to be grabbed and pulled back into the circle, punched again, this time landing hard on the pavement, knocking the wind out of his stomach and stealing away his voice brutally.
Hands gripping at wrists, pinning them to the ground, forcing him to stay painfully on his stomach, his skin pressed to the hard pavement.
More cries and more screams, desperate now in a rough voice. Tears slipping down cheeks accompanied by pleading words and trembling.
Ripping and tearing pain, giving rise to more struggling and harsh pinning in an attempt to limit his movement. It wasn't just his voice screaming anymore but his entire body, desperate, trying anything to get away.
A sharp pain in his side, followed by the warmth of blood and the cold bite of metal.
Cries and voices fade away, rhythmic pain replaced by dullness and a numb feeling flowing over his entire body.
Another cold bite of metal in his shoulder, but this time his body only jerks, trembling but not moving more then that.
Warmth flows over his shoulder and down the side of his body, also from between his legs. A sickening warmth, thick like a creature crawling over his body and slowly slinking away.
The voices around him fade, leaving only the tortured sounds of weak crying from a body unable to move as all feeling just flows away.
The images disappeared, cold freezing their edges and consuming everything in its path. The edges of the dream frosted over, becoming cold and sharp, unforgiving in their shape and angle, threatening a feeling worse then frostbite to any who came near, leaving only one image in his mind, this time with every detail intensified as if it were real, right in front of his face.
Haku looked back at Gaara, his eyes holding a hollow and dead look, his mouth open in an endless scream, crying out simultaneously for helplessness and for hatred. There was no mistaking the boy was dead and would never move again.
But a moment later his dead eyes moved, focusing right on Gaara.
Then the dream shattered around him, accompanied by a soul shattering scream, left to ring in his ears.
