Disclaimer: I do not own "The Ring" or "Ringu" or "Ring Virus" ("Ring Virus" is only hinted at in this version. In version three it may be more present)
Warning: child abuse...lots of it
A/N: This is the second version of this story. And yes there is more differnt about this version then just what person it's writen in.
Not Alone
The memories of my life have begun to fade but the hate remains. The need to kill...kill...kill...kill remains as well.
It is strange how death warps one's mind. I can understand her now, her need to bring me down with her. Yes, it was her fault. She was the first to die cursing the rest of us, the rest of us must up-hold her curse. In the spiral down we drag as many as we can. I never met the other but Sadako tells me there is a third. All together we make a Ring of Death. All the pain and hate of others is seeped into us at birth, we're the Gods' Vengeance for all the wrongs done on Earth. At least that is how Sadako justifies it. Frankly I don't think Gods have anything to do with it. I'm not still here to carry out Divine Justice I'm here for my own revenge. It won't stop.
I sat daintily (I had been trained by my parents to sit that way) in my chair in front of the fuzzy TV screen.
I suddenly snapped my head around as I heard a horse whinnying in a screeching high pitch. God, how I hated those horses! My eyes narrowed as I felt my skin burn. The horse's pleading whinnies grew louder and louder and the smell of burning flesh reached my nose from bellow my room. Suddenly the barn doors bellow flew open breaking my concentration. Daddy ran in the barn and over to what must have been a smoldering horse. I heard daddy's raged cry and flinched as the tall red ladder hit the edge of my "bedroom's" drop off floor. I looked down at my hands as I heard the ladder moan in protest against daddy's weight as he climbed it. I braced myself for my punishment.
The floor boards whined as daddy stood up on them. He drew himself up to his full height while putting a thick glove on his right hand. "You hurt the filly, didn't you!" His gloved hand came down and across my face.
I was knocked off my chair and onto the floor. My cheek was throbbing but I ignored it. I sat up and stared at daddy blankly as his hand came down again. My skull hit the wood floor with a sickening thud. But I sat up again awaiting daddy's next blow but it didn't come. Instead he took out a black tape from his overalls and flung it at me.
"It's your favorite movie." He said in a scratchy voice that meant he was fighting for control. "It'll give you something to do..." With that he went back down the ladder but I heard him say, "Besides killing my precious horses!"
I sat there for a few minutes looking at the tape. It seemed to be giving off an aura...or maybe I was just really insane like they said because the air around the tape seemed distorted somehow. I reached out a white hand and picked it up to look at it closer. What had daddy given me? This wasn't just some tape...had he done something to it? No, he didn't know how to do such things only I did.
I stood and sat back down in my chair. I leaned forward and pushed the tape in my half broken VCR then pressed play. First there was nothing but fuzz...then an image came on the screen; a man looking down through some sort of circle. Then a woman, she looked Asian, combing her hair in the mirror (mommy had a mirror like it, I hate that mirror). Then the mirror jerked over to the other side of the wall and showed what looked like me! No, it wasn't me...this girl was taller, had darker skin. But her hair was just like mine and she wore a white dress like me! The mirror jerked back to the image of the woman. A mess of Asian writing flooded the screen and seemed to swim before my eyes. And then a bunch of people writhing and some strange chanting. A man with a white thing over his head appeared and a scrapping sound made me flinch slightly. And then...was it a well? Yes, it was a well. Then the screen went fuzzy again. I sat, transfixed for how long I don't know. I was snapped out of it by another whinny from a horse. I turned off the TV...but in the black screen I saw that girl standing behind me! I spun round but there was no one there.
The next morning, once daddy finally remembered to bring me food, I asked him, "Daddy, what was on that tape you gave me?"
He stared at me as he sat down my food. "That stupid movie, what else would be?"
So he really didn't know! I knelt by the plat of food on the floor. I heard daddy climb back down the ladder then take it down so I couldn't follow. I picked at my food but didn't eat any of it.
Six days later I lay on my bed staring at my ceiling. Visions were nothing knew to me, I'd had them all the time, but I had just woken from one in which I had seen something that was now plastered to my brain. That girl, who seemed so like me, had been looking into a well when a man come up behind her, hit her with some sort of club over the head and dropped her in the well. But that wasn't all. I had then seen myself standing before that well at Shelter Mountain (we went there every year), I was singing. Then mommy came up from behind me she was talking but the words were scrambled. And then, when mommy was behind me, she pulled a bag over my head. I twisted and fought for air, I scratched at mommy's arms. Then I heard, quit clearly, "All I ever wanted was you." Something heard hit my head and then I was watching mommy push me into the well.
My hands curled around my blanket in little fists.
I suddenly sat up when I heard the TV turn itself on! The image on the screen was the well. I got up and walked to the TV. Something was coming, I could feel it. I stared at the screen, waiting. Then a hand came up on the edge of the well, then the head and the hair falling in front of it. As the girl crawled out of the well I drew closer to the screen. The girl walked as if dead towards me, she was getting closer and closer by the minute. She was now right up to the screen...in a moment she melted through the screen! I stepped back. The girl was now crawling out of the TV! I wasn't afraid but excited; I knelt down close to the girl and touched her wet hair which pooled in front of her. The girl snapped up a fingernail-less hand and grabbed my arm as she sat up. I braced myself for the burn and pain that happened anytime someone touched me but it didn't come. The girl seemed surprised as well as if she too had expected it. "You're dead...that's why." I whispered to the girl as our hands slid up and down each others' arms savoring the sensation of painless touch. "Are you going to kill me too?" I asked calmly. Though I couldn't see the girl's face I could tell the girl didn't know the answer as though she hadn't known there was anything else she could do but kill. I used my free hand to pull away the girl's hair from her face. The site would turn anyone's stomach...anyone except mine. The girl tried to turn away and hide behind her hair once again but I got a firm grip on the girl's chin and held it still. "What did he do to you?" I asked referring to the man I'd seen in my vision.
"What she will do to you..." Whispered the girl in a voice that raised every hair on my body.
I knew what the girl meant...mommy was going to kill me at Shelter Mountain. "We're the same..." I said quietly.
"I don't have much time..." Said the girl in a heavy Asian accent.
"You can't stay among the living long." I finished. Our hands were still sliding across the others' arm. I couldn't believe I could touch someone without hurting them, albeit a dead girl but still it was amazing! I let my hand now wonder up the girls' white sleeve and round the curve of her shoulder. I felt the other girl return the favor and arched my back against the touch shamelessly pressing myself to the other girl. I had never been touched on my bare skin for this long before, it was unlike anything I'd ever felt.
"You can feel so much..." Whispered the other girl.
I pulled myself together enough to realize that the girl's senses were probably different because of death. "Who are you?" I asked.
"Sadako."
"I'm Samara." I pulled my hand from Sadako's sleeve and started to touch any part of Sadako's wet skin I could. I couldn't get over what it felt like to touch and be touched. But then I felt Sadako stiffen.
"I'm sorry..." Said Sadako just before she faded away and the TV returned to fuzz.
I sat there in the middle of my floor, alone. I felt tears sting my eyes. I ran my hands across my arms trying to get something of what it was to touch another but it felt hollow.
The next morning I sat on my bed still hugging myself and stared around at my room and the various toys that held burn marks from when I'd been angry at daddy or the horses (I could burn inanimate objects at will but people I always hurt no matter what I did). I looked at the blank wooden walls of my room; I walked up to the back wall and placed a finger on it. Smoke immediately rose from the wood. I pulled my finger away and looked at the dark burn mark. Suddenly my finger was back on the wood moving furiously and it was joined by other fingers as well. After a few minutes I stopped but only to grab my chair and pull it up to the wall so I could reach higher. After maybe half an hour I stepped away from the wall, dragging the chair with me, and looked at my creation. It was a site I saw many times at Shelter Mountain; the red tree lit up like flames, and the damned horses running around it.
I smiled cruelly at the wooden picture, "It'll be the last thing I see..." But I suddenly spun round; I smelled smoke and fire from bellow in the barn. I ran to the edge of the drop off floor and looked down. The hay! It was on fire in the shape of a large ring! The horses were going crazy, damn things disserved to die anyway!
The doors to the barn burst open and father ran in with buckets of water. He ran around trying to put the fire out.
I laughed, high and cruelly, at the site.
Then mommy came in carrying more buckets and began trying to help daddy.
Finally the fire was out. Mommy looked up at me with a face that said clearly, "What did you do?"
I recoiled from the edge of the floor. I knew what was coming, burning the hide off of a few horses only got me beaten but if they thought I'd set fire to the barn...
The red ladder slammed against the edge of the floor.
I had the animal instinct to run but run where? There was nowhere to go, that was the whole point of them locking me up there! I saw daddy's head come up over the edge of the floor, he looked intent to kill. I backed away from him.
Daddy was now up the ladder and standing on the floor.
"Daddy, I didn't do it!" I pleaded.
"Oh, I know," Said daddy cruelly. "Just like you didn't hurt the horses,"
I then noticed with terror that daddy had a whip in his hand. "No, please!" I cried but he kept advancing on me.
"...just like you didn't hurt your mother," The whip came crashing down on my fragile form with a sickening crack. "Or the fish," Crack! The whip came down upon me again. "Or the weather..." Crack!
I had fallen to the ground screaming every time the whip hit me. I tried to conjure up horrific images and force them into daddy's brain but I couldn't while being whipped. Blood oozed from my wounds staining my white dress which had been ripped open in the back from the whip. I cried, screamed, twisted, but nothing helped the pain as the whip kept crashing down on me.
But then daddy stopped for a second to catch his breath.
I summoned up all the strength I had left and forced every horrible image into daddy's head that I possibly could think of.
Daddy's eyes widened and he paled as the images flooded his mind. He stumbled back clutching his head with his hands.
I kept pushing into his mind, I wanted to make him hurt as much as I did. I hated him! Hated!
But then daddy saw the tree burned into the wall somehow that invoked new horror in him and he ran to the ladder and went down it as fast as he could.
I heard the ladder crash to the ground meaning he was all the way down and running from the barn. All my energy was gone; I lay on the floor shaking. But then I heard the TV turn on. "Sadako..." I whispered, I tried to crawl to the TV but I couldn't move. Moments later I could see Sadako's feet coming towards me. I looked up at her. "Help me..."
A few days later I sat on my bed holding Sadako's tape in my hands and staring at it. My back still stung like Hell itself even though mommy had made daddy patch my up. I had been through that drill before but it never helped the stinging. Suddenly I hid the tape under my pillow and went to the edge of my room's floor and looked down. Nothing but hay. But then the barn doors opened and mommy came in.
Mommy put up the ladder. "Climb down, sweetie" She called to me.
I repressed the urge to inflict bodily harm on my mother for calling me that and climbed down the rickety ladder. It felt weird not being in my room, I had hardly been aloud to leave it in years. I looked at mommy questioningly.
"We're going to visit someone, Samara." Said mommy sweetly.
Mommy took my hand, she was wearing gloves so as not to get burned, and lead me from the barn.
Once in the harsh light of day I squinted and my eyes watered. I hadn't been in the day light in almost a year. I rubbed at my eyes angrily as mommy led me to the house. The house. Now that place I hadn't been inside for ages. I looked up at it with pure unadulterated hate. The white outer walls, the dark shutters, everything about it I hated.
We went up on the old wooden porch, which creaked beneath us, and into the house and the small cramped entry way.
I stopped dead; I could hear water running upstairs. I slowly looked up the dark wooden stairs before me realization dawning in my mind.
"Come on, Samara." Said mommy in that sweet tone again but she pulled hard at my hand taking a step up the stairs.
But I didn't move. "Don't make me go in the water." I whispered.
"Samara, honey, it's just a bath, it can't hurt you." Said mommy a bit more sharply then she'd meant to and tugged harder at my arm.
"Don't make me go in the water." I repeated this time pulling away from mommy.
Mommy got a firmer grip on me and began to drag me up the stairs.
I screamed and grabbed at the banisters. "No! I won't go in the water! It hurts me, mommy!" I pleaded as mommy got her hands round my waist so she could add more force. I felt my fingers slipping from the banister. "Please, no!" I screamed as I was dragged further up the stairs. I twisted, grabbed, bit, did anything to get away. I was in a crazed frenzy, like a demon possessed animal. Finally my teeth connected with bare skin and mommy cried in pain letting go of me. I would have fallen down the steps but I grabbed the banisters again for dear life. I heard mommy crying for daddy and heard him thundering down the hall above. I didn't look back but just ran down the stairs. I could hear daddy behind me, I flow at the door and struggled with the locks. When I finally got the door open it was too late, daddy grabbed me by the hair and dragged me up the stairs shouting obscenities at me.
I felt as though all my hair was being ripped out, I screamed, cried and struggled but it was no use daddy was much too strong for me.
He dragged me into the white tiled bathroom and towards the bathtub which was filled with water.
"No! Please!" I begged as mommy came in the room holding her quickly bandaged wrist. "I'll be good, I promise! I won't hurt the horses, I won't burn things just please don't make me go in the water!" I pleaded desperately, I believe in that moment I would have said or done anything to save myself from the water. Daddy held me in place as mommy pulled off my old tattered clothes. I shivered in the cold as the air hit my bare skin. "Please...!" I begged again as daddy grabbed me once more and forced me towards the tub. I grabbed the edges of the tub using them to help me push away but again daddy was much too strong.
He forced me into the water as I screamed wildly.
The water felt so cold that it burned; it felt as though I were being boiled alive in ice. The wounds on my back screamed in agony and protest as did I.
"Stop that!" Said daddy slapping me hard across the face with a gloved hand.
Fearing another whipping I swallowed my screams and gritted my teeth against the pain.
Daddy left the room and mommy came up to me. "See, honey, it's not so bad." She said wetting a cloth in the water and lathering it up with soap.
I winced as mommy moved the rag across my dirty skin (mommy was careful that only the cloth touched me and no part of herself did). The last time I was forced to have a bath had been the year before when they said they would lock me in the barn for good and so my skin was covered in dirt and other things. Mommy had quite a time of trying to scrub it all off.
After a half an hour my whole body was sent into spasms from the pain of being in the water for a prolonged amount of time. Finally mommy let me out and dried me off with a towel before handing me a new plain white dress to put on.
I slipped into it as mommy began the struggle of brushing my long and matted hair. My body was still shaking and my wounds still stung and the constant pulling and tearing at my hair didn't help matters.
After a good hour my hair was as smooth as could be. Mommy was completely out of breath from the effort and I wasn't sorry for it. After what mommy had just put me through I wished the woman would burn in Hell for all eternity.
After mommy had recovered herself she told me that she had been seeing a doctor and that her doctor had asked to see me and that it was really nothing to worry about.
But I immediately knew what type of doctor mommy meant and I felt both fear and hate build in me. "I don't want to go, mommy." I said flatly.
"You're going! I don't care if you want to or not!" Yelled mommy causing me to wince at the sudden harshness of her tone.
I sat on the steps watching mommy brushing her hair in her mirror on the wall. I hate that mirror.
I was staring up at the mirror thinking how one day I would be tall enough to see myself in it without having to stand on my tiptoes.
Mommy came up behind me, "Do you want to see in the mirror, honey?" She asked.
I nodded.
Mommy lifted me up and I saw my reflection in the mirror. But at that very moment an image of the horses being eaten alive by insects entered my mind. No! I didn't want to see that right now! Get out! Get out! Get out! Then the sun through the window hit the mirror and the image left my mind.
But mommy suddenly dropped me going pale and rigid.
I whined as I had hit my head in the fall. I looked up at mommy. "Mommy? What's wrong, mommy?"
I wrinkled my nose at the memory. I hate that mirror. Though the mirror had made me aware of one of my more useful powers and helped me to use it I still hate it. I have the feeling I would have been much happier if I hadn't discovered that particular power. In those early years I'd used it to get whatever I wanted but it didn't take long for mommy and daddy to realize I was the one putting the images there which started a never ending circle.
"You look so beautiful like that, Samara." Said mommy. "You should see yourself. Come here." She motioned towards the mirror.
I walked as slowly as I could towards mommy. I didn't want another scene; I'd surely get beaten for it. So I stood in front of the mirror and slowly looked into it. My eyes widen not at my own reflection but at the reflection of Sadako in the mirror. I looked over my shoulder quickly; no one was there. I looked back at the mirror; no one there. I looked down and slowly backed away from the mirror until I hit the wall. "I hate that mirror." I whispered.
Mommy and I stood outside the little house. "This is the place, Samara." Said mommy quietly.
I felt dread creeping up my spine.
Mommy opened the door and led me into what seemed to be a small waiting room. There was a puzzle toy against one wall and mismatched chairs and love seats lined all the others. Mommy took a seat and I sat down next to her.
I hadn't been in someone else's home in years and it felt weird now. The smell of fish and cigarettes permeated the stale air making me have to fight the urge to sneeze.
"Ah, hello, Anna." Said a very thin woman as she walked in the room. She wore somewhat dumpy-lived-in clothes and her thin wavy hair was clumped slightly into strands.
"Hello." Said mommy standing up. "Dr. Grasnik this is Samara my daughter."
I just stared blankly at Dr. Grasnik not showing the slightest interest.
"Hello. Would you like to come with me, Samara, so we can talk?" Asked Dr. Grasnik in that annoying sickly sweet voice adult's use with children when they think the child's too dumb to understand common English.
I didn't move, I just kept staring at Dr. Grasnik.
"Right then." Said Dr. Grasnik with a sigh. "Anna, if you could wait in the other room then?"
Mommy seemed as though she didn't want to leave me alone with the Doctor.
"Just for a few minutes, Anna." Said Dr. Grasnik understanding Anna's anxiety or at least thinking she understood.
Mommy gave one last worried look at me and left the room.
I sat quietly on my bed as daddy wallpapered over the walls of my room to cover the drawing on the wall of the tree and the horses. My back still stung but I refused to give any sign of my pain to daddy.
I scowled at the wallpaper daddy was using; it had horses' heads all over it. Why was everything horses with daddy? I hated the horses and I still do. Mommy and daddy loved the bloody horses more then they did me. They loved almost everything more then me actually.
Daddy had finished with the wallpaper. "Get ready to leave."
"Why?" I asked looking at him.
"You and mommy are going somewhere together." Said daddy trying to sound kind.
"Where are we going?" I asked as a black cloud began to hang over me. I didn't know what was about to happen or how it would twist me into a true demon child but I did know that something horrible was about to happen. And I couldn't have been more right.
"You'll see." Said daddy with what seemed an almost too genuine smile.
"Let's talk about the pictures." Said Doctor Meiyer.
I kept her my turned from him, or more importantly the camera, as I sat silently in the wooden chair.
"Samara? How do you make the pictures?" Asked Doctor Meiyer with a slight feeling of being put out by having to ask in his voice.
I felt the drugs in me taking effect as my vision started to blur slightly. It was becoming very hard to string words together. "I don't...make them. I see...them. And then...they just...are."
"Samara, I need you to start telling me the truth."
I was telling him the fucking truth...but he never believed me. No one ever did...not even... "Can I see my mommy?"
"No, Samara, not until we knew what's wrong with you."
"I love my mommy." I said, and it was ironically truthfully.
"Yes, you do. But you don't want to hurt her anymore do you? You don't want to hurt anyone."
I felt tears well up in my eyes, was it the drugs? "But I do and I'm sorry. It won't stop." I risked a look at the camera but quickly looked away because I saw Sadako in the lens.
"That's why you're here, so we can help you to make it stop."
I didn't really hear Dr. Meiyer all I could hear was Sadako in my heard saying, 'He won't come back for you.'
"He's going to leave me here." I said.
"Who?" Asked Dr. Meiyer.
"Daddy."
"He just wants to help you."
"Not daddy."
"Your daddy loves you." Said Dr. Meiyer a bit forcefully.
"Daddy loves the horses." I spat the last would like venom. "He wants me to go away. But he doesn't know..."
"He doesn't know what?"
I didn't reply but just looked at the camera lens where I could still see Sadako.
"Samara?"
Then I out loud to Sadako, "Everyone will suffer."
I walked out of the house at Shelter Mountain onto the over-grazed grass. I walked, or rather was pulled, towards where I knew the well was. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know anything, not sense I had come back from that damned Mad House. I reached the well and looked up at the tree as the sun danced through its leaves catching them on fire. The horses were grazing there, running around and whinnying in that detestable high pitch. I stared at them; one day I knew I would kill every last one of daddy's stupid fucking horses and indeed I have.
I felt a slight gush of wind next to me and looked over; I could see the faint outline of Sadako...was it really Sadako? I am not sure to this day.
"It's today..." Whispered Sadako...or was it just the wind? "You will die in seven days..." The outline disappeared.
I looked down into the blackness of the well. Was there any way out of this? I had tried to stay away from Shelter Mountain but daddy would beat me 'til she agreed to come. I had tried to keep away from the well but it called to me, pulled me to it. This was me fate it seemed and I could not get out of it. But I wasn't going to take it lying down if I had to die then I would drag as many down with me as I could. My parents and my blood parents would pay the most. As I looked into the well I felt compelled to sing and so I opened her mouth and began to sing,
"Here we go
The world is spinning
When it stops
It's just beginning..."
"Isn't it beautiful here, Samara?"
It was mommy's voice.
"So peaceful."
I looked up from the well and glared at the red tree and the horses.
"I know things will get better."
Everything seemed to slow down. I saw the black bag before me and then it was covering my face. I struggled, twisted, grabbed mommy's arms willing them to burn, and forced every image I could into mommy's already tortured mind. I felt myself hyperventilating; I twisted my head back and forth trying to found a position in which I could breath. My nails scratched at mommy's arms as I heard her say,
"All I ever wanted was you."
Panic rose in me just before a sharp pain followed by darkness. When my eyes were forced open by the familiar freezing pain of water I saw that I was indeed under water. And above me I could see the stone that sealed the well being pushed into place. Once it stopped moving I could see a ring of sunlight around the edges of the stone.
Noah flipped on the light in the barn. There was hay everywhere but what caught his attention was the red ladder leading up to a room built in the loft.
"Samara..." Whispered Rachel.
They walked forward to the ladder and climbed up it. Once they reached the room Noah looked around. There was faint music playing from a Musical Toy next to a bed. There were toys pushed into the corners, some of them looked as though they'd been burned and so did parts of the yellow horse wallpaper.
"Her mother was going crazy..." Said Rachel walking over to the Musical Toy. "Morgan blamed the child."
Noah looked down to his right; there was a TV and a chair. He knelt by the TV and ran his hand across the top of it.
"So he kept her here," The music stopped, Rachel must have stopped it. "Alone."
"Not alone." Said Noah looking up from the TV.
Here we go
The world is spinning
When it stops
It's just beginning
Sun comes up
We laugh and we cry
Sun goes down
And then we all die
End
