Author's Notes: This chapter is long overdue. Thanks to all of you who have supported me thus far.

I don't like this chapter very much, but I still kept it in for some reason.

Nightmares in adulthood are often associated with outside stressors or exist concurrently with another mental disorder. Ken just wishes they would stop.



Oneirophobia



6.

He pushes down the starchy collar and looks at the barcode on his neck again. The black lines vary in width, match in length, and dwarf the neatly printed numbers "702012 000737" that sit beneath them. His fingernail scratches the barcode and the ink doesn't smudge. Around it the skin is bruised purple, sensitive to the touch, and he knows that this tattoo is real and not some cheap press-on he could have bought with pocket change. In the mirror he can see more than just the barcode: he studies his curving neck, slim jaw, thin lips, watery eyes, and sheath of blue hair that he is holding back right now between curled thumb and forefinger so that he can better see.

The barcode is a cleanly printed tattoo, despite its location. The artist had very sure hands. Ken cannot remember receiving it.

When he doesn't want to look anymore, he lets go of the collar and it instantly returns to its default position. Fabric softener is a foreign convenience here. His clothes crackle and crease terribly at all the joints, especially around his elbows and knees, and he has to move carefully to prevent the cloth from chafing the smoothest skin of his inner thighs. He looks in the mirror, flattens a crease that runs along his shoulder like an old battle scar, and watches it reappear when he removes his hand. The mirror itself is a plain piece of equipment, stainless steel and not much else, but there is a little tray for a toothbrush and a bar of scented soap. Whatever the soap is made of always causes his skin to break out into a rash, so he avoids using it and thus feels constantly dirty. But every time he wakes up he finds a clean set of clothes, which prevents him from going insane due to an otherwise never-ending companionship with filth. He picks up the toothbrush, turns on the faucet, and waits until the water doesn't look so brownish-red. The toothpaste tastes like bubblegum. The water tastes like dirt even on good days.

Once finished, he dries both hands on his shirt, leaving big dark splotches that break up the monotony of grayness on and around him. The floor is gray stone, the walls are gray stone, the basin is gray stone; the mirror frame is shiny gray, the toothbrush is old and gray, the soap is lusterless gray; the single light fixture is covered in a mesh of gray wire that causes even the light to lose its color. At first he hated that muted light because it never turned off and hence sleep didn't come easily—but anymore he has no trouble falling sleep. Exhaustion is an excellent tutor. It makes you desperate.

His cot has a plain gray quilt and is anchored to the floor by fist-sized bolts that Ken cut his hands on during the one and only attempt at detaching a leg. He had planned to take the hefty leg and hit the gray walls until he found some indication of a hidden door, since there was no obvious way in or out of his room. Unscrewing the bolts with his bare hands, however, proved impossible. He had to suffer through the pain of pulverized flesh until he woke up the next day to find a bottle of peroxide and a mess of cotton swabs by the sink.

That failed escape happened twenty-three days ago according to the red-tinted gouges on the wall above his pillow, where he ticks off a day each time he lies down to sleep. He has no idea how many hours truly pass, but he trusts his estimations.

Aside from the mirror, the sink, the cot, and the toilet (gray stone that's icy on your butt no matter what), there is a wide silver vent on the wall about thirty-five feet up, installed beside a nondescript intercom speaker. White noise from the speaker accompanies an omnipresent chill that his gray quilt can't prevent. Every once in a while something disturbs the microphone of the outside world, causing whiny reverb to lance throughout the room; the mechanical squeals hit the walls and scatter, dying quickly, their waves nullifying each other. One time there was an actual voice that gravely asked, "Where are you?" No amount of pleading could get it to come back.

There are no windows. As mentioned, there are also no doors. The giant room is vaguely oblong—and hasn't a chance for corners—with the amenities in the center and his cot held against the curved wall. Climbing the wall to reach the wide silver vent didn't work because the stone was too smooth; he lost one fingernail in the effort, suffered through another night of hot pain, and found a mysterious gift of disinfectant and adhesive bandages by the sink when he awoke. His hand is still throbbing.

He reclines on the gray cot, presses his feet close together because they feel like blocks of ice, and waits for food. Only pastes contained in blank gray tubes are supplied to him, and he has developed an unsatisfying game of guessing which tube will contain which flavor. It's his only entertainment.

Like Pavlov's dog, Ken has adhered to the certain pattern of this prison: close your eyes, and you will receive. It started with sleep and needed materials being delivered while he was unconscious; now he can wait with his eyes closed and sightlessly observe the same result. After he does close his eyes, he will hear a distinct whir-whir-click-click-click and the clatter of a tray as it hits the ground. A watched pot never boils, and all that.

Whir-whir-click-click-click. CLACK. The tray is sitting there by the sink with a collection of tubes lying atop it.

After retrieving the tray, he places it on the cot and sits down again. He selects the left-most tube and unhappily predicts that it will be "salad with too much vinegar." He pops off the tube's lid and squeezes a line of thick, gooey paste into his mouth. The flavor doesn't register at first—his brain is forgetting the nuances tastebuds can identify—but he eventually decides it tastes like a mouthful of pork that has been sitting outside in direct sunlight for too long. The other pastes are more edible, although their flavors are run-of-the-mill cheese and carrots and something else that might be spiced apples. So long as most tubes aren't spoilt, he doesn't care.

"What is this—1984?" Ken asks suddenly, halfway through the last tube, and his voice sounds flat. Dead. He shivers.

After he feels somewhat sated, he begins the painstakingly slow process of making another gouge in the wall, because soon he will sleep. But then—

Whir-whir-click-click-click—

His eyes are open; he hears that distinctive sound out of sequence, turns around quickly in his surprise, gets his legs entangled in the gray quilt, and discovers that something substantial has deigned to give him company.

A strange man is standing over by the sink and there is no indication of how he arrived beyond the familiar sound that inducted his appearance. He has long, dark hair and looks rather like a freshly risen corpse—a haunting vampire with sunken eyes, peeling mouth, and skin paler than milk. His white lab coat is out of place amid the gray room: it is frank and expensive-looking with its tightly lashed belts, neatly pressed collar, and line of shiny gold buttons down the center that serve no practical purpose. The identification badge clipped to his breast pocket is laminated and unblemished, and as sterile as his quaint smile.

"How are we today?" the man asks. He is holding a legal pad in one hand and a cheap ballpoint pen in the other, and the way he wields them suggests that he is a professional. He busily begins writing even though Ken is too stunned to reply at first. "Any change since I last visited you?"

"Who are you?" Ken demands. The man looks familiar, but all Ken can remember are these gray walls and how they have encompassed him since—well, since. His memories go back to a certain point and then become muddled. "Why are you keeping me in here?"

"You don't remember? At all?"

"I wouldn't be asking if I did."

"You are here because your behavior has been deteriorating," the man says. "Lately you've exhibited very aggressive tendencies, Ken. We've been pretty worried about your safety ever since you managed to break the mirror in your last room, and that's why we moved you to a room that has extra precautions."

Gesturing, the man indicates the mirror above the sink. Ken now notices a thick sheet of plastic overlapping the reflective surface . . . and this is plastic he could have sworn wasn't there minutes ago. The plastic is bolted down much like the cot is; curiously, these bolts are also tinted red from failures to remove them. He doesn't remember trying to unscrew the bolts, but he knows he wanted to remove both them and the plastic so that he could destroy that mirror too.

"But where am I really?" Ken asks, confused. "Who are you?"

The man sighs and lifts his shoulders, flexing a certain joint until he hears the satisfying pop of stiff cartilage slipping back into place. "My name is Oikawa Yukio-sensei. You know that."

Oikawa? Oikawa Yukio? Suddenly Ken remembers everything: brother, funeral, Digital World, e-mails, Dark Ocean, Kaiser, Chosen, salvation, redemption, darkness, and Oikawa's twitching smile. The kidnapping. The old van that smelt of cabbage and sweat. The scanning of the dark seed. The children who wanted become him; the children who wanted to have a copy of the dark seed implanted in their necks so they could become super-smart drones; the children who wanted to be successful and popular even if it meant becoming avatars of evil. And—

Oikawa keeps scribbling on the legal pad and Ken feels too ill to think.

Ken clutches the barcode tattoo on his neck, tears the skin with his fingers, and begins coughing hard enough to regurgitate undigested paste that is warm and sticky and smells terrible. Within seconds Oikawa is on top of him and soon other people from seemingly out of nowhere join in; they wrestle Ken into submission, in the process getting smeared in his vomit and blood, and someone shouts for a sedative. One nearby woman preps a syringe and Ken gags on an acrid sob.

"No, that's too much," Oikawa says roughly. "A little less of that, if you please. That's good. Right above his elbow."

A sharp, hot pain spreads through Ken's forearm. He screams and thrashes about, fighting his detainees, but they remain atop him until the sedative sets in and he stops struggling. Once he relaxes, they back away and disappear like ghosts through the gray walls. Oikawa stays and talks as though his minions are still there.

"I think some of the aggression has to do with the dosage. To curb his hallucinations I brought up the lithium, which appears to have had serious consequences. We'll have to steadily lower the dosage back to where it was and find something else as treatment."

"Oikawa," Ken hisses through his teeth. The world is swimming and he wants to feel angrier, but the sedative's peculiar heat—now fanning out along his spine—makes it difficult to concentrate on any one emotion. "Oikawa, what are . . ."

"You should feel better now," Oikawa says to Ken, bending down to retrieve the fallen legal pad and ballpoint pen. "I normally frown upon doping up my patients, but sometimes the situation just calls for it. I think you'd agree if you were in my shoes."

Ken rolls his eyes back to look at the ceiling, which seems remarkably closer now. It has several sets of lights instead of the one mesh-enclosed bulb from before. But then the lights are far away again, cold and remote and individual—then close, mundane and united—far away, taunting and clouded . . . If he tries to focus on one version of the ceiling, his head hurts.

"Do you remember me now? You had such a strange response to my name! Inoue-sensei is fetching the bandages for your neck, don't worry, but let's get started with our session while we wait." Oikawa sits down again and manages to look dignified even with smears of bodily fluids on his coat. "Your neck always interests you, whether you're scratching it or looking at it in the mirror or something else—why is that?"

"You should know," Ken says, and the words slur together. His tongue feels heavy, awkward, and too big for his mouth. "You put it on me."

The pen writes noisily. "I put what on you?"

"The barcode, which is . . . which is . . . how you're gonna scan the Dark Seed in me . . . 'cause you kidnapped me and all of those kids . . ."

Oikawa looks at him knowingly. "Oh, that's right. One of your hallucinations is about me being an abductor of some sort. What am I using the 'Dark Seed' for, again?"

"You're not gonna use the Dark Seed—you're gonna scan it. The children want to become me, and to do that you have to transplant some of my darkness into them."

"I visited you this morning. You claimed that you hadn't experienced any hallucinations in at least a few days," Oikawa says. "The lithium must be responsible—I'm certain now. We're working hard to find the right balance of medications for you."

"You weren't here this morning," Ken mumbles. "I would've remembered. This is the second time you've come for me. The first was to get a scan of the Dark Seed."

From where he is resting, Ken can see the ballpoint pen create line after line of symbols on the paper; the handwriting is so heavy that sometimes ink bleeds through onto the yellow page beneath it. Oikawa doesn't stay within the lines.

Scratch scratch scratch, flip-flick, scratch scratch sc-scratch.

"You don't remember my visit from four hours ago?"

"I've been here for twenty-three days." For confirmation, Ken looks at the gouges on the wall. "No one has come in that time. No one has spoken through the intercom more than once."

Unabated, Oikawa replies, "You've been here for three months, Ken."

"Twenty-three days!" he says, alarmed. His head is starting to clear up, but his tongue remains slow, hindering effective communication. "I mean—okay—so maybe my timekeeping isn't great because I have no idea when it's light and when it's dark. But I've been counting the times I've had to sleep . . . look, right here . . ." He rubs his fingers over the gouges in the stone. They are rough and cool on his sore fingertips; they are something he made in a room his captors otherwise manufactured.

"There's nothing over there," Oikawa says slowly. No matter how much he squints or how hard he looks, the stone is smooth. "Furthermore, you don't have anything that could scratch the stone. You know items like that are expressly forbidden in the patient wards."

Ken frowns and rubs the gouges again, but now they are suspiciously less pronounced. Once he lifts his head, which takes a lot of effort on his part because it weighs a ton, he sees that the wall is blank like Oikawa had said. His insides contract and his vision dims down to a circle incorporating only his hand and that portion of the wall.

"That is impossible! It takes me hours to make a mark, but I get it done. They haven't gone away like this before now. What did you do?"

"There were never any marks on the wall," Oikawa says. Nurse Inoue returns with fresh bandages, some cotton swabs, and a dark bottle of iodine. "Now hold still, okay? This might sting a little and I don't want to have you restrained again."

Ken merely whimpers when an iodine-soaked swab moves over his neck. The cuts aren't too bad, which Oikawa is thankful for, and soon thereafter he unwraps a wide bandage for placement over the disinfected area. The air smells largely aseptic, overpowering the mustiness from the faucet and that hint of cypress leaking in from somewhere very far away.

"Stop it—stop it—"

"This hallucination is much stronger than the others. What do you remember before your alleged twenty-three day imprisonment began?"

"I was helping out the Chosen," Ken gurgles behind a fresh onslaught of tears. "I was having sleepovers with Daisuke-kun and I was so happy for once . . ."

"Daisuke-kun?" Oikawa asks, flipping back through the legal pad to consult another session's notes. "Motomiya Daisuke, right? He seems to come up a lot."

"Daisuke-kun is real!" Ken exclaims, but his indignation is lukewarm. "He is coming to save me. I know him. He won't let you get away with this."

"It seems that 'Daisuke-kun' was someone you wanted to see dead in another one of your hallucinations," Oikawa says. He flips back a few more pages. "I thought your likening of him to a gnat was especially poignant. We had to strap you down; you spit on anyone trying to hold you, and at that point we hadn't finished running tests on your blood to see if you had any afflictions."

"I never wanted to see Daisuke-kun dead," Ken says, scandalized. "He's my best friend. Maybe the Kaiser wanted to kill him, but you were responsible for that bastard anyway. It wasn't my fault!"

"The drugs don't seem to be working as well as they should be." Oikawa presses two fingers against his own forehead. "Maybe you've finally built up an immunity to them. Experimentation is definite now, and it will be unpleasant, and I don't get paid enough to do this. But right now I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat after me: It isn't real."

Ken shakes his head. "It is real."

"It isn't real."

"You took away my childhood, you hurt my friends, you killed my brother!"

"Your name is Ichijouji Ken. You are thirteen years old. You are an only child. It isn't real."

"My brother's name is Osamu! He's four years older than I am and he's a genius!"

"You're an only child. You're a sick little boy who needs a lot of help. You're going to have to work with me if you want to get any better."

"The children don't want to become me!"

"Ken—"

"They don't want to become me! They don't want to become me!"

Oikawa tries to say more, but Ken screams to block out his voice. There is no further reasoning to be done today, so Oikawa smiles sadly and motions to Nurse Inoue. He leaves promptly while the nurse moves in with another syringe, this one filled with a drug guaranteed to knock out the delirious patient.

Oikawa hates this part of his job. He hates having to go back to his office where Ken's parents are waiting for the latest verdict. Is our son getting any better? When will he be ready to come home? He hates doing this with everything he has left in him.

We miss him. We miss him a lot.

The other patients hear Ken as he fights the needle; inspired by his opposition, they create lonely ruckuses of their own. Oikawa pauses at the end of the ward, keycard in hand, and looks back down the plain hallway at the all doors that are closed and locked securely. He thinks of each of his patients. They tell you in school that this is the best modern medical science can do.

But Oikawa knows it will never be enough.