Chapter 4: Sick In Mind and Body

Monday, June 9th, 2005

I hear the loud engine of a lawnmower directly outside my window, and my sleep is broken. Either that, or it was the headache. A huge, dull ache in the center of my brain greets me when I open my eyes, and the sunlight streaming in through the window immediately blinds me. I shut my eyes again as fast as I can. I've always woken up to the sun, so why am I so sensitive all of a sudden? What's wrong? I don't remember…I can't remember… why does my head hurt? Why is my body so cold and clammy?

A woman's voice from down the stairs calls, "Katrina?"

"Ah!" I cry. Why the hell is she speaking so loudly?

"What?" My door creaks open, and my mother peers inside at me. I glare at her from under all the covers. She smiles. "You're awake. You slept really late. It's almost 1:00." Again, she says it really loudly. The headache spirals around my head.

She sits next to me on my bed, and guesses where my back is and starts to rub it. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Stop talking so loud." I murmur.

"What?"

"STOP TALKING…so loud…" I mutter.

She looks confused, and then understanding crosses her face. "You really are sick. Look at you." She unrolls the covers a little. "You have a very bad fever, but the rest of your body is cold and clammy, and all of your muscles are clenched. Even your ears are hearing things ten times louder than usual."

Then, it hits me, all of the memories from last night. I'm sick. I'm sick everywhere, in ten thousand ways. My eyes, ears, temperature, overall sensitivity…Margaret made me sick, with that chant. She made me hurt all over. She must have.

I groan. She rolls down the covers some more and rubs my back some more. "Does that feel good?"

I grunt. "No."

"Really? Well then, maybe a hot shower can make you feel better. You know what, let's do that. It'll work wonders."

"…'Kay…"

But in the end, she has to half-carry me to the shower. She supports my one arm, and helps me walk to the bathroom. She opens the door for me and all that, and then sits me down on the toilet. "Whenever you're ready, you can get in." She leaves, shutting the door after her.

Waking up very slightly, I start to take in this bathroom that I know so well. Man, I may love Japan, but I missed the comfort of my own home. I sigh, and relax a little bit on the back of the toilet.

Another wave of pain hits my head as I jostle it very slightly. I have never had a headache this bad, unless you count the one at the end of the Sensu battle, which I don't. How could Margaret have done this to me? It seems silly, in a way, that a mere surgeon could cause these great things with just two verses. I don't believe in witchcraft or any of that anyway. But still…something about her was a little too mysterious. She knew where to find us right away. She was all for taking me as a patient. And that song—that song was so strange. It didn't sound like anything I'd heard in my life. It had…meaning.

But why? Why give me a headache? Even if she did work something on me, couldn't she have just mind-controlled me right then and there and make me rob banks or something? Why make me ill? What could be the purpose of her witchcraft?

I've got to stop analyzing this. Margaret didn't work something on me because there is no "workings" that exist.

But there was a time in my life where I thought demons were fiction too. A small voice in my mind whispers. And she warned you that something would happen in 130 hours…

I ignore it, and stand up to get in the shower. I turn on the water to the third-to-hottest setting, feeling it warm up slowly, the sheer heat caressing my fingers lovingly. I sigh, and take off my clothes and start to walk in. But before I go 3 steps, I get hit with dizziness, and I almost slip and hit my head on the towel rack behind me.

"SHIT!" I scream, just catching myself by using the wall as a stop. I pant hard. Okay. I can't even stand up straight. Shower is out. I hastily go over and plug up the drain in the tub. I can probably handle sitting in a tub of hot water.

In two minutes, when it's full, I climb in while using the wall for support, and sink into the hot water. I exhale slowly as the water reached my neck. Perfect. This is perfect. I haven't had a water treatment in…about 6 weeks, when I was hunting Sensu and waiting for Genkai and Botan. And boy, have I missed it so much!

I sigh and relax, unknotting all of my tightly coiled muscles one by one. All of the sweat leaves. All of the pain. I sigh again. How I've missed you, hot water. It's so comforting…all troubles just disappear…

I just sit and soak for about five minutes, and get the soap to start washing myself. And then…

I look down and by chance see my reflection on the surface of the bathwater. I scream at the wicked beast I see reflected. The face vaguely looks like a panther's, but it can't be real. The fur is a horrible shade of violet and eyes with yellow centers fading out to orange to red. The color of hell. I scream again and hit the bathwater surface to make it reflection go away. The water ripples, but IT doesn't, as though it's pasted to the tub floor. It continues watching me with all that hate. That can't be me! IT CAN'T! I DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT!

My mom comes bursting through the door to find me screaming and slapping the bathwater. I can hear her gasp of shock, kind of faraway, and she throws herself on her knees next to me and shakes me, hard. I whirl around to her and continue screaming. She claps a hand over my mouth and just holds me close.

Finally, I can resist the urge to scream, and I just lay my shaking head on her chest. I don't even so much as look at the bathwater.

"What's wrong? What's wrong? Katrina, talk to me! What happened?"

I breathe slower and actually start crying, something I haven't done in years. "It-it (hic) was the (hic) it's in the (hic) water…" I sob harder. "Mo-o-om…"

Mom peers into the water and wrinkles her nose. "There's nothing there, honey, you were just seeing things. But you were scared all right…" (Draw your own conclusions).

I start to calm down some more. I sniffle and say, "When I looked in the water…my reflection was this horrible ugly creature…Mommy, what do I look like right now?"

She pulls away, and studies me. "Beautiful as always." She hugs me tighter, and seems to come to a decision. "Honey, you just wait there. I'm calling a doctor."

"What? Why?"

She lets go of me and starts to turn. "That was a hallucination. I thought it was just a cold, but this is definitely not a cold. This is much, much more. Oh, I hope you're okay. Just wait there, got it?"

"But 'here' is where the thing is!" Don't leave me, Mommy. Please don't leave me…

She sighs and drains the water. Slowly, I can see the stuff that held the vision ooze down the drain. "Okay now?"

"Okay." It's not okay. It's really not. But I can handle it. I can handle it. I have to.

She smiles quickly, throws me a towel to cover myself up, and leaves. I just sit and wait like she told me to. It was just a hallucination. I desperately want to think that.

I hide my face in the towel, but the vision remains pasted in my mind's eye, watching me with the awful, pained eyes.

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The doctor arrives in 10 minutes, and examines me right in the tub. It saves her the trouble of undressing me, anyway. I keep my face hidden the entire time in the towel while she gives me a physical exam. Then, she has to take my temperature. I will not move the towel. I can't look at her. So, we end up compromising and she rolls up the towel to only reveal my mouth, so that I hide my eyes from hers while she sticks the thermometer under my tongue. When she's done, I re-cover all of my face and listen to her talk to my mom.

"She has a fever of 101.4. Not dangerous, but still too high. The name of her disease is a cold. My diagnosis is to give her bed rest and plenty of water. She probably won't eat much. But what's strange is that she seems to be entirely healthy except for the temperature."

"But she had a hallucination! Her reflection was a monster or something. Surely that can't be an average cold symptom!"

It wasn't a symptom. It was real. Can't you see that?

"It might be stress combined with the bad cold. Has anything irregular happened in her life recently?"

"Well, she just came back from Japan for over a year…and then chiropractics were practiced on her and she said it made her ill…"

"Then I'm right. She just needs to get used to the changes in her life. Give her some time to recuperate and she'll be up within a week."

I can tell my mom isn't satisfied by listening to her voice, but she nevertheless thanks her, writes her a check, and sends her on her way.

Some of the shock wears away. How can that doctor say with a straight face that there's nothing wrong with me? How can she not see what has happened to me? How can Mom agree? How can they betray me and leave me to die inside like this? How can they dismiss my sights as fiction? It really happened. And they…they think they understand. But they never will.

Mom returns and kneels by me. "Are you okay?"

I shake my head no, refusing to take my face out of the towel and honor her with eye contact.

Bitch.

"Can I take you to your bed, honey?"

Another shake of my head.

"Well, you can't sit in this tub all day. Let me get you a drink or some soup." I say nothing, and she sighs. "Katrina, you're just sick and tired and cranky. Nothing in your life is truly bad enough…nothing could possibly be so bad that you can treat me like this. I know how you're feeling, but that's no excuse—"

"No you don't know." I mutter.

"What's that? Speak up."

"YOU HAVE NO IDEA, DO YOU?" I scream, pulling off the towel. "YOU AND THAT STUCK-UP DOCTOR THINK YOU KNOW HOW I'M FEELING, BUT YOU DON'T! THERE'S NO WAY YOU COULD POSSIBLY KNOW HOW I'M FEELING! AND YOU DON'T CARE TO KNOW! YOU JUST DON'T CARE!" I start bawling into the towel again. "You don't know…anything…" I can feel a tickle of hair on my arms. Oh no. Am I going panther again? Why am I losing control of my demon side so much? First Margaret, then Mom…

My mom rips the towel off of my face. "Give me some credit. I'm trying to get through to you even though you're shutting me out. Go to your room and change and think about what you just said." She smacks my leg to make it sting a little.

I glare at her, and stand up, still stark naked. I almost hit her on the way out, but I barely manage to restrain the urge. I slowly absorb the panther hairs dotting my body, so slowly that she doesn't notice. Thank God I didn't transform completely.

I've never gotten this mad, but I'm angry for the right reasons. She and that goddamn doctor think they understand me. Mom doesn't. She never will. She never had to fight a demon. She'll never know my sacrifices. She'll never meet Mie…or know what happened to her.

It isn't fair how I am the only one to shoulder this. It's not fair how I have to keep these poisonous memories locked up inside. More rage wells in my chest. Why doesn't she care? She's my mom!

I stomp into my room and slam the door shut. In a blind fury, I grab a t-shirt, underwear, and jeans, and tug them on viciously, one after the other. I pull the covers from my bed around me and throw myself down. I'm too mad for tears.

I hate everyone and everything. No one had to make the sacrifices I did. No one had to watch their friends die. No one had to lie to their mother about something so huge. No one ever had to become a killer at 15. No one could ever know what is happening to me. The memories are eating me from the inside out, and there's no one that knows.

I want someone to know. I just want someone to really understand me. Is it too much to ask?

I just wait there, stewing in my own dirty thoughts for I don't know how long. The thoughts get darker and darker, falling into self-pity and suffering, falling into selfishness, falling into that reflection, falling into evil itself. How much I've gone through for nothing. I've only hurt myself and others. The one thing I saved was an awful man who abandoned me.

Why did Kurama find me that third night of school? Why did he need me? Did he know I was destined to trample everything? Did he know how much that small encounter would change my life? Did he realize what he had signed me up to do? Did he not see how much it would hurt me?

What happened to my happy life? I can answer that. Kurama happened. He wanted me for my power. The power to destroy others lives and my own. My rampage isn't done. Mie and Lahri are dead, and now I'm even hurting my own mother. He never needed me to save my father. He needed me to kill Sensu. Because, that's what I am. I can only hurt.

Mom interrupts my thoughts when she knocks on the door. "Well, are you ready to talk?"

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Yes there is. I'm coming in."

"Don't—" The door opens, and I hide my face under the covers as fast as I can.

She sits down on my bed. "Well?"

"What do you want?"

"Why are you being such a pill, Kat? Aren't you going to apologize?" What a pun. She has no idea how much of a pill I was.

"For what? I was rightfully angry!"

"No, you weren't. I said that you should stop treating me poorly, and you blew up."

"I was treating you fine."

"You think so."

"Yes."

"What's wrong? Kat, let me into your feelings. I only want to help."

"Yeah, right. I'm not telling you. You don't care and you don't understand."

I'm glad I can't see my mother's face as she storms out of my room.

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Author's Note: Review! That's all I have to say. I really want to know what you think of each individual chapter! Haha, muchos gracias to Maki Tokiami. (Is that how you spell it?) She is what you should all strive to be as a reviewer. Reviewed all 66 chaps of WHTML! (clap-clap-clap-clap-clap)