She stared at the others, and listened to the man speak.
"Hello, my name is Markus Taylor. I am the assistant headmaster of this establishment. I am here to explain everything that is happening. We are the school for England's branch of the Shinigami Soul Dispatch Society. I know you must all be befuzzled, but the first thing I want to let you know is that you are dead." A few gasps traveled through the crowd, but no whispers. Nobody whispered because nobody talked to anyone. We didn't want to interact with these other people in our situation. Markus cleared his throat. "You have been selected from many people who killed themselves. You have been given a second chance. The people who did not make it past the selection process are now dead forever. A different sort of death than the one you have. You didn't know this but there was a gas being released into the room you were in. It was a gas that affects seventy five percent of the male shinigami population. And one-hundred percent of the females. It is most commonly produced when a soul is released, which is why female Shinigami don't go out and collect souls. Only those who are immune qualify. Congratulations." She looked down at her feet. What did he mean one hundred percent of the female population was affected? Was that why there were only males? Did they think she was male? Wrapping her head around this was the least of her problems. She was in a kind of daze, since everything was just so unbelieveable. She pushed aside all her worries, her protests. She had slipped into a state of shock and planned to stay that way. Markus continued to speak. "We will allow you to take some time to settle in. Our staff will show you to your dorms and your roommates can explain everything in greater detail." He paused, taking a look around at us all. There were about twenty of us. "If you have any issues you need to settle with the headmaster, then simply walk into his office." He didn't say where this office was or even how to find it. The straitjackets were taken off of everyone, she rubbed her arms, glad for them to be free of their restrictions. Then she heard a squeal. It was not a happy squeal, nor a piglike one. It was somehow guttural, insane and high pitched. A boy. A boy had made that sound. His straitjacket had just come off and he had gone crazy. He was punching people, kicking and screaming and crying with a fierce rage. Some guards she hadn't even noticed were standing by grabbed him. They dragged him, still shouting, away. She put a hand over her beating heart and everything began to sink in. No, not yet she said to herself. Not yet. She would save the breaking through of shock, the smash through numbing water's surface, for another time. Lest she become a beast like that boy. Lest she be taken away to god knows where. A staff member smiled kindly at her.
"Kat, was it?"
"Yes." She answered blankly.
"A rather strange name for a boy, is it not?"
"I'm not a boy, I'm a girl." He raised his eyebrows.
"Another trans one then." She felt like shouting at him that she was not trans and that she was biologically and psychologically female. Instead she humoured him.
"Another?" He gave a quick hard smile.
"I'm sure you will meet them soon enough. Now, I must take you to your dorm, you will be sharing it with two other boys. As it is recruitment day they will have finished classes early in order to greet you. Come along now." She followed him through a long hallway covered in doors with different numbers in them. They stopped at one labeled, 667. She really wished that she had gotten the one just across, just for the joke of it. Oh well. This would be a great place still for her eventual breakdown. More importantly she needed to take her gender up with the headmaster of the Shinigami school she was going to because she was dead. Wait. Did she just think that sentence? This entire thing was so incredibly crazy and she just wanted to sit in a corner and cry. There was nothing to do but push forward. She steeled her nerves and took a deep breath before opening the door.
"Bye." She said to the staff member. She didn't even learn his name, but social skills weren't at the top of her priority list right now. He was probably used to it. She looked inside the door and found it to be largely anticlimactic. There were two boys in here, one was sitting on a desk in the corner, typing away at a laptop. The other was lying on one of the three beds, reading a book. She opened her mouth.
"Hello?" They looked up at her, only now noticing her existence.
"Hi, you must be new. Welcome." Said the one on the bed. He didn't continue his sentence, just going back to his book. Then, almost as if it were a second thought, he looked up and said.
"Oh, the bathroom is just through there if you need to break down or throw up or anything." He smiled slyly. She pulled a hand through her fringe.
"I'm fine." He raised an eyebrow, but made no further comment. And she was fine, she would be until the shock wore off. This entire situation wasn't nearly as crazy as the one prior to it. She just had to accept that many of her loved ones were dead. Her eyes started to collect water. But she didn't want to cry to break down in front of these new people. She wanted to make a good first impression. She saw that there was another bed, next to the two presumably belonging to her roommates. The one she supposed was hers, was the one with only a plain blanket and pillow. Their ones seemed to be customized. It as vaguely exciting that she would do that in future. She went over to it and lay down. Breathing in and out slowly. She had to sort this out.
"Can any of you tell me where to find the headmaster? I have some issues I should bring up with him." The boy over on his laptop snorted softly. When she grunted questioningly the boy reading his book spoke, without even taking his eyes off of it.
"No one knows where the headmaster is. No one gets to meet the headmaster."
"Why?" His eyes flicked over to her.
"Don't ask pointless questions." She shrugged. He didn't seem to be a great talker, but she was no social butterfly either so she abstained from judgement. This boy was of medium build, with dark blonde hair and cruel eyes. His face was all jutting bones and hollow angles. Lending a sort of sharpness, a sort of meanness to it. The boy over on the computer had hanging black hair and a flat nose. He seemed some kind of Asian. On a closer look, he was in fact a filipino. Which was rather strange considering his acidic green eyes. Now that she's thought of it, the other boy shared those same eyes. And she thought that the man before did too. Lots of people had those eyes it seemed. She wondered why this was. She decided that before she took a long nap, she would socialise these people.
"So hello to both of you. Since you haven't introduced yourselves I will start." She made this slightly cutting. "My name is Kat and you two fine young fellas are?" The Filipino boy mumbled.
"My name is Chandler." The other one said grudgingly,
"I'm Stuart. Also, isn't Kat a rather strange name for a boy?"
"Yes. Yes it is." She said plainly, leaving it at that. Then she grabbed her featureless pillow, and laid to rest. She was so utterly mentally weary that she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. But that was not the end of her troubles.
Kat was running through a forest, chased by the nameless beast she had begun to refer to as Crow. He held her organs on his claws and she was dripping everywhere, her body cut open. Still sh'e ran. The trees became thicker and the night darker. Suddenly it reached a point where she couldn't fight it anymore, and she was stuck. Then Crow pounced, finishing the job he had started.
She woke up in a cold sweat, her sister's desperate, pleading face flashing behind her eyelids once again. The black haired boy- Chandler, was looking at her. He spoke softly.
"Do you have the nightmares too? I think we all do. At the start. But they dull, for most people. Sometimes people don't embrace the numbness. They fight it, they fight to stay who they are. But then I wonder, what is so great about them being who they are that they want to stay that way?" He looked up at me, waiting for an answer. I took a deep breath.
"But if you aren't yourself, then who are you?"
"Someone else of course." He said simply.
"I suppose people have a bloated sense of the importance of their own individuality. After all, I am just you with a different brain chemistry, memories etcetera."
"And by the time you are older, perhaps the current version of me will be more similar to the current version of you that the future version of you."
"Perhaps. Living really is pointless if we are constantly dying." He laughed dryly.
"I believe everyone here has already recognised that. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here.'"
"Very true." He looked at me forlornly.
"Don't have the nightmares Kat. For me?"
"No promises." She could already feel herself relax a bit more.
"Would you like me to sing you a lullaby? My mother always did that to me when I had nightmares." He seemed genuinely concerned, a stark contrast to the emotionless machine from the day. What strange behaviour, childish yet motherly somehow. Socially awkward but kind. She decided to throw doubts to the wind.
"Yes, please sing me a lullaby." He smiled. And began to softly sing. The notes were sweet, fluttering through the air like rose petals. They held such love and care in them that she was nearly brought to tears. There was a shift in the music, she knitted her eyebrows. It started with a few misplaced beats and then before she new it, he was singing full out death metal.
"DUN DUN DUN DUN DURRRRR DURRRR RRRRR. DUN DUN dun dun DUUUUUUUUUN RRRRRR." She began to laugh and he stopped. "What? Didn't you like it?"
"I loved it, it was beautiful. You must of had a cool mother." A thought occurred to her. She looked over at the bed a bit further away from her, seeing that surprisingly enough, Stuart was still sleeping.
"Don't worry, he would wake if a boulder dropped onto his head." She smirked.
"Evidently." She honestly felt a lot better now. "Thanks for the lullaby, it really helped. I think I can get back to sleep now." He just smiled. She snuggled in warm to the blanket, still unused to this new environment. As she drifted away on a river of dreams, passing over the shallow end of sleep into its depths. Stuart also went this way. And Kat did not know that he had listened to every word of the exchange between herself and Chandler.
And that's a wrap! For now. Yeah, I'm planning to write lots of stuff, and I probably won't post chapters that often considering that I have SO many other commitments. Ugh, I have something everyday of the week and weekend. It's so tiring. I do manage a bit of writing before bed sometimes though, so don't worry you will get these chapters occasionally. That is if anyone reads this. Heh.
-Anencephalouswriter