Tunes:
Dread Intrusion ;) (Can be frightening. This chapter was born almost entirely from this track, second to second, which I'm sure you'll discover if you listen and read simultaneously.)
Mausoleum Suite
Ancient Machine
Don't own Death Note
I Am L
He registered pain . . . what should have been colossal amounts of it. But there was no feeling attached to the information – only the realization that it should have been there. He screamed, but no air left his lungs, and no sound reached his ears.
Some form of consciousness came in waves that began in a dull wakefulness, peaked in sharp awareness, and then receded again to nothing. He had the most curious sensation that some time had passed, but he had no way to determine how much.
L?
Images flashed before him in lightning fast bursts, like the channels of a television being flipped impossibly fast.
Flash. A flat-panel monitor. He could hear the gentle whirring of the unseen connecting unit . . .
Flash. City lights filled his vision as far as the eye could see. He could smell the sweet scent of coffee . . .
Flash. Someone was speaking to him in a hurried tone. He could make out the flecks of gold in clear, brown eyes . . .
Flash. Trees dancing in the wind. He could hear the quiet rustle of their fallen leaves swirling around on the concrete . . .
Puzzling. This was the oddest picture show he'd ever seen. Couldn't he just settle on one channel?
He could hear a distant hissing sound – a buzzing that seemed to accompany the fading of each image. He could sense tendrils of . . . something probing through his mind, searching and examining. He felt a sickening sensation, as if something was being taken from him. But what? What was missing?
L?
Flash. He saw a coffin, the nauseating reek of roses assaulting his sense of smell . . .
Flash. Children screamed and played around him, their cries gnawing away at his nerves . . .
Suddenly, he felt an indescribable feeling of violation penetrate his awareness. These were his memories floating before him, filling this vacuum with smells and tastes and sounds and tactile contact. He tried to recall them – any of them would do – but he found that he could not, as if they had faded away in a swirl of dissipating smoke.
Where was he? How did he get here? Was this some new trick by the enemy? Yes, that was it. The enemy. He would give them nothing!
He struggled to remember who the enemy was.
Something was sifting through him, looking and picking as a grave robber would loot a royal tomb. He could feel that he was being sucked into an ocean of fear, and powerlessness. The ship of Him had been destroyed, and now all that remain were pieces of wreckage – his memories – floating on the surface.
Desperately, he tried his best to gather the random pieces and fashion them into a patchwork raft – something he could cling to. He competed with this thing for those memories, fighting to reach these fragments of his life – the things that made him who he was – before they could be stripped away from him.
Something caught his eye . . . a fragment floating unprotected within the waves that gave him an overpowering sense of importance. The thieving Kraken before him rose from the water, intent on plucking that most important thing from his reach before he could grab onto it. But he was faster, clutching onto it and shoving it below deck to the bottom of his pile. A clue – something that would lead him back to what he had once been.
. . . L.
Yes, that was him, wasn't it? He couldn't let it take his identity.
His most important piece, and he guarded it jealously against his cognitive rapist while others were ripped from him and discarded.
A ball spinning through the air, the smell of freshly baked doughnuts, a crowd of people, the city lights of a night-covered Tokyo, tickets to a movie he couldn't remember, the concerned face of an old man, his own pale dark-eyed reflection. He let them go, sacrificing them for the one piece he felt he should protect with all his being.
L Lawliet. Born 10-31-1979.
L Lawliet. Born 10-31-1979.
He repeated it in his mind, over and over, as if that would safeguard it against this onslaught. He resisted, pushing against his attacker in an attempt to save what little was left, but his efforts were ineffective.
He felt it brush against him, it's bright tentacles prodding and poking at the letter he'd curled himself around. It pulled gently at it, and he tightened himself around it even more.
No!
He refused to let go, and it recoiled from him, moving to obtain easier targets.
He felt the soft, thin skin of an elderly man's hand on his arm. Watari.
L Lawliet. Born . . . 10-31-1979.
He could taste the sugary coating of his favorite dish.
L Lawliet. Born 10-31-??
He could hear the loud chiming of those bells. Had someone died?
L Lawliet. Born . . . Born . . .
He saw the face of a young boy before him. Light-kun? Kira!
L . . . Lawliet?
He watched as each recollection of his past was analyzed, and then taken away. And all the while, he continued his mantra that seemed to become only more difficult with each stolen memory.
L . . . !
It was pulling at his most prized possession again, this time more anxious and demanding. There was nothing left but this, and it was done playing games.
L . . . ?
He could feel it slipping from his grasp, fading into oblivion despite his will to hang on.
. . . ?
He couldn't remember now. He heard a distant hissing sound, and wondered vaguely what it was? Why was he here, and why was here so dark? Something was nagging at him, as if he should be privy to something? He couldn't be sure . . .
Slowly, like the very tip of a doomed vessel still vainly struggling to remain afloat, the last of him was snatched away and he was plunged underneath the crashing waves of darkness.
. . .
. . .