Teresa ran off into the distance, panting as her feet shuffled in an eager anxiety. She gave thorough, heavy breaths; breaths of fear? No, it was more like breaths of, in fact, happiness. Somewhere in her mind she began to wonder why her thoughts were beginning to brighten up so suddenly, so quickly and shockingly that it seemed surreal. Why did she fill with hints of bliss so casually, so unexpectedly? That same part of her mind was not noticed.
The silent moon glowed, an orb of green-yellow the center of the periwinkle and dim, enigmatic skies. Darkness filled the corners of the walks without streets, the unpaved dirt ground, poor as could be. Delicate, white shoes crunched the last hairs of green nature as if claiming victory over the new freedom. Freedom – it was what she had thought it was. Shadowy feet stepped delicately into the old part of the city, eyes examining it, feeling of it. The violet, long gazes gouged the scenery with enormous scoops, strained the color from the new world that shouldn't be so new. She noticed the little things that changed as Teresa, still much eager but much slower continued her path across the dirt ground.
This part of the city was poorer than the rest. Kinotoro Town, in fact, was what they called the portion of the whole thing. It didn't last long, a small area where more of her friends grew up and lived. Dusty brown floors padded the ground with blankets over blankets of dirt, a soft, caking defense that made little effect. Winds whispered, and combed her hair into an ironic further messiness. Screams echoed once more, defenseless cries to the moon.
"What's going on?" Teresa asked herself, knowing that no answer would be given. The night suddenly became eerie. The time of freedom faded into a time of omen, a time of displeasure and despair. The moon was to be put to sleep, the orb of light fading away from society's realization. Questions would be asked, questions like, "Moon? What's a moon?" or, "Moon? That's a mighty fine word you've made up there, boy!" Yes, these statements would be used as the shadows of icy, cold-blue clouds wrapped their fingers dominantly over the yellow-green orb of mythic cheese.
More screams echoed, as if an answer to Teresa, angry cries of help. That guy… Teresa thought, thinking of the apparition that had visited her earlier. She thought of his crooked, everlasting smile, eyes of crescent memories from the past month, never wanting to let go. She remembered the rattling chains against the porcelain white, clean tiles of the floor, tainting them with certain evil virus. Screaming echoes became screeching blares now. Blares of hell that came from a chorus of instruments, a blackened room of white dress shirts and unclothed ebony ties, absent beings in a blackish tuxes that so skillfully fingered their golden instruments, snakes of golden bell-head, thin, muscular goldenrod being jerked back and forth for a beautiful, shrill sound. Ah, how this choir worked so well together! The chorus of the night hummed along to its beautiful song. Silent hushes of the moon rocked inside cribs of drowsy, pillow claiming clouds. Stars twinkled like the far away curiosity of an innocent child. Trees whispered to one another with untainted yet untamed gossip, their thin, outstretched fingers much too bony as they tickled the laughing wind. Scoffs of dirt dusted past, like its opposite mop edition, a cleaner instead of dirtier.
Eager, unknowing footsteps became a psycho dance of feet as they hurriedly dirtied the floor with their invisible stains. Screams played motivational music for the violet-haired girl as they whispered to her, beckoned to her for her presence, drawing her closer and closer – and she, being the naïve one back then, followed. Her curiosity took over her, and this time, it wouldn't kill the cat, it would scare the jitters out of it instead. The farm, she thought. It's coming from the farm. She ran past many wooden houses, windowed eyes dark without life, soulless squares of hate and patience. Doors were shut tight, sealed lips uneager to spill secrets. Roofed heads blockaded mental intrusion. No lights were on, not even a tiny, single flicker of a candle was spotted.
Enthusiasm turned to anxiety as anxiety turned to panic. A panic that hurt, that stabbed like a damned blade of hate, hate that originated from love. Picking a place she knew out of the blue, one of the few she remembered through the past years, Teresa ran uneasily, feeling her stomach turn over, as if a delicious, hissing pancake being tossed and turned by a frying pan with the hot smell of breakfast syrup. Nothing, however, was pleasing as a stack of hot cakes now. Everything seemed to be quite the opposite, a quiet secretion waiting to be found, waiting to be discovered and exposed for what it truly was. Darkness waited – waited impatiently, as if tapping its foot, a growing, tempering thump against the dirt ground, an eager, intolerant eye watching the irritated hands click and spin slowly inside the golden bracelet.
Teresa screamed. Her feet hauled to a stop, her dance of feet turning into a stand of horror. What she saw brought her mouth wide open, as if prying them with scissors. Her eyes stretched like webs, webs that begged and begged for the maximum amount of insects it could receive, greedy, sticky fingers much too selfish and conceited that they had to grow more of their own, stretching out to as far as they could. Once innocent tanned fingers now becoming a sticky whiteness, an uncared exposedness of its true greed. Watching the skinned faces and bodies of what could have been someone she knew, she threw up as she was brought to her knees. They cracked against the padded floor with a horrid sneer as her voice retched out contents. There was never much that she ate from her depression, so there was not much to throw up.
She picked her head up, now wishing that she could brush away her strands of hair away from her mouth. Comfort that she had lost began to rebuild its first level in her. Her eyes shuddered with disbelief. Taking a long, wasteful scan around the whole one-eighty degree area, she started from the beginning. She saw piles upon piles of hay, caked with drops of red, as if specific rain. Pitchforks were caked with rusted reds, bodies lying all over the floor, tossed and turned, unorganized sickeningly. Farm tools were spread all over the ground like a sprinkled rainbow over an ice cream cone – sharp farm tools dripping and bathing themselves in a hot tub of icy cold scarlet of the night. Instruments of cropping were turned over on their sides, their backs, in every single direction but the right one. And lastly, bodies, tens of them spilled over the floor, wounds not showing themselves, hiding themselves in secrecy, but yet, giving away their sense of lifeless blinks and motionless finger twitches. They lay on their shoulders, their sides, their backs, staring into the coldest sky with thieving vindication. Arms were limp and ice hard with blue. Dead. All bodies, dead. Even though the wounds did not show, blood showed in random places instead. Blood all over the skin of other people, splotches and pools of them, a crazed paintball game gone too far. Horribly distorted, their faces seemed to crawl out of them, and the once recognized and loved people she knew could not be distinguished now. Now, their faces were lost, eaten away by the horrid, cannibal blood.
Feeling her legs tremble uneasily, she felt like falling to her knees again, as if giving up and letting her obedience wander to whomever it wished. She prevented herself from doing so, knowing that it would just give her an even more extended form of sadness, an even further form of uncomforting cold. Her arms seemed glued together wrapped in front and around her as she brought her dragging, resistant feet towards the farm's entrance. Its red, happy, cheery cherry walls were now infected by the horrid, somehow not camouflaged blood. Dropping to her knees for one purpose only, Teresa took a bloodstained axe, feeling the surreal feelings seep into her. What happened…? What happened? What happened? She repeated the same questions over and over again, never finding the answers within her deep self. She opened her mouth, showing her expertly cleaned teeth as she picked up the axe by the handle, feeling the heavy weight of the metal blade and it's dripping red splotch sickening her with its hot, warm stench.
Hissing wildly, a voice spoke to her from behind. It was obvious who, she had no needs nor wants to turn around and see. "I never promised you happiness in freedom, did I?" the croaky, evil voice asked. Demonic laughter chuckled, louder and louder, rising in her head behind her as he tightly clenched the heavy axe handle between her grudged, hateful teeth. "The police will come to get you. You will stay here until sunrise until the few policemen left in this city beyond the town's border find you and blame you for the murder. Good luck in those next years in that mental institute. You just might be stupid enough to tell them a ghost murdered the ones you love, and not you."
Teresa didn't seem to care. She was too shocked, her cheeks frozen even to a crisp, her teeth a brisk ice, trembling without shuddering. Eyes began to drop woozily, wearily, as if wanting to go to sleep, as if wanting to escape, as if not caring at all of what would happen next. Hopeful eyes lost their twinkling stars, and the next day, everything – no not everything was back to the way it was.
Returning back to the real world, Teresa still found herself locked in a trance, remembering more moments of the past, more memories of the present and past, becoming so psychotic, she remembered ones of the future, remembering ones that haven't happened yet! She could not see the future, but her mind's unstableness told her that she did. Screams of Daniel's protectiveness for his brother echoed in her mind. He was scared. But he tried to tell himself that he wasn't. He tried to tell himself that he was strong enough to defeat his enemies, just for his brother. But really, who was he kidding?
"I'll put you, the protector in an illusion so big, you won't be able to move," the apparition stated with a booming, unphysical voice, the same ghastly voice that spoke to Teresa those years ago.
"What?" Daniel asked in disbelief. Seconds later, he found the world swirling in a merry-go-round carnival, spinning and spinning, swiping and swiping, swiping his better judgments away, swiping them like a hell that wouldn't seem to stop growing and growing, knowing no horizontal, nor vertical ends. He screamed. Screamed in despair, in a disordered reality he had been caught up in, feeling stabbing pains of thick, metallic pins strike through him and stab right through his body over and over again like pricks. Outside, he only felt the pain, but in his mind, he saw everything.
Screams came from another direction, screams of hate and unlocked pasts opening through the metallic, mental doors that confined them for so long. Teresa's screams. They echoed through the bushes as she continued on in her world of reverse reality. The apparition had its attention caught. Its invisible silhouette jerked its head to the direction of the screeching bushes, and smiled, asking in peculiarity, "Oh?" Senses were piquing. Teresa screamed, backed up and curdled into a tiny little sphere of disordered defense. She imagined Eric all of a sudden, a rush of his words coming into her mind. Then, she gasped. Eyes open in realization, but trance not quite snapped. Then, she continued her trembling as the invisible apparition walked forth with a playful grin.
PoVS
The sun hung in the sky, about to set. Before, it was directly overhead, but now, it was far, far away into the horizon as if the presences repelled it. Smoke piled everywhere, a rising blanket for the sky's bright orange scenery. Hell was about to rise. "I've had enough," Eric and Walter's enemy spoke through chapped and chafed lips. They were about to bleed by themselves, as if he hadn't all ready had enough wounds and scars to make up for it. "I'll become more serious. They shouldn't last too long like that!"
With a rush, the opponent zoomed out and came for the two, not too tired Minors. Fighting with Eric with hand to hand combat, Eric dodged the axe's swings skillfully, slowly turning around the opponent and jumping away when he swung the axe like a disk. The axe of love spiraled through the air and was caught by Walter's predicting fingers, his full arm turning into an aquatic, widened state. With a battle cry, Walter pummeled the axe downward and aimed for the owner. Just in time, the antagonist side jumped away and the axe crashed into the ground below. Hands began to sore from the constant blocking of punches and kicks. Feet became tired from perennial standing. Eyes became tired from wandering. Forearms became tired from lifting. Lungs became tired from breathing.
That axe… Eric thought, giving it a careful gaze as Walter drew his aquatic arm back and molded it into his regular, human one. It looks really familiar… he thought, trying to put his finger on where and how he saw that axe. I got it! he figured finally. So… that axe is the same one as… Eric remembered when he chopped the wood for the fire. I see. So he's been following us from the start. I can't believe I didn't notice the love sign on the axe. Maybe it was caked with dirt. I have to finish this fast, then. With a deep breath, Eric burst out a cloud of hot, reddish flame. The fire traveled through the area in a small, minuscule string and widened to a big burst of orange and red wisps, burning the area yet not burning the trees. The hot light it gave off hissed at Eric's chockfull of flamed cheeks.
Taking the love axe as if commanding it from Walter's feet, the opponent brought it back to his hand and began spinning it, blocking the hot-red flames with his rotational defense again. It was beginning to get annoying. The whirling of the axe stopped as the hot red cloud became hot red wisps, until they just stopped and became wisps, and then, finally, wisps became nothing. Eric breathed in a big gasp of oxygen. Cool air was rather comfortable inside his hot, burning mouth from a recent fire-blowing. "I'll tell you one thing," the opponent said as white smoke rose from the corners of the bladed axe. Eric and Walter shifted their feet and fixed their stances uneasily in nervous preparation. "I'll make the love axe give the last hit. I won't even put a scratch on you with the hate axe," he gave away.
"Giving us that kind of information will be your downfall," Walter smiled as he readied himself from nervousness to confidence. He pulsed with determination as he got his Half Spirit energy ready.
"Oh? Is it, really?" the enemy asked scornfully. He sneered with slits of eyes.
Walter sneered just as mockingly back. With pulsing hands, the Water Minor stamped the ground with his seal of approval, waiting for the eruptions to burst out like volcanoes. His command was soon followed. First, the earth rumbled. The ground shook as if shuddering from extreme cold. Then, finally, it burst in laughter, blazing out great towers of watering geysers. Oh, how they burst them out from the cracks in the ground, widening them like crazy mouths of contained laughter! The blistering geysers shot at the sky like bullets with no potential, too fat to reach their ultimate cloud destiny. The streams of vertical rivers made a wall for piercing eyes as they dropped to the ground, crashing water forcing the enemy to jump up frantically, flipping skillfully.
The water rushed like crashing waves in a forest. "Maina Mizu: Sameryu! –Shark Dragon!-" Walter declared angrily as the booming waters churned strips of water outward, saluting themselves into a big burst of a long bodied-shark. The growling teeth of molded water shuffled through the air with the sound of ocean waves as it bounced and crashed like a roller coaster all throughout the area of the antagonist. He dodged each hit of water skillfully and barely, ducking and flipping and doing all the nine miles. Then, seeing a chance, Eric breathed in another whiff of air. With a huge blast, he shot out a wave of flattened flame, a hot red ecstasy blowing up the great waves of water and blistering the blue into white hot steam, a mist for advantage – gambit.
The enemy was now lost in the smoke as the three waited for it to disappear. Walter scoffed, unsatisfied.
PoVS
"I don't want relations," Teresa had said in her old, orange and grey photographic universe, where the confusing made sense and the sensibility was made into confusion.
"What if two people have a connection all ready, and one of them reads a note, saying that connections are pointless, and you're the one who gets hurt in the end by the other person. Then the other person sees it lying around, and starts to believe in it as well. Then, who's the one who gets hurt in the end?" Eric had asked her, proving her wrong at some point, conceiving a new thought in the deep, unnoticed corners in her mind. He had said these words so confidently, so strongly, as if he knew the exact effect it would have on her. His arms were crossed, showing his cool, calm-headedness, his eyes showing nothing but his good, friendly purposes.
"Call me crazy if you want, but, it's like he can erase all your problems just by talking to you long enough. He really is something, that guy," Daniel muttered to himself." Daniel had spoken his words so strongly as well. So strongly, so believingly. So gullibly? No! Not gullibly. He was smart, Teresa knew, and he would never guide her the wrong way. And she would not do what he asked. She would not call him crazy.
"I'll protect you. I'll protect you with all my life, Kenneth," Daniel had spoken to Kenneth during the week. Daniel had smiled, and Kenneth had smiled. Flashes of confidence showed in the redhead's eyes, and Kenneth, being a grateful one, promised to repay the favors.
What did these words mean to her? Did they mean absolute crap? Or did they mean something more? Did they mean that these people who had spoken them had much more of a better sense than that of hers? The three big statements, "What if," "Erase your problems," and "I'll protect you." These words meant so much more to her than they should to anyone else in the world.
It's because of relations that we have something to fight for. This is why we are strong; some other part of Teresa told her. Then, the ghost. The apparition that killed her boyfriend and the ones she cared for so much, the dreaded face appeared in her thoughts, shocking her, giving her a hellish chill down her back with that crescent, demonic smile. Dark red eyes glowed and glowered, scowling at her threateningly.
Teresa gasped herself back to reality. What happened? She thought. What was going on? An invisible presence seemed to linger around her, breathing all over her like an innocent pedophile waiting with dreadful eyes. She could feel the steel-hard stare on top of her like iron bars crushing her bones. What was this feeling? "Finally, you're awake," the ghost's voice sounded. That voice! It's so… familiar! "Now, die!" Teresa cried out.
PoVS
White smoke continued to hiss wildly as everyone waited. Slowly, it was brushed away by the wind, knots of hissing white instead of hair being slowly combed away into nothingness. "I'll end this now," the enemy said, appearing from the white, bristling smoke, rather loudly, as if to make sure that his opponents had heard him.
"Eric," Walter called out without looking at him. Eric nodded in acknowledgment. "He'll end with 'love.'" Walter made sure Eric knew. Eric nodded once more as they fixed their stances, nothing else to do but wait. At least they could make extra sure that they were fully prepared for the big hit.
"Die!" the enemy cried out as he swung the axe of love through the air with its highest speed ever. Eric and Walter gasped at the unexpected velocity. An evil grin grew on the opponent's features. Eyes twinkled like stars waiting to be born in the night, eager enough to reveal themselves in the evening, only to get shot by greedy hunters of the midnight blues, otherwise known as the dark, pitch-black night sky. Oh, how they hunted and hunted for those children of the night, the father moon and mother sun taking equal amounts of time to look after them. The whizzing axe surprised Eric and Walter even further, and suddenly, they found themselves completely and totally unprepared, losing grip over all their wasteful time fixing their stances and glares to a perfect narrowed slant. They were done for.