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Chapter 6 - Memories Most Foul

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Author's Note:

WARNING! The following may contain triggers or may be unpalatable to some readers. If you would rather, you can skip this chapter and resume reading in chapter 7. You'll lose some of the story but it shouldn't impact, too negatively, your ability to understand the plot overall.

Thank you for reading- or not reading.

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Darkness clings to everything, only driven back in patches and wavering spheres by sporadically placed candles. A boy is laid out on a platform. A little body bathed in the yellowed light. He tries not to shiver. Unbound by tethers but kept in place by powers stronger than any leather thong or iron chain. He stares into the darkness. He focuses his attention away from his utter exposure. He will not regard the faces around him. He will not engage the hungry gazes which rove over him. He will not look at the lascivious grins which glow even in the scant light. He focuses on the nothingness of the black shadows.

A cold claw strokes his hair, long and unbound, too thin for his master's designs for a matching hairstyle. Another talon traces his collarbone. Fingertips lightly brush his ribcage. A delicate digit caresses a thigh. Mischievous fingers play over his feet.

Each cold touch threatens to pull a gasp from the boy. Each one threatens to cause a flinch. The boy stays firm. He stays disconnected. That is not his body. That is someone else's body. In these moments, these minutes, possibly these hours, he is nothing but a mind floating in an ocean of nothing.

Though the boy has been disconnected from his body he still feels the haunting touches like ripples, far away. This night the cold caresses are not new but this night they are seemingly never-ending. He allows himself a thought in the nothingness, 'Please let this be over quickly.'

"Oh?" A crown of hair obscures the boy's view of the darkness and a whisper in his ear threatens to pull his mind back to his body. The back of a freezing porcelain talon slides down his cheek as a soft laugh falls from perfect lips onto his small ear, and what they seem to promise the boy makes him shiver.

'I will not cry! I will stay strong!' The boy screws up his eyes. Too many faces press in over him to allow him to find the darkness around him. All of the darkness is squeezed out by the monsters crowding around him. Their delicate features are twisted. Their alabaster limbs are all reaching. Their countless questing hands are readying.

"Sorry to disappoint, boy, but this will not be over quickly…"

The boy focuses on the darkness behind his eyelids. He tries to separate himself from the body which is covered in sweat. The body which is shaking. The body which is bleeding. 'I will not let him win!'

But he is not far enough away from that body. Pain rips through his lower body. He hears the scream. His mind is not far enough away. He knows that it is his mouth which birthed the betrayal. Again and again the pain tears through him and the screams are ripped from a body which will not obey his mind. It will not obey his mind. Just as the boy fears that his body will not allow him to separate from it, suddenly a more full darkness overtakes him.

His consciousness is swallowed up by an impenetrable void.

This is not the comforting ocean of darkness that he had been trying to reach. This is a truer nothing. This is a darkness from which there may be no return for him.

Suddenly he is cast from the void by the crashing of his body on cold stones. The unfeeling stone offers only a biting cold to the boy as he is dispassionately dropped. His body once more rebels. Uncontrollable shivering makes his teeth chatter and make his body bounce on the stones. The pain buzzes and stings throughout his body, like a swarm of enraged hornets. Each pain screaming out to be attended to first- or better yet, to never to be touched ever again.

"Get yourself patched up." A sleepy sounding servant says in parting.

The boy lays on the stone, listening to the footsteps as they recede. He listens to them as they ascend the stairs from the cellar. His lays on the ground because he isn't sure what parts of his body will obey him. He listens to the footsteps as they disappear behind a closed door because he does not want their owner to see him struggle.

He tries to get his body up. If he can stand he will have won something. If he can walk himself to the door and walk inside he will have proven his strength. If he can just become master of his own body. Unfortunately, he quickly begins to pray that he could just crawl to the door. Just some mode of movement that was not so pitiful as the only option his mutinous body seemed to be leaving him with. He tries to pull himself up several times but quickly finds only defeat in his quest.

The door looms ahead, a safe haven. If he can only muster the strength to get through it…

Cursing himself, the boy begins to pull himself towards the door. Only a few inches away from his outstretched hand but, dragging himself on his belly, it seems to be miles away. An eternity passes and the boy finally feels the wood with his fingertips. He pulls himself farther and can rest his palm against its surface. But all is for naught. He struggles to lift his head and accepts the grim fact that he cannot raise himself to open the latch. Nor can he raise his hand to strike the door with enough force to rouse the sleeper beyond it.

Gasping from his efforts and fighting against the fatigue which is threatening to drag him back to that pure void, he submits to his only option.

A dying animal moans. It gasps and coughs. It sputters and wheezes. From underneath the door, Bakura has heard it struggling for the past several agonizing minutes. He has sat on his bed, holding his head and praying that it would simply expire. Another one of his master's cruel taunts, some joke designed to remind him of his own wounded and desperate existence. He can smell the blood through the door but something about it repulses him. He sits on his bed praying for death to do the poor creature a final mercy.

Through the choking sounds, as the animal no doubt inhales the dirt from between the stone, the moans begin to sound like words. Something makes Bakura listen. A familiar note in the moan catches his ear.

"Please…help…me…"

Gasping, the man jumps up from his bed and runs to the door. Wrenching it open he finds a ghastly present at the threshold.

He drops to his knees and his shaking hands reach for the boy. His eyes dart around the battered body. He tries to find some place to touch which will not bring about agony. The boy cries out at the slightest touch. The boy mumbles and sobs over and over again. "Please. Help me." Each repetition tears into the man's heart afresh. A new reminder of his inability to save the boy.

"Oh…Darkling…Please…Darkling…Please…" At the sound of his voice, the boy's crying begins to subside.

Bakura had come. The boy knows that he is safe. Finally he allows the void to swallow him up.

The boy falls unconscious, a temporary relief from his agony. With trembling hands, Bakura gathers up the broken body and carries him inside. Tears roll down his cheeks unabated.