Dan
I forced my eyes open and was looking up at the turning blades of a ceiling fan. My mind was in a total fog, making me completely unaware of where I was at. Sitting up, I looked around and found that I was in my bedroom at Murucho's. Portions of last night started to return to my memory.
I had gotten into yet another fight with Shun, and to calm down, I went out for a walk. But the thing was, I never recalled coming back to Murucho's. For some reason, up to when I left the mansion, was nothing but a blank memory. I swung my legs around, my feet hanging off the bed and touching the cool carpet below. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, so why did it feel like this was all a really bad dream?
I pushed myself up and out of the bed. When I stood up, I felt a pain shoot through my back, almost causing me to fall to my knees. Thankfully, I caught myself on the nightstand next to my bed. I stayed there for a moment, allowing the pain the subside, then tried to stand up straight again.
The pain didn't attack me this time, and I attributed it to sleeping in a wrong position sometime during the night. Now that I was standing, I saw that I was still in my clothes from yesterday. Every second seemed to bring with it a new feeling of confusion and loss.
Thinking that the others might be able to shed some light on what went on last night, I hurried out of my room and began my search for them. I found them in the sitting room at the end of the hall; all of them were accounted for except for Shun.
Their eyes turned to look at me, and their expressions resembled that of people who had seen a ghost. Murucho repositioned himself in his chair so he could face me. "Dan? When did you get back here?" They didn't even know when I returned to the mansion?
Something's not right here. "Yeah. You left around eight or so, and weren't back when we all went to bed. Some of us started to get worried," she said with a hint of concern that she was trying to hide in her voice. If I wasn't back when they all turned in for the night, then that could have only meant that I arrived here extremely late in the night.
But if that was the case, then why was I even out on my walk for that long of a time period? "I….Uh…..Don't really know. I don't even recall coming back here last night….." I said finally. Alice left her seat and approached me. She then placed her hand on my forehead and asked, "Do you feel sick, Dan?"
She then withdrew her hand the moment her fingertips touched me, a look of familiarity flashing in her eyes. "You're freezing…." she said quietly. "I am? I don't feel like it though," I said, looking down at myself, as if my body was now alien to me.
Nothing about me felt any different, other than the hollow feeling in my brain whenever I tried to remember what happened. I didn't feel sick, or cold for that matter. "Maybe you should see a doctor, Dan," Murucho suggested. "This isn't normal."
Suddenly, fear started to take its hold on me. What if something was really wrong with me? "You're probably right, Murucho…..I'll go up there sometime today and get checked out." Shun then walked in the room from behind me, and still felt that deathly cold shoulder being given to me.
The moment he brushed past me, the word bloodhound came to my mind for some reason. What is going on with my brain? I asked myself, fearing that I was losing my sanity. I then noticed that Shun's hand was taped up with bandages, but I knew if I asked him, he wouldn't give me an answer since we were still in bad standings.
So, I leaned over to Alice, who was still standing next to me, and whispered, "What happened to his hand?" Alice's eyes fell on him and she said with a tinge of sadness, "He said he lost his temper last night after your fight and punched the mirror in his bathroom."
I gulped, glad that the mirror hadn't been my face. I then turned to the others and said, "Well, I guess I'll go on and get checked out. See you guys in a bit." Murucho stopped me when he offered for Kato to drive me to the hospital. "No, thanks, Murucho. I think I can get there on my own."
The short blonde's expression was one of doubt, but he let me leave on my own. I didn't feel like I needed somebody to look out of me since I felt totally in control of myself, but I probably should have taken Murucho up on his offer.
What if something did happen while I went to the hospital, and I woke up somewhere else, completely unaware of how I got there? But I felt that it was too late now to change my mind, and that it would make me feel like a burden. So, I left on my own, holding onto the hope that I made it there with no problems.
Shun
Dan and the others were talking to each other when I entered the sitting room. Still somewhat angry at Dan, I didn't even so much as waste my time and glare at him. When he leaned over and asked Alice something, I knew that it was about my bandaged hand, since I caught him looking.
Murucho had taken the broken mirror rather well, not getting mad for the damage done to it. And the only reason my hand was bandaged, was so the others wouldn't get suspicious about its rapid recovery. In fact, it was already healed up.
Then, Dan and Murucho mentioned something about a hospital, and Dan left. "What was all that about?" I asked the moment I was sure he was out of earshot. Murucho leaned back in his seat and told me, "Dan doesn't remember anything from last night after his fight with you, so he's going to a doctor to make sure he's okay."
Even though I was still angry at him for following me yesterday, I had to admit that I was worried now. Dan was still my friend, and knowing that something could be wrong with him, didn't settle right with me. A thought then crossed my mind; what if he was dying and I had to be the one to Reap his soul?
I doubted that I could ever bring myself to do that to somebody I knew; in fact, I'd sooner take the punishment for not doing my job, than to take one of my friend's souls. "Well…..Let's just hope it's Dan's crappy memory getting the better of him," I said and retreated by to my room.
When I crossed through the threshold, Death was sitting in the windowsill. I closed the door behind me, so in case one of the others walked by, they wouldn't hear me having a conversation with somebody that they could not see. Without seeing his face, I could sense that something was causing Death distress.
"What's up?" I asked. His gaze was fixed intently out of the window when he said, "Nothing. Just doing some thinking. Any new deaths to report?" I shook my head, and just in case he didn't see me, I told him, "None. Maybe fate is taking a break after that massive shooting."
Surely there was such a thing as a break in between deaths; they couldn't be one after another all the time, right? I walked over and stood beside Death, trying to peer over him and get a look at what had all of his attention. He then said somberly, "Well, then, if that's the case, then I must depart now."
His cloak swallowed him up, leaving an empty windowsill behind. I then walked over to where he had been sitting and started to look around for what he had been so fixated on.
Nothing stood out at me, but I did see Dan just as he walked behind a building that now obstructed my vision. Perhaps it was just a coinsidence that Death was looking in that direction and Dan was there, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right.
Dan
I was about a block away from the local medical center, which was where I decided to get looked at for my sudden amnesia. All while on this walk, I hadn't passed by a single person. Although, that wasn't that uncommon for a weekday; most people were at work rather than walking around the city blocks and shopping.
But when I did finally encounter a person, I was about to make eye contact with them as a common courtesy, but ended up stopping dead in my tracks. While they smiled and waved at me, I was too engulfed by what I saw above them; there were numbers floating above them.
One of the numbers kept getting lower and lower, almost like a clock. The person's smile vanished, and they quickly walked away from me thanks to my strange reaction. I still stood there on the sidewalk, eyes wide with shock. "What's going on?" I shouted in the middle of the city block.
My hands found their way on the side of my head, and my back leaned against the wall of a local store. First, I couldn't remember anything from last night, and now, I was seeing things. "I'm going crazy. I'm going crazy," I mumbled to myself.
"No, you're not going crazy," a voice told me. Quickly, I looked up and saw a man dressed head to toe in a tattered black cloak. When I saw his face from under his hood, a wave of familiarity hit me. "I-I…I remember you….." I said with a shaking voice.
How did I remember this guy though? And like a crashing wave, a section of last night returned to me. This guy was talking to me while wearing some costume, and I thought him to be crazy. Then, I remember him attacking me. He had sliced into my back with something extremely sharp, and while I laid there on the ground, he attacked me again….No…..He killed me.
Dan
I stumbled back and fell on the ground, my eyes wide and starting to fill with tears. "G-get away! Wh-what did y-you do to me!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. This couldn't have happened. He couldn't have killed me because I was alive now, right? The man knelt down beside me, and I got a closer look at his face, and noticed something I hadn't seen before; he had on some kind of eye patch like contraption on his face.
"Calm down," he said. "You're making a scene." I was shaking out of pure fear, and I felt as if I was going to be sick. "Th-this…..This is impossible!" I yelled. "I must be losing it!" None of this was possible. If he killed me, then I should be dead. There was no way around it. The man then grabbed on tightly to my shoulder and lifted me up to my feet.
I was now crying, tears flooding from my eyes. I didn't understand what was happening. How bad was my new insanity going to get? "This is very possible," the cloaked man mused. "You're now a Reaper thanks to me, and you're going to help me with something. I could have just let you die and enjoy your time in the netherworld, but I let you live. So, be thankful."
He let go of my shoulder, and surprisingly, I was able to support myself without dropping back to my knees. "I can't be dead," I whispered. The man sighed and said to himself, "This is why I stopped turning people into Reapers." He then formed a black cloak out of thin air, and tossed it at me.
"Put that on. You're causing too much of a scene, and I don't want anyone seeing you and thinking you're a deranged maniac." But I am one. Just look at what's going on! With shaky hands, I put the cloak on, not seeing how this was supposed to make people think I was normal.
Then, the sidewalks started to fill with people getting off of work to go to lunch. They walked right past us, not so much as even looking at me and the other cloaked person. Over each one of their heads, numbers started to appear. "They're back," I said to myself.
What was with the numbers? I had never heard of a crazy person seeing these kinds of things. The man asked me, "What's back?" I glanced at, what I figured was now a creation of my mind, and told him, "There are numbers over everyone's heads."
A smile formed on his face. "So, you see how many days people have left on this planet. Interesting. That might come in handy with what I need you to do." I stared down at the ground so I didn't have to see the numbers. "With what you need me to do?" I asked.
Even though this was all probably the work of my mind, I felt like I had no choice but to go along with it. The man's smile only widened even more when he said, "Yes. You're going to help me find Death's new pet and take him out while I deal with Death himself. And just to let you know now, being what your gift is, other Reaper's won't have numbers over their heads. Keep that in mind."
Bloodhound came back to my mind again, along with the man's name at last. I recalled that he had said it at one point last night; Rogue if I remembered right. Slowly, bits of last night were coming back, but how did I know what really happened and what was being caused by my mind?
"You can stop thinking that you've gone insane. This is all as real as it was before last night," Rogue said, as if he had heard my thoughts. I wasn't so sure about whether or not this was all real, but it did feel that way. But wasn't that how crazy people were?
They thought that everything the wasn't happening, really was? Rogue then told me, "Now, get a hold of yourself and remove your cloak. Go on with your day, and I'll be in contact with you soon. We have a long road ahead of us." Before he had the chance I leave, I asked him, "If you want to find this Death and his pet so badly, why can't you just look at the people's numbers and find them?"
He turned and faced me. "Because, I don't have the gift that you do. You see, I have this eye." He then brought his hands up behind his head and unbuckled the eye patch. When it was off, I saw a scar that ran down the right side of his face, and a blind, milky white eye.
It….It looks just like Shun's scar, I thought to myself with disbelief. "This eye shows me how somebody is going to die. Quite an inconvenient gift if you ask me. But it doesn't show me numbers, so I can't use it to find other Reapers. Now, I have to go. Save your questions for the next time we meet."
He put his eye patch back one, and his cloak then spun up and he was no longer standing next to me. And I'm supposed to think that I'm not crazy? I took in a deep breath and took off the cloak. The moment it left my body, it vanished into the air as a black dust.
Now, I was getting looks and glances from people. Above them, a sea of numbers floated, each one falling lower and lower still. Those are how many days people have left, huh? The numbers ranged from the hundreds of thousands, to even more.
Rogue told me that 'Reapers' didn't have numbers, so I started to look around for people without them. There were none in this crowd. I then shook my head several times. Stop this, Dan. You're losing it…..No reason to feed it more. Seeing now that it was too late to keep going towards the clinic, I turned around and headed back to Murucho's, refraining from looking at the numbers that now plagued me.
Dan
As I walked back to Murucho's, I slowly started to feel like this was actually real. That I really did die, and was brought back. As crazy as it may have seemed, I was actually starting to accept it. It was either all real, or I was just way off the deep end. I reached Murucho's in no time and walked upstairs to rejoin the others.
They were still all in the sitting room. I tried my best to keep my gaze adverted from what was floating over their heads; I didn't want to know when my friends were going to die. Murucho asked me, "How did the doctor's visit go?" Since I didn't go, I had nothing else to tell them other than a lie.
"They said they couldn't find anything wrong with me, and that it just might be a minor case of amnesia." My eyes then started to wander around the room, and they suddenly stopped on Shun. Above his head, there were no numbers. "Reapers won't have numbers above their heads." The scar that resembled Rogue's, along with the lack of numbers, made me put two and two together; Shun was a Reaper too.
chapter title based off the song I'm Not Alright by Shinedown. i know i'm using a lot of their songs, but i felt that this one really fit the chapter really well. read, review, and other things. ~Copperpelt~