Entry 6

.. 3 Months

I almost got to see what a human looks like today. Yako-nee and I were walking through an intersection in town. I looked like her best friend, who she had shown me pictures of. I told Yako-nee about my ability a week ago—I couldn't bear to be by myself in this when I trusted Yako and hoped she would help me find out what I was. She had seemed shocked, but accepted it quickly. Could I do this before my memories were lost? It must be. How else could she come to terms with it so easily?

She had said that from now when we left the apartment I should change into someone else, anyone else but myself. Why? Why can't I be myself? I asked her, taking her by surprise, but she said it was best this way. "Best this way"? Since when does she know what's best to me? Does she know me better than I know myself? Does she know that I sneak into her room, watch her sleep, while trying to think what a human is and what makes her a human? No, she doesn't. What on earth can she possibly now?

Oh… sister, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I wrote. I shouldn't have thought that. You're always taking care of me, aren't you? I know you are. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…

It had happened really suddenly at that intersection. The light had stopped blinking, and Yako-nee and I reached the other side and were about to go on when I noticed a commotion up ahead; out of hte corner of my eye I spotted a car swerving madly, its driver drunk, and a young woman running into the middle of the road before she looked. I could see it before anyone else did, that the two were going to meet in a kiss of eternal sleep.

The screams of the witnesses sounded just like the screams of the tires as the rubber pushed against the road and the road pushed against the metal of the car. In a moment the woman had gone from human to pudddle. The metal bumper of the car had carved her in half, slitting her stomach up to her chest, showing red underneath. Blood pooled about her in a flood, leaking from every wound, every orifice, every opening in the skin. Her skull had been fractured and the skin torn, and liquid oozed out from the jagged edges of smiling skull around the back of her head.

The chaos on the sidewalks was worse than the chaos in the street; humans screaming and flapping their arms and trying to figure out exactly what had happened. They had all seen it, hadn't they? The car come screaming down the road, the stupid woman running into the middle of the street like the world had to stop for her, the car finally stopping by using her body as a brake. What was there to learn?

I looked at the human again, looked at the blood. Human blood. And there it was. The answer to my questions—there was a human, split open right in front of me, her cells on display as if the higher powers had given me a gift. I tried to walk towards the body, but Yako stopped me. She said we needed to go. I argued, and he stated to fight, almost breaking out into a scuffle.

Move, Yako, why won't you move?! Let me see the body—what is a human, finally I might have the answer!

Out of nowhere Neuro appeared beside us and remarked in the serious, powerful tone I had come to know was his true self that there was no smell of mystery about this crime, and that we shouldn't waste our time there. Yako-nee looked more surprised by Neuro's appearance than the accident, but I ignored them both. I wanted to see the body. I wanted to see that woman's cells, that human's cells. Maybe the answer to what I am is in there, hidden in code, in its structure, in its DNA. What am I, what is it, over there? This human being, what makes it human, what makes me not human? The answer is right there, like a cheat-sheet. Let me see it, why can't I get close enough just to dip my fingers in that blood, see the cells, feel the structure and base of all life swirling through my fingers, so different from my own. Or are they the same? Similar? Me and them, what is it, what is that difference?

But Neuro wouldn't let me—his hand clamped onto my shoulder, his fingers beginning to sink into the muscle. But I didn't care. That human, just laying there, I want to see!

I tried to pull my way through Neuro's fingers; I could feel my muscle stretching and tearing and screaming as his fingers went through my shoulder, claws raking furrows through my flesh. But I didn't care—I could stand any amount of pain, any amount of damage. There was a human right before me, I wanted to see it!

But Neuro plunged his hand into my chest, the sudden claws on his hands curling around my ribs like fingers through chain-link fence. I coughed at the pain, blood on my breath, and he smiled at me, that same sweet, evil smile that promised destruction and sleep.

"It looks like our little brother here isn't feeling too well," he said to Yako as if she wasn't panicking at the claws curling around my ribcage. Neuro… you did know, didn't you? You knew this whole time I could change, didn't you? How long, Neuro? How long have you known? You really are amazing, Neuro. "We should head back," he decided and he pulled me along, my muscle and bone screaming at Neuro's pull. As he dragged me away from the scene of that woman's death, the museum of cells of that woman's body, my mind was torn in half—one side screaming in pain and misery that I would miss what this human looked like, the other side excited to the point of acute agony that Neuro knew even more about me than I had thought and that his hand had changed from something like Yako-nee's, like a human's, into something red and long and clawed. Neuro, you are like me, aren't you? If not like me, then different like I am different, right? Neuro, I can't wait to learn everything about you there is to learn. I want to see your cells, too.