If You Don't Have a Smile
Warnings: Alternate universe. Gory depictions. Dead girls. Confusion?
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters found here in. They belong to their rightful owners. I am merely a humble Clouffie servant, trying to spread the unconventional love.
End 2: DEAD RUN
Irrationality.
The human mind thrives on the documented processes upon which it has become accustomed. What it cannot comprehend, it pushes aside.
In other words, the natural human condition is to run.
The sky isn't blue today, at least, not under all of the heavy cloud cover. Instead, the unappealing splendor of a green sheet of cumulonimbus and rust-red cirrostratus hangs over his head like the cloying breath of a monstrous beast.
It sickens him, but he heads out of the house anyways; if he skipped another day of school, his mom would become suspicious.
It's been three days since that time. Since that Thursday that he tried to…to…
He can't bring himself to think beyond that. He had felt ill for hours afterwards, enough for even his mother to have noticed, exhausted as she was after a difficult day at work; she had called the school for him, to excuse his absence for the next day, and kindly turned a blind eye to the swelling on his temple, his split lip, and the bruises on his arms.
Even thinking about that time turns his stomach; but, despite his trauma, his dreams are filled with strange things. Flowers on a hill; a sword, rusted and stained, wedged into the ground; a glass of water; a seed growing into a sprout.
Most strangely of all are the very ends of the dreams. Always the same; a swallow sitting on a fence post. It screams and screams, feathers flying away as it thrashes about, but, the bird never moves from its place. He walks towards it, always the same, slow pace, and, as he nears, he notices thin chains binding the bird in place. Just as he reaches the fence, the swallow spins and lunges at him, and he lurches backwards, falling into darkness.
That's when he wakes up.
A low roar breaks into his reverie, and with a start he realizes that the green clouds overhead have darkened to a toxic green. He rushes to school, trying to think of nothing as the sky closes in.
I've always run from things. Whenever my father had to leave, and he tried to explain to me why, I couldn't understand. I would cry, or get angry and yell at him, before I would run away and hide in my closet.
I would never say goodbye to him; I was afraid.
When you say goodbye to something, that means you're saying it's okay for it to go away.
That it's okay, if it never comes back.
Right?
There are sirens in the distance.
They singe their way into his brain, a wailing scream that thrums in his chest and counteracts the beating of his heart.
"Invaders!" the teacher yells. The students around him stiffen and begin to cry out, shoving desks and each other out of the way as they scuttle towards the door.
He remains seated as the teacher tries to herd the over-reactive teens into some semblance of order, but inevitably fails as the last fall out of the door in a dead scramble. The teacher follows suit, not looking back.
Invaders.
Vermin of the earth, though the term 'invader' can be used interchangeably with a volley of beasts that plague the surrounding lands of the city.
They're all running for a safe house, though the facilities in the school aren't big enough to hold them all, as old as the place is, and as new as the idea of safety facilities for invasions are. It's best to let them run around a bit before moving. There's no place for him, anyways.
The monsters never usually come this far anyways; most of the time, he coops himself up in a classroom until the sirens die down, then, he runs for home, hoping that no strays are about. He's only ever seen an invader once; it had its head stuck in the carcass of someone's unfortunate golden retriever, and he'd snuck by, footsteps concealed by the grinding and squelching of teeth.
That type had merely been a monster, common for the area; the other types of invaders, on the other hand, were much worse. Creatures of darkness and magic, impossible to kill without some sort of specially-made weapon.
As he moves from his desk, a flash of movement catches the corner of his eye, and for an instant, the memory of an index finger trembling to life enraptures his mind, before rationality sets in and he recognizes the dark form as something entirely non-human. He hears the breaking of glass a couple rooms over, and knows that he doesn't have much time to flee. A scream confirms this thought, and he quickly runs to the windows opposite him, glancing about to ensure that the coast is clear, before cracking open the stiff locks along the gilded panes, almost welded shut with heat and dust. He takes one more cursory look before leaping out, feet catching in the roots of a tall tree.
He has to run. The sirens aren't letting up, and now that he thinks about it, they're getting louder, indicating that the breach is extending over to their section of the city. He tries to ignore the blatant gouges on the wall a few windows down, and begins a desperate flight.
The human brain is a strange thing, creating reason where there is none, and invoking fear and misunderstandings where it shouldn't.
I've always run, whether it be from my father or my problems. Ignore what you can't understand, and it doesn't exist. Ignore what you don't want to believe, and it no longer applies to your logic in the world.
Whatever it is, it's just a bad dream.
Home is this way.
That's all he thinks, breathes, as he moves through the abandoned streets, alarms ringing in his ears.
As he rounds a corner, his mind grinds to a halt. Slinking across the street is the limping form of a shadow creature, long arms dragging on the ground as its antennae wriggle in the air. He scrambles back as its head whips around, and he listens for the scritch-scritch of its terrible black talons on the ground.
He can vaguely make out the noise, and doesn't linger to reflect on whether or not it's following him, although he's sure it is.
He runs as fast as he can through the streets, veering away from roads infested with clusters of vagrant shadows.
He falls, hands tearing along the pavement; he ignores the stinging pain of dust embedded within his flesh and climbs to his feet.
Just a bad dream.
Before he realizes it, he's made it to the old park; rusted metal climbing cages and dilapidated swings fill his vision. The area is abandoned, but it still isn't safe. He makes his way to the back of park, where the deserted church rises up from a stumpy little hill.
He shivers as he passes through the door, the green of the sky casting an acidic glow through the holes in the roof. He moves forward, trying to block out the images of three days prior.
Placing his boot down, he discerns a metallic crunch, only to find the spent shell of a bullet underfoot. Breath quickening, he stumbles back, shoe catching on a loose floor board and bringing him to his knees.
He fumbles, hands pushing out, only to catch hold of the butt of a gun. He almost wants to kick it away, but thinks better of it and grasps the cold metal in a tight grip, eyes traveling the room and resting on the cross overhead.
She was still there.
Though now, he can see the loose folds of parched epidermis and weathered limbs. Her skin is peeling away, dress stained a disgusting yellow and brown, enhanced by the poor lighting. A crow is perched at her shoulder; at the sound of his commotion, it had lifted its head. Examining him for a few seconds, it screeches and then turns away, resuming pecking at the growing hole in the girl's left cheek.
He can't hold back, and immediately retches at the sight.
That's all this is, right?
He can't stop himself from looking again when he's finished, up at the unholy sight before him.
"This is a dream," he stutters, "I'm dreaming!"
The sirens, the shadows, the crucified corpse.
"Just a bad dream! I'm dreaming; it's a dream! I'm dreaming right now, and I need to get up any minute to go to school!"
I'll dream of a swallow on a fence any second now.
"A dream…," he closes his eyes.
Wake up! Please, wake up!
I can't run anymore…
"That, or a nightmare."
The words don't belong to him.
He snaps his eyes open to the sight of a smiling corpse, half its face eaten away. The crow screeches and flutters to the rafters.
"Good morning, emo kid! I thought you'd never come back," the corpse grins, browning teeth prominent. Her skin is flaking away in sheets, grimy hair falling out. The tissue in her cheek begins to thread itself together. The hole in her forehead begins to run anew with a sludgy flow of blood, slowly turning red once more.
On instinct, he raises the pistol in his hands and takes shaky aim at the corpse.
She smirks at the sight, "Boo."
The pulling of the trigger is met with the sound of disappointing clicks. "It's empty, chocobo-brain," she lets out an obnoxious laugh.
He throws the gun aside, and stands up, "Who are you?"
"Who, me?" she asks; he takes in the fact that her skin has stopped shedding. It looks completely new, pink and raw like a baby. She grins again, incisors and canines gleaming like silver. He glances further up, only to find the absence of the hole and steady stream of blood.
"Mmm, I guess you could say…," she smiles. The luminous twist of lips is almost feral. She pulls at the nails embedded in her hands, as if they'll come out like pegs from a board, "Later. Do ya mind being useful for a sec and taking these out?"
"Who are you?" he tries again. The girl, all blemishes completely gone, though dress still irreparably stained, shakes her head and tugs on her restraints pointedly.
He thinks of running away, fleeing through the closed double-doors; the muffled sound of sirens halts that idea faster than he can complete it.
"Get a ladder. Over there, in the corner," she says, and he finds himself willing to follow the instructions of a zombie-girl over chancing it with the shadow monsters on the prowl outside.
He grabs it, gnawing on his lips slightly and peeling the small sliver of scab in the middle. He hauls the creaky contraption over to the cross and rests the legs at its base, before hesitantly climbing up to the top step, which rests roughly against the girl's waist. He ignores her grunts as the wood digs into her abdomen, and instead swallows the slight dizzy feeling he gets as he snags a whiff of the girl's dress.
It smells of rotting meat and blood.
A dream?
"Just pull 'em out, already!" she chastises him, and he almost falls off the ladder with the realization that he's staring very heatedly at her chest. He stretches as much as he dares on the moldy, rough wood of the ladder, managing to snag the thick head of a nail.
It comes out easier than he thought, sliding away like butter and almost sending him off the ladder again. He shudders at the sight of red tissue clinging to the shaft; tosses it away into a dark corner.
The girl allows her hand to fall limp, groaning at the absence of support. He quickly pulls the nail in her other hand out. With nothing holding her up, she quickly wraps her arms around his back, shoving his face into the lacy, yellowed frills of her dress; he blanches at the feeling of free-flowing blood seeping through his shirt.
Finally, he reaches down and gropes for the nail pinning her feet together and grunting as it too is pulled out and thrown away into the dark corner. Full weight of the girl upon him, he barely recognizes the sensation of falling before his back hits the floor and the dead body of his passenger assails him.
He grits his teeth and shoves her away, the girl gurgling as she rolls aside, head resting at an odd angle. She stops moving after a pathetic whine, and seems to completely still, almost looking dead again.
He backs away, glancing at the sight of the scattered pieces of ladder and wondering how he hasn't broken his neck.
"Hey, dumbass," the gurgled call startles him into looking over. Zombie-girl hasn't moved from her place, "Move my head, idiot."
He almost doesn't do it, but after a moment of hesitation, crawls over and rolls the limp body into a supine position. He almost doesn't recognize it, but the way the head lolls limply backwards as he handles her gives away the fact that her neck is broken in half, and, upon further inspection, he realizes that her skull is cracked like an egg and seeping blood into the plaid pattern of his uniform pants.
Her eyes open and look up at him. In the dim green light of the sky, her gaze almost seems to glow.
"Surprised?" she sputters, grinning up.
"What are you?" he asks in return, watching as the vertebrae in her neck realign.
Perhaps it is a dream. Perhaps it isn't.
The mind must rationalize in order to function. Our perception is based upon the reality we have created for ourselves.
But, what happens when we can't rationalize?
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Fear?
"I don't care. Tell me!"
Hate?
"I am…"
What do we do when the reality we once relied upon so heavily falls apart at the seams?
"An angel."
I can't tell you. No one can.
The only thing I can say is that…
Despite my past, despite my basest instincts…
She grinned nervously, "Hello."
For the first time in my life
I didn't run.
Whoo, boy! What a chapter! I seriously didn't mean for it to be this long. I just couldn't seem to find a good stopping place, and I wanted to get this part over with. Hopefully, some things in the prologue are starting to make sense.
You'll also notice a plot element not introduced in the one-shot "To Smile Through." I think every KH story at least requires mention of the heartless. Somehow though, I always seem to make my heartless intros really creepy. Sorry guys! Hope this story isn't too gory for its rating! Also, I hope it isn't too choppy, I'm having a bit of trouble with the writing style. Please inform me of whether or not I should try something different with the style. It'll start to shift in the next few chapters.
Also, I feel I should point out why Cloud is so, well, wimpy. He'll get better, I promise. I just think, without all the loads of crap he went through in KH (and FF7) he'd be more like this. You should've seen him in Crisis Core. An old, fat guy knocked him across the room. He got motion sickness. He's pale as a sheet and as sweet and soft-spoken as a girl. But he does have his tough moments, like when he gets stabbed in the chest and then manages to knock Seph into a wall, take the sword out, then stumble over to Zack. It's the most hilarious thing. I'm trying to pull more from that personality, scared and brave all rolled into one, although it'll shift over time into, well…I really don't know. High ho compulsory plot and character development!
Thanks to Filipina Shortaay and Kaikai PANTS for reviewing! You guys must be sent from the gods, seriously. Reading your reviews always makes me smile and feel like writing more.
