#39 Hide

It's what we've done our entire lives, right? It's one of those things kids just do automatically, like chasing or digging in the playground with sticks. Hiding.

Its simple enough, you just find a good place where no-one will think to look, and you stay there until the seeker finds you, or you make a break for the base.

And somehow it always seemed so dangerous, didn't it? We'd go and hide together, you knew all the best places and in any case, we were joined at the hip.

You always picked dark, dank, damp places; places no one else went because they were too scared. Stories about how Beyond haunted the house, searching for children to laugh at in his manic fashion kept people away from dark places.

For a while it wouldn't be so bad, we'd sit there in those dark places trying to hold in giggles and stay perfectly still while we listened to one of the other kids counting down from one hundred. And we'd almost have a fit when they ran right past our place calling ready or not.

Then after a while we'd chatter quietly about whatever was on our minds, for me it was usually Pokemon, for you it was L.

Soon enough, our conversations would die down into nothing, occasionally one or the other of us would try to get it going again, but something about those places crept in and made it dangerous to speak.

That was when the little twitches would start. I'd start thinking too hard about the stories of what Beyond did to those poor people, and wincing, move closer to you. I never knew what set you off, but you were always shivering slightly.

I never understood how hiding gave us such an adrenaline rush. Still we'd stay there, huddled together, neither one mentioning the pants-crapping fear that had suddenly seized us both.

Then we'd hear it. Don't deny it, because we did. Whether or not it was just our imagination was never an issue because no matter how great the imagination, it can't make a soft gasp or groan or slithering sound.

We'd run from whichever spot we chose to hide in screaming. Usually we'd reach the base and win the game anyway, and afterwards we'd be falling around laughing at each other's panic, but in those instants when we ran it'd be cold hard terror that we were running from.

Not so different now, is it?

Only now the game's bigger, now we're hiding in crappy apartments across the city, every now and then the seeker gets a little too close for comfort and it's a mad dash to the next safe house. You still know all the best places to hide out, the places no-one would think to look, at least that's what you say every time we have to move on to a new place and I question if we'll ever have a permanent place to stay.

At night, we either sit up together monitoring multiple screens, or on the rare occasions that we allow ourselves a break, curled up together in bed.

And we still mumble to each other about whatever's on our mind. Except it's not, Kira's always on our minds, we just fill the silence with talk about Pokemon and L.

Eventually the conversation dwindles, and then we start to hear those little sounds again, and both of us hold our breaths, because maybe this time it's Kira's army, come to kill us both. So far it's just been the noises any building will make at night.

But god, Mello, I'm scared. I feel my heart racing and that same cold terror rising along my backbone every time there's a creak or a slight, light thud in the hall. Only difference is that this time, I can't run.