At some point in life, everyone has to make a life-changing decision, like choosing to eat a cheeseburger instead of a salad.
Unfortunately, my decision did not involve a cheeseburger.
I hadn't planned on making any large, potentially life changing decisions when I locked the door to the apartment as I left to walk my little sister, Mizuri, to school. In fact, I had only planned on doing what I did everyday: walking her to school, and then going back home to spend my day cleaning the apartment and reading until I had to go back to the school to walk her home.
I had not, in fact, planned on being chased through the streets on my way back to said apartment and being kidnapped.
Then again, who does plan on those things? The kidnappers, sure, but the kidnappee's? I don't think so.
"Hurry up, Ka-chan! I don't wanna be late!" Mizuri already stood at the foot of the stairs, her voice floating up to me as she shouted. Out of habit, I checked the underside of my left wrist. In thick, black marker, an 'x' is marked, standing out harshly against my pale skin. Seeing it, I nodded to myself, adjusted my messenger bag, and started toward the stairwell at a relaxed pace.
Mizuri hates to be late.
I, on the other hand, am always late.
By the time I reach the bottom step, my little sister is bouncing back and forth from foot to foot, ebony hair bouncing with her. She is glaring at me, brown eyes narrowed.
"Come on, Ka-chan! Let's go let'sgolet'sgolet'sgo!" She races off and I take off after her. Although I call it 'walking Mizuri to school', it's truthfully better known as 'running behind Mizuri to school'.
It's two blocks before I finally catch up to her. Two exhausting blocks of dodging people and apologizing to those I was unable to miss as I bumped shoulders and treaded on toes in my purple sneakers.
"You're slow, Ka-chan," she taunted as I reached her, huffing and puffing. Although we did this every morning, I was unable to run those two blocks without becoming physically exhausted. So much for stamina.
Not a single wisp of her hair was out of place, but I knew mine must have looked horrible—my bleached blond hair always did, what with it's untameable frizzy waves. I'd tried everything to get them to bend to my will, but nothing ever worked. It had reached the point that I simply let it do what it wanted for the most part, beyond brushing it out.
"And you could probably run a marathon," I tell her sarcastically. "What's new?" Mizuri frowns, grabbing my left hand and checking the underside of my wrist as we walk. The markered 'x' is there, just as it had been when we had left the apartment. The sight of it somewhat stilled my pounding heart and relaxed my heaving lungs.
"You're in a bad mood today, Ka-chan." Mizuri had a skillful knack for pointing out the obvious. But then again, what eight year old didn't? "What time did you take your medicine?"
"Four," I answered, looking about. I never felt easy out in public; I always felt like I had a large sign on my head that said 'Hey, look at me! I'm crazy!'. Of course, my . . . condition . . . was so bad that I had to take my medication three times a day if I wanted to stay out of any asylums. I also had to mark my wrist to remind me how many times I had already taken it because of the potential overdose problems.
"Then why are you in such a bad mood?" I frowned, glancing over my shoulder. It felt like there was someone watching me, studying me closely, but no one was standing still or looking my way as Mizuri and I continued walking.
Paranoia and I were close friends; we had been for a while.
"I don't know," I told her. I didn't feel like I was in a bad mood. "What makes you think that?"
"Because you're frowning, Ka-chan. People only frown when they're sad or in a bad mood, and I know you're not sad. You don't talk when you're sad." My eyes alight on a man across the street. Generally, I would shrug it off, because, hello, seeing people on the streets is pretty normal at that time of day. But this man was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring right at me, hands shoved down into the pockets of his clothing, which in itself was enough to attract attention. He wore a pair of white hakama and an open white jacket with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. That was all he wore, leaving his rather muscular chest and abdomen open to the public. If that wasn't enough to draw attention, then his hair was, the color being light blue, rather like cotton candy.
And yet, no one was looking at him. The people on the sidewalk seemed to move around him, almost like they didn't see him.
In my chest, I could feel my heart rate pick up.
"Mizuri, I think I need to strengthen my dosage," I confided quietly, shaking my head looking straight ahead again, away from the man that it seemed like only I could see. My sister looked up at me, confused.
"Then have Mom make you an appointment," she answered simply, glancing away from me in the direction I had been looking, frown wrinkling her features before she focused her gaze ahead again. I looked over my shoulder again, back at the blue haired man. He was still across the street, his eyes focused on me intently.
I had never seen him before in my life—why was he looking at me? What was going on? Why could I see him, when I had been promised that my medication would stop that entirely?
"Mizuri," I said distractedly, "why don't we start running again?" I pretended to check my watch, even though its battery had been dead for a week. "We don't want you to be late to class now, do we?"
"Nope!" Mizuri shouted as she released my hand and broke into a run. I don't believe I had ever been so thankful for the bundle of energy known as Mizuri. Even though I knew the man with the blue hair was without a doubt part of my condition, seeing him while on my medication was still rather unsettling.
Thankfully, Mizuri's school was only seven blocks away from our apartment; we only had to run three blocks. The two of us slowed to a jog as it came into view, stopping as we came within a few feet of the entrance.
"Have a good day," I managed to gasp out, doubled over, hands gripping my knees through my jeans. "I'll see you later, okay?"
"Alright, Ka-chan." She sounded hesitant, brown eyes trained on my face, studying me closely. "Be careful, okay?"
I looked at her, eyebrows furrowing. I was always careful, and she was fully aware of that.
. . . unless you counted that incident with the bacon.
"I promise, Mizuri." With that, she turned and walked away from me.
The second Mizuri entered the school, I turned around and surveyed the street. Sure enough, the blue haired man was standing across the way, eyes still studying me intently. At that point, I noticed two things about him that I hadn't before.
The first was there there was something on his face, and I'm not talking about his nose. It appeared to be a white material of some sort, jutting out from his right cheek and jaw. If that wasn't strange enough, then the second thing definitely made him applicable for a traveling freak show:
There was a large hole in his stomach.
As I saw it, I stifled what was sure to be a loud shriek. The inkling of fear I had developed upon seeing him earlier blossomed into a fear that was nearly all consuming. It was the same kind of fear I got when I saw a different man, a man I only saw when I didn't take my medication.
A man whose voice bid me to do horrible things to good people.
Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves, I turned away from him and began walking back to the apartment. I told myself that I wasn't going to panic; that I was going to go home and make myself a cup of tea, that I was going to call my mother and ask her to make an appointment with my psychiatrist because my medication seemed to be weakening, that I was going to take a nap and not panic.
I made it three blocks before I looked across the street again, silently pleading that the blue haired man wasn't there anymore, that it was only for a moment that my medication wasn't doing it's job.
He wasn't there.
I let out a long sigh of relief, all of the tension flowing from my body. It really was just a lapse of my medication. Nevertheless, I would have to inform my mother. As my primary caretaker and the main reason I wasn't currently in an asylum, she was definitely my number one confident.
Then, I looked over my shoulder at the sidewalk behind me and any and all sense of safety was over.
The blue haired man walked behind me, not even ten feet away.
My breath hitched in my throat as I fought the urge to run away screaming. Instead, I looked forward again, my right hand reaching down into my bag. More medication would fix this, I was sure.
Carefully, I pulled out my pill bottle and retrieved one before placing the bottle back in the bag and taking out my water bottle. Once I had downed my medication, I pulled out one of the markers I always had on me, quickly marking the underside of my left wrist with another 'x', right next to the first.
It wasn't even nine in the morning and I had already taken two of my three doses.
Even a blind man could see that today wasn't going to be good.
Just two more blocks to go, Kaori, I told myself. Two more blocks and you can call mom. Two more blocks. Two more blocks. Two more blocks.
It became my mantra as I trudged the two hideously long blocks home.
I didn't look over my shoulder again.
Edited and updated December 7th.