Post by Itsuki Hasegawa on Dec 13, 2022 2:53:04 GMT -5
Digitised beeps and haptic hums were followed by the clattering of a plastic charm against a glass-backed frame. Piercing blue backlight blasted blurred vision. Pixelated black against white faded into focus. Early morning sun kissed his pale cheek while a winter-cold thumb beeped up the volume. Easing back into plush, pillowy embrace a tired mattress groaned. Slowly, steadily, Itsuki's brain began to catch up with the notion it wasn't time to sleep anymore. Beneath dulled awareness sparks of warmth, the kind not fended off by pills and instead kindled by the comforting familiarity of the wall of compassion composed of so many tiny bricks of text scrolling by had come to life. Bittersweet smile born between gently glistening cheeks revelled in the private moment. Minutes rose and fell as the tide of time is inclined and with it, the sun's ever inquisitive eye opened more and more. Finally blinded by that glistening gold some quaint sound of amusement at his own melancholy reprieve escaped as he brushed away the last of his tears. For such an impertinent, rebellious kid as he'd been, somehow he still was able to build a whole house out of those familiar and protective walls to lie within come these early hours of vulnerability. Alas, all too many times had he come to turn down the temptation to taste the air back home again and still again so many chefs with worrywart-aprons would ply him with a new recipe come each week marching by. With a clack of closing flip-phone he pushed away from the cocoon of warmth. It could stay there for now, too.
Chewing his way through a bowl of porridge more fruit-laden than those asethetically fruit-adorned displays he had always been served in that chemical, stale-white place he snickered to himself.
"...See, now this is how you make a bowl of fruit and porridge." Spoke aloud the young man beleaguered by drowsiness to the spectres haunting his room. Finding a mouthful of strawberry and banana he waved his spoon in some experimental, matter-of-factly way like some old-time warmonger from the black and whites. You'll get what you're given and like it! Recited a ghost in his mind shaped vaguely like that woman clad in scrubs and a stern smile. Chewing as hastily as he had back then with a dramatic clatter of cutlery against the half-empty bowl an emphatic gesticulation rolled out the red carpet for his accusation. "You always skimp on the best bit, I thought this was meant to help me get better!" Lilted the playful tone. From the corner of his eye the shadow of tape and tubes sullied his hand. Somehow, the recitation seemed as stilted and stale as an overwound and rusted music box. Lips creased downwards around the next spoonful as gaze downturned into the bowl. "Then she'd say it was, ah... hope. If we wanted a proper serving of fruit we had to get better and go home." Strained mechanical memory. Cogs spun and faltered, rotted teeth snapping and spinning free with springs and coils sailing free from it all. Tightness in his chest strangled out the efforts to breathe clear. As the phantasms filled the empty spaces of his mind the soft sound of grief rising up to overflow from lips and eyes alike as gentle, salty rain blown by mirthless winds. That cold brand of fear rose from an abyss choked ocean within that yawned out below. Frozen hands the colour of night clasped his insides, beckoning him to add his song to those beneath that sea. Something so mundane as cough broke the sombre concentration of his troubled mind on that grim spiral. Chasing down his hearty bite of anguish and short-lived despair with a gulp of water, a lengthy exhalation followed. Breakfast's paltry enjoyment had been ruined by tinny mucous muffled taste and scent. Clunking the ceramic bowl into the metal of the sink sink he administered another 250cc of water to aid his ailing condition.
Somehow being told to simply be, to merely exist wrapped up in that tranquility of familiar hands and to simply rest until his life was exhausted didn't sit right. For one shining moment he had managed to push free of hospital gowns and doctors, pills and potions and rolling doldrum updates of cabbages and kings. Before that he had spent his time with everyone without even knowing how precious that time would be to him, clasped close to his heart and worn like cherished treasure against all that was oncoming. It was irreplaceable. More bitter amusement frothed up as a fleeting thought passed over him and escaped out into the sky. Peaking in university was said to be a thing but this was ridiculous. Beneath the brief levity of such a ridiculous thing the barrel of his mind again turned to pluck at the many-noted comb of memory. Leaning over that sink, propped up by his elbows upon the edge glassy eyes gazed out into memory. The path back to strength enough to steady himself was in there somewhere. It didn't lie within the choking cotton of cloying, coddling relatives and over-attentive friends muffling who he aspired to be in favour of flattening down into a memory more easily digested before he had even passed.
Amber leaves lined a golden week of aurum winds and too-fair temperatures spent amongst the hallowed history of a sacred shrine so familiar. The head priest had called upon him personally as soon as the old man had caught wind of Itsuki standing upright on his own two feet again. It had been so strange at the time. Stoicism was one thing but this withered old wise one had refused to visit the hospital and instead told him that they would meet again in time when Itsuki was able to leave. Told was too strong and generous a term - a letter was what he had been given by a weeping mother burdened to act as a medium for something far more weighty than the souls of others. Fury's burning tongue of flames licked against the worn edges of emotion. That paper scrunching in his hands could practically be felt all over again. Before he knew it the image of that so easily provoked figure was straining to improve with each and every day that went by. Who was this monk, isolated from the world, to dimiss him so easily? Somehow this whole process hadn't gone how he had imagined it so far. It was utterly unpalateable to someone who had spent so much time and focus prioritising things that were second nature, predictable, things like the challenges of education and the expectations of family. Amidst the melancholy recollections something in the shape of a faded impulse, an ex-addiction trailed through the corners of his presently wound-up awareness. Squinting scornfully beneath a softly furrowed brow out into the unfocused distance the poltergeist rose from the pressuring plume of smoke's spook snaking, in mind's muddled eye at least, from his lips. An advent of anger propelled that clenched-fisted fitful thing up stone steps with the least respect and reverence the shrine had been paid in years by one of it's own. Glistening sweat-swathed scalps in the midsummer sun turned from their worship to meet the tantrum forcefully stomping to the highest point like so many flickering candles of what felt to be a justified one-man procession. Itsuki's heart held aloft a barbed gift of chastisation and criticism, cooked acerbic and glazed with spiteful accomplishment. The plate it sat upon bore none of the expected adornment, a leather-glove donning vessel adorned in smart, modern clothes and finer shoes still. Over-warm winds washed rivers of disapproving sussuration free of the trees, torii after torii the colour of his mood flickering by. Burning in his breast and tension about his bones urged him to jog his way up the stone steps that seemed to continue on and on in defiance of his purpose. Faint whispers in the back of his mind knew it was only the result of his health-based struggle.
At last, the tiled roof of the main shrine building came into sight. Labouring chest heaved against the dull strain behind his ribs sung by flesh and feelings alike flayed by what tributlations his life offered up. Clarity seeped in, somewhere, somehow. No amount of mantras and measured methods, no patient prayer nor sweeping of the courtyard and no lack of devout ceremonies had prepared him, eased him for such a thing as this. His master's words were an insult that jewelled an unseen crown of betrayal placed upon the pristine perception of the precepts portrayed through the portal of his past's perspective. Pitiful, the present self remarked against the deaf history playing on the viewscreen in their brain. With a grunt of exertion the oh-so-righteous one crested the highest point of that lowest pit. The short walk across to the shrine proper had been a blur of steadying and collecting himself, the kami's winds and watchers seemingly holding their breath before blowing the next gout of gust. Only cicadas signalled his final approach across that grand precipice.
Cold mist dampened the flame, sacred ice rising up to bind him in place from the knees down. The head monk had turned to him with a smile brimming with warmth, flanked by his parents. His father had been stuck overseas in England for the past year owing to troubles with travel. His mother wore a smile glistening with tears as they all welcomed him back in near-unison. Anxiety and pain washed away those smouldering remains, cleansing water trickling free of his eyes. Atop the discomfort perpetually present in his beating breast came an explosion of feelings. For the first time in a long time, he felt almost whole. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he could ignore the traumatic loss he had endured as he entered the embrace of his family, surrogate father included.
The week proved golden indeed. Safely tucked away in traditions and the solace of a short, parental visit, he indulged in pretending all was right with the world. Levity and familiarity seemed to surround those days, giving him a chance to breathe free. Barely any time at all was spent at his apartment, opting in favour of old temple duties from teenaged years, fanciful luncheons and family restaurant dinners. Dreams like this all too often are wont to turn to nightmares, eventually. At first it was mild. Subtle. No more difficult to dismiss and ignore as the symptoms stirring inside. The problem is that feelings and issues of mental health can quicken much faster than slow-killing diseases. This one had slept deep a quiet, fermenting in the deep dark of the subconscious. Therapy and pills had muffled the trauma, hewn away at it, rejuvenated the corrupted parts of a disqueted teen's mind and reintegrated them. Problem was that the root cause had been dismissed as delirium, truth had been suppressed and toxified in the sludge of a mire made with a lover's corpse rotting at the core. Amidst the cold rain that gripped his restless dreams, he saw that face.
-
maybe some connective tissue here, change feels a little too sudden. then again I am being quite drawn out lately.
-
Muscles stiffened with tension and his breath burned past his teeth. Pushing away from the sink with a groan of the ill-fitted worktop, it wasn't long before he was seated at his table with a stack of papers. Roughly rubbing tears away the distraught dreamer's brow creased as he tried to focus within and without. Attempt after attempt had been made to draw what he had seen. Hands faintly quivering beneath attempts to rationalise a nightmare made flesh brushed through wrinkled pages. The plastic sleeve of a reference book rustled, the spine creaking as much as paper and carboard could until arriving at the bookmarked page. Bear skulls. An anxious heart quivered. On that day five years ago it had all changed.
Burning wood and salty air filled his nose, the taste of badly-grilled meat peppered with the grit of kicked-up sand. Wounded memory reached out, bursts of sound and sight was reaching up.
"Come on, I mean, you'll come with me." Playfully danced her voice across the crackling flames. Cheeks burned crimson at that adoring emerald gaze, hanging his head low. Reflected flames danced across the black glass bottle planted at his feet. Spritely laughter drew close before her lips met his cheek. "You know I've always liked how much you blush anyway." The heat of her own glowing face was more than apparent. Looking up to confirm his suspicions and bask in her affections the freshly free from home young man realised he was smiling as brightly as she was. Their hands met and self-chastisation followed for still being shy. How many times had she told him...
"...Nothing to worry about, we've been dating for years now." Soothed that woman. Sea-sprayed grass crunched underfoot as they strayed into the cool night, darkened canopy of bark and leaves stretching out to conceal them from peeping stars. Those days had felt so full of love and excitement. They would have to stray a little further into the forest, away from the orange beacon and revelrie behind them to share their quiet moment together.
"Is here okay?" He had asked once only the wind accompanied them. "Perfect!" Had come her reply, turning at last to face him with her own shy smile crowned in dusted pink. "You know, I wanted to thank you. Things have been so busy this year with exams and making sure our English up to scratch I feel like I've barely had any time at all to say it." Oh boy. Itsuki's reflection in time nervously fidgeted. "There's things I wanted to say to you too, not just about uni, though." The couple stood there silently for a moment, facing one another with hands held in the space between them. "I..."
"What?" Spouted surprise and confusion. They'd been out amongst the trees for most of the night now, was this a prank telling them to hurry up? It sounded again, clearer, louder. No, perhaps clearer wasn't the proper word for this. A great prolonged scream unlike anything he had ever heard, bellowing with strength and agony, a bloodcurling sound as if a wild beast were bellowing all the suffering and hate it could overlayed with fitful rage distorting it through itself. Even as the sound began to recede it droned, a half-weezing squall distorted by a brutal, bestial edge. Something inside of him spoke of it being familiar, some deep and primal memory from the time before conscious memory formed. "...Who's out there...?" He laid, clenching her tightly, unmoving. Eyes wide open he waited, quivering in the cold. Something breathed out loud in the darkness behind them, its throat rasping. They heard plants and twigs snap underfoot, the scratching of something against a tree. There was a sound of thunder.
Blackened grass and naked earth. Blurry eyes and the sensation of his body slick beneath his clothes with something warm. Dry pain spasmed with the first strangled breath, arms aching and shaking in answer to pushing himself up. A hand slipped, reds mixing with blacks and browns to meet a handful of smouldering splinters. A heavy snort of breath thick with a foul smell splattered his hair with that same slick crimson.
Craning his aching neck he blinked free the haze.
Flayed bone rent with bloody channels where flesh once lay inspired madness. A still twitching carcass held in damnation's jaws cemented despair. Searing streams of agony coursed through his veins, reaching up and out with a throat creaking into a baleful, miserable sound. His hands burned white hot for anything, a stone, a knife, a weapon with which to shatter the naked, gore-painted skull before him. Soul screaming in pain, the unseen engine within began to churn. Streaked with tears, flecked with dirt, drenched with blood, despair burned black in the air before fading eyes. Something stung in his collarbone, a lance of light the colour of the moon blew the skin off of his fingers as abhorrance's arrow flew free.
Nothing he had come to learn could wash that away. Not the golden atmopshere of sacred order nor the comforting dreams woven into the sheets of a family's nest. Madness's precipice still lingered in his mind's eye, barricaded and cordoned off by years of therapy to combat the images carved into the matter of his brain. Afterward he had spent the rest of his summer in the hospital, bounced between therpay and police interviews wreathed in flowers and fruit before taking the flight back to Oxford. The whole incident was branded harshly onto his heart, a silvery scar on a wounded soul.
Awareness began to return outwards. Scrunching his eyes against the heated agitation of their dryness he paused at the beginnings of his efforts to wipe away torrents of tears. The latest effort to depict that thing, to commit it to paper lay crumpled and torn in his grip. Tensions in his hands eased, rustling the thing down onto the table before dabbing at his eyes.
For years the same answer to these details had been reinforced, compounded with unerring sincerity and certainty. These events were not real. Injuries suffered, physical and mental trauma had burdened his mind so heavily a fantasy had arisen as a shield against true, darker madness that lay within those cursed internal halls of despair. Holding on to those memories was supposed to be a poison, anathema to sanity. And yet, he was becoming more and more convinced the further away he got from that trauma that it was real. It felt maddening to hold up this tiny match of truth in the dark a lone, a nova of inexplicable impossibility.
Reasserting the memory in his mind, he at least acknowledged what truth there was to be found in there. Chances were his perspective had warped it, some inaccuracies had risen and been exaggerated according to his feelings with other elements downplated. It was becoming less a desire for truth and more a malefic spirit taking hold of him, occupying his thoughts more and more in silent, darker moments.
The usual practiced rituals to compose himself followed, smoothing out the paper and setting it down, brushing beyond books he'd poured himself into studying. Species, typical features, diseases and symptoms acorss all manner of animals you'd expect to find. Itsuki had even entertained the notion of it being some foreign, exotic species let loose somehow. Still nothing. Only in fantasy and children's books did bears grow so ridiculously large. Diseases of all sorts happened but to be completely hairless, distinctly human shaped in places, the entire head naked of skin? Extreme cases could explains fur and skin loss, even the aggression but not the unnatural size and characteristics.
Fresh paper procured, it seemed about right to at least replace the ruined attempt. Perhaps some different detail would arise now he seemed to have seen one of these strange things again. Smoothing out the stray page some part of him spoke of a desire for this to be done with already before hissing away into nothing, his feelings still too muddied to engage with it. That, after all, was what this extensive comfort habit was for.
Somehow, as soon as pencil touched paper his mind almost automatically began to still. Leaves rustling in sea breeze, a room dimly lit by blue light, the scent of freshly baked food. A parcel in his mind reserved for these moments where things must empty away. His hand and eyes took over as thoughts focused on the shapes of lines and curves, angles and representation. Somewhere in the depths of his heart the fear still stirred, a bitter taste on the roof of his mouth manifesting about it. Leaves rustled again in his imagination, scribbling returning.
Today, it was the skull he was beginning with.
Gentle slopes like two ossified sibling hills, the older over the younger formed the base of the shape for the top of the head. The more angular, almost decorative arch of the lower orbital transitioning to the zygomatic arch, sloping back and curved down, out and back around to the rear base of the skull. The cut off front of the smaller sibling to form the nasal aperture. The dip from the peak of the aperture that ran the length of the skull, sagging into the second hill like a well-worn village path. Something in him churned unpleasantly as he cut away the smooth, flat shape into a more proper rendition of a nightmare's face made flesh. Or, rather, fleshless.
Pale bone, delicately picked clean, macerated, polished and painted. Worn like a mask of war atop a body like a human burst outwards. Such a despicable artist might even call it brutal stylisation.
To Itsuki it was nothing more than a grotesque perversion. How sad it seemed, how embittering, some monster that perhaps once was this animal so distorted and mangled by an unkind fate to become such a horrendous shape, a shadow of its former self. Something deeper beneath the layer of his meditative state sizzled atop the perceived reality of things.
The truth that came in the shape of the muscle structure of the shoulders he was sketching out now, trapped somewhere between human and beast. Even though the thing had been travelling on all fours, limbs betrayed it. It was hunched, shoulders too far back and rounded like a human to properly fit a real quadrupedal body. He'd considered a mutation before but, apparently, the handful of biologists and zoologists specialising in this kind of thing he'd harrassed discredited the possibility of these specific mutations. Strangely, despite the more bipedal structure the hefty scapula silhouette of a bear still was partially apparent, jutting back in incongruity, almost as if some malformed mixture of the two were present. Perhaps both simply were. Extinct species were rules out too. It was unlike he prehistoric cave bear or arctodus, the features too alien and irregular.
A steadying breath came as he scrawled out the distinctly human curved to the spine, an admittedly hazier detail from his memory not really possible to have been seen, best guessed from posture alone. Feeling things slipping back into fantasy, the pencil drifted back to refine what had been clear. For the spine, that meant the thick mane of fur running the length of the spine, sprawling across shoulders. Sort of where you would expect human body hair to be thickest. This stuff, however, expanded beyond those limits and beyond the thickness of a bear's fur but failed to match the coverage.
Thickly muscled arms seemed like much of the rest of it, burst out of human and bear forms. Exaggerated human musculature up to bear scale, combined and then the whole thing swelled almost as tall as the trees they had been under that day. The forearm as with both species was thinner, yes, but still steel-like cords of muscle furnished it. Hands, claws, it was difficult to tell. Whatever they were, some were bend like fingers in the mud while others lay flat. Humans and bears both being pentadactyls, no secrets could be divined from the skeletal structure from carpals to phalanges. They were already so similar that thickened bone and the addition of claws seemed almost trivial compared to the rest of the mutant remodelling. Thoughts faded, meditative focus and artistic corrections taking over. Itsuki worked the next short while in mental silence until the task was done.
Eyes set in the leering, grinning face like embers upon the page stared back at him. That dreadful sound echoed from the recesses of his mind, staring at that memento mori expression. Research streaked through his mind like a firefly. Bears were supposed to represent noble qualities. Strength, wisdom, courage, family and medicine. What the fuck did this beast represent, solely strength? Perhaps something like the strength and wisdom of something as ancient as death. Streaks of turquoise stained the skull like some pale mockery of life's vibrancy. It could have been because of anything.
Frustration squeezed at his chest, heat knotting in his gut. So many avenues had been looked into out of desperation. Myths, legends, religious depiction. Friendly, wise spirits offering guidance dominated that field. Antagonistic examples were often more middling, bear-like human-hybrids or miscreant, cattle rustling lesser demons. Yes, they killed men, none were displaying naked bone.
Months, years of compounded failure and therapy contrasting to his reality welled up and overflowed. Tears streaked his face like white-hot beads. Muscles in his jaw clenched, teeth grit. This time he had the good sense not to ruin the latest depiction. This thing, fragment of imagination, misty-eyed recollection, had long since planted roots inside of him.
Breathe, he needed to breathe. Itsuki realised he had come too far and had precious little time left to permit this darkness to encroach the corners of his vision again. Sometimes, he wondered how he got anything done at all. The pious man muttered a prayer of clarity and purity as he stood, making for his kitchen.
Eyes wiped and another glass of water chugged, his stomach made demands. Outside the rain had washed everything clear, every surface glistening with moisture. Neighbours' voices carried over, indistinct through the clear air. Resolve, washed clean of indecisiveness, quickened within. Itsuki had decided what he wanted to do, it was time to try and lay some kind of positive first brick to the foundations of it all. If nothing else it would tear him away from this dangerous spiral.
The question was where to start. He hadn't met anyone else who had even remotely described the same experiences, even at university. Emergency services when he had risked speaking to them only offered him therapy and a polite comments about shock, trauma and the underlying implication of a longer term stay at a less consent concerned facility for his mental health. Nobody at work was likely to know, they were just business people. Something like that in the inner city would definitely go well recorded.
Shadows over his heart, images of time gone by littered the theatre of his mind. Like a stack of pictures, more vivid than life, drawn with feeling blown across the precipice of his innermost sanctum. Even upon the empty throne in his heart did these things find rest, memories gazing up into him with eyes wide open. It was almost accusatory.
His family and friends. A dozen smiling faces had slowly turned to indifferent distance. Sheltering shell of social dissonance caught the whispers of longing, each syllable resonating along the gong of malfeasance. Like cold ice in his bones, the tension slowed him. Swaying, he almost went back down to his seat. Strapped in place, the projector of his mind began to whir as once more he was enraptured by the internal world.
One by one the images arranged, the sights and sounds once a cacophonous symphony of chaos now fitting neatly into the orchestra of his social demise. It was torture, a slow acting poison. His own voice and actions crept like a sinister thread of evidence through the scenes. The windows in time teased his nerves and muscles to almost mimic out the same actions once more. After all, it was what he wanted, wasn't it? Person by person the so-called pious man had committed what Abrahamics would call the cardinal sin of treachery.
So enthralled had he been with this pain, romanced by the sins of self-indulgent self-loathing he had self-inflicted a new method of pain. An unconscious, invasive thought had one night crept into his waking nightmares of a table empty, only a cold breeze brushing against his skin. The justification at the time had been one of freedom. Freedom to walk the path he chose when he chose, all the way down into the hellish confines of obsession. Little did he know that the worming parasite of his mind's output was merely announcing their presence.
His betrayal was not violent, nor an act of wrath or bitterness towards them. No. Itsuki had wanted to push them away and bathe in his quest for vengeance. Mired in such sorrow that clawed and raked at his being each and every day, the months of memory dulled by repetition and salted with medicine rolled by. It was almost effortless, needling himself with the thorns choking out those fallbacks and safeties.
Killing slow was the way he conquered those friendships. At first it was less time spent messaging them at all. A fire in his breast burned indignantly against it, smouldering with paranoia that they'd bind him back in those medical places for their own convenience. Direly ill as he was and they, being the best sort of people, still extended their digital, immaterial hands, gesturing for closeness. Silence drowned them.
Next came the dismantling of expectations and comfortable habits. Time once spent so actively present and participating was strangled softly beneath a pillow of excuses and reasonings. Ill health and the circumstance it adorned itself with had its conveniences. As irregularity became the norm, the smiling faces and embraces of friends, the clasping of hands and bittersweet remarks of being glad he had been able to come at all were as tenderly comforting as the almondesque taste of the cyanide he felt as if he was swallowing in order to bite his tongue backand press his rejection.
Somehow, the saddest stirring in his heart was that it had been so simple.
His relationship with his parents had always been strained. Such hard pressing requirements of him had roused in his youth and never yet ceased. Ailing health was a mere modifier, an accessory to them, it had seemed during those times played back in the reels. Too thick and tightly worn was the blindfold to see the truth of their pressing for time and mundanity with him made out of love and a desire to share in his remaining life without too much pressure or straining him too hard. As his present spectre of self gazed back through time wasted for the sake of his own ignorance the man wept as if a babe once more.
Abrasiveness. Reluctance. Ignorance. Inconsideration. These were the ingredients he had mixed in delicated measure and careful process and injected his personality with, supplemented by the spite of one he felt he loved above all being torn away from him.
Yes, she was gone.
No, she would never return.
That did not make it his correct place in the world to turn upon those he called brother, sister, mother and father and smite them for it.
In his rueful ambitions Itsuki had wished for those closest to him to be pushed away. He had somehow imagined it would make all of this easier, somehow. That bearing the load of responsibility for being the only one to know the truth was somehow made easier by being borne by his hands alone. Sins laid bare with his project having reached completion, regret smothered him.
It was no secret that he viewed himself as stained with impurity for these things. It was only perhaps now that he could see, feel the fullest extent of his descent into despair and feel it crawling upon his skin. He had dropped anchor, blocked out the sun and drained the oceans in order to dig down into the abyss. Every step down here had been carefully crafted and fit in place as he buried himself deeper and deeper. The restraints of loneliness and the great door sealing the hole he'd crawled into, carved from the rock he was living beneath had turned the air of whimsy stale. His own blood seemed even to rot beneath his skin with the chant of that awful desire for self-destruction, anything would be expended if only it could mean he was able to reach back and bring her back to life.
He had gotten exactly what he wanted. It was the worst thing he had ever wished for. His very heart tensed against it as feelings long since locked in iron at the bottom of the pit began to flow freely. He was not some sisyphean figure or a heartless automaton to be set to work with an insurmountable task on behalf of the dead. The months he had cast into the crucible had forged this blackened thing, depression's weight worn as a cross about his neck. It rang with every motion, a reminder of the pain he had wed himself too in these unbidden depths of his soul.
He had begun, like Izanami or Eurydice, to fear even the light itself upon his skin lest it expose him for the self-damaging social composer he had been.
Minutes rolled by as his repentant sobbing slipped free.
On the other side of another glass of water his again cleared mind tried to grip resolve again. Slow and careful, clumsy. Like a baby first gripping a table, like learning to walk again, he eased it into the crack in his heart. It sat in a way that almost felt unnatural in how neatly it fit in that gaping hole. Resolve, a purer, cleaner core gleaming silver with ambition and not the blackened gold of his extended misery.
It wasn't all over.
No, something has gone right now. He had been approved to return to his job and he was able to do things himself again, without a doctor or a drip. He had glimpsed upon the truth of what he regretted and missed, perhaps there was potential to seize it again in his short time left. To seize it and as that true, complete version of himself still strive to find the answer.
It was, perhaps, time for the hermit to leave his home and the turtle to peek from their shell. His stomach turned in warning, fear from his decayed social skills sinking anxiety's teeth into him. It gave him pause as he unlocked that phone. It didn't matter. The radiant sun shone up against him, the smiling face of a departed loved one was watching over him. Beneath her smile, that silly little sliver of silvery resolve felt like hope again. Besides, everyone knows the sun and metals both are excellent at killing disease.
Itsuki had to be honest with himself here and now. It would be a long climb back out and an even harder one pushing to the truth. It was precisely why he needed those people around him again.
---
Send: All
Hi, everyone. I miss you. I hope we can spend some time together soon. I finish work in a month but I'll try to visit home before then.
Love, I.H.
P.S// Sorry it took so long.
---
A blubbering laugh came against his own dramatic gesture as the phone confirmed the message went out. It was just like him in a way, living life in broad, sweeping strokes. As the first few messages buzzed in, Itsuki took the next step. It's time to look for answers in that same place he has been avoiding, a place where constant research is conducted and he knows the way around. When at a loss in a subject, find one's teacher or at least, their works.
With a few thumbs and a dismissal of excessive seasonal pricing, Itsuki was very soon in possession of a ticket to London. Perhaps shockingly, the first message had been from his father. In the span of ive years he could count on one hand the amount of times the old man had reached out to him. Itsuki found himself laughing past his limits, sides aching in the best way they had in weeks!
As he left the room to pull out his suitcase and begin packing, the phone upon the desk shone the message asking his son to travel to London with him like a beacon of light warming the room.
Chewing his way through a bowl of porridge more fruit-laden than those asethetically fruit-adorned displays he had always been served in that chemical, stale-white place he snickered to himself.
"...See, now this is how you make a bowl of fruit and porridge." Spoke aloud the young man beleaguered by drowsiness to the spectres haunting his room. Finding a mouthful of strawberry and banana he waved his spoon in some experimental, matter-of-factly way like some old-time warmonger from the black and whites. You'll get what you're given and like it! Recited a ghost in his mind shaped vaguely like that woman clad in scrubs and a stern smile. Chewing as hastily as he had back then with a dramatic clatter of cutlery against the half-empty bowl an emphatic gesticulation rolled out the red carpet for his accusation. "You always skimp on the best bit, I thought this was meant to help me get better!" Lilted the playful tone. From the corner of his eye the shadow of tape and tubes sullied his hand. Somehow, the recitation seemed as stilted and stale as an overwound and rusted music box. Lips creased downwards around the next spoonful as gaze downturned into the bowl. "Then she'd say it was, ah... hope. If we wanted a proper serving of fruit we had to get better and go home." Strained mechanical memory. Cogs spun and faltered, rotted teeth snapping and spinning free with springs and coils sailing free from it all. Tightness in his chest strangled out the efforts to breathe clear. As the phantasms filled the empty spaces of his mind the soft sound of grief rising up to overflow from lips and eyes alike as gentle, salty rain blown by mirthless winds. That cold brand of fear rose from an abyss choked ocean within that yawned out below. Frozen hands the colour of night clasped his insides, beckoning him to add his song to those beneath that sea. Something so mundane as cough broke the sombre concentration of his troubled mind on that grim spiral. Chasing down his hearty bite of anguish and short-lived despair with a gulp of water, a lengthy exhalation followed. Breakfast's paltry enjoyment had been ruined by tinny mucous muffled taste and scent. Clunking the ceramic bowl into the metal of the sink sink he administered another 250cc of water to aid his ailing condition.
Somehow being told to simply be, to merely exist wrapped up in that tranquility of familiar hands and to simply rest until his life was exhausted didn't sit right. For one shining moment he had managed to push free of hospital gowns and doctors, pills and potions and rolling doldrum updates of cabbages and kings. Before that he had spent his time with everyone without even knowing how precious that time would be to him, clasped close to his heart and worn like cherished treasure against all that was oncoming. It was irreplaceable. More bitter amusement frothed up as a fleeting thought passed over him and escaped out into the sky. Peaking in university was said to be a thing but this was ridiculous. Beneath the brief levity of such a ridiculous thing the barrel of his mind again turned to pluck at the many-noted comb of memory. Leaning over that sink, propped up by his elbows upon the edge glassy eyes gazed out into memory. The path back to strength enough to steady himself was in there somewhere. It didn't lie within the choking cotton of cloying, coddling relatives and over-attentive friends muffling who he aspired to be in favour of flattening down into a memory more easily digested before he had even passed.
Amber leaves lined a golden week of aurum winds and too-fair temperatures spent amongst the hallowed history of a sacred shrine so familiar. The head priest had called upon him personally as soon as the old man had caught wind of Itsuki standing upright on his own two feet again. It had been so strange at the time. Stoicism was one thing but this withered old wise one had refused to visit the hospital and instead told him that they would meet again in time when Itsuki was able to leave. Told was too strong and generous a term - a letter was what he had been given by a weeping mother burdened to act as a medium for something far more weighty than the souls of others. Fury's burning tongue of flames licked against the worn edges of emotion. That paper scrunching in his hands could practically be felt all over again. Before he knew it the image of that so easily provoked figure was straining to improve with each and every day that went by. Who was this monk, isolated from the world, to dimiss him so easily? Somehow this whole process hadn't gone how he had imagined it so far. It was utterly unpalateable to someone who had spent so much time and focus prioritising things that were second nature, predictable, things like the challenges of education and the expectations of family. Amidst the melancholy recollections something in the shape of a faded impulse, an ex-addiction trailed through the corners of his presently wound-up awareness. Squinting scornfully beneath a softly furrowed brow out into the unfocused distance the poltergeist rose from the pressuring plume of smoke's spook snaking, in mind's muddled eye at least, from his lips. An advent of anger propelled that clenched-fisted fitful thing up stone steps with the least respect and reverence the shrine had been paid in years by one of it's own. Glistening sweat-swathed scalps in the midsummer sun turned from their worship to meet the tantrum forcefully stomping to the highest point like so many flickering candles of what felt to be a justified one-man procession. Itsuki's heart held aloft a barbed gift of chastisation and criticism, cooked acerbic and glazed with spiteful accomplishment. The plate it sat upon bore none of the expected adornment, a leather-glove donning vessel adorned in smart, modern clothes and finer shoes still. Over-warm winds washed rivers of disapproving sussuration free of the trees, torii after torii the colour of his mood flickering by. Burning in his breast and tension about his bones urged him to jog his way up the stone steps that seemed to continue on and on in defiance of his purpose. Faint whispers in the back of his mind knew it was only the result of his health-based struggle.
At last, the tiled roof of the main shrine building came into sight. Labouring chest heaved against the dull strain behind his ribs sung by flesh and feelings alike flayed by what tributlations his life offered up. Clarity seeped in, somewhere, somehow. No amount of mantras and measured methods, no patient prayer nor sweeping of the courtyard and no lack of devout ceremonies had prepared him, eased him for such a thing as this. His master's words were an insult that jewelled an unseen crown of betrayal placed upon the pristine perception of the precepts portrayed through the portal of his past's perspective. Pitiful, the present self remarked against the deaf history playing on the viewscreen in their brain. With a grunt of exertion the oh-so-righteous one crested the highest point of that lowest pit. The short walk across to the shrine proper had been a blur of steadying and collecting himself, the kami's winds and watchers seemingly holding their breath before blowing the next gout of gust. Only cicadas signalled his final approach across that grand precipice.
Cold mist dampened the flame, sacred ice rising up to bind him in place from the knees down. The head monk had turned to him with a smile brimming with warmth, flanked by his parents. His father had been stuck overseas in England for the past year owing to troubles with travel. His mother wore a smile glistening with tears as they all welcomed him back in near-unison. Anxiety and pain washed away those smouldering remains, cleansing water trickling free of his eyes. Atop the discomfort perpetually present in his beating breast came an explosion of feelings. For the first time in a long time, he felt almost whole. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he could ignore the traumatic loss he had endured as he entered the embrace of his family, surrogate father included.
The week proved golden indeed. Safely tucked away in traditions and the solace of a short, parental visit, he indulged in pretending all was right with the world. Levity and familiarity seemed to surround those days, giving him a chance to breathe free. Barely any time at all was spent at his apartment, opting in favour of old temple duties from teenaged years, fanciful luncheons and family restaurant dinners. Dreams like this all too often are wont to turn to nightmares, eventually. At first it was mild. Subtle. No more difficult to dismiss and ignore as the symptoms stirring inside. The problem is that feelings and issues of mental health can quicken much faster than slow-killing diseases. This one had slept deep a quiet, fermenting in the deep dark of the subconscious. Therapy and pills had muffled the trauma, hewn away at it, rejuvenated the corrupted parts of a disqueted teen's mind and reintegrated them. Problem was that the root cause had been dismissed as delirium, truth had been suppressed and toxified in the sludge of a mire made with a lover's corpse rotting at the core. Amidst the cold rain that gripped his restless dreams, he saw that face.
-
maybe some connective tissue here, change feels a little too sudden. then again I am being quite drawn out lately.
-
Muscles stiffened with tension and his breath burned past his teeth. Pushing away from the sink with a groan of the ill-fitted worktop, it wasn't long before he was seated at his table with a stack of papers. Roughly rubbing tears away the distraught dreamer's brow creased as he tried to focus within and without. Attempt after attempt had been made to draw what he had seen. Hands faintly quivering beneath attempts to rationalise a nightmare made flesh brushed through wrinkled pages. The plastic sleeve of a reference book rustled, the spine creaking as much as paper and carboard could until arriving at the bookmarked page. Bear skulls. An anxious heart quivered. On that day five years ago it had all changed.
Burning wood and salty air filled his nose, the taste of badly-grilled meat peppered with the grit of kicked-up sand. Wounded memory reached out, bursts of sound and sight was reaching up.
"Come on, I mean, you'll come with me." Playfully danced her voice across the crackling flames. Cheeks burned crimson at that adoring emerald gaze, hanging his head low. Reflected flames danced across the black glass bottle planted at his feet. Spritely laughter drew close before her lips met his cheek. "You know I've always liked how much you blush anyway." The heat of her own glowing face was more than apparent. Looking up to confirm his suspicions and bask in her affections the freshly free from home young man realised he was smiling as brightly as she was. Their hands met and self-chastisation followed for still being shy. How many times had she told him...
"...Nothing to worry about, we've been dating for years now." Soothed that woman. Sea-sprayed grass crunched underfoot as they strayed into the cool night, darkened canopy of bark and leaves stretching out to conceal them from peeping stars. Those days had felt so full of love and excitement. They would have to stray a little further into the forest, away from the orange beacon and revelrie behind them to share their quiet moment together.
"Is here okay?" He had asked once only the wind accompanied them. "Perfect!" Had come her reply, turning at last to face him with her own shy smile crowned in dusted pink. "You know, I wanted to thank you. Things have been so busy this year with exams and making sure our English up to scratch I feel like I've barely had any time at all to say it." Oh boy. Itsuki's reflection in time nervously fidgeted. "There's things I wanted to say to you too, not just about uni, though." The couple stood there silently for a moment, facing one another with hands held in the space between them. "I..."
"What?" Spouted surprise and confusion. They'd been out amongst the trees for most of the night now, was this a prank telling them to hurry up? It sounded again, clearer, louder. No, perhaps clearer wasn't the proper word for this. A great prolonged scream unlike anything he had ever heard, bellowing with strength and agony, a bloodcurling sound as if a wild beast were bellowing all the suffering and hate it could overlayed with fitful rage distorting it through itself. Even as the sound began to recede it droned, a half-weezing squall distorted by a brutal, bestial edge. Something inside of him spoke of it being familiar, some deep and primal memory from the time before conscious memory formed. "...Who's out there...?" He laid, clenching her tightly, unmoving. Eyes wide open he waited, quivering in the cold. Something breathed out loud in the darkness behind them, its throat rasping. They heard plants and twigs snap underfoot, the scratching of something against a tree. There was a sound of thunder.
Blackened grass and naked earth. Blurry eyes and the sensation of his body slick beneath his clothes with something warm. Dry pain spasmed with the first strangled breath, arms aching and shaking in answer to pushing himself up. A hand slipped, reds mixing with blacks and browns to meet a handful of smouldering splinters. A heavy snort of breath thick with a foul smell splattered his hair with that same slick crimson.
Craning his aching neck he blinked free the haze.
Flayed bone rent with bloody channels where flesh once lay inspired madness. A still twitching carcass held in damnation's jaws cemented despair. Searing streams of agony coursed through his veins, reaching up and out with a throat creaking into a baleful, miserable sound. His hands burned white hot for anything, a stone, a knife, a weapon with which to shatter the naked, gore-painted skull before him. Soul screaming in pain, the unseen engine within began to churn. Streaked with tears, flecked with dirt, drenched with blood, despair burned black in the air before fading eyes. Something stung in his collarbone, a lance of light the colour of the moon blew the skin off of his fingers as abhorrance's arrow flew free.
Nothing he had come to learn could wash that away. Not the golden atmopshere of sacred order nor the comforting dreams woven into the sheets of a family's nest. Madness's precipice still lingered in his mind's eye, barricaded and cordoned off by years of therapy to combat the images carved into the matter of his brain. Afterward he had spent the rest of his summer in the hospital, bounced between therpay and police interviews wreathed in flowers and fruit before taking the flight back to Oxford. The whole incident was branded harshly onto his heart, a silvery scar on a wounded soul.
Awareness began to return outwards. Scrunching his eyes against the heated agitation of their dryness he paused at the beginnings of his efforts to wipe away torrents of tears. The latest effort to depict that thing, to commit it to paper lay crumpled and torn in his grip. Tensions in his hands eased, rustling the thing down onto the table before dabbing at his eyes.
For years the same answer to these details had been reinforced, compounded with unerring sincerity and certainty. These events were not real. Injuries suffered, physical and mental trauma had burdened his mind so heavily a fantasy had arisen as a shield against true, darker madness that lay within those cursed internal halls of despair. Holding on to those memories was supposed to be a poison, anathema to sanity. And yet, he was becoming more and more convinced the further away he got from that trauma that it was real. It felt maddening to hold up this tiny match of truth in the dark a lone, a nova of inexplicable impossibility.
Reasserting the memory in his mind, he at least acknowledged what truth there was to be found in there. Chances were his perspective had warped it, some inaccuracies had risen and been exaggerated according to his feelings with other elements downplated. It was becoming less a desire for truth and more a malefic spirit taking hold of him, occupying his thoughts more and more in silent, darker moments.
The usual practiced rituals to compose himself followed, smoothing out the paper and setting it down, brushing beyond books he'd poured himself into studying. Species, typical features, diseases and symptoms acorss all manner of animals you'd expect to find. Itsuki had even entertained the notion of it being some foreign, exotic species let loose somehow. Still nothing. Only in fantasy and children's books did bears grow so ridiculously large. Diseases of all sorts happened but to be completely hairless, distinctly human shaped in places, the entire head naked of skin? Extreme cases could explains fur and skin loss, even the aggression but not the unnatural size and characteristics.
Fresh paper procured, it seemed about right to at least replace the ruined attempt. Perhaps some different detail would arise now he seemed to have seen one of these strange things again. Smoothing out the stray page some part of him spoke of a desire for this to be done with already before hissing away into nothing, his feelings still too muddied to engage with it. That, after all, was what this extensive comfort habit was for.
Somehow, as soon as pencil touched paper his mind almost automatically began to still. Leaves rustling in sea breeze, a room dimly lit by blue light, the scent of freshly baked food. A parcel in his mind reserved for these moments where things must empty away. His hand and eyes took over as thoughts focused on the shapes of lines and curves, angles and representation. Somewhere in the depths of his heart the fear still stirred, a bitter taste on the roof of his mouth manifesting about it. Leaves rustled again in his imagination, scribbling returning.
Today, it was the skull he was beginning with.
Gentle slopes like two ossified sibling hills, the older over the younger formed the base of the shape for the top of the head. The more angular, almost decorative arch of the lower orbital transitioning to the zygomatic arch, sloping back and curved down, out and back around to the rear base of the skull. The cut off front of the smaller sibling to form the nasal aperture. The dip from the peak of the aperture that ran the length of the skull, sagging into the second hill like a well-worn village path. Something in him churned unpleasantly as he cut away the smooth, flat shape into a more proper rendition of a nightmare's face made flesh. Or, rather, fleshless.
Pale bone, delicately picked clean, macerated, polished and painted. Worn like a mask of war atop a body like a human burst outwards. Such a despicable artist might even call it brutal stylisation.
To Itsuki it was nothing more than a grotesque perversion. How sad it seemed, how embittering, some monster that perhaps once was this animal so distorted and mangled by an unkind fate to become such a horrendous shape, a shadow of its former self. Something deeper beneath the layer of his meditative state sizzled atop the perceived reality of things.
The truth that came in the shape of the muscle structure of the shoulders he was sketching out now, trapped somewhere between human and beast. Even though the thing had been travelling on all fours, limbs betrayed it. It was hunched, shoulders too far back and rounded like a human to properly fit a real quadrupedal body. He'd considered a mutation before but, apparently, the handful of biologists and zoologists specialising in this kind of thing he'd harrassed discredited the possibility of these specific mutations. Strangely, despite the more bipedal structure the hefty scapula silhouette of a bear still was partially apparent, jutting back in incongruity, almost as if some malformed mixture of the two were present. Perhaps both simply were. Extinct species were rules out too. It was unlike he prehistoric cave bear or arctodus, the features too alien and irregular.
A steadying breath came as he scrawled out the distinctly human curved to the spine, an admittedly hazier detail from his memory not really possible to have been seen, best guessed from posture alone. Feeling things slipping back into fantasy, the pencil drifted back to refine what had been clear. For the spine, that meant the thick mane of fur running the length of the spine, sprawling across shoulders. Sort of where you would expect human body hair to be thickest. This stuff, however, expanded beyond those limits and beyond the thickness of a bear's fur but failed to match the coverage.
Thickly muscled arms seemed like much of the rest of it, burst out of human and bear forms. Exaggerated human musculature up to bear scale, combined and then the whole thing swelled almost as tall as the trees they had been under that day. The forearm as with both species was thinner, yes, but still steel-like cords of muscle furnished it. Hands, claws, it was difficult to tell. Whatever they were, some were bend like fingers in the mud while others lay flat. Humans and bears both being pentadactyls, no secrets could be divined from the skeletal structure from carpals to phalanges. They were already so similar that thickened bone and the addition of claws seemed almost trivial compared to the rest of the mutant remodelling. Thoughts faded, meditative focus and artistic corrections taking over. Itsuki worked the next short while in mental silence until the task was done.
Eyes set in the leering, grinning face like embers upon the page stared back at him. That dreadful sound echoed from the recesses of his mind, staring at that memento mori expression. Research streaked through his mind like a firefly. Bears were supposed to represent noble qualities. Strength, wisdom, courage, family and medicine. What the fuck did this beast represent, solely strength? Perhaps something like the strength and wisdom of something as ancient as death. Streaks of turquoise stained the skull like some pale mockery of life's vibrancy. It could have been because of anything.
Frustration squeezed at his chest, heat knotting in his gut. So many avenues had been looked into out of desperation. Myths, legends, religious depiction. Friendly, wise spirits offering guidance dominated that field. Antagonistic examples were often more middling, bear-like human-hybrids or miscreant, cattle rustling lesser demons. Yes, they killed men, none were displaying naked bone.
Months, years of compounded failure and therapy contrasting to his reality welled up and overflowed. Tears streaked his face like white-hot beads. Muscles in his jaw clenched, teeth grit. This time he had the good sense not to ruin the latest depiction. This thing, fragment of imagination, misty-eyed recollection, had long since planted roots inside of him.
Breathe, he needed to breathe. Itsuki realised he had come too far and had precious little time left to permit this darkness to encroach the corners of his vision again. Sometimes, he wondered how he got anything done at all. The pious man muttered a prayer of clarity and purity as he stood, making for his kitchen.
Eyes wiped and another glass of water chugged, his stomach made demands. Outside the rain had washed everything clear, every surface glistening with moisture. Neighbours' voices carried over, indistinct through the clear air. Resolve, washed clean of indecisiveness, quickened within. Itsuki had decided what he wanted to do, it was time to try and lay some kind of positive first brick to the foundations of it all. If nothing else it would tear him away from this dangerous spiral.
The question was where to start. He hadn't met anyone else who had even remotely described the same experiences, even at university. Emergency services when he had risked speaking to them only offered him therapy and a polite comments about shock, trauma and the underlying implication of a longer term stay at a less consent concerned facility for his mental health. Nobody at work was likely to know, they were just business people. Something like that in the inner city would definitely go well recorded.
Shadows over his heart, images of time gone by littered the theatre of his mind. Like a stack of pictures, more vivid than life, drawn with feeling blown across the precipice of his innermost sanctum. Even upon the empty throne in his heart did these things find rest, memories gazing up into him with eyes wide open. It was almost accusatory.
His family and friends. A dozen smiling faces had slowly turned to indifferent distance. Sheltering shell of social dissonance caught the whispers of longing, each syllable resonating along the gong of malfeasance. Like cold ice in his bones, the tension slowed him. Swaying, he almost went back down to his seat. Strapped in place, the projector of his mind began to whir as once more he was enraptured by the internal world.
One by one the images arranged, the sights and sounds once a cacophonous symphony of chaos now fitting neatly into the orchestra of his social demise. It was torture, a slow acting poison. His own voice and actions crept like a sinister thread of evidence through the scenes. The windows in time teased his nerves and muscles to almost mimic out the same actions once more. After all, it was what he wanted, wasn't it? Person by person the so-called pious man had committed what Abrahamics would call the cardinal sin of treachery.
So enthralled had he been with this pain, romanced by the sins of self-indulgent self-loathing he had self-inflicted a new method of pain. An unconscious, invasive thought had one night crept into his waking nightmares of a table empty, only a cold breeze brushing against his skin. The justification at the time had been one of freedom. Freedom to walk the path he chose when he chose, all the way down into the hellish confines of obsession. Little did he know that the worming parasite of his mind's output was merely announcing their presence.
His betrayal was not violent, nor an act of wrath or bitterness towards them. No. Itsuki had wanted to push them away and bathe in his quest for vengeance. Mired in such sorrow that clawed and raked at his being each and every day, the months of memory dulled by repetition and salted with medicine rolled by. It was almost effortless, needling himself with the thorns choking out those fallbacks and safeties.
Killing slow was the way he conquered those friendships. At first it was less time spent messaging them at all. A fire in his breast burned indignantly against it, smouldering with paranoia that they'd bind him back in those medical places for their own convenience. Direly ill as he was and they, being the best sort of people, still extended their digital, immaterial hands, gesturing for closeness. Silence drowned them.
Next came the dismantling of expectations and comfortable habits. Time once spent so actively present and participating was strangled softly beneath a pillow of excuses and reasonings. Ill health and the circumstance it adorned itself with had its conveniences. As irregularity became the norm, the smiling faces and embraces of friends, the clasping of hands and bittersweet remarks of being glad he had been able to come at all were as tenderly comforting as the almondesque taste of the cyanide he felt as if he was swallowing in order to bite his tongue backand press his rejection.
Somehow, the saddest stirring in his heart was that it had been so simple.
His relationship with his parents had always been strained. Such hard pressing requirements of him had roused in his youth and never yet ceased. Ailing health was a mere modifier, an accessory to them, it had seemed during those times played back in the reels. Too thick and tightly worn was the blindfold to see the truth of their pressing for time and mundanity with him made out of love and a desire to share in his remaining life without too much pressure or straining him too hard. As his present spectre of self gazed back through time wasted for the sake of his own ignorance the man wept as if a babe once more.
Abrasiveness. Reluctance. Ignorance. Inconsideration. These were the ingredients he had mixed in delicated measure and careful process and injected his personality with, supplemented by the spite of one he felt he loved above all being torn away from him.
Yes, she was gone.
No, she would never return.
That did not make it his correct place in the world to turn upon those he called brother, sister, mother and father and smite them for it.
In his rueful ambitions Itsuki had wished for those closest to him to be pushed away. He had somehow imagined it would make all of this easier, somehow. That bearing the load of responsibility for being the only one to know the truth was somehow made easier by being borne by his hands alone. Sins laid bare with his project having reached completion, regret smothered him.
It was no secret that he viewed himself as stained with impurity for these things. It was only perhaps now that he could see, feel the fullest extent of his descent into despair and feel it crawling upon his skin. He had dropped anchor, blocked out the sun and drained the oceans in order to dig down into the abyss. Every step down here had been carefully crafted and fit in place as he buried himself deeper and deeper. The restraints of loneliness and the great door sealing the hole he'd crawled into, carved from the rock he was living beneath had turned the air of whimsy stale. His own blood seemed even to rot beneath his skin with the chant of that awful desire for self-destruction, anything would be expended if only it could mean he was able to reach back and bring her back to life.
He had gotten exactly what he wanted. It was the worst thing he had ever wished for. His very heart tensed against it as feelings long since locked in iron at the bottom of the pit began to flow freely. He was not some sisyphean figure or a heartless automaton to be set to work with an insurmountable task on behalf of the dead. The months he had cast into the crucible had forged this blackened thing, depression's weight worn as a cross about his neck. It rang with every motion, a reminder of the pain he had wed himself too in these unbidden depths of his soul.
He had begun, like Izanami or Eurydice, to fear even the light itself upon his skin lest it expose him for the self-damaging social composer he had been.
Minutes rolled by as his repentant sobbing slipped free.
On the other side of another glass of water his again cleared mind tried to grip resolve again. Slow and careful, clumsy. Like a baby first gripping a table, like learning to walk again, he eased it into the crack in his heart. It sat in a way that almost felt unnatural in how neatly it fit in that gaping hole. Resolve, a purer, cleaner core gleaming silver with ambition and not the blackened gold of his extended misery.
It wasn't all over.
No, something has gone right now. He had been approved to return to his job and he was able to do things himself again, without a doctor or a drip. He had glimpsed upon the truth of what he regretted and missed, perhaps there was potential to seize it again in his short time left. To seize it and as that true, complete version of himself still strive to find the answer.
It was, perhaps, time for the hermit to leave his home and the turtle to peek from their shell. His stomach turned in warning, fear from his decayed social skills sinking anxiety's teeth into him. It gave him pause as he unlocked that phone. It didn't matter. The radiant sun shone up against him, the smiling face of a departed loved one was watching over him. Beneath her smile, that silly little sliver of silvery resolve felt like hope again. Besides, everyone knows the sun and metals both are excellent at killing disease.
Itsuki had to be honest with himself here and now. It would be a long climb back out and an even harder one pushing to the truth. It was precisely why he needed those people around him again.
---
Send: All
Hi, everyone. I miss you. I hope we can spend some time together soon. I finish work in a month but I'll try to visit home before then.
Love, I.H.
P.S// Sorry it took so long.
---
A blubbering laugh came against his own dramatic gesture as the phone confirmed the message went out. It was just like him in a way, living life in broad, sweeping strokes. As the first few messages buzzed in, Itsuki took the next step. It's time to look for answers in that same place he has been avoiding, a place where constant research is conducted and he knows the way around. When at a loss in a subject, find one's teacher or at least, their works.
With a few thumbs and a dismissal of excessive seasonal pricing, Itsuki was very soon in possession of a ticket to London. Perhaps shockingly, the first message had been from his father. In the span of ive years he could count on one hand the amount of times the old man had reached out to him. Itsuki found himself laughing past his limits, sides aching in the best way they had in weeks!
As he left the room to pull out his suitcase and begin packing, the phone upon the desk shone the message asking his son to travel to London with him like a beacon of light warming the room.
Player of:
Itsuki Hasegawa (Fullbringer Caster)
Cuetlachtli (Arrancar Prodigy)
Est. reply time 24 - 48 hours
GMT+0
Itsuki Hasegawa (Fullbringer Caster)
Cuetlachtli (Arrancar Prodigy)
Est. reply time 24 - 48 hours
GMT+0
