𝐇(𝐀)𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 | yandere! dazai osamu

10 / 15

Dazai has to go again. After soft, comforting bouts of silence, with his mouth gently mouthing and shaping words that you knew wouldn't hurt you, talking about his colleagues, what he knew about this house (at least, what little he knew), he had gently pried himself away, stating that he had to get back to the Agency before they called the cops on him.

But before he goes, you watch him take his coat off and hand it to you. The lump of beige fabric is limp against your palms.

"In case you need it," He says. And it's such a tender thing for him to do, give up a piece of clothing, as if it's his last fig leaf, waiting for you to take it to conceal yourself in the eyes of the devil in hell.

"Why don't you leave this place, (first name)?"

You stare at him as he's about to open the door. And he's right—why aren't you leaving? You have the world outside waiting for you to come back...right? Yet something just under your naval pulls you back into this room, like you were anchored here, and when you try to think of leaving, your mind draws a blank.

"But where would I go? I can't abandon this place either," You say, fiddling with the soft fabric of the coat. "I think I've hit the lowest point of my life. My brain feels like it's my arch enemy. I need to find out what happened here, I can't abandon it anymore."

He pauses. "Do you feel like you will feel alive in the face of death?"

You don't answer him. You don't say anything, even when he sends you one final look as he closes the door behind him. You peek out at the windows and the skies are drawing its curtain on you, swoops of dusty orange closing in on the fading wisps of blue on the horizon, clouds turning baby pink, thinner, and dissipating in the great pools of darkness. You stare at the scenery for a few seconds before rolling out of the couch at the foyer and turning around.

You decide to walk back into the library and sleep under the table with Dazai's coat over you. When you walk in, light a match and place it against the candelabrum, the room becomes swathed in amber golden lights, the walls like raw honeycomb. You watch the ember flicker into a flame on the wick, melting the air and wax around them.

Squeak!

You tiredly turn your head to the side. A single brown mouse looks at you. You check the sky outside and seeing that it wasn't that dark outside, you decide to check out the attic. But when you turn back around, the mouse is already scampering away.

You press the switch, and the attic stairs unfold. When it finally rests on the floor, you put a foot on it and put half your weight on it—it didn't seem to crash and break, though it did creak a bit. You could already hear the squeaking of mice upstairs, and for some reason, that made your shoulders square up—they were alive, and you were going to be okay.

You climb very carefully, with one hand holding onto the heavy candelabrum, and set it on the floor of the attic when you climb yourself up.

It is a room angular and slanted from the roof, a single light bulb from the breeze that slipped in. A shelf was by your left, tucked behind a decaying protruding wall. At the very end was a window that was the height of a door. The room sounded as if it was submerged in jelly, or some sort of formaldehyde embalming solution—it felt like it was a place of transition, a pause, a moment to breathe; it felt like a place time had forgotten. This entire room feels like a space of bated breath, something constricting their lungs, on the point of tipping over, threatening to fall over the edge and into the unknown. Very unnerving, that stretched out pause, knowing you are alone in the world of your body—you are alone, and you fear being alone.

You walked to the window and peeked outside—the streets were empty but otherwise looked normal. You sigh and slowly turn back around.

There's no one there. Yet something feels like it's waiting to show itself. You peek around the shelves and see nothing and touch the walls. It lightly vibrates.

You look around and notice that there is a sheet of paper behind the shelf. You walk to the end and push the shelf to the side. The paper is pinned to the wall by blue-tack, and you peel the sticky substance at the back to get the paper free.

When you finally wriggle it out, it says: Innocence of Evil, innocence demands no evil, yet is mother of all evil.

You flip it back and there's nothing else written. You decide to fold it into quarters and slip it into your bra. You're reminded of what Dazai said: Evil envied innocence and tried to replicate her.

And now that you thought about it, it made sense; how many criminals were out there who used innocence to cover up their crime? I am innocent, my parents used to beat me, the essence of their evil has now been imbued into my very being. I didn't mean to hurt you by saying that; I meant no harm. I was just brutally honest and if you're hurt by that, I apologize. Innocence demands no evil—but it is the origin point of any potential evil...

You sigh, and pivot on your feet to go back. The floorboards creak violently under you, and the mice hiding in the walls squeak in alarm. You step in front of the attic door—had you closed it before?

Your eyes widen. The hairs on your nape stand up straight. Without looking, something changes in the air. The dust around you comes at you in two different directions: there is something between them.

Something cracks behind you. A sickening crack that sounds full, ripping the air around them. It's reminiscent of a bone being crushed.

You can feel sweat bead down your temple. You can feel your stomach churn. The tips of your fingers feel cold and sweaty. You slowly turn your head to the side.

A pair of gaunt, sunken eyes stare back at you from the darkness.

Your head's screaming at you to run. Your heart hurts. Your legs are itching and racing to go. But the thing steps out of the shadows. It's a body...at least, you think it's one. It had the face of a person: nose, eyes, lips, ears; hairs in normal clumps on the scalp, shoulders, natural curves of a body, legs...yet there was something off-putting about it.

There is no clear and obvious danger. But your brain is alarming you.

It looks human, but there's a tug in your heart that tells you: that's no human. That's too vague to be human. It looks like it's trying too hard to be human. It looked like something that wasn't within the comfortable boundaries of a human, but more so had nicked aspects of humanness without knowing how it all fit together like jigsaw puzzles. It then turns to the side, pushes its shoulder back, and then forces its head back. And then the backs tarts to bend backward, and your skin prickles with cold sweat when it starts to go too low, unnatural. It cracks, rolls, goes limp and cracks again. Something snaps, and then the upper body flops uselessly against its back. The legs are still standing firm. You back away slowly when it turns to you.

You drop onto all fours, the candle wax spilling onto the floor. Your fingernails pull at the latch, but it doesn't relent—it's like someone's pulling it close from the other side.

The thing turns to you. You can see a hint of black hair brushing against its legs. Your mouth is open in a scream, the noise only hitting your ears once you start frantically banging on the door, fingernails clawing at the wood in desperation. You're cursing and drool comes out of your mouth from your bouts of frenzied cries. You clench your fists and smash them down on the wood.

The thing turns blue. A halo forms at the back. It says something backward. The language of tongues. The devil.

It then tries to hobble to you. You scream in terror—paralyzed before something in your brain unlatches and you kick a leg out. Your foot crashes into its shin and it falls over. Just before it falls over you, your fists finally break free under you, the wood opens up, lets you out, and you go falling, seemingly without an end.

You can finally feel the hard floor smashing against you.

Your head swims. You try to get up with your forearms against the floor. You get up on a foot and a knee on the carpet—but you collapse, into the comfortable veil of static behind your eyes, limbs giving out from being stunned.