Ink Stained

29: with him without him*

It was like watching something out of a horror movie. She saw herself screaming in pain, tears of blood welling up in her darkened eyes and dripping down hollowed cheeks, before jerking to the left. Another face, the girl from before but her at the same time, seemed to tear herself out from Pai's neck, silent laughter echoed in the crazed smirk of her blood-red lips.

She blinked rapidly in shock – and between one blink and the next, she was left staring at only her own reflection. At her normal self, mirrored in glass, with white hair and terrified, blown-out brown eyes looking back at her.

Come on, a snide voice whispered, half in her head and half out. You know better than that. You know things as weak as they cannot get past a barrier built by the blood and sweat of Hengen.

She shook her head, shutting her eyes. "I – this – I'm hallucinating. It must have been that – that dream..." she swallowed, scrunching her eyes tight. "This isn't happening, this isn't real, I'm tired. This is that dream, this isn't –"

That memory.

"Dream," she whispered, and she could hear the desperation in her voice. "It was – it was a..."

But – was it? Was it really just a dream? It was too real, too close and personal. How could it have been nothing but a dream, if she could remember every detail of it when she always forgot her dreams?

She remembered how thin Kazuki's shoelaces were. She remembered that he kept a pen in the breast-pocket of his white lab coat and she remembered wondering why there was only one, when every other doctor she had ever seen always had at least three.

She remembered the precise shade of the woman's blush when she looked around to see if anyone else on the street had seen her lover, the Tanuki, kiss her. She remembered how cold the spring wind was, yet how warm the setting sun felt against her back, and the cool metal in her hands as she aimed the sights of that gun right in the centre of the woman's forehead.

Stop it!

She shook her head vehemently, nauseous in a way she was not used to as she struggled to focus her mind away from the dream-memory. She hated to think that somehow, someway, she had killed those people, maybe...maybe more.

She hated more how she relieved she felt at finally starting to remember something. The opposing emotions, the sickening relief, threw her into disarray; she didn't know what she was supposed to feel.

Because how? How could that have happened? How could she have turned into that?

"This isn't real," she murmured, almost listlessly, stuck as she was in the swirling confusion of her head. "This – I'm – I am hallucinating –" she winced when the voice returned.

Are you really?

"The Oni's venom must still be in my system."

It has had one whole turn of the moon to get out.

"I've not been getting enough sleep. That's it – because of what's happening, I'm not sleeping enough, I must be really stressed –"

You just woke from a nine hour slumber.

"Who says 'slumber'?" she slapped a hand over her mouth. No, no, if I don't acknowledge it, then it's not real. It isn't real.

Hm, the voice murmured. That single syllable carried in it such dangerous promise, such tangible dark malice, that Pai felt a shiver race down her spine at it. It would not do to pretend we do not exist.