𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐜'𝐬 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤 | dazai osamu

4. THE SECOND DREAM: A DAZAIESQUE PANOPLY OF DEATH.

A woman appears in Dazai's room.

Darkness shrouds her like a long-lost lover—and for a moment, Dazai feels jealous in how intimate the shadows were in pressing into her skin: A hand-shaped imprint against the pliable flesh, a contrast of tenderness and cruelty. The space before him assumed the shape of a lover filled with black, swarming flies—vicious predators to the helpless carcass of a dying beast.

Though who was the predator, who was the dying beast?

She quietly stands there, fingers hovering over the light switch, before deciding against it. The mask that blurs the face, filled with echoes, memories, voices; but what it says to him is tinged with blood, with the filthy sacredness of loving a demon; and, watching as he slipped out of his bed with his bandages trailing like rope, he cannot touch you; he cannot make himself known with his ghostly fingers.

Then, she angles her face down. Demure enough to imitate the soft, wan serenity of the Mary Pietà. Her monumental, thick drapery follows like black hair.

Though he had been warm in bed, Dazai Osamu knows that this is all just a web of structures plucked from his own darkness, reminding him of the tenderness of love he had within his chest; dwelling in the warm den of his heart, the valves closing in with every breath, carefully measuring them as though you were truly curled up within. The shuddering muscles grazing your back, squeezing you, touching you.

All just a dream.

Was that what he wanted? Love? Tantamount to death? An automatic grimace at the swelling tumour within his chest—one that his heart recognizes as obsession.

For you.

The only thing that made her discernable from the dark was the soft, dim glow to her skin, as though there was a flickering ember beginning to die away within. The wax melting, the flesh weakening.

"(First name)?" He whispers. But you're sensitive, you're so sensitive that even the gentlest of touches breaks you. A stone to a lake. And as if something had stabbed you from the back, the darkness begins to melt and drip from your chest. Sludge-blood pooling down.

A gurgle. Trying to say something. A heart closes; it collapses at the futile attempts in saying his name one last time.

The monsters are hungry. The demons and angels within that love-sick stare of yours shrivel like paper to fire. Holes in your gaze, memories; the deep darkness of which had begun to tear at the seams, bursting like entrails to a wound. Something within you aches for him—something within you wants to break yourself to love him.

But it's too late, isn't it?

Dazai rips the bandages from his face—the lack of his other eye was beginning to annoy him. Finally seeing his home in all its darkened glory, his peripherals filled with the corners and edges of the walls, he runs. He sprints after the figure down the hallway, untouched cabinets and other pieces of furniture dissolving into a blur.

You want something to desire you? To the point of murder, self-immolation?

Start running.

Something is bound to come after you.

So, he chases you. But this is no cat-and-mouse run. Cat-and-cat; mouse-and-mouse. Dazai leaps down the stairs—he lands at the bottom with a loud thump. Still, ignoring the crack of pain in his soles, he runs.

"Wait!" He cries. "(First name)!"

Just as his fingers had grazed the silken texture of her back does the woman snaps like stretched elastic—into the darkness does she vanish into.

Confused, like the abandoned child in Omelas, he sinks into the darkness, letting the waves of his dreams—no, nightmares, splash and spatter inside him. A noise of utter despair. A whisper, a haggard breath, a whimper that he muffles by clenching the skin stretched over his chest.

The clock begins to move in the corner of his eye. Time and life flood this house, and yet, he feels as though the most miasmic of gales had submerged his lungs.

Dark brown hair melts with the black of his house. Beginning to submit to the horrors within, he lets himself disassemble; but then despairs at the absence of your gentle hands putting him back together again.

Save yourself from this nightmare, he said.

Save yourself from me, you replied.

Do you see the imbalance?

Thus, awakening from his life that he had gone through asleep, he wishes that he was still asleep. Forever. With you in his arms.

Dazai just feels pain. So much. He had thought he had measured and imagined the perimeters of how much it would hurt within him, but his calculations fall flat when he realizes how wrong he was.

Life will have its worth. But death is needed for that worth.

You had simply woken up from your sleep without seeing that.

You had simply died in your sleep.