Living Hell
Dreams. They’re what children often talk about, how
pleasant and carefree they can be, but these dreams were not of those childhood
tales. The happy, bright colors rotted
into hardly any color at all, and whatever remained, should have been left
forever unseen.
A demon with eyes of fire and spiky,
unkempt hair flew around Hisoka on a plain of absolute darkness. Only the fires that surrounded the beast lit
a portion of the bleak area, enough to see the bones, skulls, and pools of
blood all about his feet. The beast was
so huge and grotesque and yet it looked somewhat human. It had the claws and teeth like a wolf and
still its eyes shone with a tinge of human knowledge, as if they meant to say
“I’ve been there before, once long ago.”
But then the demon cast away any remaining human emotion to tightly grab
a hold of his prisoner’s fragile mind.
“This is the land of death, Hisoka,” spoke the demon from high up in the splintered sky. “No one can escape from this hell, especially you, precious one…” He pointed a clawed hand from which bright bolts of lightning shot down to where Hisoka stood motionless. There was nothing he could do.
**********
Suddenly jerking awake with tears
rolling down his face, Hisoka cautiously looked from side to side to find out
where he was. What was that dream he
just had? He felt so very warm as if he
had been walking in a desert all day and yet he was shivering cold. The anxiety from the dream still clutched
his being and he couldn’t forget it. He
wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and angrily swiped the tears away. He was so helpless in the dream, like a
child lost in a wild crowd with nowhere to turn; he was determined not to be
such in this reality.
Slowly he began to calm down. As he looked around some more, he became
more aware that it was his own bedroom that he was in but he couldn’t recall
ever coming here. And then it hit him
all over again. With both the
appearance of the dream and the sudden visions that flooded his brain while he
spoke with Sakura in the park made it obviously clear that something weird was
definitely happening to him. It felt as
if he was losing all sense of reality, slipping into the vast pit of endless
darkness… like the sphere of eternal midnight that he found himself within the
dream. The visions of the cliff were
still very unclear to him, but the dream was different. As he recalled the face of the demon, the
one who seemed to rule over the bleak terrain, Hisoka felt as if he knew that
person some way or another. The beast
he saw was hardly human; it was an entity of hatred and anger alone, taking the
form of an animal cross-between. It
looked human from a distance, but as Hisoka continued to remember, the beast
looked more like a wolf or a wild cat with its eyes focused only on death and
decay. Not a drop of compassion could
be found within those crystalline infernos.
The more he caught his gaze falling into the swirl of fire there, the
deeper he felt himself lose control, like falling off a cliff…
Some time must have gone by since he
talked with Sakura in the park. As he
quickly stood from his bed, the same dancing mist started to fill his eyes once
more. Crashing unsteadily against the
small wooden dresser beside his bed, he tried to blink the fog from his
eyes. That same feeling of anxiety
mixed with a sense of helplessness flooded over him. What was happening to him?
Nothing made sense any more.
There was no good reason why all these visions and dreams should have
come to the surface, unless there was something in his past that he tried so
hard to forget. Was the fall from the
cliff so severe that every memory of it fell into the same darkness as his
dream? And Kataki; they were classmate
rivals! Why couldn’t he remember
that? Somehow whatever tragedy happened
in 7th grade crippled Kataki from ever playing sports again. If he was so gravely injured, then how could
Hisoka walk away from it with only a small scar on his left wrist?
“You look confused.”
Looking up from the dresser as he
slowly sat back down on the bed, he saw his mother step into the room with that
same look on her face. Would that
expression ever change? Well,
definitely not at this rate.
“Yeah… I am,” Hisoka replied,
raising a hand to his head. It was
starting to spin again, and the voices… they were faint, yet he still could
hear them. He turned his glance
away. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Hisoka’s mother, bent on only
helping her son and not to worry or annoy him, smiled reassuringly. She sat with a sigh next to him and held his
left hand. His hand was hot and
sweaty. Ever since he was a little
child, he had always been overly warm-blooded.
There were days when he frequented the local hospital due to extreme
fevers that no doctor had ever seen before, temperatures reaching the high
120’s. And through it all, his mother
sat by his side, alone. She was here
for him now, too, just as she was every other time in the past. But this time, there was nothing that she
could do to him calm this fever. Nothing
could.
“Oh, Hisoka… What happened today? Some girl from your school called me early
this morning and told me you had collapsed.
This has never happened before.
Do you think you’re catching ill?”
He knew what it was. It was his own memory, forgotten and lost,
that was making him ill. Even trying to
uncover more of the fragmented pieces of his memory sent horrific shocks of
pain through his soul, ceasing any further exploration until the sensation
faded. Not only was his mind fighting
to keep the past a secret, but his body followed the command of his mind to
keep the key hidden. Or perhaps it was
something else that held the truth from him.
He highly doubted that his mother knew anything, but it was worth a
try. Either he could attempt to discover
the truth or he would go insane trying.
“No, I’m not sick… I’ve just been seeing some weird things.”
“Seeing things?”
Hisoka nodded, feeling his mother’s
grasp on his hand tighten. “Today when
I was walking to school and walked past the Hokage house, I noticed a
splintered cherry tree in their yard.
Somehow that triggered something in my memory that I can’t recall, but I
have a feeling I might know what it is.
This girl I met today also has a brother, Kataki. She said that we knew each other, but I
couldn’t remember him. We’re supposed
to be rivals, but I couldn’t remember!
Do you know anything about this?”
When he spoke Kataki’s name before,
his mother’s hand flinched and she caught herself looking away. She had to know something!
“Hisoka… you really don’t remember
anything, do you?”
Feeling the anger well up inside of
him, he scowled at her and said, “If I could remember, do you think I’d be
asking you all these questions? I don’t
know! She mentioned something about 7th
grade and about some accident that happened then. What was she talking about, mom?” He raised his left arm and showed her the scar. “How did this happen?”
All was silence. Hisoka’s mother appeared to be thinking, but
he was in no mood to wait for her to think of something to change the subject
like she always does. Then just before
Hisoka stood up and walked out of the room, she lowered her head as if to cry
and began to tell the story.
“It was your 7th year in
school, and you were 13 years old.
During a day in September, your class went on a field trip to the Sukuba
mountain range. It was the perfect
class trip, they said. Everyone was
enjoying their time there, walking through the paths of trees. They even had some kind of orientation
game. Mrs. Sanders told me that you
were unnatural in founding your way through the woods, leading your group to
victory.” She laughed, proud to be able
to tell the story after so long, through seemingly endless agony from the
thought. “But then during another game,
your group split up somehow and only Kataki was left with you. You two wandered through the forest, trying
to search for the group meeting place, but you couldn’t find it. They said that Kataki was getting furious
with having to follow you around, so he decided to go off on his own. That’s when he lost his footing along the
side of the mountain. He was able to
keep himself from falling by holding onto a small root on the side of the ledge
for a short while. Then you reached
down and grabbed his arm. Kataki was already
quite a distance down the cliff. That’s
how your arm was scarred, while you reached down to save him. But the branch that you held onto with your
other hand broke, and there was nothing you could do. You both fell and were gravely injured. Kataki suffered the use of his right hand and partial use of his
leg as well, whereas you… They said you
seemed to have escaped death by a narrow margin, but you were in a coma for
almost four months afterwards.”
Four months? How could that be? Why couldn’t he remember any of this? For the past two weeks or more, these missing periods of time
have been plaguing his thoughts, especially after the lightning struck near his
home… Everything seemed to be centered
around that one incident; too many, in fact, to be coincidence. But the pieces of the puzzle still didn’t
add up. If the lightning experience
indeed triggered some lost memory of the past, then why was he having these
dreams, hearing the screams of a dozen or more lost souls in the back of his
mind? From the story his mother told
him, he understood how the splintered cherry tree tied into everything, how it
too held a small portion of Hisoka’s forgotten memory. Then again, how or why would these images of
the past suddenly start to come to the surface? Why now? Why not years
ago, after he recovered from the accident five years past?
He still felt uneasy about this topic and yet he was
too tired to care. Moments ago, before
his mother spoke of the field trip, he was ready to walk out of the room and
find something useful to keep his mind off of things. But now he felt so wasted, as if he was left wandering around in
a desert with no hope of escape ahead of him.
He wanted out of this world, out of the constant reminder that something
was severely wrong with him. All he
wanted was to escape from this world’s pain and regret, and whatever else there
was he couldn’t remember. Again the
vision of the dream filled his head. In
a fast swoop, the darkness again fell over him.
**********
Boring, boring, boring! Why did the days have to be so boring? Sitting around the office was never so much
fun, but at least there were live people walking the halls instead of this massive
emptiness! Kaori sat, staring at the
ceiling from her computer station within the Psychiatric Center for the
Millennium. She had already counted all
the dots on the ceiling tiles and she needed to find something else to occupy
her time. Sitting up again, she glared
into her computer screen while she nervously tapped her fingernails on the
desk, eager to make any sound at all to fill the empty air. But then jumped with a start. The phone was ringing!
Pouncing upon the black phone beside
her station, she swiftly picked up the receiver as if she had been expecting a
call from some fancy company that handed out millions and millions of dollars
every year.
“Hello, PCM, this is Kaori
speaking. How may I help you?” Her voice was harsh from a lack of usage the
past few days while all the other doctors were away on business. A tang of jealousy sounded in her voice as
she spoke. “Yes? Oh, hello again, Aiko. How have you been? It’s been what? Almost
five years since I spoke with you last.
Uh-huh. Ohh, no. I’m sorry.
What seems to be the problem?
Yes, I remember. He was lucky to
survive. Calm down, it’ll be all
right. Just tell me what’s the
matter. Visions and voices, huh? ………I see.
Well, things are running a bit slow here, so I’m glad you called. I’ll be right over, okay? Just relax.
I’ll be right over. Hm-mm, right. Bu-bye.”
With a sort sigh hissing out of her
small body, she hung up the phone. Five
years. Could it possibly take that long
to fully recover from that sort of accident?
Five years and the memories keep coming back. Or maybe her suspicions had been correct and that the source of
these memories came from much further back in time. But besides all that, she finally found something to waste…or
spend her time rather then wasting away little by little in this tiny cubicle
of an office. She happily packed her
books into a brown, leather bag, carried it over her shoulder, and turned off
the power to her computer with the press of a button. And off she was to work on her most favorite case: the case of
lost destinies.
**********
Again Hisoka was hurled into the
despairing darkness of that dream, surrounded by nothing but death and
chaos. He stood in the center of a
large open area with no sight of shelter or a place to hide anywhere. If that demon came back again, what would
happen? What would he do next?
Hisoka didn’t want to wait around to
find out, either. Glancing in all
directions, he saw an odd looking piece of land jutting out of the ground on a
45 degree angle. It looked like it was
part of a mountain side, but it was too narrow and too sudden to be a
mountain. Plus, it wasn’t nearly that
high. In any case, he knew there would
be at least a small area under the structure to hide if the demon chose to show
his face again. As he ran to the side
of the mountain, he heard a loud noise, rumbling in the distant sky. He knew he had to run, but his legs
froze. He couldn’t move even if he
wanted to, even if his life depended on it.
He stood looking up at the hellish figure in the sky as it approached
rapidly, the sounds of its laughter echoing on the lifeless air.
Popping out of a reddish-gray cloud, the same demon
as before plummeted to the ground below and landed on his two feet as
delicately as a cat. The demon,
stretching his massive arms over his head, yawned tiredly, as if he was bored
of the constant run-around. Turning his
gaze upon the helpless human, he casually began to walk nearer. Bones and other unidentified body parts
crushed under his feet as he stepped closer and closer until they were face to
face. Hisoka swallowed uneasily and
stared defiantly into the beast’s glowing red eyes.
The demon grinned.
“Why have you come back so soon, Hisoka? Do you enjoy me torturing you?
You know that is all you will find in this world, for there is nothing
else. But I suppose there’s nothing you
can do. You are destined to die.”
Gaining a little more courage from his anger, Hisoka
frowned, baring his own teeth as he spoke, “What are you talking about? I don’t even know who you are! Why are you always after me?”
“Why?
Why?” The demon turned away,
laughing uncontrollably. “You really
don’t know who I am? Hahaha, that’s
rich. Hmhmhm…”
Confused to say the least, Hisoka stared at the
beast, nearly on the ground from laughing so hard. He saw this was his chance to escape. Breaking into a sprint, Hisoka headed for the base of the rock
sticking out of the ground.
“Hahahahaha!”
The demon continued to laugh even as he stood, watching Hisoka
frantically run away. “Do you honestly
think you can run from me?
Heeheehee…” This was going to be
a fun game. Beginning to run after
Hisoka, the demon tossed streaks of lightning one after the other at the
human. The grin on his demonic face
showed how much he enjoyed tormenting him.
Running as fast as he could as he dodged the flying
streaks of blue left and right, Hisoka still aimed for the small area under the
ledge. And this the demon knew. Out of any other place in this bleak world,
that would be Hisoka’s main target.
The blasts of lightning suddenly subsided as Hisoka
approached the giant rock ledge. He
didn’t dare look back to see what the demon was doing; he didn’t want to look
at that wicked face again if he didn’t have to. But then again, his sanctuary was right before him. As he stepped under the shadows of the
ledge, Hisoka slammed his back against the cold rock and slid down the side of
it to the dusty ground below. Was it
safe here? He was too tired to care or
wonder about it, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking back the way he had
come. The monster that chased him to
this place was no where in sight. That
uncertainty was the worst feeling. It
crept up the base of his spine and sent a chill all through his soul.
Then he felt a sharp pang in his right side along
with the sound of piercing flesh. A
surge of pain griped him better than demon ever could have, and as he looked
down to see what it was, he found a small dagger lodged into his side. Frightened just by the sight of it, Hisoka
instinctively gripped the blade to pull it out, the feel of his warm blood
dripping down his hands making him sick.
The weapon was in deep, only the golden hilt in the shape of a dragon’s
out-stretched wings remained in view.
And as he slowly removed the blade, he could hear the demon laughing
nearby, his harsh voice like a dozen more knives piercing through his
body. He took the weapon and looked at
it. It looked somehow familiar with its
golden glimmer, and the blood… How many
times have he seen this sight before— a bloody dagger… It was like a reoccuring nightmare of which
he could not escape, and as far as he knew, the blood dripping down his side
was real. The pain, the fear, the
agony; they were all real, even the demon.
How could something so evil exist in the world? But he had said that this was the world of
the dead. Anything could happen.
He felt himself weaken from the blow, his breath
harder to grasp than before. He didn’t
know what to do, whether to run and find shelter elsewhere or to stay put and
endure the wound in his side. If he
stayed here for too long, he’d surly bleed to death. But still all he could do was lean against the side of the stone
slab, waiting for the demon’s next move.
“How’s it feel?”
The voice came from inside the rock’s surface.
With nothing more to do than to sit still, holding
his side painfully, Hisoka looked around.
There was no sign of the demon anywhere and yet he could feel his
presence nearby. Then all of a sudden,
something from behind him grasped a hold of his neck, strangling him as he was
forced to stand. He fought to break
free of the demon’s grip with his two redened hands. But he was too weak and the demon that amerged from the rock’s
inner core was far too powerful for him to withstand let alone overcome. With a mere flip of the rist, Hisoka went
flying through the air, out into the open plain of death.
Landing hard on his stomach, the wind knocked out if
him, he fought to catch his breath as the dust scuffled up from his fall arose
in the air. Weakly propping himself up,
he saw the feet of the demon right in front of him. Quickly looking up at the beast, Hisoka again froze with the one
thought running through his brain:
There’s nothing you can do.
There’s nothing you can do. You
are destined to die.