Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Fiction: Yellow Flowers and a Bag of Bones
Chapter ten: The missing skull
I sat perfectly still on the sidewalk outside of the bookstore as the police arrived and started bustling around, filling the street with uniformed men and women, with a stretcher and coroners and police cars and normalcy. Right now normalcy seemed like a very good thing – between the odd atmosphere of the store and the corpse of the woman who seemed to in fact be the same woman whose journal I had read only days earlier, my head was spinning. I didn’t like it when my head was spinning.
A police man asked me routine questions and I answered them just as routinely, not even capable of being nervous for once, even if my voice shook more than normal. He seemed to think I was in shock over stumbling upon a dead body like that, and gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and told me to rest for a while before I got moving. At least they didn’t seem to think that I was guilty of anything, which was a relief – I wasn’t sure if I could handle interrogations and cops and forms. Especially not seeing as I was supposed to be lying low, not make much of a fuss, not attract attention.
I was doing a splendid job at it.
For some reason, I decided to stick around, watching the police do their thing. The coroners carried the body out on a stretcher, thankfully covered, though the white cotton couldn’t keep the smell away. I wondered if my face was green. I wouldn’t have been very surprised if it was.
Watching work like this fascinated me. These were people who no doubt came to work every day, diligently, doing their eight to four – possibly even longer – jobs without complaining. Serving the community, slaving away for a wage that was probably almost not even enough to feed their families. I wasn’t sure whether to pity or admire them. This was a world that I knew nothing about, seeing as I had never had a steady eight to four job. The mere thought of it had always creeped me out, and so I stayed away from it. Easier that way.
Suddenly there was a cry from inside the store, and more commotion than there really should be, now that the body had been carried out. On sheer reflex, I got up to go inside to check it out, but a police man stopped me firmly in the door, one hand out to create a barrier.
“You can’t go in there,” he said, the tone of his voice making it very obvious that I would not be going in there.
Of course, I couldn’t leave it at that. “W-why not?”
“Because this is a crime scene and an investigation and you are a civilian,” he explained, not very patiently. It should be an explanation I could accept, but moving on from a discovery like this one wasn’t that simple.
“But I w-was the one who f-found the body. Don’t I d-deserve to know what’s g-going on?”
The police man hesitated, and then told me to stay there while he went inside to talk to his superiors. He looked less than happy when he got back, but nodded to me. “Come back around this time tomorrow, and someone will fill you in, if you’re that interested in knowing what’s happening. Does that sound fair to you?”
I nodded. “That s-sounds very fair, t-thank you,” I replied, politely, and turned to leave. Reluctantly. I had to admit that I didn’t want to leave just yet – the atmosphere of the store, as much as it freaked me out, was also more than a little intriguing. Besides, I had to know more about the woman, about who she had been. I might already be the one person in the world who knew the most about her, and yet I knew nothing at all. I wondered how I could find out for sure whether or not she really was the woman whose journals I had read. It wasn’t as if I was an expert on handwritings, I couldn’t determine for sure that the same person had written both the journals and the short suicide note. I thought it was likely, but likely and certain were two very different things.
I found it difficult to concentrate that night, and even more difficult to sleep. All I could think about were the various women that had suddenly snuck into my life, affecting it in various ways. Thankfully, at least Maria wasn’t mysterious; she was simple and straight-forward and cute and pleasant, and I liked her and she liked me back. Nice and easy, even if I wasn’t used to the very fact that a girl actually liked me for me.
Dakota, on the other hand, was not simple and straight-forward. I had only seen her two times, though I had looked for her countless times, and yet she was proving impossible to forget. I wished I could forget, just leave that mystery unsolved, because it would sure as hell make things a lot easier for me. But then there was the look of pure terror on her face the last time I had seen her. Maybe she was in trouble, and I was the only one who was aware of it. Didn’t that mean that I had a duty to help her out? Sure, I had never really cared all that much about duty before, but when the matter at hand was a young, fairly attractive woman, it was a lot easier to not suppress that sense of duty.
Then there was the mystery woman. I had been calling her Star in my head, because of the little stars she had jotted down next to some of the names. I wondered what could have driven her to those kinds of steps, if she had really killed herself, or if someone else had found her too troublesome and staged a suicide. I felt sorry for her, that she had sunk deeper and deeper into the trouble she was in, without anyone to help her.
The next day I was greeted with yellow police tape and just as many people as the day before when I got to the alleyway. On the way I passed several gangs, looking none too happy about having their turf invaded like this, but with so many cops around, there wasn’t much they could do.
By the look on the men’s faces when I approached them, I could tell that they’d rather keep me out of all of this, but I was stubborn and insisting, and eventually they let me in. Possibly just so they wouldn’t have to listen to me anymore.
The police man I had talked to the day before, the kind one who had patted my shoulder, walked up and introduced himself as Janson, telling me that he’d be taking care of me. “A-as long as y-you don’t put m-me in jail,” I said, and he laughed. Normally I really didn’t like cops (exactly because theoretically, if they looked closely enough, they would find more than enough of a reason to actually put me in jail), but Janson seemed nice enough. Besides, he had no reason to think that I was anything other than a regular young man who had stumbled across a horrible sight.
“Come on, let’s sit down here at first,” he said, half pushing me down on one of the chairs that had been brought out to the side of the store. The whole scene looked like a city within a city, with the amount of cars and people and chairs and equipment. It was fascinating. Janson found a sandwich and a cup of coffee for himself, offering some to me as well, but I shook my head. I hadn’t been able to eat since yesterday.
For a while we sat there in silence; him eating, and me looking at the work that was being done. Someone had seemed to scrub the bookstore clean – I could actually look in through the windows now, and it was possible to read the sign above the door. Le Livre Vert. So apparently, it was a French bookstore. Nothing too uncommon really, in a city like this. There were stores that catered to pretty much every nationality possible, and then some.
“The body you found was the one of a woman, who was twenty-six years old,” Janson began, sighing slightly. “Her name was Jenny McLoughlin, and she was Irish. That’s pretty much all we know so far. By the looks of it, she hadn’t been living here for long. It’s almost as if she uprooted from wherever she lived before and then came here just to… Just to kill herself.”
I swallowed. Jenny. My mystery woman had a name now. I wanted to ask him if they had found any journals, but I figured that kind of specific question could be a bit too suspicious. They didn’t need to know the fact that I might just have known this woman. “W-was there any p-personal belongings?” I asked instead. I was pretty good at not being suspicious when I wanted to. I had to be, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to live the kind of carefree life I did.
Janson nodded slowly, chewing the last of the sandwich as he stared at the store. “There was a wallet, which was how we found out who she was, the suicide note, and a few letters. One change of clothing, no toiletries. Either she was incredibly poor, or she had sold of everything she owned.”
“L-letters? What d-did they s-say?” I tried to sound casual, interested but not too interested, but it was difficult when all I wanted to do was to shake Janson and demand the letters.
He shrugged. “They were a pile of nonsense. Some ranting about four sisters and how she loved one of them and that she had done everything they asked of her, but that she couldn’t take it anymore. Most likely she had a condition. Maybe depression, maybe delusions. Living in a fantasy world with voices talking to her and all that,” he said, smiling even if he hardly sounded amused.
I wanted to jump up and down, but seeing as that would have looked very funny, I merely sat there. Jenny was my mystery woman; there was no doubt about it. I still wanted to get my hands on the letters, but it might not be all that important – I had the information I needed.
I was still piecing everything together quietly when Janson’s voice interrupted my thoughts, “The suicide is fairly straight-forward. It’s horrible to say that it’s easy, but as far as cases go, it doesn’t take a lot of manpower to solve. It’s the skeleton in the store that brought all these people out.”
“S-skeleton?” I couldn’t come up with anything smart to say, because his remark blindsided me completely. I sure hadn’t seen a skeleton in the store yesterday.
He nodded again, slowly and thoughtfully. “Yep. By the looks of it it’s been there for at least twenty-five years, maybe even more. Store must have abandoned in all that time, door open and everything. Horrible, really, that something like that can go by unnoticed.”
“S-so, was the p-person…m-murdered?”
“We don’t know yet, but it looks that way. The skull is missing,” he said, all too calmly. As if he was used to stumbling across twenty-five year old skeletons with missing skulls. I wasn’t, however, and I was suddenly glad that I was sitting down.
“There will be an investigation, of course,” Janson continued. “We have sent off the skeleton for analysis to find out more about the person. Right now we have no idea about gender, age or identity, though the store is registered to one Nicodème Gramont, who we haven’t been able to locate, so chances are that the skeleton is his.”
I paled. Or at least, I was sure that I paled. Visibly. To regain my composure, I bent my head, running a hand through my hair. Gramont. That was one name I had run across far too often lately, and it was starting to mess with my head. Did this mean that the skeleton in the store belonged to Rei’s father? And if it did, how had he died? Where was his skull? And possibly the most important question; did Rei have anything to do with it?
“I s-see,” I said, mostly trying to buy myself some time to come up with something else to say, though even after a few more moments of silence, I couldn’t think of anything smart to say. It wasn’t as if I could reveal the fact that I might just know something about the skeleton man as well as the hanged woman, which would simply be too much. It was already proving to be more than enough for me to handle, and I knew I was innocent in all this. However, the police might not see it that way. Most likely, I should just back away from all of this crap. Definitely would have made things a whole lot easier. And yet… “D-do you m-mind telling m-me if s-something new c-comes up?”
Janson shrugged and looked me over. He probably took me for some bored, poor student with nothing better to do with his time, which was okay with me. I didn’t mind it when people made that kind of assumption about me – maybe it was even part of the reason for why I never tried to change my looks at all. That, and the fact that I felt comfortable like this.
“Normally we don’t do something like that, but seeing as you were the one who found the woman, I guess you have a right to. It won’t hurt anyone. You’re welcome to take a look inside the store if you want, just don’t touch anything.”
I thanked him with a polite smile and a bow, and got up to check it out. Even with the added light and police, the store still felt strange. Once again I had the feeling of stepping back in time, and I looked around, almost expecting everything to have turned into black and white, like images on an old TV, but everything looked normal on the surface. As far as I could tell, no one else felt what I felt either, so it had to be my wild imagination.
Maybe I had just spent a bit too much time around strange little boys and talking rabbits lately.
Unlike yesterday, I took my time along the bookshelves, reading the spines of the books. Even if I was one of the most well read people I knew, I had barely heard of any of the titles. The fact that half of them were in French didn’t exactly help me much. From what I could understand, there were a lot of books on religion, a lot about flora and fauna, a lot about travel. Nothing that really stood out to me.
There was a small crowd gathered near the stair, and I walked closer; carefully, not quite sure I wanted them to notice me. Though considering how focused they all were on a gathering of grayish white bones on the floor, I figured that they couldn’t care less about me. The skeleton didn’t really interest me all that much, because it wouldn’t give me any information. I couldn’t ask a skeleton questions. Except that right now, I wouldn’t even be surprised if it had answered. If it had a skull, anyway.
As casually as possible I climbed the stairs, one step at a time, trying to make them creak as little as possible. A couple of the cops did look up and frown at me, but they didn’t protest. I was surprised, but figured that in this part of town, maybe they were used to things like this happening on their crime scenes. Or maybe Janson had told them to leave me alone. I didn’t particularly care as long as they didn’t stop me or ask me questions.
The apartment above the store had the same strange feel to it, and everything looked aged. It probably didn’t help that everything was covered by a thick layer of dust, apart from where someone had walked around, apparently taking the same look around as I was. Except that I knew what I was looking for. Well, more or less, anyway.
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed by the fact that I couldn’t see any pictures, or any personal effects of any kind. The apartment was as generic as a display in a furniture store. The living room, kitchen and bathroom all looked almost too plain, and the main bedroom wasn’t any better. I glanced in the closet, finding suits that looked like they had been fashionable decades ago.
It wasn’t until I opened the door into a smaller bedroom that I found some kind of sign that someone had actually been living here, instead of merely existing here. I could tell that it was a boy’s room by the cars and planes lined up neatly on narrow bookshelves, as well as by the amounts of comic books stacked beside the bed. There were a few drawn pictures taped to the walls, looking like they had been drawn by someone who was young, but not a little kid.
I looked through the closet here as well, finding the same kinds of clothes, the kind that looked like they had been worn many, many years ago. The lone window in the room was too small and dirty by years without washing, and the sun shining in through it cast the room in a sickly glow. I shuddered. This didn’t feel like a happy place.
I didn’t want to sit down on the bed, so I crouched down beside it instead, pulling back the duvet carefully, coughing over the cloud of dust that I brought up with the simple movement. The worn bed sheets were nearly covered with dark stains that I could only assume were old bloodstains, and I was sure that if this had been newer, I would have found tearstains as well. Definitely not a happy place.
Somehow it made me think of my own childhood room, how filled with light and colors and laughter it had been, and I felt bad for Rei – if this had indeed been his room.
I found the answer to that question moments later when I moved over to give the drawings a closer look. All of them were marked with a small R.G. in the bottom right corner, and one was even signed Raphael. So I had found out where he lived either before or after he had stayed at Mrs. Ortega’s institution. By the gap in the drawings I guessed that this really had been his home both before and afterwards.
Rei must have been kissed to sleep by his mother in this bed, and later… Later he might have been beat up by his psychotic father and cried himself to sleep in the very same bed. Maybe I should feel sympathetic for the man lying at the bottom of the stairs, but quite frankly I felt like he had deserved whatever had happened to him.
I flipped through the comic books quickly, recognizing most of them even if they were all old – a few of them were rare issues that I would have loved to own myself, but despite the temptation, I didn’t take them. Not only because I could get in trouble, but also because it felt wrong somehow. Like these comics belonged to Rei and that I had no right to take them.
There wasn’t really much else to look through in the room; the small desk was stripped bare, as if someone had gone through the room and taken everything of interest. I looked through the drawers on the left side of the desk, shaking my head over the fact that they were all empty. Something was definitely not right about that.
And something was definitely not right about the bottom drawer. From the outside, all three drawers looked to be the same size, but on the inside, the bottom one was noticeably smaller. I grinned a little because I had used the very same method to hide things when I was a kid – my parents had insisted that I share everything, that I shouldn’t have any secrets whatsoever, whereas I really didn’t agree with that point of view.
I took a pen from my bag and eased it down in the tiny crack between the bottom and the wall of the drawer. It was loose. Ignoring the urge to cheer, I lifted it up slowly, hoping that Rei hadn’t booby trapped the thing like I had used to do. No traps, the fake bottom of the drawer lifted away easily, revealing a small space underneath.
If I had expected to see something spectacular, I was sorely disappointed. All I found was a small stack of slightly crumpled paper, with what looked to be a few photographed mixed in. However, I figured that it was better than nothing, and probably the best I could have hoped for.
This time I didn’t feel the slightest hesitation about lifting the entire stack from the drawer, slipping it into my bag. I didn’t think that the cops had any right to this information. They didn’t know Rei, but I did, and considering that this was his personal property, I was the one that had the right to remove it. I chose to not ponder the fact that the Rei I knew was still a twelve-year-old boy, when he should be far, far older. I could assume that he was lying to me somehow, but for now I opted for simply accepting the fact that Rei was Raphael, and that he had lived here decades ago.
A small voice at the back of my head told me that I was being insane, but I chose not to listen to it. It wasn’t as if it was the first time in my life that I had come across something seemingly insane.
When I wandered back out again I made sure to stop and chat a little more with Janson, appearing as if I had found nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that could be of interest to them. Janson gave me a lingering look that I wasn’t sure how to react to, but then said goodbye with a smile after giving me his card and telling me to call if I had any questions.
Somehow, I didn’t want to look through the papers in my own apartment, and instead I went to the park, settling down underneath a tree, safely away from other people. I filtered out the photographs first; there were five of them altogether.
On the first, a young man and woman were smiling at the camera, the woman holding a baby on her arm. The back read “Me and Nico with baby Raphael”, but there were no date at all. I looked at the photo again. One of the corners was slightly stained, and it had the appearance of having been left out in the sun for too long; the colors faded to pale sepia.
The second photo was of Rei alone, slightly older this time, holding a toy car in his hand. He was looking at the camera with wide, surprised eyes, as if the photographer had yelled at him. I imagined that seconds after the photo was taken, he had focused back on his car, continued to play.
The third picture was of Rei and his mother. She was sitting on a chair; he was standing beside her with a hand on her shoulder. He looked like he was four or five years old. They were both serious, almost somber, and I thought I could see the hint of a bandage around her wrist, along with a faint bruise on her face. Of course, that could just be the light, but I didn’t think so.
The fourth picture was of Rei and his father, and it looked like the most recent one, judging by how Rei didn’t look all that different from the Rei I had come to know and like. The clothes were different, obviously, but otherwise he looked just like now. I wished the picture had been in colors instead of black and white, because somehow, his hair, eyes and lips looked lighter on the picture, but naturally, it was impossible to tell what kind of color his hair and eyes had back then. Rei wasn’t looking at the camera this time, he was looking at his father, which made it impossible to read his expression. I wanted to know what he felt about his father, but I couldn’t tell.
The last picture was a simple and quick black and white Polaroid, but even the darkness could conceal the fact that it was a picture of Rei’s father, lying in the exact same position as his skeleton was now, many years later. The difference was that he still had a head on the picture, and that he was wearing clothes – I hadn’t seen any traces of clothes around the bones back at the store. Underneath the picture, on the white frame, someone had scribbled down the word “finally”, and nothing else. I wondered if it was Rei who had taken it, seeing as it had been in his secret drawer. And if it was Rei who had taken it, it was difficult to imagine that he hadn’t had anything to do with his own father’s death.
I took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of the fresh grass and clean air around me, and went on to the crumpled pieces of paper. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were crumpled because Rei must have been crying when he wrote them. No wonder; the contents were enough to make my eyes tear up as well – all were little letters to his dead mother, filled with apologies and pleadings for her to come back. There were tales of his days, of how his father would scream at him and hit him, how his father still blamed him for his mother’s death, how his father had changed so much that Rei didn’t even recognize him as his father anymore. How he thought he was going to die if he stayed, but didn’t have anywhere to go – he had tried to run away once, but then his father locked him in his room for three days without food after beating him so hard he couldn’t move.
It was difficult to imagine how scared the boy had to have been. I had been used to a happy home environment, two parents who might be some of the strangest in history, but they were kind and happy and always treated both each other and me with so much kindness and love that it had almost been difficult to not be suffocated with love. The only time I had been smacked by my father was when I set fire to the cat to see what would happen, and even then he probably didn’t punish me nearly enough, considering what I did.
I read through the little letters twice, and then looked at the pictures again. Rei’s past seemed to piece itself together right in front of my eyes, but it wasn’t a pretty picture, and I almost wished that I could take the knowledge away again. It wasn’t strange that Rei himself had suppressed all of this, and I was almost sure that I wouldn’t tell him any of it. It would be better if he didn’t learn about his past; it would probably be far too painful to remember all of this again.
The walk back to my apartment was slow, as I was trying to think. I didn’t accomplish much in the way of figuring things out, however. Rei still didn’t really belong anywhere. As things were, it seemed like staying with me was more of a home to him than anything he had experienced in a long time, and even though I wasn’t all too happy over the idea of having him around for an unknown amount of time, I couldn’t kick him out either. Not after everything I had learned.
Then there was Maria – I had to find the courage to kiss her, somehow. And talk to her more, and take her out on dates. All those things that I had no idea how to actually do. I had seen them in movies and comics, of course, but seeing things done was far from the same thing as doing them myself. However, I figured that this was the easiest problem to fix, seeing as Maria didn’t seem to mind my slowness all that much. I kind of hoped she found it adorable instead of annoying. Not that I had a strong yearning to be adorable, but it was far better than being annoying.
There wasn’t much I could do about Dakota; I didn’t even know if that was her real name, so finding her would be next to impossible. I would keep looking for her, of course, but it had to come second. I felt bad, but I had to prioritize. And my plan had been suffering for far too long already.
With Jenny’s death and the information she left behind, I thought I could get closer to The Four Sisters. It was difficult to know whether or not she had said anything to them about quitting her mission and killing herself, so going to the length of impersonating her would probably be far too dangerous, but I knew that there had to be some way I could use the information she left.
My apartment was dark when I let myself in, and I shuffled along the familiar path to my living room, kicking off my shoes and dropping my coat rather carelessly on the way. It wasn’t until I reached the living room door that I froze, staring at my computer.
The large screen flashed in dark red and black, with white words covering almost the entire screen.
Death becomes you.
The moment I got close enough to touch the computer, the flashing and letters disappeared, as if my computer knew that I was there. Everything looked normal again, but as I sat down, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being surrounded.
~tbc~
I sat perfectly still on the sidewalk outside of the bookstore as the police arrived and started bustling around, filling the street with uniformed men and women, with a stretcher and coroners and police cars and normalcy. Right now normalcy seemed like a very good thing – between the odd atmosphere of the store and the corpse of the woman who seemed to in fact be the same woman whose journal I had read only days earlier, my head was spinning. I didn’t like it when my head was spinning.
A police man asked me routine questions and I answered them just as routinely, not even capable of being nervous for once, even if my voice shook more than normal. He seemed to think I was in shock over stumbling upon a dead body like that, and gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and told me to rest for a while before I got moving. At least they didn’t seem to think that I was guilty of anything, which was a relief – I wasn’t sure if I could handle interrogations and cops and forms. Especially not seeing as I was supposed to be lying low, not make much of a fuss, not attract attention.
I was doing a splendid job at it.
For some reason, I decided to stick around, watching the police do their thing. The coroners carried the body out on a stretcher, thankfully covered, though the white cotton couldn’t keep the smell away. I wondered if my face was green. I wouldn’t have been very surprised if it was.
Watching work like this fascinated me. These were people who no doubt came to work every day, diligently, doing their eight to four – possibly even longer – jobs without complaining. Serving the community, slaving away for a wage that was probably almost not even enough to feed their families. I wasn’t sure whether to pity or admire them. This was a world that I knew nothing about, seeing as I had never had a steady eight to four job. The mere thought of it had always creeped me out, and so I stayed away from it. Easier that way.
Suddenly there was a cry from inside the store, and more commotion than there really should be, now that the body had been carried out. On sheer reflex, I got up to go inside to check it out, but a police man stopped me firmly in the door, one hand out to create a barrier.
“You can’t go in there,” he said, the tone of his voice making it very obvious that I would not be going in there.
Of course, I couldn’t leave it at that. “W-why not?”
“Because this is a crime scene and an investigation and you are a civilian,” he explained, not very patiently. It should be an explanation I could accept, but moving on from a discovery like this one wasn’t that simple.
“But I w-was the one who f-found the body. Don’t I d-deserve to know what’s g-going on?”
The police man hesitated, and then told me to stay there while he went inside to talk to his superiors. He looked less than happy when he got back, but nodded to me. “Come back around this time tomorrow, and someone will fill you in, if you’re that interested in knowing what’s happening. Does that sound fair to you?”
I nodded. “That s-sounds very fair, t-thank you,” I replied, politely, and turned to leave. Reluctantly. I had to admit that I didn’t want to leave just yet – the atmosphere of the store, as much as it freaked me out, was also more than a little intriguing. Besides, I had to know more about the woman, about who she had been. I might already be the one person in the world who knew the most about her, and yet I knew nothing at all. I wondered how I could find out for sure whether or not she really was the woman whose journals I had read. It wasn’t as if I was an expert on handwritings, I couldn’t determine for sure that the same person had written both the journals and the short suicide note. I thought it was likely, but likely and certain were two very different things.
I found it difficult to concentrate that night, and even more difficult to sleep. All I could think about were the various women that had suddenly snuck into my life, affecting it in various ways. Thankfully, at least Maria wasn’t mysterious; she was simple and straight-forward and cute and pleasant, and I liked her and she liked me back. Nice and easy, even if I wasn’t used to the very fact that a girl actually liked me for me.
Dakota, on the other hand, was not simple and straight-forward. I had only seen her two times, though I had looked for her countless times, and yet she was proving impossible to forget. I wished I could forget, just leave that mystery unsolved, because it would sure as hell make things a lot easier for me. But then there was the look of pure terror on her face the last time I had seen her. Maybe she was in trouble, and I was the only one who was aware of it. Didn’t that mean that I had a duty to help her out? Sure, I had never really cared all that much about duty before, but when the matter at hand was a young, fairly attractive woman, it was a lot easier to not suppress that sense of duty.
Then there was the mystery woman. I had been calling her Star in my head, because of the little stars she had jotted down next to some of the names. I wondered what could have driven her to those kinds of steps, if she had really killed herself, or if someone else had found her too troublesome and staged a suicide. I felt sorry for her, that she had sunk deeper and deeper into the trouble she was in, without anyone to help her.
The next day I was greeted with yellow police tape and just as many people as the day before when I got to the alleyway. On the way I passed several gangs, looking none too happy about having their turf invaded like this, but with so many cops around, there wasn’t much they could do.
By the look on the men’s faces when I approached them, I could tell that they’d rather keep me out of all of this, but I was stubborn and insisting, and eventually they let me in. Possibly just so they wouldn’t have to listen to me anymore.
The police man I had talked to the day before, the kind one who had patted my shoulder, walked up and introduced himself as Janson, telling me that he’d be taking care of me. “A-as long as y-you don’t put m-me in jail,” I said, and he laughed. Normally I really didn’t like cops (exactly because theoretically, if they looked closely enough, they would find more than enough of a reason to actually put me in jail), but Janson seemed nice enough. Besides, he had no reason to think that I was anything other than a regular young man who had stumbled across a horrible sight.
“Come on, let’s sit down here at first,” he said, half pushing me down on one of the chairs that had been brought out to the side of the store. The whole scene looked like a city within a city, with the amount of cars and people and chairs and equipment. It was fascinating. Janson found a sandwich and a cup of coffee for himself, offering some to me as well, but I shook my head. I hadn’t been able to eat since yesterday.
For a while we sat there in silence; him eating, and me looking at the work that was being done. Someone had seemed to scrub the bookstore clean – I could actually look in through the windows now, and it was possible to read the sign above the door. Le Livre Vert. So apparently, it was a French bookstore. Nothing too uncommon really, in a city like this. There were stores that catered to pretty much every nationality possible, and then some.
“The body you found was the one of a woman, who was twenty-six years old,” Janson began, sighing slightly. “Her name was Jenny McLoughlin, and she was Irish. That’s pretty much all we know so far. By the looks of it, she hadn’t been living here for long. It’s almost as if she uprooted from wherever she lived before and then came here just to… Just to kill herself.”
I swallowed. Jenny. My mystery woman had a name now. I wanted to ask him if they had found any journals, but I figured that kind of specific question could be a bit too suspicious. They didn’t need to know the fact that I might just have known this woman. “W-was there any p-personal belongings?” I asked instead. I was pretty good at not being suspicious when I wanted to. I had to be, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to live the kind of carefree life I did.
Janson nodded slowly, chewing the last of the sandwich as he stared at the store. “There was a wallet, which was how we found out who she was, the suicide note, and a few letters. One change of clothing, no toiletries. Either she was incredibly poor, or she had sold of everything she owned.”
“L-letters? What d-did they s-say?” I tried to sound casual, interested but not too interested, but it was difficult when all I wanted to do was to shake Janson and demand the letters.
He shrugged. “They were a pile of nonsense. Some ranting about four sisters and how she loved one of them and that she had done everything they asked of her, but that she couldn’t take it anymore. Most likely she had a condition. Maybe depression, maybe delusions. Living in a fantasy world with voices talking to her and all that,” he said, smiling even if he hardly sounded amused.
I wanted to jump up and down, but seeing as that would have looked very funny, I merely sat there. Jenny was my mystery woman; there was no doubt about it. I still wanted to get my hands on the letters, but it might not be all that important – I had the information I needed.
I was still piecing everything together quietly when Janson’s voice interrupted my thoughts, “The suicide is fairly straight-forward. It’s horrible to say that it’s easy, but as far as cases go, it doesn’t take a lot of manpower to solve. It’s the skeleton in the store that brought all these people out.”
“S-skeleton?” I couldn’t come up with anything smart to say, because his remark blindsided me completely. I sure hadn’t seen a skeleton in the store yesterday.
He nodded again, slowly and thoughtfully. “Yep. By the looks of it it’s been there for at least twenty-five years, maybe even more. Store must have abandoned in all that time, door open and everything. Horrible, really, that something like that can go by unnoticed.”
“S-so, was the p-person…m-murdered?”
“We don’t know yet, but it looks that way. The skull is missing,” he said, all too calmly. As if he was used to stumbling across twenty-five year old skeletons with missing skulls. I wasn’t, however, and I was suddenly glad that I was sitting down.
“There will be an investigation, of course,” Janson continued. “We have sent off the skeleton for analysis to find out more about the person. Right now we have no idea about gender, age or identity, though the store is registered to one Nicodème Gramont, who we haven’t been able to locate, so chances are that the skeleton is his.”
I paled. Or at least, I was sure that I paled. Visibly. To regain my composure, I bent my head, running a hand through my hair. Gramont. That was one name I had run across far too often lately, and it was starting to mess with my head. Did this mean that the skeleton in the store belonged to Rei’s father? And if it did, how had he died? Where was his skull? And possibly the most important question; did Rei have anything to do with it?
“I s-see,” I said, mostly trying to buy myself some time to come up with something else to say, though even after a few more moments of silence, I couldn’t think of anything smart to say. It wasn’t as if I could reveal the fact that I might just know something about the skeleton man as well as the hanged woman, which would simply be too much. It was already proving to be more than enough for me to handle, and I knew I was innocent in all this. However, the police might not see it that way. Most likely, I should just back away from all of this crap. Definitely would have made things a whole lot easier. And yet… “D-do you m-mind telling m-me if s-something new c-comes up?”
Janson shrugged and looked me over. He probably took me for some bored, poor student with nothing better to do with his time, which was okay with me. I didn’t mind it when people made that kind of assumption about me – maybe it was even part of the reason for why I never tried to change my looks at all. That, and the fact that I felt comfortable like this.
“Normally we don’t do something like that, but seeing as you were the one who found the woman, I guess you have a right to. It won’t hurt anyone. You’re welcome to take a look inside the store if you want, just don’t touch anything.”
I thanked him with a polite smile and a bow, and got up to check it out. Even with the added light and police, the store still felt strange. Once again I had the feeling of stepping back in time, and I looked around, almost expecting everything to have turned into black and white, like images on an old TV, but everything looked normal on the surface. As far as I could tell, no one else felt what I felt either, so it had to be my wild imagination.
Maybe I had just spent a bit too much time around strange little boys and talking rabbits lately.
Unlike yesterday, I took my time along the bookshelves, reading the spines of the books. Even if I was one of the most well read people I knew, I had barely heard of any of the titles. The fact that half of them were in French didn’t exactly help me much. From what I could understand, there were a lot of books on religion, a lot about flora and fauna, a lot about travel. Nothing that really stood out to me.
There was a small crowd gathered near the stair, and I walked closer; carefully, not quite sure I wanted them to notice me. Though considering how focused they all were on a gathering of grayish white bones on the floor, I figured that they couldn’t care less about me. The skeleton didn’t really interest me all that much, because it wouldn’t give me any information. I couldn’t ask a skeleton questions. Except that right now, I wouldn’t even be surprised if it had answered. If it had a skull, anyway.
As casually as possible I climbed the stairs, one step at a time, trying to make them creak as little as possible. A couple of the cops did look up and frown at me, but they didn’t protest. I was surprised, but figured that in this part of town, maybe they were used to things like this happening on their crime scenes. Or maybe Janson had told them to leave me alone. I didn’t particularly care as long as they didn’t stop me or ask me questions.
The apartment above the store had the same strange feel to it, and everything looked aged. It probably didn’t help that everything was covered by a thick layer of dust, apart from where someone had walked around, apparently taking the same look around as I was. Except that I knew what I was looking for. Well, more or less, anyway.
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed by the fact that I couldn’t see any pictures, or any personal effects of any kind. The apartment was as generic as a display in a furniture store. The living room, kitchen and bathroom all looked almost too plain, and the main bedroom wasn’t any better. I glanced in the closet, finding suits that looked like they had been fashionable decades ago.
It wasn’t until I opened the door into a smaller bedroom that I found some kind of sign that someone had actually been living here, instead of merely existing here. I could tell that it was a boy’s room by the cars and planes lined up neatly on narrow bookshelves, as well as by the amounts of comic books stacked beside the bed. There were a few drawn pictures taped to the walls, looking like they had been drawn by someone who was young, but not a little kid.
I looked through the closet here as well, finding the same kinds of clothes, the kind that looked like they had been worn many, many years ago. The lone window in the room was too small and dirty by years without washing, and the sun shining in through it cast the room in a sickly glow. I shuddered. This didn’t feel like a happy place.
I didn’t want to sit down on the bed, so I crouched down beside it instead, pulling back the duvet carefully, coughing over the cloud of dust that I brought up with the simple movement. The worn bed sheets were nearly covered with dark stains that I could only assume were old bloodstains, and I was sure that if this had been newer, I would have found tearstains as well. Definitely not a happy place.
Somehow it made me think of my own childhood room, how filled with light and colors and laughter it had been, and I felt bad for Rei – if this had indeed been his room.
I found the answer to that question moments later when I moved over to give the drawings a closer look. All of them were marked with a small R.G. in the bottom right corner, and one was even signed Raphael. So I had found out where he lived either before or after he had stayed at Mrs. Ortega’s institution. By the gap in the drawings I guessed that this really had been his home both before and afterwards.
Rei must have been kissed to sleep by his mother in this bed, and later… Later he might have been beat up by his psychotic father and cried himself to sleep in the very same bed. Maybe I should feel sympathetic for the man lying at the bottom of the stairs, but quite frankly I felt like he had deserved whatever had happened to him.
I flipped through the comic books quickly, recognizing most of them even if they were all old – a few of them were rare issues that I would have loved to own myself, but despite the temptation, I didn’t take them. Not only because I could get in trouble, but also because it felt wrong somehow. Like these comics belonged to Rei and that I had no right to take them.
There wasn’t really much else to look through in the room; the small desk was stripped bare, as if someone had gone through the room and taken everything of interest. I looked through the drawers on the left side of the desk, shaking my head over the fact that they were all empty. Something was definitely not right about that.
And something was definitely not right about the bottom drawer. From the outside, all three drawers looked to be the same size, but on the inside, the bottom one was noticeably smaller. I grinned a little because I had used the very same method to hide things when I was a kid – my parents had insisted that I share everything, that I shouldn’t have any secrets whatsoever, whereas I really didn’t agree with that point of view.
I took a pen from my bag and eased it down in the tiny crack between the bottom and the wall of the drawer. It was loose. Ignoring the urge to cheer, I lifted it up slowly, hoping that Rei hadn’t booby trapped the thing like I had used to do. No traps, the fake bottom of the drawer lifted away easily, revealing a small space underneath.
If I had expected to see something spectacular, I was sorely disappointed. All I found was a small stack of slightly crumpled paper, with what looked to be a few photographed mixed in. However, I figured that it was better than nothing, and probably the best I could have hoped for.
This time I didn’t feel the slightest hesitation about lifting the entire stack from the drawer, slipping it into my bag. I didn’t think that the cops had any right to this information. They didn’t know Rei, but I did, and considering that this was his personal property, I was the one that had the right to remove it. I chose to not ponder the fact that the Rei I knew was still a twelve-year-old boy, when he should be far, far older. I could assume that he was lying to me somehow, but for now I opted for simply accepting the fact that Rei was Raphael, and that he had lived here decades ago.
A small voice at the back of my head told me that I was being insane, but I chose not to listen to it. It wasn’t as if it was the first time in my life that I had come across something seemingly insane.
When I wandered back out again I made sure to stop and chat a little more with Janson, appearing as if I had found nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that could be of interest to them. Janson gave me a lingering look that I wasn’t sure how to react to, but then said goodbye with a smile after giving me his card and telling me to call if I had any questions.
Somehow, I didn’t want to look through the papers in my own apartment, and instead I went to the park, settling down underneath a tree, safely away from other people. I filtered out the photographs first; there were five of them altogether.
On the first, a young man and woman were smiling at the camera, the woman holding a baby on her arm. The back read “Me and Nico with baby Raphael”, but there were no date at all. I looked at the photo again. One of the corners was slightly stained, and it had the appearance of having been left out in the sun for too long; the colors faded to pale sepia.
The second photo was of Rei alone, slightly older this time, holding a toy car in his hand. He was looking at the camera with wide, surprised eyes, as if the photographer had yelled at him. I imagined that seconds after the photo was taken, he had focused back on his car, continued to play.
The third picture was of Rei and his mother. She was sitting on a chair; he was standing beside her with a hand on her shoulder. He looked like he was four or five years old. They were both serious, almost somber, and I thought I could see the hint of a bandage around her wrist, along with a faint bruise on her face. Of course, that could just be the light, but I didn’t think so.
The fourth picture was of Rei and his father, and it looked like the most recent one, judging by how Rei didn’t look all that different from the Rei I had come to know and like. The clothes were different, obviously, but otherwise he looked just like now. I wished the picture had been in colors instead of black and white, because somehow, his hair, eyes and lips looked lighter on the picture, but naturally, it was impossible to tell what kind of color his hair and eyes had back then. Rei wasn’t looking at the camera this time, he was looking at his father, which made it impossible to read his expression. I wanted to know what he felt about his father, but I couldn’t tell.
The last picture was a simple and quick black and white Polaroid, but even the darkness could conceal the fact that it was a picture of Rei’s father, lying in the exact same position as his skeleton was now, many years later. The difference was that he still had a head on the picture, and that he was wearing clothes – I hadn’t seen any traces of clothes around the bones back at the store. Underneath the picture, on the white frame, someone had scribbled down the word “finally”, and nothing else. I wondered if it was Rei who had taken it, seeing as it had been in his secret drawer. And if it was Rei who had taken it, it was difficult to imagine that he hadn’t had anything to do with his own father’s death.
I took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of the fresh grass and clean air around me, and went on to the crumpled pieces of paper. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were crumpled because Rei must have been crying when he wrote them. No wonder; the contents were enough to make my eyes tear up as well – all were little letters to his dead mother, filled with apologies and pleadings for her to come back. There were tales of his days, of how his father would scream at him and hit him, how his father still blamed him for his mother’s death, how his father had changed so much that Rei didn’t even recognize him as his father anymore. How he thought he was going to die if he stayed, but didn’t have anywhere to go – he had tried to run away once, but then his father locked him in his room for three days without food after beating him so hard he couldn’t move.
It was difficult to imagine how scared the boy had to have been. I had been used to a happy home environment, two parents who might be some of the strangest in history, but they were kind and happy and always treated both each other and me with so much kindness and love that it had almost been difficult to not be suffocated with love. The only time I had been smacked by my father was when I set fire to the cat to see what would happen, and even then he probably didn’t punish me nearly enough, considering what I did.
I read through the little letters twice, and then looked at the pictures again. Rei’s past seemed to piece itself together right in front of my eyes, but it wasn’t a pretty picture, and I almost wished that I could take the knowledge away again. It wasn’t strange that Rei himself had suppressed all of this, and I was almost sure that I wouldn’t tell him any of it. It would be better if he didn’t learn about his past; it would probably be far too painful to remember all of this again.
The walk back to my apartment was slow, as I was trying to think. I didn’t accomplish much in the way of figuring things out, however. Rei still didn’t really belong anywhere. As things were, it seemed like staying with me was more of a home to him than anything he had experienced in a long time, and even though I wasn’t all too happy over the idea of having him around for an unknown amount of time, I couldn’t kick him out either. Not after everything I had learned.
Then there was Maria – I had to find the courage to kiss her, somehow. And talk to her more, and take her out on dates. All those things that I had no idea how to actually do. I had seen them in movies and comics, of course, but seeing things done was far from the same thing as doing them myself. However, I figured that this was the easiest problem to fix, seeing as Maria didn’t seem to mind my slowness all that much. I kind of hoped she found it adorable instead of annoying. Not that I had a strong yearning to be adorable, but it was far better than being annoying.
There wasn’t much I could do about Dakota; I didn’t even know if that was her real name, so finding her would be next to impossible. I would keep looking for her, of course, but it had to come second. I felt bad, but I had to prioritize. And my plan had been suffering for far too long already.
With Jenny’s death and the information she left behind, I thought I could get closer to The Four Sisters. It was difficult to know whether or not she had said anything to them about quitting her mission and killing herself, so going to the length of impersonating her would probably be far too dangerous, but I knew that there had to be some way I could use the information she left.
My apartment was dark when I let myself in, and I shuffled along the familiar path to my living room, kicking off my shoes and dropping my coat rather carelessly on the way. It wasn’t until I reached the living room door that I froze, staring at my computer.
The large screen flashed in dark red and black, with white words covering almost the entire screen.
Death becomes you.
The moment I got close enough to touch the computer, the flashing and letters disappeared, as if my computer knew that I was there. Everything looked normal again, but as I sat down, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being surrounded.
~tbc~
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Fiction: Yellow Flowers and a Bag of Bones
Chapter nine: The shopping trip
After such a big decision, I decided that it was time to lay low for a little while. This was hardly something I wanted to rush. If I was going to do it, I was going to do everything in my power to do it right. And doing it right meant having patience – something which I wasn’t exactly known for. Whenever I bought a new computer game, I would play it through to the end within a week, and then forget all about it. Whenever I bought a book, I would read it through as quickly as possible, then forget all about it for years.
So in order to pull back and not take any risks, I decided to take a proper break; get out and get some air. It was also time to re-stock my fridge and cupboards, something which meant seeing Maria again – in the time I had spent searching for Dakota and more recently, the mysterious woman with her mission, I had almost forgotten about Maria.
Although, not completely. I had seen Maria every week for several years now, she was the one person I had been in regular contact with for that long; she was a part of my life, and I couldn’t possibly just forget a part of my life.
“M-morning, Maria,” I said to her as I entered the little grocery store, and she looked back at me, surprised but smiling.
“Good morning, Kai,” she replied softly, and it struck me once again just how much I enjoyed listening to her voice. “You’re out early and cheerful today, do you have plans?”
I picked up the few things I needed; all the standards along with a few things that I usually never bought, such as supplies for actual, healthy meals. Not that I really believed I was going to suddenly start making proper dinners, but the morning was beautiful and I was in a good – albeit jittery – mood, so I figured why not.
“Not r-really, but I’m g-going to be out all d-day,” I said, smiling almost shyly at her. Maria had a brilliant tendency to make me blush, make me even more awkward than usual, but she never seemed to be bothered by it.
She went through the usual routine, tallying up my groceries and taking my money, nodding absentmindedly to the store owner when he walked through the door. “Kai, I… Can I ask you something? There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, and I noticed that for once, she looked almost as nervous as I usually did when talking to her.
“A-ask away.”
Maria still hesitated a little, then went around the counter, suddenly being all too close to me – it wasn’t exactly often that I was close to girls. Especially ones this pretty “I’m off work now, and I have nothing planned for the day, so I was thinking… Maybe you and I could do something together?”
I nearly fell down. Something like this was almost as shocking to me as finding out the truth about Rei’s past, if not even more. “I… T-th-that s-sounds n-nice,” I said, struggling to get the words out even more than usual. It was obvious that Maria could tell, because her smile widened, and she looked strangely happy.
“Great! I’m going to go home and change, and I guess you want to get home with your groceries, but we can meet in front of the Buttercup Theater in thirty minutes, how does that sound?”
“S-sounds g-good,” I said, cursing myself for not being able to come up with something smarter to say. Talking to girls face to face definitely wasn’t one of my strengths, that much was certain. I had a feeling that the day could turn into a total disaster, seeing as it was a very different thing to talk to someone for two minutes a couple of times a week, and to spend possibly several hours with them in one go.
Oh well. If I could risk my life with The Four Sisters, I should be brave enough to face a date with a girl I really liked.
Still, as I walked up to Maria half an hour later, I felt far more anxious than I had so far with anything in regards to The Four Sisters. Maybe dating was far more perilous, what did I know. It wasn’t as if I had ever been on a date before – I wasn’t even sure if this could be called a date.
Maria offered me a warm smile and took my hand as we walked down the street, acting so naturally that I was starting to feel like even more of a freak than I normally did. She was too beautiful for me to handle, with her bright blue eyes and dark blonde hair, with her slightly chubby cheeks and lips that always looked too red. She reminded me of a fairytale princess, especially in the simple blue dress she was wearing. It was embroidered with tiny yellow flowers, and I found it nearly impossible to look away from them.
“I thought that maybe, we could go shopping, and then eat lunch in Doushi Park,” she suggested, and I merely nodded in return. I wanted to talk, I really did, but I couldn’t come up with anything to say. I wished I could find the words to tell her how pretty I thought she was, I wished I could tell her that I had liked her since the very first time I had talked to her, back when I first moved into my apartment.
Instead, I listened and Maria talked. She didn’t say anything particularly important, just told me things about herself that she said had never seemed appropriate to say when I was just a customer. She told me about growing up without a mother and with a father who was always busy with work. She told me about having two sisters and a brother, but that she had fallen out with her entire family when she grew up. She told me about how she thought they weren’t proud enough of their heritage, and that they would rather forget all about Germany and the fact that they had ever lived there. She told me about how she had wanted to open a school for children in The Slums, but that nobody would fund it.
I figured that all in all, it wasn’t the deepest conversation in the entire world, but I liked it anyway. I enjoyed listening to her talk, and I enjoyed holding her hand even more. We walked through the street, occasionally stopping at a store here and there – I wasn’t big on shopping unless it was online shopping, but I decided not to say anything about it because I would have done anything Maria wanted to do, just to be able to spend time with her.
She stopped outside a florist and let go of my hand, asking me to wait there. A couple of minutes later she came back with a single yellow chrysanthemum, holding it out to me before she changed her mind. I was just about to ask her what she was doing when she reached up, took off my hat and fastened the flower in my hair.
“I’m s-sure I look v-very manly n-now,” I said with a little laugh, pushing my glasses further up on the bridge of my nose. Maria grinned and stepped closer to me, reaching up again and combing her fingers through my hair, slowly and with great care, as if she wanted to make sure to enjoy the moment, make it last as long as possible.
“I love your eyes, Kai. They look like the sea,” she murmured, so quietly that I had to lean closer just to be able to hear her. “You shouldn’t hide behind your hair and your glasses and your coat all the time. I want to see more of you. I’ve wanted that for a long time.”
I wished I had been confident enough to kiss her. I really did.
As it was, I just put my hands on her hips and met her eyes for a moment that felt like pure magic. She was the one who pulled away, still smiling, though I was sure I could see a hint of disappointment in her expression. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. My habits of not trusting anyone carried over into matters of the heart as well, it seemed, no matter how much I wished that wasn’t the way it was.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I left the flower in my hair, earning me a lot of strange looks throughout the day, but I was used to that, and with Maria at my side it hardly mattered how people looked at me.
We ate lunch in Doushi Park, as Maria had suggested, baguettes and fresh fruit, and I thought that if I could live one day in my life over and over, it would certainly be this one. I’m sure that it wasn’t anything big for a girl like Maria, she told me that she had had a few boyfriends in the past, and that she had dated a lot, but that she wanted something different. I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or flattered, but decided that if it was really me she wanted, and then I should be flattered.
When we parted, I very nearly kissed her. I wanted to, and I didn’t doubt that she wanted me to either. However, for someone like me, kissing a girl was a big thing – I had to work up the courage to do it. Today had been about the date, about spending time together, and I just couldn’t add a kiss on top of everything else.
“I r-really enjoyed being w-with you today,” I told her, and almost gasped when Maria smiled and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me close. Instinctively, I hugged her back, almost not even daring to breathe out of fear to break the fragile relationship blooming between us.
“And I loved being with you,” she replied against my shoulder, her words slightly muffled by my coat. “We’re going to do it again sometime, and soon. Now that I’ve gotten you this far, I’m not letting you go.”
I grinned, almost embarrassed, because I couldn’t understand what she wanted with me, but I sure wasn’t going to protest either. “S-sounds good t-to me,” I said, and whispered a soft goodbye against her hair.
Quite frankly, I had always thought that people who said that they were walking on clouds out of sheer happiness were idiots, but I had to add myself to that group of idiots for the next few days – I went out more, I ate lunch with Maria again, I went by the grocery store every day to talk to her, and we even talked on the phone. I loathed having to talk to people on the phone usually, and now I found myself doing it voluntarily. My world had been turned upside-down on me, and I wasn’t even sure when it had happened.
Somehow, I found myself heading into The Slums, searching for a store that Maria had told me about – just why she knew stores in that area of town, I had no idea, but I opted for not asking her just yet. We might be officially dating now (though I still wasn’t quite sure about how that whole thing worked), but I still didn’t want to push her too far too early. Had to leave some of the mystery for later, after all.
Without even knowing it, I kept an eye out for Dakota while I was in the Slums, seeing as that was where I had seen her last, but I found no trace of her. Not so strange, really, considering that The Slums made up a fairly big part of the city, and that if she wanted to hide from me – or someone else – she most likely wouldn’t be walking around on the open street in the middle of the day.
I couldn’t for the life of me find the store that Maria had talked about, but I found something else instead – a bookstore that looked almost exactly like the Bookstore Inn, though the sign above the door was so old and faded that I couldn’t figure out what it said. Out of curiosity I went inside, only to be met by a stench unlike anything that I had ever experienced before.
I backed away instantly, holding a hand over my mouth, but I didn’t turn to flee the store just yet. Lying low or not, I couldn’t resist investigating when I stumbled across something. The darkness and the look of the store – the little I could see of it, anyway – made it feel like I had suddenly stepped back in time, as if this was a store that had gone out of business decades ago. Minding my steps in the dark store, I walked further inside, trying to block the intrusive stench. I squinted to be able to make out more details, but all I could see were rows and rows of bookshelves, just like in any bookstore.
The creaking from the back room was so faint that I didn’t even hear it at first, mistaking it for my own footsteps. Eventually I picked up on it, however, and after a couple of deep breaths – which nearly make me choke and gag – I walked through the door to the back room
The corpse hanging from the beam in the ceiling was rotting, and had clearly done so for a long, long time without being discovered.
For once, I realized that the life I had lived had been sheltered. I had never seen a dead body before, and the sight of a human being like this was enough to make me heave, though I managed not to throw up. I had no desire to walk into the room and examine the body closer; this was none of my business, after all. As far as I could tell, this was a suicide, pure and simple, and more a case for the police. I went back outside, digging up my cell phone and calling the police, who asked me to stick around, as long as I didn’t touch anything.
While I waited for the police to arrive, I went back inside the store, trying to turn on the light, but apparently the light bulbs had burned out a long time ago. Instead I left the door wide open, both to let in light and to let in some fresh air, otherwise the coroner and police might just end up nearly throwing up as well, even if they were more used to these kinds of sights and smells.
I glanced at the books on the shelves, finding that they were all old. They looked at least twenty years old; in fact the entire store looked like it was at least twenty years old, like it should have been renovated several times over. I had to admit that the atmosphere of the store made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and it wasn’t all about the corpse, barely hidden from view by a wall. I didn’t like it here; it was as simple as that, though I couldn’t explain why.
Because the store in itself made me feel so ill at ease, I ventured into the back room, trying to avoid looking at the body. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a woman. Whether she had been old or young, black or white, I had no idea – it was impossible to tell. And I’d rather not get close enough to investigate it, either.
The back room bore signs of having been lived in, and it didn’t have the same strange atmosphere that the store itself had, which made it nicer to be in, regardless of the stench and the sight at the corner of my eyes of limbs dangling, revolving slowly. I walked around in a small circle around the room, taking in the couch, the desk, the tiny stove and kitchen corner, before a sheet of paper on the small kitchen table caught my eye.
I walked over, almost feeling how the color drained from my face as I read the two words scribbled down in a hand-writing that was disturbingly familiar.
I quit.
~tbc~
After such a big decision, I decided that it was time to lay low for a little while. This was hardly something I wanted to rush. If I was going to do it, I was going to do everything in my power to do it right. And doing it right meant having patience – something which I wasn’t exactly known for. Whenever I bought a new computer game, I would play it through to the end within a week, and then forget all about it. Whenever I bought a book, I would read it through as quickly as possible, then forget all about it for years.
So in order to pull back and not take any risks, I decided to take a proper break; get out and get some air. It was also time to re-stock my fridge and cupboards, something which meant seeing Maria again – in the time I had spent searching for Dakota and more recently, the mysterious woman with her mission, I had almost forgotten about Maria.
Although, not completely. I had seen Maria every week for several years now, she was the one person I had been in regular contact with for that long; she was a part of my life, and I couldn’t possibly just forget a part of my life.
“M-morning, Maria,” I said to her as I entered the little grocery store, and she looked back at me, surprised but smiling.
“Good morning, Kai,” she replied softly, and it struck me once again just how much I enjoyed listening to her voice. “You’re out early and cheerful today, do you have plans?”
I picked up the few things I needed; all the standards along with a few things that I usually never bought, such as supplies for actual, healthy meals. Not that I really believed I was going to suddenly start making proper dinners, but the morning was beautiful and I was in a good – albeit jittery – mood, so I figured why not.
“Not r-really, but I’m g-going to be out all d-day,” I said, smiling almost shyly at her. Maria had a brilliant tendency to make me blush, make me even more awkward than usual, but she never seemed to be bothered by it.
She went through the usual routine, tallying up my groceries and taking my money, nodding absentmindedly to the store owner when he walked through the door. “Kai, I… Can I ask you something? There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, and I noticed that for once, she looked almost as nervous as I usually did when talking to her.
“A-ask away.”
Maria still hesitated a little, then went around the counter, suddenly being all too close to me – it wasn’t exactly often that I was close to girls. Especially ones this pretty “I’m off work now, and I have nothing planned for the day, so I was thinking… Maybe you and I could do something together?”
I nearly fell down. Something like this was almost as shocking to me as finding out the truth about Rei’s past, if not even more. “I… T-th-that s-sounds n-nice,” I said, struggling to get the words out even more than usual. It was obvious that Maria could tell, because her smile widened, and she looked strangely happy.
“Great! I’m going to go home and change, and I guess you want to get home with your groceries, but we can meet in front of the Buttercup Theater in thirty minutes, how does that sound?”
“S-sounds g-good,” I said, cursing myself for not being able to come up with something smarter to say. Talking to girls face to face definitely wasn’t one of my strengths, that much was certain. I had a feeling that the day could turn into a total disaster, seeing as it was a very different thing to talk to someone for two minutes a couple of times a week, and to spend possibly several hours with them in one go.
Oh well. If I could risk my life with The Four Sisters, I should be brave enough to face a date with a girl I really liked.
Still, as I walked up to Maria half an hour later, I felt far more anxious than I had so far with anything in regards to The Four Sisters. Maybe dating was far more perilous, what did I know. It wasn’t as if I had ever been on a date before – I wasn’t even sure if this could be called a date.
Maria offered me a warm smile and took my hand as we walked down the street, acting so naturally that I was starting to feel like even more of a freak than I normally did. She was too beautiful for me to handle, with her bright blue eyes and dark blonde hair, with her slightly chubby cheeks and lips that always looked too red. She reminded me of a fairytale princess, especially in the simple blue dress she was wearing. It was embroidered with tiny yellow flowers, and I found it nearly impossible to look away from them.
“I thought that maybe, we could go shopping, and then eat lunch in Doushi Park,” she suggested, and I merely nodded in return. I wanted to talk, I really did, but I couldn’t come up with anything to say. I wished I could find the words to tell her how pretty I thought she was, I wished I could tell her that I had liked her since the very first time I had talked to her, back when I first moved into my apartment.
Instead, I listened and Maria talked. She didn’t say anything particularly important, just told me things about herself that she said had never seemed appropriate to say when I was just a customer. She told me about growing up without a mother and with a father who was always busy with work. She told me about having two sisters and a brother, but that she had fallen out with her entire family when she grew up. She told me about how she thought they weren’t proud enough of their heritage, and that they would rather forget all about Germany and the fact that they had ever lived there. She told me about how she had wanted to open a school for children in The Slums, but that nobody would fund it.
I figured that all in all, it wasn’t the deepest conversation in the entire world, but I liked it anyway. I enjoyed listening to her talk, and I enjoyed holding her hand even more. We walked through the street, occasionally stopping at a store here and there – I wasn’t big on shopping unless it was online shopping, but I decided not to say anything about it because I would have done anything Maria wanted to do, just to be able to spend time with her.
She stopped outside a florist and let go of my hand, asking me to wait there. A couple of minutes later she came back with a single yellow chrysanthemum, holding it out to me before she changed her mind. I was just about to ask her what she was doing when she reached up, took off my hat and fastened the flower in my hair.
“I’m s-sure I look v-very manly n-now,” I said with a little laugh, pushing my glasses further up on the bridge of my nose. Maria grinned and stepped closer to me, reaching up again and combing her fingers through my hair, slowly and with great care, as if she wanted to make sure to enjoy the moment, make it last as long as possible.
“I love your eyes, Kai. They look like the sea,” she murmured, so quietly that I had to lean closer just to be able to hear her. “You shouldn’t hide behind your hair and your glasses and your coat all the time. I want to see more of you. I’ve wanted that for a long time.”
I wished I had been confident enough to kiss her. I really did.
As it was, I just put my hands on her hips and met her eyes for a moment that felt like pure magic. She was the one who pulled away, still smiling, though I was sure I could see a hint of disappointment in her expression. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. My habits of not trusting anyone carried over into matters of the heart as well, it seemed, no matter how much I wished that wasn’t the way it was.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I left the flower in my hair, earning me a lot of strange looks throughout the day, but I was used to that, and with Maria at my side it hardly mattered how people looked at me.
We ate lunch in Doushi Park, as Maria had suggested, baguettes and fresh fruit, and I thought that if I could live one day in my life over and over, it would certainly be this one. I’m sure that it wasn’t anything big for a girl like Maria, she told me that she had had a few boyfriends in the past, and that she had dated a lot, but that she wanted something different. I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or flattered, but decided that if it was really me she wanted, and then I should be flattered.
When we parted, I very nearly kissed her. I wanted to, and I didn’t doubt that she wanted me to either. However, for someone like me, kissing a girl was a big thing – I had to work up the courage to do it. Today had been about the date, about spending time together, and I just couldn’t add a kiss on top of everything else.
“I r-really enjoyed being w-with you today,” I told her, and almost gasped when Maria smiled and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me close. Instinctively, I hugged her back, almost not even daring to breathe out of fear to break the fragile relationship blooming between us.
“And I loved being with you,” she replied against my shoulder, her words slightly muffled by my coat. “We’re going to do it again sometime, and soon. Now that I’ve gotten you this far, I’m not letting you go.”
I grinned, almost embarrassed, because I couldn’t understand what she wanted with me, but I sure wasn’t going to protest either. “S-sounds good t-to me,” I said, and whispered a soft goodbye against her hair.
Quite frankly, I had always thought that people who said that they were walking on clouds out of sheer happiness were idiots, but I had to add myself to that group of idiots for the next few days – I went out more, I ate lunch with Maria again, I went by the grocery store every day to talk to her, and we even talked on the phone. I loathed having to talk to people on the phone usually, and now I found myself doing it voluntarily. My world had been turned upside-down on me, and I wasn’t even sure when it had happened.
Somehow, I found myself heading into The Slums, searching for a store that Maria had told me about – just why she knew stores in that area of town, I had no idea, but I opted for not asking her just yet. We might be officially dating now (though I still wasn’t quite sure about how that whole thing worked), but I still didn’t want to push her too far too early. Had to leave some of the mystery for later, after all.
Without even knowing it, I kept an eye out for Dakota while I was in the Slums, seeing as that was where I had seen her last, but I found no trace of her. Not so strange, really, considering that The Slums made up a fairly big part of the city, and that if she wanted to hide from me – or someone else – she most likely wouldn’t be walking around on the open street in the middle of the day.
I couldn’t for the life of me find the store that Maria had talked about, but I found something else instead – a bookstore that looked almost exactly like the Bookstore Inn, though the sign above the door was so old and faded that I couldn’t figure out what it said. Out of curiosity I went inside, only to be met by a stench unlike anything that I had ever experienced before.
I backed away instantly, holding a hand over my mouth, but I didn’t turn to flee the store just yet. Lying low or not, I couldn’t resist investigating when I stumbled across something. The darkness and the look of the store – the little I could see of it, anyway – made it feel like I had suddenly stepped back in time, as if this was a store that had gone out of business decades ago. Minding my steps in the dark store, I walked further inside, trying to block the intrusive stench. I squinted to be able to make out more details, but all I could see were rows and rows of bookshelves, just like in any bookstore.
The creaking from the back room was so faint that I didn’t even hear it at first, mistaking it for my own footsteps. Eventually I picked up on it, however, and after a couple of deep breaths – which nearly make me choke and gag – I walked through the door to the back room
The corpse hanging from the beam in the ceiling was rotting, and had clearly done so for a long, long time without being discovered.
For once, I realized that the life I had lived had been sheltered. I had never seen a dead body before, and the sight of a human being like this was enough to make me heave, though I managed not to throw up. I had no desire to walk into the room and examine the body closer; this was none of my business, after all. As far as I could tell, this was a suicide, pure and simple, and more a case for the police. I went back outside, digging up my cell phone and calling the police, who asked me to stick around, as long as I didn’t touch anything.
While I waited for the police to arrive, I went back inside the store, trying to turn on the light, but apparently the light bulbs had burned out a long time ago. Instead I left the door wide open, both to let in light and to let in some fresh air, otherwise the coroner and police might just end up nearly throwing up as well, even if they were more used to these kinds of sights and smells.
I glanced at the books on the shelves, finding that they were all old. They looked at least twenty years old; in fact the entire store looked like it was at least twenty years old, like it should have been renovated several times over. I had to admit that the atmosphere of the store made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and it wasn’t all about the corpse, barely hidden from view by a wall. I didn’t like it here; it was as simple as that, though I couldn’t explain why.
Because the store in itself made me feel so ill at ease, I ventured into the back room, trying to avoid looking at the body. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a woman. Whether she had been old or young, black or white, I had no idea – it was impossible to tell. And I’d rather not get close enough to investigate it, either.
The back room bore signs of having been lived in, and it didn’t have the same strange atmosphere that the store itself had, which made it nicer to be in, regardless of the stench and the sight at the corner of my eyes of limbs dangling, revolving slowly. I walked around in a small circle around the room, taking in the couch, the desk, the tiny stove and kitchen corner, before a sheet of paper on the small kitchen table caught my eye.
I walked over, almost feeling how the color drained from my face as I read the two words scribbled down in a hand-writing that was disturbingly familiar.
I quit.
~tbc~
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Fiction: Yellow Flowers and a Bag of Bones
Chapter eight: The pile of notebooks
I felt defeated. Completely and utterly. I wasn’t used to feeling defeated; I was used to getting what I wanted, even if it took a while for me to actually get it. This time, everything just seemed to get further and further away from me, and the more I uncovered, the more confused I became. I didn’t like it. Not one single bit.
Rei looked up from the book he had buried his nose in, glancing at me with an expression that clearly spelled out confusion. Which I couldn’t blame him for, really, considering that I had been apprehensive and almost cold whenever I talked to him after I got back. It wasn’t that I wanted to confuse the kid, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of someone not aging in the least bit in thirty years.
There was a solution, of course, but I didn’t like that thought any more, considering that it would mean that Rei had been lying to me all along. I preferred the mystery, actually, no matter how frustrating it was.
And then I had to add Dakota and her constant disappearances as well, which were getting on my nerves. Mostly, I wanted to forget about her, but I couldn’t.
For once, it was a relief to focus on my job. My nice, simple job that had no complications, a nice boss, not too many annoying customers, and enough time to read instead of actually work. The best part, though, was that it paid fairly well. I had to admit that I enjoyed having a steady job for once, if nothing than for the financial security it brought – I was used to taking small jobs every now and then, just enough for me to pay the bills, and then do as little as possible until the next time I was broke.
I sat down at the back of the shop, letting Miss Karen mind the counter – sometimes we worked at the same time, something which I didn’t mind, oddly enough. Miss Karen was nice enough; she told me small stories about her family, about how her husband had been killed, so now she took care of their two daughters and one son by herself. They had mostly grown up now, she told me, but they still lived with her.
Most of the time, however, we discussed books, or merely worked together in silence, like today. I decided to unpack a couple of crates of new things that had come in, sent to us anonymously. It wasn’t anything new, most people sent things anonymously, and a lot of the time it all turned out to be crap that was impossible to sell. Miss Karen didn’t particularly like going through these crates, but I found it fascinating.
This time there were a few old magazines that I put up on the shelves, along with a few old textbooks and some dictionaries. I hummed to myself as I sat down cross-legged on the floor, cracking open the second crate, frowning when I saw that it was filled with notebooks. “Great, more people who can’t be bothered to take their own garbage out,” I muttered to myself, flipping through the first one to see if they were new or old ones, quickly discovering that it was filled with scribbles.
It wasn’t until I caught sight of a mention of The Four Sisters that I became interested – I knew for certain that it was prohibited to actually write something about The Four Sisters. Even in the notebook the green rabbit had given me there were no direct mentions of them, so this was definitely a surprise.
Today I met The Four Sisters for the first time, the notebook – which appeared to be some sort of diary – read, and I figured that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to read the rest as well. Not when there were mentions of The Four Sisters.
They were more magnificent than I could have imagined, but they also surprised me. I came to the hill outside of Ashio, just like they had told me to. They were already there, waiting for me, standing at the top of the hill, as if they were queens. And king. I hadn’t expected that – one of The Four Sisters is a man! I think this is something that almost nobody knows, so I feel extremely privileged and proud.
The first Sister greeted me with a warm smile, the second Sister took my hand, and the third Sister led me into a house, right there on the hilltop. I can barely remember anything they said, I was so happy, but I remember the most important thing. The fourth Sister, the man (and such a handsome man, too!) was the one who really spoke to me, though I could tell that he isn’t the one who is really in charge.
Anyway, I have a mission now. A secret mission, no one is to know about it. I can’t tell anyone that I met with The Four Sisters either, which is understandable. I mean, if people knew, then they would demand to meet them too, right? I think I like it better this way. Makes me feel special. Chosen.
I wish I could talk more about the mission, but I don’t dare to mention it, not even in my journal. I don’t really think that my journal will be found by anyone, but I’m not taking the chance. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I’ll talk more about my mission later.
--
Today was the first day I started working on my mission. I still don’t really understand it, but if The Four Sisters want me to do it, then of course, I will. How anyone can be against The Four Sisters is beyond me, and if it’s true what they are saying – and of course it is – that someone is trying to destroy what they’ve worked for so hard, then I will do my best to bring that person down. Or if it’s more than one, then that’s fine as well. I know that The Four Sisters will point me in the right direction. All I have to do is to follow their orders.
--
I found my first villain today. I don’t have a better word for it than that. He had to have been a villain, right; otherwise The Four Sisters wouldn’t have sent me after him. I liked finding him. Searching for him, hunting him down. The fourth Sister called me a hunter, and that’s what I am. I’m going to hunt down everyone who tries to break the rules.
They don’t know. The Four Sisters see everything. There won’t be anywhere to hide. Not from them, and not from me.
--
I had no idea that there were so many villains here. I thought this was a peaceful place, filled with people who just wanted a second start, and people who wanted to good. People who knew how to obey the rules, and who didn’t want to ruin everything.
I’m so glad that The Four Sisters made me see the truth. There are bad people here, and those people need to be taken care of. Some of them are sneaky, they avoid getting marked. Some people are like that, you know. They just can’t help breaking the rules openly, and they get marked again and again, until the black rabbit picks them up and makes sure that they leave. I can tolerate those people – of course they’re stupid, but I can forgive the ones that just don’t know any better.
The ones I can’t forgive, though, are the ones that break the rules in silence, or find ways to bend the rules, or who try to trick or hurt The Four Sisters. I will not tolerate that. Those people don’t deserve to be here at all, they only deserve to be punished.
And I’m going to be the one to find and punish them all.
--
I feel so tired. I wonder if it’s all this evil that is wearing me down. I wish I could see The Four Sisters more often, to get strength from them. I love The Four Sisters, especially him…
I’d do anything for him. I’d die for him. But I don’t think he sees me as anything other than a hunter. So I’ll be the best hunter I can possibly be, and then he’ll see me for who I really am.
Then he’ll finally love me.
--
So much evil. So many people who want to do wrong. I don’t know what to do anymore. How to deal with it.
So much evil.
--
It hurts, It hurts so much, and I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m not sure I can deal with this anymore. I can feel myself changing; it feels like I’m becoming more evil, more like the ones I’m hunting down, one by one. Most of them look so innocent too – when I examine their lives I can almost never find anything wrong.
Sometimes… Sometimes it feels like The Four Sisters are sending me after people that they don’t like. People they want to get rid of, for no good reason whatsoever, and that it’s why the black rabbit can’t do this.
I wonder why they chose me. Do they know something about me that I don’t?
Am I evil too?
--
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. I’ll tell them tomorrow. I quit.
I finally looked up from the notebook I was currently reading – I had gone through three of them in the span of a few hours, reading as if transfixed. Flipping through the rest of the book, I found that it ended there. Nothing more. From the hand-writing and the way the author talked about the fourth Sister, I assumed that it had to be a woman. A woman who had been picked to do The Four Sisters bidding, and who had simply done it – out of love?
The hand-writing seemed to change over time. From the first entries to the last, there seemed to be a steady decline; it became bigger, sloppier, and more difficult to read as time went on. The things the woman had been doing had clearly changed her on a fundamental level, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, even though she had no doubt done some bad things merely because she was ordered to do them.
Only three of the notebooks turned out to be the woman’s diaries, the rest only contained names. Rows and rows of names, some with a circle in front, some with an X, and some with a star. I had no idea what it meant, but I assumed it was some kind of code; maybe a code for just what she had done to them.
Even if I knew that these notebooks were dangerous material, I ended up taking them home. I offered to pay for them, but Miss Karen shook her head and said that she’d just throw them out otherwise. Without even noticing it, my entire shift had gone by while I was reading. Not so strange, considering that the diaries didn’t only contain mentions of The Four Sisters and her “mission”, but also descriptions of her city, of her friends, little anecdotes of what she had been doing that day. It was a look into a stranger’s mind and heart, and even if I didn’t know the woman’s name, she hardly felt like a stranger anymore. By now, I was probably the person in the world who knew simultaneously the most and the least about her.
I looked through the notebooks more thoroughly when I came home, re-reading all the passages that had to do with The Four Sisters, re-writing it into my own little notebook, though I chose to code everything I scribbled down, never directly mentioning The Four Sisters. I had to be careful. After all, it wasn’t as if I was the one on a mission set by The Four Sisters. It was better to be safe than sorry.
It annoyed me a little that nothing was dated – it would make it far more difficult to figure out who the woman was. People came and went in this place, and without a date to go by, it would be nearly impossible – or at least incredibly time-consuming – to go through all the registers the woman’s city to find someone that might fit the description. I had a feeling that I was going to do it; however, seeing as this was a woman I wanted to learn more from. So far, I had met many who had mentioned The Four Sisters (always in hushed, reverend tones), but I had yet to meet anyone who had actually seen them and talked to them in person. The closest had been the green rabbit, but I had no idea how to get in touch with him again.
The lists of names didn’t tell me much at first, not until I went to the Town Hall to look up the names. I argued with the clerk for a while, but eventually she allowed me to search in the grand registry, the one that covered everyone living here, instead of only the ones living in Ixero. I told her that I was doing a freelance project for the Ixero Press, and that I was also looking for an old friend that I thought had moved here, though I didn’t know which city.
I was a good liar when I had to be – it was more or less required for someone with my kind of objective.
It didn’t take long for a pattern to emerge. Everyone that had been marked down by an X had died, pure and simple. There were details listed for each case, and as far as I could tell, they all looked accidental. I found it a bit strange that none of them seemed to have died from illness or old age, though, but I chose not to think about that too much now.
The next pattern that emerged was the fact that everyone who had a circle in front of their name had left. Some with an explanation, some without. It struck me as very strange, seeing as I knew for a fact that not many people decided to leave on their own.
The last pattern was the strangest one. The ones that had their name marked by a star had simply vanished without a trace. They hadn’t died, hadn’t left. I really didn’t like the pattern I was seeing, and the conclusions I drew from them.
Maybe I was insane, but to me the fact that people who vanished in thin air were marked by a star spelled out that this woman, whoever she was, had been the one responsible for Dakota’s disappearance, along with all the others. And the star that appeared in the sky – that was probably controlled by her as well, not The Four Sisters. Not directly, anyway. It was painfully clear, however, that it was The Four Sisters who ordered this woman to get rid of people.
It was difficult to tell the time span, but from the names I researched it seemed that the woman had been doing her “mission” for at least five years, up until roughly six months ago. People didn’t mysteriously die, leave or vanish before that, and the ones who had disappeared in one way or another afterwards weren’t written down in the woman’s notebooks.
I tried to put it all together as I walked back to the apartment, but I had to admit that I found it difficult. This also made me realize just how influential The Four Sisters were. I had known it before now as well, sure, but I hadn’t quite taken them seriously. In a way, I had seen The Four Sisters as I had seen the Town Elders – rulers in name and title, but not in reality.
Now, it seemed like the Town Elders were merely pawns in a game that was far larger than I had originally thought. It made me wonder if I should get myself out of this before it was too late – I wasn’t quite ready to risk my life on this, after all.
But on the other hand, didn’t I owe it to all these people to go through with my plan? These hundreds and hundreds of people that The Four Sisters had merely eliminated, apparently for no good reason whatsoever. I didn’t consider myself to be particularly courageous, nor was I a thrill seeker; all of this had been purely out of curiosity and for monetary gain up until this point.
“Oh, fuck it,” I said to myself, causing a few people to turn their heads and look at me, but I was hardly paying attention to any of them, even if I probably should. Considering the fact that I now knew exactly what I was risking by even thinking of going up against The Four Sisters, I should be paying, very, very close attention to anyone around me.
It took me over a day of contemplation to make up my mind, but I finally decided: I was going to see this thing through to the end, no matter what happened.
Even if I lost in the end.
~tbc~
I felt defeated. Completely and utterly. I wasn’t used to feeling defeated; I was used to getting what I wanted, even if it took a while for me to actually get it. This time, everything just seemed to get further and further away from me, and the more I uncovered, the more confused I became. I didn’t like it. Not one single bit.
Rei looked up from the book he had buried his nose in, glancing at me with an expression that clearly spelled out confusion. Which I couldn’t blame him for, really, considering that I had been apprehensive and almost cold whenever I talked to him after I got back. It wasn’t that I wanted to confuse the kid, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of someone not aging in the least bit in thirty years.
There was a solution, of course, but I didn’t like that thought any more, considering that it would mean that Rei had been lying to me all along. I preferred the mystery, actually, no matter how frustrating it was.
And then I had to add Dakota and her constant disappearances as well, which were getting on my nerves. Mostly, I wanted to forget about her, but I couldn’t.
For once, it was a relief to focus on my job. My nice, simple job that had no complications, a nice boss, not too many annoying customers, and enough time to read instead of actually work. The best part, though, was that it paid fairly well. I had to admit that I enjoyed having a steady job for once, if nothing than for the financial security it brought – I was used to taking small jobs every now and then, just enough for me to pay the bills, and then do as little as possible until the next time I was broke.
I sat down at the back of the shop, letting Miss Karen mind the counter – sometimes we worked at the same time, something which I didn’t mind, oddly enough. Miss Karen was nice enough; she told me small stories about her family, about how her husband had been killed, so now she took care of their two daughters and one son by herself. They had mostly grown up now, she told me, but they still lived with her.
Most of the time, however, we discussed books, or merely worked together in silence, like today. I decided to unpack a couple of crates of new things that had come in, sent to us anonymously. It wasn’t anything new, most people sent things anonymously, and a lot of the time it all turned out to be crap that was impossible to sell. Miss Karen didn’t particularly like going through these crates, but I found it fascinating.
This time there were a few old magazines that I put up on the shelves, along with a few old textbooks and some dictionaries. I hummed to myself as I sat down cross-legged on the floor, cracking open the second crate, frowning when I saw that it was filled with notebooks. “Great, more people who can’t be bothered to take their own garbage out,” I muttered to myself, flipping through the first one to see if they were new or old ones, quickly discovering that it was filled with scribbles.
It wasn’t until I caught sight of a mention of The Four Sisters that I became interested – I knew for certain that it was prohibited to actually write something about The Four Sisters. Even in the notebook the green rabbit had given me there were no direct mentions of them, so this was definitely a surprise.
Today I met The Four Sisters for the first time, the notebook – which appeared to be some sort of diary – read, and I figured that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to read the rest as well. Not when there were mentions of The Four Sisters.
They were more magnificent than I could have imagined, but they also surprised me. I came to the hill outside of Ashio, just like they had told me to. They were already there, waiting for me, standing at the top of the hill, as if they were queens. And king. I hadn’t expected that – one of The Four Sisters is a man! I think this is something that almost nobody knows, so I feel extremely privileged and proud.
The first Sister greeted me with a warm smile, the second Sister took my hand, and the third Sister led me into a house, right there on the hilltop. I can barely remember anything they said, I was so happy, but I remember the most important thing. The fourth Sister, the man (and such a handsome man, too!) was the one who really spoke to me, though I could tell that he isn’t the one who is really in charge.
Anyway, I have a mission now. A secret mission, no one is to know about it. I can’t tell anyone that I met with The Four Sisters either, which is understandable. I mean, if people knew, then they would demand to meet them too, right? I think I like it better this way. Makes me feel special. Chosen.
I wish I could talk more about the mission, but I don’t dare to mention it, not even in my journal. I don’t really think that my journal will be found by anyone, but I’m not taking the chance. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I’ll talk more about my mission later.
--
Today was the first day I started working on my mission. I still don’t really understand it, but if The Four Sisters want me to do it, then of course, I will. How anyone can be against The Four Sisters is beyond me, and if it’s true what they are saying – and of course it is – that someone is trying to destroy what they’ve worked for so hard, then I will do my best to bring that person down. Or if it’s more than one, then that’s fine as well. I know that The Four Sisters will point me in the right direction. All I have to do is to follow their orders.
--
I found my first villain today. I don’t have a better word for it than that. He had to have been a villain, right; otherwise The Four Sisters wouldn’t have sent me after him. I liked finding him. Searching for him, hunting him down. The fourth Sister called me a hunter, and that’s what I am. I’m going to hunt down everyone who tries to break the rules.
They don’t know. The Four Sisters see everything. There won’t be anywhere to hide. Not from them, and not from me.
--
I had no idea that there were so many villains here. I thought this was a peaceful place, filled with people who just wanted a second start, and people who wanted to good. People who knew how to obey the rules, and who didn’t want to ruin everything.
I’m so glad that The Four Sisters made me see the truth. There are bad people here, and those people need to be taken care of. Some of them are sneaky, they avoid getting marked. Some people are like that, you know. They just can’t help breaking the rules openly, and they get marked again and again, until the black rabbit picks them up and makes sure that they leave. I can tolerate those people – of course they’re stupid, but I can forgive the ones that just don’t know any better.
The ones I can’t forgive, though, are the ones that break the rules in silence, or find ways to bend the rules, or who try to trick or hurt The Four Sisters. I will not tolerate that. Those people don’t deserve to be here at all, they only deserve to be punished.
And I’m going to be the one to find and punish them all.
--
I feel so tired. I wonder if it’s all this evil that is wearing me down. I wish I could see The Four Sisters more often, to get strength from them. I love The Four Sisters, especially him…
I’d do anything for him. I’d die for him. But I don’t think he sees me as anything other than a hunter. So I’ll be the best hunter I can possibly be, and then he’ll see me for who I really am.
Then he’ll finally love me.
--
So much evil. So many people who want to do wrong. I don’t know what to do anymore. How to deal with it.
So much evil.
--
It hurts, It hurts so much, and I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m not sure I can deal with this anymore. I can feel myself changing; it feels like I’m becoming more evil, more like the ones I’m hunting down, one by one. Most of them look so innocent too – when I examine their lives I can almost never find anything wrong.
Sometimes… Sometimes it feels like The Four Sisters are sending me after people that they don’t like. People they want to get rid of, for no good reason whatsoever, and that it’s why the black rabbit can’t do this.
I wonder why they chose me. Do they know something about me that I don’t?
Am I evil too?
--
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. I’ll tell them tomorrow. I quit.
I finally looked up from the notebook I was currently reading – I had gone through three of them in the span of a few hours, reading as if transfixed. Flipping through the rest of the book, I found that it ended there. Nothing more. From the hand-writing and the way the author talked about the fourth Sister, I assumed that it had to be a woman. A woman who had been picked to do The Four Sisters bidding, and who had simply done it – out of love?
The hand-writing seemed to change over time. From the first entries to the last, there seemed to be a steady decline; it became bigger, sloppier, and more difficult to read as time went on. The things the woman had been doing had clearly changed her on a fundamental level, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, even though she had no doubt done some bad things merely because she was ordered to do them.
Only three of the notebooks turned out to be the woman’s diaries, the rest only contained names. Rows and rows of names, some with a circle in front, some with an X, and some with a star. I had no idea what it meant, but I assumed it was some kind of code; maybe a code for just what she had done to them.
Even if I knew that these notebooks were dangerous material, I ended up taking them home. I offered to pay for them, but Miss Karen shook her head and said that she’d just throw them out otherwise. Without even noticing it, my entire shift had gone by while I was reading. Not so strange, considering that the diaries didn’t only contain mentions of The Four Sisters and her “mission”, but also descriptions of her city, of her friends, little anecdotes of what she had been doing that day. It was a look into a stranger’s mind and heart, and even if I didn’t know the woman’s name, she hardly felt like a stranger anymore. By now, I was probably the person in the world who knew simultaneously the most and the least about her.
I looked through the notebooks more thoroughly when I came home, re-reading all the passages that had to do with The Four Sisters, re-writing it into my own little notebook, though I chose to code everything I scribbled down, never directly mentioning The Four Sisters. I had to be careful. After all, it wasn’t as if I was the one on a mission set by The Four Sisters. It was better to be safe than sorry.
It annoyed me a little that nothing was dated – it would make it far more difficult to figure out who the woman was. People came and went in this place, and without a date to go by, it would be nearly impossible – or at least incredibly time-consuming – to go through all the registers the woman’s city to find someone that might fit the description. I had a feeling that I was going to do it; however, seeing as this was a woman I wanted to learn more from. So far, I had met many who had mentioned The Four Sisters (always in hushed, reverend tones), but I had yet to meet anyone who had actually seen them and talked to them in person. The closest had been the green rabbit, but I had no idea how to get in touch with him again.
The lists of names didn’t tell me much at first, not until I went to the Town Hall to look up the names. I argued with the clerk for a while, but eventually she allowed me to search in the grand registry, the one that covered everyone living here, instead of only the ones living in Ixero. I told her that I was doing a freelance project for the Ixero Press, and that I was also looking for an old friend that I thought had moved here, though I didn’t know which city.
I was a good liar when I had to be – it was more or less required for someone with my kind of objective.
It didn’t take long for a pattern to emerge. Everyone that had been marked down by an X had died, pure and simple. There were details listed for each case, and as far as I could tell, they all looked accidental. I found it a bit strange that none of them seemed to have died from illness or old age, though, but I chose not to think about that too much now.
The next pattern that emerged was the fact that everyone who had a circle in front of their name had left. Some with an explanation, some without. It struck me as very strange, seeing as I knew for a fact that not many people decided to leave on their own.
The last pattern was the strangest one. The ones that had their name marked by a star had simply vanished without a trace. They hadn’t died, hadn’t left. I really didn’t like the pattern I was seeing, and the conclusions I drew from them.
Maybe I was insane, but to me the fact that people who vanished in thin air were marked by a star spelled out that this woman, whoever she was, had been the one responsible for Dakota’s disappearance, along with all the others. And the star that appeared in the sky – that was probably controlled by her as well, not The Four Sisters. Not directly, anyway. It was painfully clear, however, that it was The Four Sisters who ordered this woman to get rid of people.
It was difficult to tell the time span, but from the names I researched it seemed that the woman had been doing her “mission” for at least five years, up until roughly six months ago. People didn’t mysteriously die, leave or vanish before that, and the ones who had disappeared in one way or another afterwards weren’t written down in the woman’s notebooks.
I tried to put it all together as I walked back to the apartment, but I had to admit that I found it difficult. This also made me realize just how influential The Four Sisters were. I had known it before now as well, sure, but I hadn’t quite taken them seriously. In a way, I had seen The Four Sisters as I had seen the Town Elders – rulers in name and title, but not in reality.
Now, it seemed like the Town Elders were merely pawns in a game that was far larger than I had originally thought. It made me wonder if I should get myself out of this before it was too late – I wasn’t quite ready to risk my life on this, after all.
But on the other hand, didn’t I owe it to all these people to go through with my plan? These hundreds and hundreds of people that The Four Sisters had merely eliminated, apparently for no good reason whatsoever. I didn’t consider myself to be particularly courageous, nor was I a thrill seeker; all of this had been purely out of curiosity and for monetary gain up until this point.
“Oh, fuck it,” I said to myself, causing a few people to turn their heads and look at me, but I was hardly paying attention to any of them, even if I probably should. Considering the fact that I now knew exactly what I was risking by even thinking of going up against The Four Sisters, I should be paying, very, very close attention to anyone around me.
It took me over a day of contemplation to make up my mind, but I finally decided: I was going to see this thing through to the end, no matter what happened.
Even if I lost in the end.
~tbc~
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
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