Darkness (Author - MitsuiSelphie)

Title: Darkness
Author: MitsuiSelphie – The Black Iris
Genre: angst, POV
Rating: PG
Cast: Rukawa Kaede
Synopsis: Rukawa Kaede…the kitsune otoko most famous for two things – basketball and…sleeping. What is the mystery behind his frequent and seemingly abnormal habit of dozing off?
WARNING: Un-edited, spur of the moment fic. Some disturbing contents ahead too. I tried my best even though this is short so I hope you all like it even just a bit.
A/N: Written for Esra-san, smile and my hime - mihari.

~*~

I wasn’t always like this. I was once lively just like any other child – my mom even used to complain how I almost always expertly turn a place upside down. But now is different. I’m not who I used to be anymore. It was so long ago in the past that I could barely remember it. It’s almost like there’s a hazy glbetween me and my visions of what was what and which was which…so vague…so unclear…so unnervingly frightening.

Happiness was a word practiced in those days. There was never an idle day in my life. For me, if things stop being happy, it’s not worth anything at all. It was my philosophy, my doctrine…my belief. My definition of life was happiness itself. Now that I think of it, it was sensible, yes, but very immature. For who’s to say what happiness is? What it is for me may not be what it is for everyone else. So what is happiness? And if life is happiness, then what is life? So many questions in my head even now, that I’m so confused, so rattled, I decided not to look for answers anymore.

It happened so quickly, so suddenly, that the idea of time seemed so primitive. Every tick of the clock seemed to stretch onto forever that it seemed to be immortalized in my brain…emblazoned…imprinted…haunting every bit of me until now.

Four years…it had been four seemingly long years since then. It was an ordinary day, a rather dull day for an exuberant kid like me actually, but an unpleasant one too. Everything seemed so brightly illuminated, yet so inexplicably terrifying. I can’t explain it, but the world for me that day was so horribly tinted with red. Anxiety was eating me so much everyone in the family thought I ought to spend the night with my cousins – and so I did. I thought it was nothing serious, that it was just a syndrome of growing up – but I was wrong, dead wrong. Early next morning, when I went home, I understood. Everything was over…

…my family was murdered…

Everything was so…crimson…so hideously tinted with blood that it suffocated me. The metallic smell was so strong, it invaded my nostrils…my mouth…my soul. And there was no escape…

…death was all around me that day…

…so strong…so overwhelmingly fierce that I hadn’t managed to cry out until I fully realized what was before me. The image of my murdered family was so shocking yet so amazingly tranquil. The police said they struggled, I say the opposite. I saw it in their faces, how undisturbed their features were before they were taken away. Maybe they had wanted it…

…maybe they wanted to die…

Maybe they stopped being happy and decided it was all right to just let go. But why was I left all alone? The world stopped revolving for me that moment. It was as though somebody pushed the pause button of the VCR and left it as it is. I couldn’t explain my emotions because back then I was not good at hiding them.

Before I knew it, I already had to move on. The funeral was heart-wrenchingly miserable, but even if it was so, I wanted it to last forever. I wanted to guard their bodies until I, myself, die. I wanted to hold onto them and the memories we shared…I didn’t want to let go…it was so painful I’m surprised I survived. But I was alive, and I had to move on.

I didn’t want to move on…I don’t want to move on. Change is not in my vocabulary. But I was forced to live my life – if it even could be called so. The idea of living a life I was not used to, terrified me a lot. And then suddenly, it hit me. I was not happy anymore. And so I thought, ‘now that things stop being happy, does that mean nothing’s worth anything at all anymore?’ And worse, ‘if happiness is gone, then life is too.’ For me, the experience was like the abyss. It was stretched onto forever, dark, unending…sorrowful.

And so I started hiding. Reality scared me a lot after the incident that I wanted to shrink so small and fit into a hole and hide forever. But I couldn’t. I was stuck with a life worse than death…and I was scared…

…truly utterly scared...

…and I had no one to run to – because I was alone. What was I to do? I wanted to run away, to run and to keep running until the world ceases to exist. I wanted to hide from everything around me, wanted to escape from reality. I tried to think of a way, but I was simple-minded – so in the end, I get exhausted and I end up sleeping.

At first it seemed odd. I had overslept before, but at that time, every time I wake up after 10 or 12 hours of sleep, I become sleepier. I thought it was because of fatigue from all the excitement, and maybe it was, but it became a turning point in my life. I found solace in sleeping. I’m alone when I sleep and I had nothing to worry about. When my sleeping habit was just starting, the abnormality of it scared me, but now it seems pretty normal. When I sleep, I escape from a world where happiness ceased to exist for me. Each time I lay my head down, my eyes would droop and the sheer pleasure of drifting away from a world so harsh makes me at least content of the present. When I close my eyes, everything would start to drift away…sounds become so distant and the play of light on my closed eyelids become so deliciously wonderful, enticing me into a world of my own, and then…darkness.

After some time, I stop remembering dreams when I wake up – it’s like I’m not having dreams at all. It was darkness all over. I love darkness. I feel so attached to it, yet when I leave it, there’s no pain felt – because there’s nothing in it but darkness itself. I never wanted to wake up anymore, because every time I do, I only remember visions of blood against my mother’s favorite Ming vase, and my father’s treasured golf trophy. Yes, it had been years ago, but you must understand, time for me is not continuous. I’m not like ordinary people who sleep at night and wake up during the day. I sleep so long and so frequently, time means nothing to me, so until now the pain remains fresh as if it was yesterday.

So in darkness, I chose to remain. If ever I’m awake, I pledge my life to basketball, but in the end, darkness is where I come home to. I don’t want to see light anymore – and I know that there will be a time when darkness would engulf me forever. Until then, I will wait patiently in a world I made for my own.

I embrace my home of pitch-black abyss – because I myself became darkness of my own habitual sleep.

~OWARI~

A/N: did I make sense? ^^;;;;;;;;; I hope I did.

~MitsuiSelphie
http://geocities.com/mitsuisylph