Dream | 08 | Card Payment (Horrific Dream)
It started out just like any typical dream for Rena. She was walking through Hinamizawa, saw a cute animal on the side of the road, and attempted to take it home. The usual. But something about this particular dream seemed...off. Maybe it was the dark clouds looming up ahead, or maybe it was the eerie silence of no one around. Either way, the dream continued on as Rena fell deeper and deeper into her slumber.
The longer Rena walked in her dream, the darker the sky became until it was pitch black. It was nighttime. She looked up to see that she had walked all the way to Keiichi's house. "I wonder if Keiichi is home, I wonder?" Rena mused as she opened the front door and stepped inside. She looked around. All of the lights were off except for one coming from upstairs. "He must be in his room."
Ascending up the stairs, Rena could hear strange noises coming from Keiichi's room:
Heavy breathing, a consistent thudding noise, and the faintist sound of something splattering against the walls.
Slowly, Rena turned the knob and opened the door. But once the door was opened, she started to wish that she could close it again. Blood was everywhere and the scene playing in front of her was Keiichi holding Satoshi's baseball bat, beating what appeared to be Mion (or what was left of her at this point) to death with said bat. Rena let out a loud gasp and covered her mouth to keep herself from gagging.
"How could you? How could you do something like this? I though Mion was your friend, Keiichi!"
Hearing her gasp, Keiichi turned towards Rena, a crazed look in his eye. She could see his grip on the bat tightening. "You're next, Rena." Keiichi breathed as he suddenly rushed at her, bat raised.
CRACK! The sound of Rena's own skull breaking against the impact of the bat to her head. Rena fell to the ground like a limp doll, now at the mercy of Keiichi's beatings. But she wasn't dead. Dear god, why wasn't she dead? She could feel every smash of the bat course through her body and the feeling of her bones breaking and organs distorting. Rena tried to scream but the only sound that came out was gargling sounds as blood gushed out of her mouth. "Just kill me now, please! KILL ME!"
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Sunlight.
Rena blinked a few times at the bright light and raised herself up into a sitting position. She was back in the area where the dream had originally started. And she looked exactly the same too; no bruises or pain or anything. Rising up to her feet, Rena started walking again.
This time her footsteps had taken her to the school house. And once again, it had turned to nighttime when she got there. But what Rena found really strange was that all the lights were still on in the school.
“Who would be in the school at this time of night?” Rena questioned out loud.
When Rena went inside the school, it was much to her surprise that she found almost all of Hinamizawa’s residents inside. “What is everyone doing in here?”
Rena’s question was answered with a scream and the noise of windows breaking. She ran to one of the classrooms to see what had broken the windows. On the ground lay a bunch of small gray canisters. Suddenly, gas began spewing out of the canisters and the whole school was filled with toxic gas. Rena backed away violently and collapsed to the ground. People were gasping for air and throwing themselves at the windows left and right.
She couldn’t breath. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to inhale air that wasn’t polluted. She could feel the gas filling up her lungs and it felt like all of her insides were on fire. Rena’s eyes were burning, but she was able to look up long enough to see her friends on the other side of the room suffering the exact same fate.
“Everyone...why did this happen to us, why?”
Rena closed her eyes again as she felt her lungs collapse in agony.
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At this point Rena was getting some serious de ja vu. She was, once again, back to the beginning of the dream and completely normal. And once again, she started walking without even a second thought, this time into the forest in front of her. The only difference this time was that it was already nighttime when Rena started walking.
As she continued walking, Rena realized that she now had her machete with her. Weird, she didn’t remember having it before entering the forest. But she just shrugged and kept walking.
“Rena!” someone called out from further into the forest. It sounded like Keiichi’s voice, so Rena began walking faster to where it had come from.
There in the middle of the forest, were all of Rena’s friends waiting for her. “What are you guys doing here?” she asked. Before her friends could say anything, multiple gunshots were fired from behind them. And just like that, they all fell to the ground simultaneously. Dead.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. Without even blinking, all of her friends had just died in front of her eyes. “W-why? Why is this happening to everyone??”
“Ohohoho. Because. It is their fate to be killed by my hands.” A women’s voice laughed from behind the trees. In one swift motion she came out and reviled herself. Takano.
“You monster!” Rena screamed, rushing at her with the machete. Her attack was cut off when she felt a sudden pain in her shoulder. A bullet.
Takano walked over to Rena and in one graceful movement, smacked Rena’s head with the end of her gun. Rena screamed and fell to the ground in agony, blood dripping down her face. Takano laughed and bent down to look into Rena’s face eye to eye.
“Hmmm, I wonder what your next death is going to be like, Rena-chan.” Takano cooed, gun pressed against Rena’s forehead. She pulled the trigger and-
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[Rena violently wakes up from her dream, screaming at the top of her lungs. She stops screaming when she realizes that she’s still safe in her bed. The sickness from getting the cure is wearing off, but she can still feel her muscles aching and her body shake.]