Tales From Beyond The Stage [Chapter 1, Part 1]
Title: Tales From Beyond The Stage.
Rating: PG- 13, maybe a bit more.
Warnings: Drug use implied, there's swearing? I dunno, it's... not a happy story.
Notes: This is... kinda fic, kinda not? I'm writing this for NaNoWriMo, and I have characters that are original. But it's easier to write this if I 'cast' members in it. XD;; The character Changmin is standing in for is named DaeShim, and he was part of a singing group that broke up. Each went their separate ways - one became a producer, one became a teacher, one stayed in the entertainment business, one is now an office worker with a family. The only one whose life didn't seem to go to plan is DaeShim's. He fell off the map for a while, then resurfaced as a songwriter. While his work is strong in that business, and he's fairly renowned, his private life (and I use the term 'private' loosely, as it's pretty well known) is far less sterling.
This is only part of what I've written; I also have a scene later in the story, but I'm not going to post that until I actually get up to that part. Some people have probably already read all of this. ^^;;
---
The man curled into himself, body pressing against the dirty sheets with an almost palpable need. Fingers curled into them, clinging and tugging them as close as possible, and he held on as if the world would suddenly tip and throw him from the bed. His entire body had given in to spasms, angry shudders that ran up his spine and shook the very breath out of his chest. Eyes fluttered opened and closed, though never fully focused enough to see past the hand that lay clenched inches in front of his face.
Too much. He didn't know where he was, or how he'd gotten here, or even if the soft voices he was hearing were real or simply hallucinations. He didn't even know what he'd had. All he knew was that he'd had too much. His tongue felt as if it had swollen in his mouth, preventing him from calling out to anyone who might be in the vicinity. Not that he needed to; a blurry figure appeared, far past the point where his vision was capable of making out details, and hovered there.
It was wearing something white. One hand chanced his being thrown off the world and let go of the sheet, reaching for the unknown figure. Fingers clumsily worked at air, trying to find that which he thought he was seeing. Was it merely a hallucination? After several wild, yet weak swipes, he was very willing to believe it was, and his arm dropped heavily against the mattress, not even bothering to be drawn back in toward his body.
He was dying. Much more rapidly than he'd ever expected. His entire body felt as if it were shutting down on him, much as he tried to fight against it; soon, his legs were immobile, not even twitching when the shaking wracked him. A rather cold feeling was spreading into his chest, and a sleepy detachment had started filling in the space where consciousness was making its last stand against the impending darkness.
The figure took his now limp hand.
"Go to sleep," a man's voice whispered. The words were twisted, malformed to the young man's ears as his eyes struggled to stay open. The body slowly ceased its jerky, involuntary movements, and a gnarled old hand reached forward to brush the eyelids closed over the glassy brown eyes.
"Go to sleep, Changmin."
--
Everything hurt.
This was the first realisation to hit him; consciousness was coming and going, flowing and ebbing like water against him. Every time he felt its touch, he also felt the sharp stinging of pain. It was impossible to discern where it was coming from as he swung back and forth from the darkness. Each little bit of awareness brought with it a stab to another part of him, and each ache carried over to the next try at consciousness, so that soon his entire body felt as if it were an open wound.
Death should not have been allowed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to hurt. Anguish was not to be allowed after everything else had faded. Dry lips parted, the seal that had held them together slow to yield, and Changmin drew in a deep breath. Breathing... breathing meant that he wasn't dead, didn't it? Did one breathe in the afterlife? Maybe he didn't have to, and it was just out of habit that he'd done so.
Maybe this torture was his penance for the way he'd spent his life. He'd been sentenced to lie here, unable to move or even open his eyes, with agony as his only companion. For who knew how long. Centuries probably, considering his sins.
"It's your own fault, you know. That it's like this."
The voice was both vaguely familiar and yet somehow completely unplaceable. Eyes still cemented shut, Changmin couldn't even search for the source of it, and his ears gave him no hints as to where the speaker might be in relation to his person. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. Somehow, even though it had spoken quietly, the loudness of it sent a shock wave of misery through his head. Were he capable of moving, he would have clamped his hands over his ears to escape further repetition of that.
"Are you wondering if you're dead right now? I can't hear it over the screaming in your head." The voice paused, then plunged on. "You really should stop doing that. Surely it can't hurt that much."
He seemed to be waiting for a response, one that Changmin considered himself well past giving to him. His tongue lay useless in his mouth, more a lead weight than a part of his own body. Apparently this torment wasn't going to be his only companion for the rest of forever. He also had a voice that was making him wish he could cut his own ears off. Surely that would provide less injury than the stabs that ran through his brain at every word. He had to be dead, because surely this level was unreachable while alive. Nobody could feel as if their entire being were a raw nerve.
"You are. Dead, I mean. This very moment. But..." Something touched his arm, fingers pressing into his skin, and it was enough to wake his ability to speak. The throb that emanated from the point of contact forced a scream from him, which in turn caused another stab straight through his head. "You can't even die correctly... Stop screaming. It's not going to help anything. If you'd just separate from your damn body for good already, it wouldn't hurt so much."
"How?" His voice cracked, and the single word came out almost as an indiscernible squeak rather than a question. Did the recently dead always sound like they'd swallowed sand? "M-make it s-stop."
A convulsion ran through him, setting his extremities twitching and pressing tears from his still squeezed closed eyes. The man made a sound of approval even as Changmin let out a choked sob. He was in hell. This was hell. He'd always figured there was an afterlife, but the whole 'heaven' and 'hell' thing had been left out of his assumptions. Apparently he'd been wrong, because this was surely not anything like what he'd previously imagined.
"You're not dying right. You're trying to go back. And you can't go back. That's why it hurts so much. If you don't give up, it won't stop." Changmin's body shook again. "That's a good sign though. You may not be willing to give up, but you're slipping away anyway. That's why you can move a little bit now... and stop being such a fucking idiot. You're not in hell. Hell doesn't exist. I wouldn't be nearly this nice if you were in hell."
There were little footsteps then, and quiet, high-pitched whispers, the words far beyond Changmin's comprehension skills at the moment. A loud thwack, and the man let slip a grunt of annoyance.
More footsteps, and someone was touching his face. Tiny fingertips pressed against his eyelids gently, still managing to send sparks through him; his own hands trembled at his sides, still unable to move much past what the occasional bodily spasm made them do. The touch shifted, and without warning, his left eye was being forcibly opened.
Everything seemed faded, beyond blurry. It was impossible to focus his eyes on anything; every shade of grey seemed to run together, edges watery and swirled into each other as if the world had suddenly turned to paint that had been thrown haphazardly left and right. Even as something leaned into his field of vision and lowered itself until it was less than an inch from the tip of his nose, he was unable to make out any distinct facial features. It had to be a person; he could feel the soft puff of breath against his skin as she examined him.
"I always feel so bad for them when they're like this." The voice sounded young, the pitch high and girly and full of saddened sympathy. Changmin fought to blink, tears now running freely from the propped open eye, and she squeaked. "Oh dear, I'm so sorry."
She let go, and the eye slid shut, turning the grey world black once more.
"Apparently your sight hasn't come in yet... Most of your body's functions seem to be stuck." A small hand pressed against his cheek, giving it what was probably supposed to be a comforting stroke. It sent needles into his skin, however, and Changmin sucked in a sharp breath. "Apparently the other you is fighting really hard to stay there. I do wish there were something we could do to help, but we're not allowed to kill you..."
Considering he was already dead, this made no sense whatsoever to the young man. The hand pulled away from his cheek, and something pressed against his chest, a careful pressure that was light enough to not hurt. Whoever the female was, she was pressing her ear against him, listening intently for a heartbeat that by all rights shouldn't be there.
"Oh it's not," the girl chirped, and the motion against his front led him to believe that she was nodding her head even with her probably odd current stance. "That's why you're hurting so much... your heart hasn't stopped beating over there, so you don't have it here yet. Your body needs it, that's why it's causing you so much pain. Your other body's probably not going through just as much, though I'd venture to guess that your mind separating caused a bit of trauma."
He couldn't decide if it was comforting or not, the fact that he could tell where the girl's voice was coming from. Unlike the man's which had seemed to be everywhere, this girl's was definitely coming from the head pressed against his chest, and when she lifted away from his skin, he could hear the little footfalls that identified to where she was moving. Her lack of ubiquity, and the soft edge of her voice that didn't seem to induce pain quite as badly as the man's did, made her presence far easier for him to handle.
He just wished he knew who they were.
The pain was quickly becoming a constant; he had no idea how long he'd been lying there, unable to move, trying hard to bite back the automatic cries whenever he suddenly felt as if something were stabbing him. It seemed to be getting worse rather than better, though who knew if that was just his mind working against him or not. It seemed to be its lot in life, worsening things that really shouldn't have been as bad as he believed them to be. His thoughts wandered, lingering on vague memories of past events and conversations. Things from when he was alive. Things that he now was beginning to regret, because he would never be able to apologise or make up for them.
"Your memories are really something," the man grumbled, and Changmin realised that the voice was coming from a definite spot now. "You were some kind of big shot for a while, on the other s-" he stopped abruptly and sighed, exasperated. "You know, I'm pretty sure you're an idiot. I'm sitting three feet to your left, which is exactly where I was sitting when you showed up. Not my fault your hearing is slow to adjust."
The creak of a chair, and heavier footsteps than the girl's were approaching him; her soft voice whispered a warning, something about gentleness and not being cruel as he was hurting so much, but the man seemed to be ignoring her. Fingers pressed against his wrist again, and his breath caught in his throat, teeth pressing together in his jaw as new tears sprung from his eyes. The grip held, though he seemed to move the digits a few times in search for Changmin's pulse; eventually, unsatisfied by the continued lack of a heartbeat in the young man's body, he sighed, and stopped applying pressure. Instead, he turned the arm over, much more gentle in his handling now, and traced a circle against Changmin's palm. His fingertip was following a scar that Changmin knew well.
"When I was seventeen," he breathed, answering the unasked question. The girl's footsteps danced around him, and stopped next to the man; her little fingers took the arm, and she too traced along the circle. It was a noticeable scar, if one took the time to look at his hands. The circle itself was an inch and a half tall at least, and clashed with the natural lines that criss-crossed his skin. "It happened at a party, the day after we debuted."
Recalling the memory seemed to make the pain in his body less intense. The two might have taken note to that, because the girl pressed his palm against her cheek and nodded encouragingly.
"Go on. Tell us the story. It's possible we might be here for a while... and it looks like you've got lots of interesting memories to share. You were some kind of singer over there, right?" With his hand on her face, he could feel her movements as she spoke, and what almost felt like a smile. "You obviously want to tell us, otherwise you wouldn't have put the scar there."
Put it there? He opened his mouth to protest. He hadn't been the one to make that scar. There were plenty of others on his body that had been self-inflicted, whether by accident or otherwise, but this was one that had been inflicted on him. It had been this that had made him extremely wary of being around someone who was drunk and jealous, though it really hadn't been the fault of anyone that had been actually allowed at the party. As far as Changmin knew, nobody was sure how the guy had gotten in anyway.
"It's... I didn't hurt myself to get that mark. Someone attacked me with a broken glass..."
The man let slip a derisive sound. "That's not what she meant. Your scars and stuff from over there, they don't transfer over here. Unless they're important to you, attached to important memories and the like. So that one funny scar on your knee from when you fell as a kid probably won't show up, but this one did, so it's obviously something you want to remember."
Here and there. They kept saying that. There were two of him, each in separate locations. Here and there. The copy of him that was 'there'... was dead? Wasn't quite dead yet? His heartbeat was apparently trapped with that one, so it couldn't be fully dead. He wasn't even sure how it was happening.
The girl shifted his hand and pressed her small mouth against his palm, and the scar.
"You poor dear... I guess I can understand why you're confused. It must be terribly difficult for your mind to process the fact that you're here, and not in the Living World anymore. Do you want me to explain it to you? What's happening?" She didn't wait for him to speak, didn't wait for an answer that she already knew. Instead, she lowered the hand back down to whatever it was he was lying on, and leaned close to his ear. "Tell us about your scar, and we'll tell you anything you want to know. Okay? Share a few of your important memories with us while your body adjusts."
I guess I can post more of this here as I write it? I'm going to try and write a hell of a lot over the next few days, to get as much in for NaNo as possible; I doubt I will be able to bang out all 50,000 words before the end of the month, but I will try like hell. ^^;;
Rating: PG- 13, maybe a bit more.
Warnings: Drug use implied, there's swearing? I dunno, it's... not a happy story.
Notes: This is... kinda fic, kinda not? I'm writing this for NaNoWriMo, and I have characters that are original. But it's easier to write this if I 'cast' members in it. XD;; The character Changmin is standing in for is named DaeShim, and he was part of a singing group that broke up. Each went their separate ways - one became a producer, one became a teacher, one stayed in the entertainment business, one is now an office worker with a family. The only one whose life didn't seem to go to plan is DaeShim's. He fell off the map for a while, then resurfaced as a songwriter. While his work is strong in that business, and he's fairly renowned, his private life (and I use the term 'private' loosely, as it's pretty well known) is far less sterling.
This is only part of what I've written; I also have a scene later in the story, but I'm not going to post that until I actually get up to that part. Some people have probably already read all of this. ^^;;
---
The man curled into himself, body pressing against the dirty sheets with an almost palpable need. Fingers curled into them, clinging and tugging them as close as possible, and he held on as if the world would suddenly tip and throw him from the bed. His entire body had given in to spasms, angry shudders that ran up his spine and shook the very breath out of his chest. Eyes fluttered opened and closed, though never fully focused enough to see past the hand that lay clenched inches in front of his face.
Too much. He didn't know where he was, or how he'd gotten here, or even if the soft voices he was hearing were real or simply hallucinations. He didn't even know what he'd had. All he knew was that he'd had too much. His tongue felt as if it had swollen in his mouth, preventing him from calling out to anyone who might be in the vicinity. Not that he needed to; a blurry figure appeared, far past the point where his vision was capable of making out details, and hovered there.
It was wearing something white. One hand chanced his being thrown off the world and let go of the sheet, reaching for the unknown figure. Fingers clumsily worked at air, trying to find that which he thought he was seeing. Was it merely a hallucination? After several wild, yet weak swipes, he was very willing to believe it was, and his arm dropped heavily against the mattress, not even bothering to be drawn back in toward his body.
He was dying. Much more rapidly than he'd ever expected. His entire body felt as if it were shutting down on him, much as he tried to fight against it; soon, his legs were immobile, not even twitching when the shaking wracked him. A rather cold feeling was spreading into his chest, and a sleepy detachment had started filling in the space where consciousness was making its last stand against the impending darkness.
The figure took his now limp hand.
"Go to sleep," a man's voice whispered. The words were twisted, malformed to the young man's ears as his eyes struggled to stay open. The body slowly ceased its jerky, involuntary movements, and a gnarled old hand reached forward to brush the eyelids closed over the glassy brown eyes.
"Go to sleep, Changmin."
--
Everything hurt.
This was the first realisation to hit him; consciousness was coming and going, flowing and ebbing like water against him. Every time he felt its touch, he also felt the sharp stinging of pain. It was impossible to discern where it was coming from as he swung back and forth from the darkness. Each little bit of awareness brought with it a stab to another part of him, and each ache carried over to the next try at consciousness, so that soon his entire body felt as if it were an open wound.
Death should not have been allowed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to hurt. Anguish was not to be allowed after everything else had faded. Dry lips parted, the seal that had held them together slow to yield, and Changmin drew in a deep breath. Breathing... breathing meant that he wasn't dead, didn't it? Did one breathe in the afterlife? Maybe he didn't have to, and it was just out of habit that he'd done so.
Maybe this torture was his penance for the way he'd spent his life. He'd been sentenced to lie here, unable to move or even open his eyes, with agony as his only companion. For who knew how long. Centuries probably, considering his sins.
"It's your own fault, you know. That it's like this."
The voice was both vaguely familiar and yet somehow completely unplaceable. Eyes still cemented shut, Changmin couldn't even search for the source of it, and his ears gave him no hints as to where the speaker might be in relation to his person. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. Somehow, even though it had spoken quietly, the loudness of it sent a shock wave of misery through his head. Were he capable of moving, he would have clamped his hands over his ears to escape further repetition of that.
"Are you wondering if you're dead right now? I can't hear it over the screaming in your head." The voice paused, then plunged on. "You really should stop doing that. Surely it can't hurt that much."
He seemed to be waiting for a response, one that Changmin considered himself well past giving to him. His tongue lay useless in his mouth, more a lead weight than a part of his own body. Apparently this torment wasn't going to be his only companion for the rest of forever. He also had a voice that was making him wish he could cut his own ears off. Surely that would provide less injury than the stabs that ran through his brain at every word. He had to be dead, because surely this level was unreachable while alive. Nobody could feel as if their entire being were a raw nerve.
"You are. Dead, I mean. This very moment. But..." Something touched his arm, fingers pressing into his skin, and it was enough to wake his ability to speak. The throb that emanated from the point of contact forced a scream from him, which in turn caused another stab straight through his head. "You can't even die correctly... Stop screaming. It's not going to help anything. If you'd just separate from your damn body for good already, it wouldn't hurt so much."
"How?" His voice cracked, and the single word came out almost as an indiscernible squeak rather than a question. Did the recently dead always sound like they'd swallowed sand? "M-make it s-stop."
A convulsion ran through him, setting his extremities twitching and pressing tears from his still squeezed closed eyes. The man made a sound of approval even as Changmin let out a choked sob. He was in hell. This was hell. He'd always figured there was an afterlife, but the whole 'heaven' and 'hell' thing had been left out of his assumptions. Apparently he'd been wrong, because this was surely not anything like what he'd previously imagined.
"You're not dying right. You're trying to go back. And you can't go back. That's why it hurts so much. If you don't give up, it won't stop." Changmin's body shook again. "That's a good sign though. You may not be willing to give up, but you're slipping away anyway. That's why you can move a little bit now... and stop being such a fucking idiot. You're not in hell. Hell doesn't exist. I wouldn't be nearly this nice if you were in hell."
There were little footsteps then, and quiet, high-pitched whispers, the words far beyond Changmin's comprehension skills at the moment. A loud thwack, and the man let slip a grunt of annoyance.
More footsteps, and someone was touching his face. Tiny fingertips pressed against his eyelids gently, still managing to send sparks through him; his own hands trembled at his sides, still unable to move much past what the occasional bodily spasm made them do. The touch shifted, and without warning, his left eye was being forcibly opened.
Everything seemed faded, beyond blurry. It was impossible to focus his eyes on anything; every shade of grey seemed to run together, edges watery and swirled into each other as if the world had suddenly turned to paint that had been thrown haphazardly left and right. Even as something leaned into his field of vision and lowered itself until it was less than an inch from the tip of his nose, he was unable to make out any distinct facial features. It had to be a person; he could feel the soft puff of breath against his skin as she examined him.
"I always feel so bad for them when they're like this." The voice sounded young, the pitch high and girly and full of saddened sympathy. Changmin fought to blink, tears now running freely from the propped open eye, and she squeaked. "Oh dear, I'm so sorry."
She let go, and the eye slid shut, turning the grey world black once more.
"Apparently your sight hasn't come in yet... Most of your body's functions seem to be stuck." A small hand pressed against his cheek, giving it what was probably supposed to be a comforting stroke. It sent needles into his skin, however, and Changmin sucked in a sharp breath. "Apparently the other you is fighting really hard to stay there. I do wish there were something we could do to help, but we're not allowed to kill you..."
Considering he was already dead, this made no sense whatsoever to the young man. The hand pulled away from his cheek, and something pressed against his chest, a careful pressure that was light enough to not hurt. Whoever the female was, she was pressing her ear against him, listening intently for a heartbeat that by all rights shouldn't be there.
"Oh it's not," the girl chirped, and the motion against his front led him to believe that she was nodding her head even with her probably odd current stance. "That's why you're hurting so much... your heart hasn't stopped beating over there, so you don't have it here yet. Your body needs it, that's why it's causing you so much pain. Your other body's probably not going through just as much, though I'd venture to guess that your mind separating caused a bit of trauma."
He couldn't decide if it was comforting or not, the fact that he could tell where the girl's voice was coming from. Unlike the man's which had seemed to be everywhere, this girl's was definitely coming from the head pressed against his chest, and when she lifted away from his skin, he could hear the little footfalls that identified to where she was moving. Her lack of ubiquity, and the soft edge of her voice that didn't seem to induce pain quite as badly as the man's did, made her presence far easier for him to handle.
He just wished he knew who they were.
The pain was quickly becoming a constant; he had no idea how long he'd been lying there, unable to move, trying hard to bite back the automatic cries whenever he suddenly felt as if something were stabbing him. It seemed to be getting worse rather than better, though who knew if that was just his mind working against him or not. It seemed to be its lot in life, worsening things that really shouldn't have been as bad as he believed them to be. His thoughts wandered, lingering on vague memories of past events and conversations. Things from when he was alive. Things that he now was beginning to regret, because he would never be able to apologise or make up for them.
"Your memories are really something," the man grumbled, and Changmin realised that the voice was coming from a definite spot now. "You were some kind of big shot for a while, on the other s-" he stopped abruptly and sighed, exasperated. "You know, I'm pretty sure you're an idiot. I'm sitting three feet to your left, which is exactly where I was sitting when you showed up. Not my fault your hearing is slow to adjust."
The creak of a chair, and heavier footsteps than the girl's were approaching him; her soft voice whispered a warning, something about gentleness and not being cruel as he was hurting so much, but the man seemed to be ignoring her. Fingers pressed against his wrist again, and his breath caught in his throat, teeth pressing together in his jaw as new tears sprung from his eyes. The grip held, though he seemed to move the digits a few times in search for Changmin's pulse; eventually, unsatisfied by the continued lack of a heartbeat in the young man's body, he sighed, and stopped applying pressure. Instead, he turned the arm over, much more gentle in his handling now, and traced a circle against Changmin's palm. His fingertip was following a scar that Changmin knew well.
"When I was seventeen," he breathed, answering the unasked question. The girl's footsteps danced around him, and stopped next to the man; her little fingers took the arm, and she too traced along the circle. It was a noticeable scar, if one took the time to look at his hands. The circle itself was an inch and a half tall at least, and clashed with the natural lines that criss-crossed his skin. "It happened at a party, the day after we debuted."
Recalling the memory seemed to make the pain in his body less intense. The two might have taken note to that, because the girl pressed his palm against her cheek and nodded encouragingly.
"Go on. Tell us the story. It's possible we might be here for a while... and it looks like you've got lots of interesting memories to share. You were some kind of singer over there, right?" With his hand on her face, he could feel her movements as she spoke, and what almost felt like a smile. "You obviously want to tell us, otherwise you wouldn't have put the scar there."
Put it there? He opened his mouth to protest. He hadn't been the one to make that scar. There were plenty of others on his body that had been self-inflicted, whether by accident or otherwise, but this was one that had been inflicted on him. It had been this that had made him extremely wary of being around someone who was drunk and jealous, though it really hadn't been the fault of anyone that had been actually allowed at the party. As far as Changmin knew, nobody was sure how the guy had gotten in anyway.
"It's... I didn't hurt myself to get that mark. Someone attacked me with a broken glass..."
The man let slip a derisive sound. "That's not what she meant. Your scars and stuff from over there, they don't transfer over here. Unless they're important to you, attached to important memories and the like. So that one funny scar on your knee from when you fell as a kid probably won't show up, but this one did, so it's obviously something you want to remember."
Here and there. They kept saying that. There were two of him, each in separate locations. Here and there. The copy of him that was 'there'... was dead? Wasn't quite dead yet? His heartbeat was apparently trapped with that one, so it couldn't be fully dead. He wasn't even sure how it was happening.
The girl shifted his hand and pressed her small mouth against his palm, and the scar.
"You poor dear... I guess I can understand why you're confused. It must be terribly difficult for your mind to process the fact that you're here, and not in the Living World anymore. Do you want me to explain it to you? What's happening?" She didn't wait for him to speak, didn't wait for an answer that she already knew. Instead, she lowered the hand back down to whatever it was he was lying on, and leaned close to his ear. "Tell us about your scar, and we'll tell you anything you want to know. Okay? Share a few of your important memories with us while your body adjusts."
I guess I can post more of this here as I write it? I'm going to try and write a hell of a lot over the next few days, to get as much in for NaNo as possible; I doubt I will be able to bang out all 50,000 words before the end of the month, but I will try like hell. ^^;;