(dream o2) move your body when the sunlight dies (week 23, day 2)
Everything here is white or off-white. Shiny, cold, antiseptic; the fluorescent lights make everything glow oddly. Well, it is the waiting room of a hospital. Funny, the way a hospital is making you feel slightly ill. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, your vision swims slightly at the edges - why does this feel familiar, this sick feeling (like a bright white migraine squeezing at the back of your eyes) ?
Occupying the two seats to your left are your parents. This scene seems strangely familiar. Have you done this before? Have you seen this before? You look around and spot some old magazines on the table next to you, but when you flip through them, the pages are all unsettlingly blank.
Your mother turns to you. Don’t worry, she says, in an attempt to comfort, the doctor said there’s no shot. Just something to help with the nightmares. A quick, meaningless smile. Suddenly, memory rushes back - of being six and waking up most nights crying from dreams filled with pain and terror and someone else’s loneliness, until finally - then, this is what this is. You shift uncomfortably in your chair; how are you here again? You’d thought you’d already done this. No one around you seems to realize you’re suddenly eighteen, and you can’t tell if this is some sort of corrupted memory or an actual thing that is going on, some sort of twisting of reality.
Before you can speak up, the door to the offices opens. They’re ready for you now, an orderly says, beckoning to you and your family. You follow, glancing around anxiously - you feel like you keep losing tiny jumps of time. Doors after doors after doors after doors file past (how long is this hallway?) and suddenly you are in a sterile white room, floors polished to a gleam and numerous monitors scattered among the beds and scanning equipment. One of these catches your eye: something that looks like an MRI scanner, a bed attached to some large boxy machine that looks ready to swallow a patient whole. You glance underneath the opening at the flat panels lining the inside; perhaps they light up. For some reason, the faint prickliness you felt in the waiting room has bloomed into full-tilt unease.
Behind you, your parents are speaking with the doctor. There is something familiar about his voice, but you are still eavesdropping under the pretense of fascination with the complex equipment, so you do not turn around. Yes, I am sure it must be very distressing to you, the man says soothingly, and the boy, of course. I can assure you, his health and welfare is in very safe hands. Insomnia can be a very dangerous problem, unchecked, especially during the developmental years.
Your father says something, but the moment you hear the words, they have run through your ears and drained out like water: you can retain none of it. There is something about this machine that makes you feel anxious just to look at, and yet you can’t stop, regarding it with a mixture of wariness and curiosity. You can’t seem to remember many of the fine details of this visit - you were so young at the time - but you have a feeling this has something to do with it. Your mother speaks, and again, the words carry no meaning.
Of course, the doctor says. What is it about his voice that you cannot remember? (Your head hurts.) Smooth, but with something sharp beneath it, like a knife concealed by velvet. Something hungry and masked. Not to be trusted. You know that much. I’m sure he doesn’t blame you. (alarm! this is a worrying sentence!) And we’ll be sure to make the process as painless as possible; after all, this is for his own good. That connection needs to be destroyed - it makes him dangerous.
You whirl around. The doctor - a nondescript man, average height, weight, face - places a comforting hand on your mother’s shoulder. You’ll have your son back when all of this is over, he says soothingly. I keep my word. He looks up, and you make eye contact -
(a moment of blinding pain behind your eyes again, and you feel something stir inside you, reacting to an ancient foe)
- You remember that tone of voice now, that same predator’s hiss building behind Saiou’s teeth. You, you snarl, backing up instinctively and hitting the edge of the bed behind you. The Light of Ruin, why is it here, you must have missed it, you must have let it escape and hide on Earth two years ago or else it couldn’t have come back this quickly -
The Light bares the doctor’s teeth in a grin. Third time’s the charm, it says, and hands clamp onto you from behind you, orderlies and nurses with burnt-out eyes forcing you down onto the bed. You struggle, try to reach your deck, but someone’s already taken it; they’re pinning your arms, strapping you down, the machine is warming up and the panels are beginning to glow with that sick brightness.
No, you scream, writhing against the bonds, no, no, no, you can’t do this - can’t do this again, not this way, not how it is now, you remember fighting Darkness and the fingers that had reached into you and ripped you in half, the pain like having your lungs torn out or your heart crushed in one hand - to forget now - after - no - not ever -
[ Juudai jerks awake on the floor next to his mattress; the sunlight from the uncovered window has been shining into his eyes for some time now. The Hitomi is accidentally kicked a short distance away as he scrambles to get his bearings in the wake of the nightmare; he's not in shot anymore. Aloud, he speaks: ]
- Only a nightmare. [ His breathing is slowing. ] No, it's gone. I know it. [ A pause. Much lower, more difficult to make out: ] It can't hurt us.
[ Another pause. The light shifts: he's standing now, examining the window. Just his head is visible in shot now. ]
I gotta get some curtains.