(no subject)
ARGH I’m making this fic into a horror fic!O_O should start reading Clive Barker’s books again…|||||
PS:In this chapter Kirito reminds me of the master vampire in The Addition moive…ha.
PSS: the Shinya here is DEG Shinya.
Dark Blood
Part 2
Suspicious noises had wakened me from my sleep at the night when my mother met her end.
It was already few weeks after I witnessed my mother with her mysterious lover together, but this time it wasn’t sound of sobbing or murmuring that had wakened me.
It was a shape piercing noise of a male’s cry. It sounded like a cry to me, but it might well be a bead of crazy laughers…I couldn’t decide which…
At first all I wanted to do was to sink back to the sheets and ignore the noise, but as this fearsome laughers grew louder it was impossible to ignore and I was began to worry about my mother, for I couldn’t hear her voice at all.
So bringing what whatever courage I had had, I slipped out of my bedroom and made the way downstairs. The rooms were gloomy and there was no one in the empty plain living room, all I could see was the dim light coming out from the half opened door of my mother’s room.
And these ominous laughers continued, behind the half closed door. Still mother had made no noise, she was silent.
I recognized the voice; I knew he was here, in my mother’s room.
And this knowledge put me into mortal fear.
What was he doing here? What had he done with mother this time? Why was he laughing like this? Why I couldn’t hear her? Did anything bad happen to her?
I took a few soundless steps forward, to peer into the room.
The scene I found beyond the doorframe was absolutely stunning.
My mother, abnormally pale and still laying in her mysterious lover’s arms, the man himself was sitting on her messy bed, holding her lifeless body, his head bending forward, his face hidden beneath his dark hair.
What captured my eyes immediately were the tiny twin holes on her fragile neck. Tiny drops of blood still stained near the wounds. The crimson color of blood staining her dress, and there were also bloodstains upon the sleeves of the white shirt which the man was wearing.
I could not explain why, but at this moment I knew, I had come to understand that my mother was dead, no more.
I just stood there, unable to react as the realization hit me, while the man suddenly uttered out a sentence, a question.
“Why, why, why you never told me the truth, Heather?”
I understood that he was accusing my mother for something, something she did, but I never knew what he had referred to by accusing my mother for “not telling him the truth”, what kind of truth or secret could a powerless sad woman who could barely protect herself, could possibly be keeping from a vampire?
Suddenly he was shaking her body violently now, as if he could still shove some reply or answer out of her. “Why, you keep it from me, Heather!? Why!!?”
It was too much, seeing him shoving my mother so roughly, so full of anger…I felt dangerous, but at the same time I wanted him to stop, to stop treating my mother like this, even though she now was clearly beyond feeling any pain …
Then unexpectedly, the man had turned his eyes on me, I was almost nailed to the floor under his gaze. I could not even cry out, I watched in horror as the man watched me closely, maybe it was just for a brief moment, but to me it felt like an eternity, before I saw his lips, bloodstains still upon them, moving to form words.
”Don’t be so upset, Aiji.”
I could feel the hairs on the back of my arms rising. No one would ever know how horrifying it was to have a man, who obviously had just killed your own mother, to utter your own very name so calmly and almost tenderly! “It was what your mother had wanted from me.”
Then he gently put my mother down to the bed, stood up and moved toward the door, toward me.
Before I realized it I was running like hell, away from the doorframe, out to the corridor and unlocking the locks of the front door almost mindlessly. Fear swollen uncontrollable inside of me, driving me to run out of my mother’s house, into the empty street beneath the moonless night sky.
Hours later at dawn some policemen had caught me at the corner of some ally, chilled down to the core by the nightly fog. They tried to return me home, thinking I was a runaway; I was still too shocked and scared to offer them any information and I could hardly speak in my deeply disturbed mental state and my confusion. It was only later the same day they had found out who I was and what happened to my mother. They judged that my mother was dead of a heart attack, which was probably causing by her alcoholic abuse. The tiny twin wounds on her neck, which I had witnessed so clearly that night, had long been mysteriously disappeared when they examined her body for good.
***
When you were small and ignored of the world, you took whatever things in your daily life for granted, viewing them as the one and only way of living, for you’d never had the chance to experience another ways of life. However at the life when the vampire brought me to the Night City, suddenly the wide unpredictable sea of possibilities stretched open before me, and I was almost too unprepared to handle what happened, while being completely bewildered by this strangely magnificent palace of macabre and its residents at the same time.
No one could clearly describe what the entire Night City was like, not even the “residents” who had spent their lives there warding within those maze-like blocks and allies. Even the residents could at best describe to you*parts* of the Night City they knew or understand. On surface level, Night City was a no-man land in the middle of the city central area, surrounding by the modern skyscrapers from every possible angles until the entire Night City was shadowed under them twenty four hours a day, untouched by sunlight. Decades ago the run-down old community which would become Night City was doomed to be torn down in order to make way for more fancy skyscrapers as well. But the plan soon back fire so there left a little square of old, unwanted buildings surrounding by skyscrapers, cutting off by overhead bridges, like an isolated small island, or a sanctuary in the middle of the cement forest. A zero ground which no one would dare to go near even in brand day light.
Or rather, like a maze that the Night City had grown into being, a maze for the unfits, the freaks,the homeless, outlaws or any kind of desperate people who had nowhere else to go to go there to hide. And like I’d mentioned before, this place also became the home of the night creatures, the hidden residents within the city.
The kind of creatures like Kirito and his race or the others like them, to be certain with.
And these “residents” had taken what the former builders and urban planers left behind. Unseen and unnoticed by the outside world, hidden away by the darkness in the area, one by one they occupied the ran-down buildings or the half-finished constructions in the abandoned community, and chaotically shaped the place according to their different tastes and special needs or interests. Now most of the buildings within Night City seemed to be thrown together by a child playing with his toy blocks, with no apparent norms of any sort for his creation. The result of it was a maze-like city, a city that could never be touched by natural sunlight. It was a maze from the normal ground-floor to the underground, for some of the residents even dug tunnels, countless of tunnels and secret allies beneath the ground in order to completely avoid any sort of light.
“So here we are, kiddo.” It was his sound that woke me from my nap. I rubbed the sleepiness off of my eyes, looking outside of the car and saw the gloom blur outlines of Night City in the dark for the first time. I did not remember falling asleep on the way leaving the urban area, but when I looked outside there was still only darkness to greet me, I still could tell by the deep dark blue color of the night sky that it was again sometime pasted midnight. It was when we reached to the destination of this journey, he brought me to entrance of the Night City, of course I didn’t know its name by then, nor did I found out it was a the home of countless of night creatures.
The “entrance” of the Night City located at the end of a dark narrow ally between two skyscrapers, barely visible from the outside.
We stood in front of the steel gate with faded dirty graffiti painted random upon it, nobody would ever guess what was hidden behind this gate, but to those who knew the truth, it was unmistakably the gateway to all the nightmarish delights and horror you could imagine.
I saw the vampire pushing the steel gate slightly open, enough for one person to pass through, he stepped inside without turning back, but I didn’t move, I merely stood where I was and watched him walking away.
He turned back eventually, probably noticing that I had not followed, I couldn’t see clearly of his expression for his eyes were hidden beneath his sunglasses. But I could tell he was now studying me with a small smile of curious amazement.
“What’s it now, kid? Not going to follow?” he asked.
“What do you want from me?” I didn’t answer his question, nor did I moved, instead I quietly uttered the doubt that had always been in my mind since he brought me here.
“That’s it? That’s what you want to know?” a beads of soft cold laughers. “Well, *you* came to me, *you* followed me here. You will have to find the answer to this question yourself.”
Then without waiting for any response from me he turned his back again, making his way further down the ally behind the gate, slowing fading into the shadow. It was when I did move, walking quickly pass the gate and following him.
By now you might be asking the question, the reason why did I choose to follow the vampire who had killed my mother? I had no answer, I was asking myself the same question as well, and the answer would not be clear to me for a very long time.
maybe it is because I want to know. a strange unfamiliar voice in my heart, an answer to my question and doubts, but to know what? Did I want to know about him?
What did I want to know about him? What good could it make even if I knew? What could I do after I found out? To seek for revenge? To kill him? Would I ever be strong and smart enough to do it?
Deep down in my heart I understood revenge was out of the question right now, for I still too weak and powerless against the like of a vampire, but as long as I survive that would still be chance in the future. As I moving down the strange and murky corridors of the Night City, I vowed to myself that I would be strong; I didn’t want to be powerless like my mother. But the first thing I have to know was: from now on I must learn how to control my own fear, never letting it to overpower me again.
***
After passing through several of allies (I was soon losing count of them), he eventually brought me to the front door of an ordinary-looking apartment building and went upstairs to one of the many rooms on the top floor, I soon noticed the abnormal orientation of the room numbers upon each doorframes, for example Rm.D865 was right next to Rm.23, and Rm. 450A opposite of Rm. 901, etc. He knocked on the door with the number Rm. 304. The one who answered the door was a slim quiet-looking young man who seemed to be five or fours years older than me. This auburn haired young man didn’t look any bit surprised to see Kirito on his doorstep, but soon he noticed me standing behind and soon he was studying me with curious eyes.
“What’s up this time, Kirito?” the auburn haired asked calmly.
“Oh, Shinya I had someone to introduce to you…” before I could do anything the raven haired got a hold on my shoulder and pushed me follow to the young man whom he called Shinya.
“This kiddo here is Aiji, and I want him to stay in your place for a while. Isn’t it okay for you?” With that the vampire who took me from my mother’s house had introduced me to the only friend I had had for the upcoming years.
“You know I won’t say no to you, Kirito.” Shinya murmured, looking at him with a small frown then lowering his sight to look at me. “I don’t know what trick is up your sleeve this time but I’m pretty certain a child like him should be kept away from you....”
I heard the raven haired giggle. I looked up just in time to see the vampire staring down at me. ” So from now on Shinya-san would look after you.”
Then the raven haired let go of me and Shinya awkwardly offering his hand to me. At first I was a bit frightened by Shinya, for suspecting that he might be one of the raven haired man’s race, another blood drinking creature. But when the auburn head took my hand and led me into his house, I found that his hand was humanly warm under my touch. When I looked up to meet the other boy’s eyes I saw the same sign of relief, which I was sure mirroring in my own eyes. For both of us had made sure that it was nothing but an ordinary mortal whom we were facing, the other of our kind, not some fearsome creatures lurking in the shadow.
Oh, if only I could keep the old adage that “you can never judge a book by its cover” in mind then.
TBC…
The relationship between Kirito and Shinya is still too blurrly…should do something about it in the next chapter. X_x
PS:I was picturing the late Kowloon Walled City when I describing Night City here.
Note: when describing the nature of the fictional Night City, I made used of the information I’d collected about the already-disappeared yet well known landmark in HK: Kwoloon Walled City. Quite a number of precious pictures in the below web.^^
http://www.twenty4.co.uk/on-line/issue001/project02/KWC/
a brief introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City
Part 3>>
How could I describe the auburn haired who eventually became my one and only best friend to you? Shinya wasn’t the kind to talk about himself all the time nor would he express his feelings and thoughts to the others easily, yet I slowly built up my understanding on his personality during the time I spent with him. Generally he was caring and gentle in nature, unlike many of the “residents” in Night City, he never meant to bring anyone into harm, never intend to be malicious. But yet Shinya was complicated and he had his many secrets to keep.
Shinya lived in a rather large apartment room at the top floor of one of the nameless buildings in one small quiet ally in the Night City, in Rm. 304. Normally he led a life of solitary but he didn’t mind having a live-in roommate. The auburn haired had quickly cleared up a spare room for me to stay and being considerate, he even bother himself to take me out shopping for the supplies I might need. In return for his kindness, soon as I settled in I picked up the task to do as much domestic work as I could for Shinya, for there wasn’t much else I was able to do for my host and I certainly didn’t want him to view me as a parasite.
Beside this, whenever he had time, Shinya would teach me all the things I needed in order to survive in the Night City little by little. The lesson was started at the following day, when I accompanied the auburn head to a small store nearby- I could not tell you exactly what time was it because I could hardly tell the difference of daytime and nighttime because darkness had always been surrounding the place- and it was when I began to ask him the questions I’d bear in mind since I arrived to this unfamiliar place…
“Shinya-san…I wanted to ask you something…”
“Yes?” the older man was carrying a full shopping bags in his arms, the same as I did, Shinya had just done shopping and was about to leave the store.
“Where are we now?”
“oh he didn’t tell you?” he sat down beside me. ”We’re in the place which people called as the Night City. Nearly forget you’re new to this place and there’re so many things I should remind you…”
“The Night City? I never heard people in town talking about this place before! Never ever knew there’s a place like this right inside the city center!” nor did I read the name in any city-maps of any sort.
“Because they don’t know the Night City is here and don’t look where to look for it, to tell the truth most of them are scared to look for what is unknown and unfamiliar to them.”
For the first time I saw a smile on Shinya’s lips. “ but to the people-the small account of people who know the truth and the ‘residents’ who live within the City, the Night City is always there.”
“But who are these residents? The people who live there, who are they actually?” and who are you Shinya? I never uttered the last question though.
“They’re the residents, it’s how they call themselves. They’re just…everywhere within the City. I know you haven’t encountered many of them yet probably expect me and Kirito and some other few people on the street because you’re new here. But soon you’ll learn more about them as you settling in I’m sure…”
“Are you a resident here too, Shinya-san?”
“…” Shinya paused before answering this question. “Yes…”
before I could ask any further, Shinya was changing the subject.
“As you might notice already, the Night City was different from any other place outside…there’s no road sign or signpost on the streets, no postman to deliver any letter, nor did there’s any newsboy or milkman to knock on the door, nor did there’s policeman to patrol either.”
Yes I did notice those things that Shinya was mentioning, though I still haven’t fully understood what this lack of these things might entail. I waited for the older one to continue this introduction.
“No tax, no license of any sort exists here either, and the list can go on and on…but in short, there’s no authority which you knew or recognized in the outside world that ever exists within the region of the Night City, and officially no one or authority ever claims the ownership of the City. So far, can you follow me?”
I nodded in response. I was still too young to understand the word “anarchy” but I was began to understand what Shinya was trying to explain.
“So basically you’re saying that we are in a region where people could do whatever they want, without any sort of government or force to control over what happens within the region. Am I right Shinya-san?” I shivered upon speaking, for suddenly I realized what kind of potential danger of being in such archaic place might entail.
Shinya had to think it over before he could reply. “You might be right…because there is an adage in this area:there are only residents and preys within this Night City...”
Then seemingly noticed my discomfort he took my hand and explained. “But don’t be so worry like this! It’s not half as dangerous as you might imagine to live here. As long as you keep some rules in mind and make sure to avoid some traps then you will be okay.”
Next the auburn head began to give me the reminder of the things I needed to be noticing for my own sake. He told me of the basic surviving rules of the Night City, the certain dangerous places I should avoid going in certain times; and the certain types of people who were harmless as long as you didn’t get in their way, etc.
When he was finished, after he finished reminding me of the several kinds of “residents” whom I should avoid at any cost, especially those who were not human, hours had already been passed and I asked the question I’d been burying in my heart.
“Is Kirito dangerous to me?” I went straight to the point steadily. ” to us?”
This time Shinya only blinking at me blankly, he was unable to answer.
“Look Shinya, I knew exactly what he is, you don’t have to cover him up or anything. I only want you to tell me the truth, onegai?”
“Well, if you asked my opinion Aiji, all I could tell you is that Kirito had killed people, many people in order to stay alive. He never mind doing such thing…it was true enough he was dangerous now and then…but still…I think I still trust him.”
“Why?”
“Because he was my friend now and he once saved my life.”
Whenever I asked Shinya’s own relationship with the raven haired vampire afterward, his explanation was simply as this: “He saved my life once.” And never went into the detail.
Then I told Shinya the entire story, the first and only time I’d told it to another living soul about what happened to my mother, but how strange it was for me to describe the whole thing without feeling anything, I remained calm and aloof as if I was telling a story that happened to someone else, not to me. Shinya seemed to be startled to learn Kirito was the one who ended my mother’s life, but later he explained to me that it surprised him even further to know that Kirito didn’t kill me, even though I’d witnessed his kill. Such thing wasn’t normal, for he knew that vampires had always been wiping off witnesses in order to keep their secret, regardless the witness was a child.
Finally Shinya shook his head after my story went to an end, confused. “But…Kirito really did say he would not hurt you, sure?”
I thought to myself for a while, reaching through my memory before I nodded. Yes, he had said that.
“Then you don’t have to worry too much. If he said he won’t hurt you, then he won’t. I’m sure?”
But why? Why did he spare me?
It was the other enigma that I didn’t have any answer to, but which would not stop returning to my mind during the years to come.
Then Shinya asked me about my mother. “Are you upset about this, Aiji-san? about losing your mother…?”
it was a question that difficult to answer.
“I’m not sure.” I offered him a bitter smile. “I loved her, that was sure enough for me. But I think I’ve always known I’d lost her one way or the other. I can’t even shed a tear, not when I saw her dead, not during the funeral, not even now…you must think it’s unnatural do you? That I’m bad and cold hearted?”
Yes, I knew how abnormal my speech had sounded, but somehow my own emotions became so strange even to me since *that night*. They seemed to be sealed inside, locked away from me, too far away from my waking self to reach. I was no longer able to touch nor understand them anymore. It felt like something in me was missing after my mother’s death. Like when I ran out of the door, I’d accidentally left part of myself behind…or it was like something in my being had just *changed* while I wandering in the cold dark corridors of the city almost mindlessly…But how could a ten years old child put all these thoughts in words and explain all these complexities to another person? It was beyond my ability.
“Don’t worry. You don’t have to think you are abnormal because you can’t cry for your mother…or for anything else. In this place, the measure for normality never bothers us as much as it does in the *outside*. Soon you’ll know what I mean.”
“Understand what?”
“You’re in another world now, so the rules of normal society aren’t approval here anymore”
tbc…
hehehe…you might start wondering about Shinya…about what he is already…all I can say is he’d be a lot of fun to write! The drunk, greedy vampires Hyde and Gackt will be there in the next chapter if luck is with me.XD