I closed the door behind me then checked the puppy fallen above my shoes, he was sound asleep. I grabbed it while his head swayed, his body was limp and lifeless.
Of course it was just an ordinary puppet that I move using my ability, from the sound down to the character was all staged. Magic users can do the same for golems but I sometimes question my sanity of playing a split personality.
"Thank you for your hard work" I said in a sad smile. It was a little depressing that the only one sister can call friend is a marionnette controlled by her brother, and her brother only knows how to be alone. She have mom to pass time and chat with and Carl to practice in his company, but I wonder at times if I'm a good big brother for her.
"This nonsense of a noble life". Even if common people does admire you in 'look it's the little Miss', no one will dare to involve with someone in higher statues and form friendships with as it looks unmannered, too risky and the self sabotage stops ordinary families from reciprocating treating us as equals. 'Miss can't play ball with you', 'miss can't go to fields and catch butterflies and criquets with you', 'miss won't play hide and seek', 'this activity is dangerous for miss', 'hey stop bothering little miss... If you can accept my apologies', that's what every parent told their children when they wanted to innocently approach her.
She would have made friends of the noble girls and invited them to parties instead of me, enjoyed time sharing their interests and participated in fitting activities for her gender. That if we weren't outcasted by other greedy nobles, ruling a city surrounded by mountains and little supplies, cause father objected their abuse of power.
I took a glass of cold water from the fridge; I visited first the kitchen since I was thirsty. Sat in the dark, put the puppy above the counter and drank the water slowly. I was humming and taping my fingers.
The strong abuse the weak, the rich despise the poor , the gifted trample on the struggling, that's how the world works. Yes they are exceptions, but don't deny that you don't question how weak poor dumb people exists and the world would be a better place if they weren't present . I'm not saying that regarding people as themselves to perish, but what if for example poverty wasn't a thing! I'm fully aware that the world requires variety of roles, but I can't aknowledge how the roles were distributed by a system for someone to have the facilities for success and the other to be lower than scum. It's strange to be put in an environment and be told to adapt, overcome or proceed in your situation.
"I want to change the system, but I need knowledge and power right!" In a deafening silence I started talking, to myself to drive away the sleepiness, in a teenager dream of wanting to change the obvious as you don't understand how is it obvious. "Knowing the weak points from the inside, basically performing inside the system. To win a game you need to play by its rules, I can change the rules if I know how to win outside it" my mumbling went on chatting with the darkness as my head was tilting.
The lights turned on suddenly, opening my eyes widely by a choking yellow strike.
"Oh, it was you master!"
"haahe!" I was half asleep.
"I came to check the noises when I passed by"
I rubbed my eyes, got up from my seat and grabbed the empty glass "Oh yeah, it's just me". I went to the sink and splashed water on my face. "I was thirsty for water yet I sunk in my thoughts"
"Being alone in the darkness, you should be ware of your demons" he lift a finger stating.
"Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to cause any disturbance, you got an early day tomorrow" I opened the fridge and reached for a bottle.
"That's so considerate but..." he handed me the puppet "Try to also have some rest, it will be different starting tomorrow"
"Of course, I'll try to be in the best shape" I put the puppet under my armpit and grabbed the empty glass. "If you excuse me, I'm going to my room to rest"
"Watch your steps, master" he said when I departed from the kitchen.
I took a turn and the lights already disappeared, but the stairs where reflecting nicely the moon's gleam. I'm glad I'm not obliged to turn on the lumps.
"HHhH" a laugh got out when I oppressed it, it seemed creepy as it echoed by the walls.I couldn't help but get amused of the fact an untouched volume is waiting for me. I rectify, a volume I didn't start. It pisses me off that a ghost read it before me, it flatters me that a pretty ghost liked ones of my stories.
It was the same path I take every night from the water source back to my room so I automatically stoped in front of what I regard as the location of the door. The handle was shining gold thus I easily found it. I rotated it in a click clack but the door didn't open.
"Is it locked!" My hands were full and it will be bothersome to crouch to grab the bottle after if I put it down. "Haaaaa!" this inconvenience was tiresome, why lock the room in the middle of the night? if I was in, why held me captive inside! if I'm out, I will eventually go to sleep! noo!?
I put the puppet in my shoulder to swap it with the bottle, I searched for the keys on my pockets. "Hm, got them!". I was trying to discern the right keys ; I was frustrated when the one I thought was fittest didn't go in the lock so I tried others one by one. I finished my keys and none fit inside.
"Hoooohe, calm down me" I was pissed and wanted to punch the door to wreck it down as I tried all the keys three times already, but I held myself down. Actually any anger birthed from an inconvenience doesn't live up to learn that there is more than six seconds in time.
I put the keys on my mouth to free my right hand, then flicked my fingers in sparks of energy. The flicker brightened briefly the position of the lock, maybe it was side ways cause it's not all the way in!
"What?" I was surprised after I performed another flick to be certain. I snatched the fallen keys midair "This is ridiculous" ironically, there wasn't a lock all along. Forget the lock there isn't even a door to be opened, it's merely the handle hung on a wall.
"Haaaaaaahe" a sight got out deep my chest. I put the keys on my pocket then pinched between my brows in frustration.
I took the bottle to directly drink from it; my mouth felt dry and my chest was hot. One sip was gonna be enough to refresh me, yet the bottle was unexpectedly empty, warm and dry when I lift it above my mouth. What was stranger is the wetness surrounding my mouth and the heaviness of my stomach full of liquid even when I didn't sense drinking a single drop.
I looked to the corridor allowing the darkness to pass, tarnishing it's walls in black and catching me up into it. I was holding no bottle or glass or a puppy laying on my shoulder. My senses were dull as if I were in the depths of the ocean.
"Sight! When did I fell asleep?"
No, really, I'm concerned. Is it in a weird position on the stairs, on a chair in the kitchen, in sister's room, in the library or since evening in my room dreaming about a ghost encounter. What you perceive as reality is another mind play when you feel the character. My mind collapsed somewhere without it realizing, guess that's just the limit of the human capacity to ran of a major need. I lived more than a week without wasting third of my life, life is short after all.
I sat on the ground and leaned on the wall, waiting for it to begin so I can find a way out. This nightmare will go on as long as it takes for me to reach outside the castle or till I die, unfortunately I'm not suicidal.
The two candles floated beside me indicated it's time to get moving. I carried myself up and walked while staring down on my feet, the candles were covered in a shape to merely spot my shoes moving toward the unknown. I can see no path except the small area lighted below me, thus my eyes were drown as moths to the ground.
Not being able to have a visual perception of my body image, I wonder if I have a body at the moment or I'm eyeballs levitating above a pair of shoes. I don't even feel my hands to touch my face and check, but the fact I can hear my footsteps indicates I also have ears connected to a brain. How I image my self turn creepier in every step.
To be frank, I don't remember what happens exactly in this nightmare to know where my walk will take, but I always wake up petrified from it with three instructions embed in my mental scars.
First: don't stop in the candles light, don't move in the dark, reach the exit to remain
Second: Listen to the guide, guide the guide
Third: Don't run on stairs
Forth: No matter what, don't look behind you, don't be loud.
Being counted by order, maybe it's how the nightmare proceeds. The guide, I sure need someone to pull a string leading somewhere in this pitch black labyrinth. Is it an endless corridor since I didn't bump into any death ends!
*Bump* talking about thoughts power inside a dream, just if a door opened to the outside. I should have mentioned an exit, yeah.
I pressed the wall while walking on my place. An exit didn't appear through it, I already used my cheat card on a wall, my dreams doesn't obey my imagination or is it I don't fully grasp what I wanted to be The Outside. It was worth trying but I need to choose a path to carry on my walk, I have to keep moving.
Right or left, once I choose a path there will be no turn-arounds allowed. A fifty percent chance for escape, a fifty percent chance to sink deeper into this abyss.
"This way...Er!? My voice follow it" When I was hesitant, a voice was coming back from the corners, I couldn't tell from wish side it came.
"That's right, my voice is disturbed by the echo so you can't tell, so... If it's the first wall take right, if it's the second take also right, and so on left,right, left...I don't know when you are now" This voice was helpful by assessing the situation I'm in and be as quick in giving important points, maybe it's the rumoured guide as he knew where to go. I wanted to thank him but my voice didn't come out.
I took the turns as he told, right, right, left, right, left and left. Was I right!
"No, that's wasn't where am I. You took an additional turn" No, I wasn't right. But what should I do I can't "You can't go back, I know that...but I don't know the path I didn't take.... it's up to your hench from now on I suppose" that was his last words before leaving me in the silence, confused of what to choose next.
They say if you answered at random you can get a passing grade, that if it was fifty percent. In that reason, I didn't overthink much and followed the popups ringing to a direction.
It was right,left, right, right, and right and proceeded,then right,right,left, right, right and left then went straight again. If my analysis are exact, I covered the corridor where the guide informed as his location, yet I bumped into no one and no one called for me stating 'I'm here'.
The candles suddenly went off and I felt the darkness holding me back from taking additional steps or was it just fear from not being able to close my eyes. In total darkness, I always shut my eyes to not stare into the emptiness as a blind man, yet they remained wide open despite me pinching them. I held my hands to cover my eyes when I felt my face flat;my features were erased. My arms felt suddenly heavy and dropped down.
The dark image rolled in unease making me feel slightly frightened of this loneliness. 'You are not afraid to be alone in the dark, you are afraid of not being alone in the dark' but I like the dark but not being lonely without someone holding on my hand.
I was standing in lack of bright for a longue time now finding company in the *tick, tack* of a clock. I was driven mad by the taping of time in the air waiting for the light to come, I'm sick of this place. The candles didn't seem to light on their own, but how am I gonna fire it up if that's the case without my abilities?
I lift my gaze to the horizon when I spotted a yellow dot marched by black, what I was hearing as a ticktacking was in fact footsteps a few blocks away. Who is that I wonder, isn't there supposed to be walls hiding him as he is not in a linear location in front! That didn't matter at the moment, he have light, candles, so the fire I need to light mine.
"This way" I called for him as I couldn't advance "Er!? My voice follow it" It would have been convenient if I could march towards him, following an illumination is easier. I realized that the voice will be echoed on the walls, it will be disorienting to know where it came from, "That's right, my voice is disturbed by the echo so you can't tell, so...". So what? I don't know how to guide him, I don't know what path he took, but "If it's the first wall take right, if it's the second take also right, and so on left,right, left...I don't know when you are now" got out from me without me saying it. No wonder I recognized the voice from earlier, it was mine.
I instinctively realized that in my dream, there are none than I roaming around before even regaining memory of the past encounters I was in so far. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy, then who am I?
He took the additional turn and I informed him, the candles went on thus I couldn't talk more and quit the corridor.
Again and again and again, I kept following my voice then guiding myself. Turn after turn after turn, a way out wasn't found, that was expected as I pursued his words without any hesitation. A fool chasing his voice, blindly trusting himself when it was it fabricating ephialtes to trap him in. If I guide I, and I guide I, who was the first him?
I lost track of how many conversations I had. Go there, stop there, from here, carry on... I've heard-used all the sentences I know for leading a path. And so, I'm the one above the light at the moment.
"Hey, this way" My voice, I begun to hate it. "Here from the right" I didn't walk, I stayed put on my place as I'm tired from orders and supervisory. "hey, hey!" he raised his voice as I didn't budge. "What are you doing, the lights will cut off" that was his last shout before I heard a scream of him being taken out.Who was the one attacking him? I didn't know as it was a first, but I was petrified.
I wanted to dash and flee somewhere when a point traced a light line beside me in a galloping sprint. Then the line disappeared and a scream rose again, the person running was put off brutally. The occurance deterred me from carrying on my action, it would have been me who vanished.
The darkness caught up again, devouring me inside it, and faint lights scattered around me swayed as fireflies. They were disoriented as dust particles rambling in wind and sun, buzzing in an uproar that I couldn't catch on their speech. I couldn't help it but to be tempted to walk and catch one.
"Aren't you I?" shook me clearly by its hysterical furiousness tearing my drums. The fireflies were snatched and got their bulbes thorn off from their guts, that's what a loud shriek indicated. Stars died in a moment leaving a cold space inhabited by a lonely man.
In the calm gloom I kept advancing before the quiteness fall by my trip. I reflexively looked back at what stumbled my foot and made my entire being jump down.
My body shivered as a blue light stood up, there was a cimeterre decorated by burning flower shaped candles. The graves sprouting from the white ash had it's names scribbled in different unknown characters and the time span engraved on them indicated the deceased were all one year olds.
A cruel fate for infants, that was my sympathy before my eyes were drawn to 'Arata Freya' on the stone in the far back.
I approached to be certain; it was really my name held by a one year life span under it. From lawleight 267 to barieight 268th, basically to this month.
My head hurt by a sharp pain as if hundred knifes were thrusted then drilled in my mind. The blue light thickened and flashed my eyes before it was switched off; the candles instantly melted. I realized at that moment that I broke three rules already as I changed my direction from the path.
Despite the pain, I shook my head violently to face the right way, and there it is. So strange to call him a demon, too evil to call him an angel, and too relaxing to call him a demon. Thus, a bright shadow swaying in front of me! Yes I know, shadows aren't bright, but how come I can see him in total obscurity! Shining in darkness, I couldn't find the exact terms to describe him at the moment. My mind froze it's internal speech leaving the mike to my heart racing.
He was approaching slowly, no footsteps and no sound, as a man who left his silhouette behind. I didn't back off, I wasn't paralyzed by fear but I was hypnotized in a calm nostalgia.
He landed on the ground. I didn't try to run away, cause how can a one escape himself. Yet he was strange than the ones I encountered earlier, I couldn't see this self reflected in his.
"Who are you?" I muttered letting out my suspicions.
He dashed and strangled me to a wall, he was lifting me from the neck by one arm. I was choking, I had no energy to fight him back.
Fire birthed on the wall facing me, displaying two corpses drenched in their bloods. The fuse burned as to bomb my expressions and shake my core by their familiar appearences; they were father and mother pinned crucified and grabbing a deformed goatish head between them.
It's just a dream, It's just a dream. That's what I repeated in my consciousness as he was seating me on the premium stadium.
He grabbed my chin,"Me!...I'm him?", he replied in deep voice before dislocating my head from its seat of a hung body.
"Haaaaaaaa" I jumped out my sleep by a scream followed in polypnea.
The surrounding was spotted by faint moonlight, the bedsheets sheets were foreign; This is not my room. I put my hand on my forehead in dizziness "That why I don't like to sleep"
"Did you have a nightmare?" someone said beside me.
I turned slowly to my side in wide eyes. There was the shadow caressing my hand and consoling me in lime stares.
I escaped the bed and fell to the ground. "Am I still dreaming!?". I felt my hand stamping on something viscous on the floor. I checked my palm and it was tarnished by a red liquid.
I looked behind me, "Aaaaaaaaahh!", it was father and mother slaughtered. They had eyeless faces embedded in their chests while they were grabbing their hearts where the heads are meant to be. "Yes it is a dream, it is a dream, it is dream" I backed off to the side rail, folded on my knees and was whining. "It must be.. I should wake up..hik! I should wake up".
He stood above me suddenly, pulled my hand and put a knife in it. I was staring at him confused and frightened. "I'm afraid it's reality" he declared.
I held onto the knife. That's right, you can wake up if you died inside a dream, but am I supposed to kill my self!
I mustered the courage and cut off my wrist, slighting my throat was extreme. I felt a scroching pain and I pressed on my injury to stop the bleeding. Pain! That is impossible.
"Told you it's reality" he added when I was quivering.
"Aaaagh! Ah!" My face was a mess. "Did you do that?"
"No. But I didn't stop it either"
I grabbed the knife and tackled him down. "You bastard" my eyes were flowing in tears, I masked my sadness with anger.
"Don't you think there is someone you need to check on instead of this? We all know you can't harm anyone, you'll just waste precious time" he was mocking me.
"Leila!.." I realized. "what did you do to her?" I hollered to his shapeless face and pressed the knife on his neck.
"As I said, I didn't do anything and you are just wasting her precious time" he held his hands like surrounding.
"Raaaaagh" I freed him frustrated and hurried towards sisters room. I didn't have time to lamente my parents who were killed in their room by a psychotique maniac, I need to save her.
I was running as fast as I could after tearing my clothes to bandage my cut wrist. "Sister! Sister!" I was praying desperately to make it in time.
I got to the stairs at full speed, they were taller to be skipped over. I went down normally and hastily, but I tripped on the first two steps down. This is annoying.
Ridiculously I was falling towards a spear shaped corner of the newel . I tried to use my witchcraft to round its sharpness, however I felt my abilities sealed.
A faint smile was drawn on my face by ironical realisation. "I always regarded myself as a prodigy". The pointy end pierced into my throat and went up my head using my weight force.
That was how Arata Freya quit the scene to his grave.