I have not been having a good week at all. . .

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  I m F e E l I n G f I n E

   …A Homicidal Fairytale…

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    The next day was a Thursday. The next after was a Friday, but it wasn't like it mattered much to Kagome. Night after night for the past two days she couldn't sleep. Not even for forty winks could she sleep empty-minded like she had been used to before that awful dream.

    Many times she figured there was nothing to be worried about. Nothing in the world could matter, and she could almost hear a snarl in the back of her mind—urging—just urging for her to sleep. Just for a little while. But as she sat in the clean canteen of the mental ward, her mind told her otherwise. Telling little lies to her heart that if she were to sleep something dreadful would happen. A nightmare realm to visit, just as the carnivorous Kirara had told her.

   She didn't know what to expect anymore.

   For such a while now, for what seemed a million ages, she had not been able to see light of day—not for a minute. The silver screen told more lies than her mind did about the outside world; how terrible it is. How much sin is lurking in every corner, every psyche out there was possessed by some inner demon.

   Kagome did not like that doctor abusing her when she awoke. Kagome would not put up with such abuse, even if she was granted a crazy lunatic.

   Which she fully knew she wasn't.

   Kagome sighed, and put down her spoon that she had been naively swiveling around in the bowl of tomato broth. The clock on the plastered white wall read a little past ten at night. Another night to keep up to. Kagome made her way to the bulky coffee machine and carefully spouted caffeine enriched coffee into a foam cup and sipped it slowly. The man at the vendor behind the counter eyed her carefully as she made no mind of his presence. He made his way around the counter and shut down the dining hall for the night.

   The young and tired girl crept into her room, placing the hot coffee on a table stand near her untidy bed without a sound. Knowing she wasn't being watched this late at night, Kagome changed into her white washed nightgown and slipped her way under the covers leaving her clothes lying around.

   Hours passed by until it was finally near one o' clock at night. Her coffee was now all gone with just a few drops left to stay away for mere minutes. She was a mess. Again.

   Just like every night, her wire black hair was messed up and wet from the sweat that cascaded from her scalp. Her russet eyes were widened from the affect of the coffee and her pupils were smaller than a pea.

    Then she felt it.

   Tapping and tearing claws scratched the back of her mind as if trying to dislocated her brain from the back of her skull.

   She automatically knew who it was.

   "Fifty nine hours and all I get is this?! Disobedience and coffee by the gallon?! You're coming with me now, girl, even if I have to force you!"

   Kirara's voice echoed in her mind. Kagome's fists clenched the sheets of her bed as her breathing labored. His words dripped with toxin as they ricocheted throughout her psyche, compulsively closing her eyes to obstruct out the owner to the core of the voice…  

    Only to find that she could not reopen them again.

 × • · × • · × • ·

    "That's it, keep moving!"

    A factory was what it was. Just a gigantic power plant on a black meadow of miasma and dust, hidden deep within a mountain where lightning struck down to a towering rod held up, almost touching the twisting crimson and wine skies above. The unit seemed to go on for miles and miles, with yells and hollers and commands being barked left and right to indignant juvenile women and children. Thousands, millions, or maybe billions of women and children who were kept in manacles, anchoring shafts and cranes to keep the whole tower operating in a synchronized movement. Men with rippling muscles and those of hideous well being jumped from level to level, higher and higher from perches of broken metal staircases controlled t hose women to keep the whole unit in motion. The task was most often completed by force.  

    "Keep moving-on the double! This isn't fucking Denny's! We ain't takin' breaks, are we? Then get back to work!"

    The whole place seemed like one colossal clock watch. It never stopped. It never took a break. It always sat there, ticking slowly, working its ways. It always had the time of day. When one person stopped working, the whole pattern was ruined. Nowadays, everyone knew better than to disobey a command. They were owned. 

     No one had a split chance in hell to notice the girl and grinning cat from the 5th floor above their heads.

    "This is horrible!" Kagome shouted in abrupt total disgust. "It's nothing but a-a-slave factory!"

    "Yes..." The cat grinned, as it shook its spine rattled in bizarre excitement making his rusty golden earring in his right ear shake along with it. "Yes, I know."

     Kagome had never met such a satanic, nasty creature in her lifetime. She frowned in completely palpable antipathy and shivered. For a factory in complete Black Mountains, it was simply too cold to stand. The knees of the women and children below shook and egged to go on. Sympathy washed over every fiber of her being, and her dark chocolate eyes softened into a milky fashion.

     This is what they go through in their minds…? Women of all ages and races were in one cluster, fighting for inner dominance. The dominance for not only their dignity and poise… but for their spiritual rights. The spiritual auras within the young girls were considerably lower than any average belief. For they seem to not have a mind all their own. Just a bunch of soiled and soulless children, out there with nothing to dream of but lurid nightmares galore.

    And here she was… So stuck in her past… But. Despite the sympathy she felt for those women down there, none of it compared to the pain she felt that would last her a lifetime in grief. Her eyes turned back into their dark posture, the milkyness was nearly gone as quick as it had shown.

    Kagome spied to her right side and noticed the cat, that vile cat Kirara, lazing upwards with its back straightened in an etiquette posture with it's two tails swaying around rhythmically like a tainted love song. For a creature with bloodstains on it's teeth, it sure knew good manners when he showed them.  

    Kirara seemed to notice her edgy staring and slowly turned his head to her without budging his body an inch. His golden eyes narrowed, as he looked her up and down. Just that simple movement made Kagome shudder. Was this cat checking her out? Pervert!

     "Just what do you think you're doing?" Kagome hissed. The feline just closed his eyes. Just what was he doing? Kagome thought with a disgusted frown. Kirara snorted, shooing a small puff of dust from his dry nostrils and reopened his eyes to inspect Kagome over again.

      Kagome was appalled that she had been ignoring him, after all she put up with his, 'I-own-you-and-there-is-nothing-you-can-do-about-it' garbage and now he was looking over again.

     "Hey! Are you even listening to me? I ask you what you were—" Kagome stopped short of her sentence. She felt oddly warm. Kirara was conveying a façade of rage, as his ribs rattled like there was a time bomb inside he needed to get out. Kagome looked down at her body and gasped.

     Upon her she wore a deep cobalt dress. Over the dress was a clean white apron that went over her shoulders and tied at the small of her back tightly. There were two small pockets on the apron, both completely empty. Sewn into the right was the symbol for Neptune, on the left, a symbol for Jupiter. Around her neck she wore a cross on a low chain. It was her father's… Her father was an erudite Christian and where he lived, so her mother said, no one accepted him. It was this cross that she believed was the key for his killing, but she could have been mistaken. She barely knew him, after all.

     Adding to the oddity of the attire, she wore black stalkings that ended at the upper thighs. On her feet were black buckle boots that ended just below the knee. Her black and sweaty hair was evenly combed and straightened, without one snarl or knot inside the jungle of ebony it once was. The straight hair gave it a slick and creepy appearance that beautifully framed her pale face.

     She tried to reach up and grab a clump of her dark lock, but couldn't. In her hand, there was a knife. Brandished and slick clean. Testing its lightweight in disbelief, she peered at her reflection on the blade. A blue electrical charged empowered the knife, and in the reflection appeared sickeningly intense crystal cerulean eyes. Suddenly, the whole handle grew colder than ice. What in the blue hell did that damn cat expect her to do with a neurotic instrument like this?!

    Kagome dropped the knife as if it had burnt her to the bone. It fell to the metal diamond-shaped footpath they were sitting upon with a shrill clatter. As it stilled to a twinge, so did everything else. The once thunderous factory was silent to a halt.

    Frantically, Kagome's dark brown eyes flitted around, her pupils dilating to the size no smaller than a pinhead.

    Kirara had left her alone.

× • · × • · × • ·

    "You there, girl! Why are you not at work with all the other low-lifes?" Shouted a man a head of her.

      He was suited to look like he was in combat. He wore a silk black undershirt with a see-through over shirt decorated in a picture that camouflaged an exact photo of the scarlet and amethyst skies beyond that came down to his mid-thighs. The picture on the outer shirt was moving, to Kagome's great wonder and shock. Loose chinos, he wore, that were long enough to cover his feet, hiding his scuffed army boots from vision. The chinos, like the loose outer shirt on him, had also the same affect with moving skies. Each step the man took, he became more and more annoyed. His frown said so.

    Kagome intentionally gulped and found herself crawling backwards like a crab as he closed in on her. The only sound made was the jingling of his boots and ruffling of clothing. All else was dead silent. 

    Suddenly the man stood halt under the essence of luminosity glowing brightly from a battered skylight from above. The man had sparkling white air, completely unreal. It could not be seen if it was natural because of the man's top hat covering the roots. The girl was suspicious at that.

    On his back, there was a sheath. A sheath not fit for a sword, but one fit right for a massive weapon such as a sickle. In the broken light, Kagome found, that a sickle was just what it was glimmering with silver and rose red blood at his feet. A fingerless glove on his left hand indicated that the weapon was not ordinary to be wielded by an expert hand.

    Nothing here was ordinary…

    The skin on the man's body was tanned that had rare and shining trinkets or bracelets running up and down his robust arms. He was not too bulky, but he was not skinny. From close up, he had the power and splendor of a thousand knights in shining armor. Kagome slowly lifted her head as her beguiled russet eyes met a duo of strict gold ones.

     "I asked you, bitch, what exactly do you think you're doing lazing around on your ass and not working like everyone else?"

      The man stomped one foot forward. With one fluid swipe of his hand, the lethally mass sickle was withdrawn from its sheath and the blade tip whirred to end just at the tip of her nose. Kagome was shaking in fear, she could tell the man knew it, for he was just smirking in his own world of delight with the impact of death two centimeters directly in front of her nose.

     "And where did you get those clothes?" The silver-haired man asked, a fine brow rising in suspicion as Kagome shifted uncomfortably. He was not the only one who wanted to find that out. 

     "Take them off." He spoke again. Kagome gasped and her eye twitched dangerously. A new adrenaline was coursing through her veins. She didn't care about the massive weapon in front of her face. She did not care if this was going to do something to her mental stability. She did not care if she was going to regret her actions. Besides, who ever heard of dying in your dreams and dying in reality in the first place?

     Some would be amazed.

     Kagome slammed a fierce fist into the blade's surface, catching the man off guard. She made a swift grab for the knife and bend her body backwards like a bridge before snapping up to her feet. The edge of the butcher's knife she held expertly in her grasp was now a breath span away from his nose.

     "I…dare you to repeat that!" Kagome snarled from the back of her raw throat, scaring even herself, not to mention a few other men who shivered at her ruthless feistiness. She held the blade firmly as her attitude drastically switched from petrified to completely courageous in record timing.

     The man stilled. After a split second he glimpsed down at the blade in his face, then peered back into the girl's eyes with trivial bewilderment playing it's way into his eyes.

     "Tricksy, aren't we?" He leered. "Just who the hell do you think you are, bitch?"

     "I am Kagome." Kagome spat with anger and embarrassment as people stared at her intently and were starting to whisper. "Kagome Higurashi. And who might you be?"

     "InuYasha."

      As he gazed into the stranger's eyes, carefully avoiding the knife's tip, InuYasha noticed that she didn't look slightly familiar. The girl, completely opposite to all the female workers, was actually attractive and appealing to the eye. She had a raging fire within her, and that just—well, frankly, turned him on. No other girl stood up to any man around, and it was just plain sickening that the female race had no backbone whatsoever. But this girl… He could feel it in his veins… was unusual.

     "What in the hell are you looking at, PERVERT?" Kagome's cheeks were sketched in scarlet.

     Just as InuYasha was about to retort he immediately turned to the crowds below.

     "THERE'S NOTHIN' TO SEE HERE, THIS AIN'T NO PEEPSHOW! DOUBLE TIME FOR EVERYONE! MOVE IT!"

     Another strapping man from the other side of the plant was also yelling in mock unison with InuYasha.

     "You heard the boss! GET BACK TO WORK, INGRATES!"

     Kagome's eyes broadened a fraction. Boss?

     Moans and grunts reverberated throughout the factory as the heavy machinery was turning in use again. The slight break the women had slowly weakened the muscles and relaxed them, but now were being pushed to the point of burning in their legs, arms and everywhere. Some little girls cried at the pain, but were only shoved aside as the others from behind moved to continue their duty.  

     InuYasha heard a noise behind him and turned around rapidly, seeing that this Kagome bitch was already getting out of sight.

      "HEY!" InuYasha's voice was lost among the sea of people. He shoved his way, knocking others down as he high-tailed it after the girl. She stood up to him and damaged his pride in front of weak humans! It just didn't work like that! InuYasha was so preoccupied in running that he almost missed a turn that led to a creaking door. Almost.

      InuYasha cautiously opened the door. He knew what was beyond this door. He knew everything about this plant. Every person assigned to every particular job. Every emotion that surged through the human body.

      As he opened the door with a cautious clawed-hand, the certain emotion he felt disturbed him. He had just seen her come in here. There was no emotion in the depth of this room whatsoever, like no one had been inside the boiler room before for ages. Which was the truth, in many cases. 

      "SYAH!"

     A sudden jerk behind a towering furnace caught InuYasha's attention. From behind the furnace came a blue light that made him squint to hide the pain it caused to his sensitive eyes. The figure held the blue object in its grasp as it jumped him unexpectedly, knocking him to thin air.

     It was that girl! That bitch tricked him! …But he never smelt her fragrance as he entered the room. She must've hidden it some how. What was this psycho up to?! 

     They tumbled down a void of nothing. Walls were contorted into random foreign devices with shimmering mirrors that disillousioned the body into another shape or species. InuYasha and Kagome were to busy trying to wring each other's neck in the process to take notice of the different colors the room glowed as they zoomed of the mirrors and particular ghostly matter.

     The void seemed to have no conclusion and the launch was clandestine. They were mutually falling fast as a bullet down the rabbit hole. Kagome had somehow let go of her only means of fortification from the surprise of being jerked into a void. InuYasha, on the other hand, saw this to an advantage of some sort to take that weapon from her, leaving her useless like the little girl she was.

     InuYasha simpered sardonically and single-handedly grasped for the knife. The lights in the void flashed to a sickening toad jade into a nocturnal indigo, seeing himself perfectly in the reflection of the stiletto. He was so close to grasping the handle with his gloved hand when he felt another jolt like before yank at his insides, making him clutch his stomach in agony. From top to bottom, a star-crossed force ripped him swiftly into another dimension.

     With just that done, he had noticed there was no delicate fingers gritted against his neck like the stranger had done before as they fell, but he was now unaccompanied.

      How he dare open his voluptuous honey eyes, he did not know. InuYasha sat up, grasping his head in his clawed hands as it throbbed within his skull. A loud and piercing ringing rung through the drums of his ears, but sooner than he had expected, it had slowed to a stop, until only deep breathing was heard within the room. And yet… It wasn't only his.

      A bright spotlight swerved around the room, as if trying to feel in it's own way to detect the presence within the room and undcovering little whereabouts of the location. InuYasha inclined a superior brow, and with gushes of bravado shining through his heart's cruel shell, he rose to his feet. Standing tall and mighty as a stone statue without doubts of his action at all.

      The spotlight halted for a second, and just as InuYasha thought it was going to stay on its position behind him, it moved directly over him. The passionate radiance of the beam heated his skin immediately from the coldness he had felt from within the void.

      But the smooth skin on that girl-that bitch-did kept him warm for a while… He shortly wondered where she was…

     InuYasha looked around him, as if the light was a child's joke. As if someone was putting him on and the light was just to make him feel intimidated. He scowled like a barmy beleaguer. He would not be frightened by something that wasn't even there! This humanity would be the demise of him one day with all its psychosis…  

     InuYasha drew out his sickle within half the time it takes to blink an eye, proficiently holding it to the source of the light. It was unseen… Some life form had to be there…

      There was padding. A padding of claws striking tile, he heard, as any run of the mill house pet would saunter into a kitchen or overlaid place-it was the same. InuYasha knew the sound, and knew nothing first-class would come out of the whole trial. That girl was there in his factory for a reason. InuYasha could only think up all the chaos inside of the factory that must be going on now that he was away—he didn't even make out how far it was.

     The almost antediluvian owners of the place had told him not to go into that room. Time and time again would they tell him never to enter, even though he had done it several times after it was all said and done, nothing like this has happened in his little adventures… No deviations or being stuck in a room with a bunch of pranksters and blood chilling sounds of claws and with a naughty wench to go along with it.

      But in this place, he just couldn't expect less.

     The padding of the claws left the floor, but didn't leave the room. InuYasha's attention immediately directed itself in which he could see two large golden eyes, so much unlike his, that shown through with such destruction it nearly knocked him off his feet.

    Only one cat could make anyone feel this way…

    The spotlight violently shook and blew a fuse, completely swarming the place in dark.

     InuYasha heard a giggle. It was completely feminine, and very human. But the giggle didn't even come close to any annoying sound of a teenage school-lass acting bouncy and toffee-nosed. This one was sparkling with hinted darkness. He narrowed his eyes into hazardous slits. InuYasha's grip on the bone-poled sickle loosened a bit.

    A new brightness filled the room, slowly from the old circle the spotlight had once covered. It expanded more and more. More and more InuYasha could see what was happening, and it didn't astonish him much.

    But the fact that the giggling seemed enticingly endless, he just had to wonder. Was that damn girl that stood up to him still alive? How would any human take a blow so rough like that to a stone cold floor? Her body would have splattered into unidentifiable bits from the jolt that nearly gave him a brain freeze.

    InuYasha could only watch from his spot as the light expanded over a plane where the tile, black and white checkered, had ended, and a new patch of grass had come into view.

     It was more than a patch or two, but much bigger than that. From the lush green honeydew grass came into view yellow mushrooms with red dots, red mushrooms with white dots, magenta mushrooms with neon lime dots, black mushrooms and so much more in a cluster of various sizes. Until the light hovered and awoken one particular mushroom into view that was bleeding a stream of deep crimson blood as it seemed to cry an eerie song in pain.

     That knife he had tried to steal was jammed into it.

     But if the knife had come through, that means it's owner must—

     "Still be alive." InuYasha growled. "Come out from the shadows girl, and fight me like the lunatic you were born to be! If you can't fight me, then I'll just have to kill you when I find you instead!"

      He was responded by silence.

      InuYasha's grolw grew even louder than before, his hands twisting the unbreakable bone staff of the mass weapon. "Show yourself or I swear to God that when I find you, I'll pop open each and every one of your veins until they ooze your sick human blood along with every internal organ of your frail and useless body like the insane bitch you are! Is this your game? Did you open that portal by yourself? How the hell did you enter my factory without anyone noticing?! Then you kidnap me here and think it's—FUNNY? You can't scare me, bitch, so come OUT AND FIGHT ME NOW THAT YOU HAVE ME WHERE YOU WANT ME!"

      His blood was boiling at a faster than average rate, his eyes flashing a horrifying mauve before melting into complete scarlet.

     More giggles filled the room again, this time it was more vivacious, like a child fooling around on a playground who had just heard a funny joke from a friend.

     InuYasha got more and more annoyed with every laugh rather than before when he couldn't get enough. Something in his blood stirred and boiled. InuYasha's severe gaze took in the whole region, and what he saw made him want to completely wreck loose in his mind.

      Kagome sat on a giant red and white spotted mushroom, her legs dangling over the side with the silver buckles on her boots jingling merrily along with her incessant giggles. When he had seen her for the first time, she had on completely clean clothes. Her apron now was bloody and wrinkled; splotches of frosty blood were splashed on her face, a few droplets dripping down her pale cheek. Her hands that seized deep into the mushroom she sat on was oozing blood and singing a bottomless and treacherous song.  

       "WHAT IS SO FUNNY?!" InuYasha looked about ready to attack. Kagome just smiled like she didn't care for the blood that was all over her. In a way, his demon side found it rather sexy…

       He shook his head ferociously to clear out that thought.

       A gleam in the tiny mushroom that Kagome's stiletto was jammed in glimmered a moment before a pair of stunning ocean colored eyes appeared. They magically laughed at InuYasha's position with his demonic side switching in and out of his conscious state. The blade grew deep navy until they disappeared leaving the gory silver knife in a cerulean glow.

       Again, InuYasha drew in a deep breath. "WHAT IS SO FUNNY?!"

       His very voice made all the mushrooms and toxic herbs rattle in the grass that connected to the black and white tile. The floor was engaged in tranquility as a lucent poltergeist holding a brass-bent candle that had a diluted heliotrope flare. She drifted through one wall that suddenly materialized and through another after that. No one paid the lone banshee any mind, so she turned and left through another wall with a sad complexion.

      Grass rustled in a non-existent breeze. InuYasha's snowy sallow hair fluttered in the wind, striking silver in the light that shown fair over the territory. The black and white tiled area is where the light stopped, and all turned black.

      The rattling of ancient bones shook the souls of those in the area and those just passing by. Kirara leapt from a mushroom that was one foot lower than the one Kagome was on, making his way towards InuYasha. He stopped short and sat down hastily, protecting his charge from any harm of the blade the demon wielded. He grinned a wicked, sinister smile all his own. Yellowish teeth glimmered white and drenched in black and red blood as his mischievous golden eyes warned him he was not going to be in for a ride.

     Kirara's two bony tails swished as he straightened his back and stared intensely into InuYasha's golden orbs as they flickered a deadly red before settling back into their normal state.

     Kirara's whole being purred in an irregular pattern, as a claw of his rose and wretched out immediately five grizzled and sharp claws.

     A bellowing laugh roared through the dewy lush fields, ricocheting, making mushrooms cry harder…

     But suddenly it arrested and Kirara just grinned as Kagome chuckled in the background clenching her hands tighter in the mushroom. The vicious, fierce feline pointed a claw at InuYasha's nose.

     InuYasha screamed. With all his might, power and agony, he did scream.

     His veins ran cold and his body stood rigid as stone. He was surrounded by universal midnight; a world where he felt no pain, yet he did… somewhere there was pain… He was going to find that pain… Even though he knew blood could not be washed away with more blood. There was a pain…

     "You."

     It was the only thing he had heard before his world was enveloped in black.

× • · × • · × • ·

      I'm glad people are actually giving me praise on this story… And to think people would be offended…

      DarkDemonMaster × I always thought that Kirara was a female, too. But for me, he shall remain male in my story. I just feel having a female cat would mess up the reputation of protection. Having male protect female, instead of female with female, that is.

      If anyone knows of a person who likes American McGee's Alice and/or InuYasha, then maybe you could refer this story to them…? Even if I changed the rules for the game in my story, I would still like to know from those who've also played the game, and others who just enjoy being surprised/confused by what I'm writing.

      Just as this chapter may have hinted, there will be romance in this story. You know who… And if you don't, well then, that's not my problem.

      Thanks… I hope that maybe you'll find the time to review something short for me. If not… thanks for reading anyways. Love you…

      Missing school to type this,

      Hirari the 9th Goddess Of Maple Syrup 

 P.S.: If anyone would take a moment to read my poem "Everything's Blowing Up Roses", I'd much love to hear what you think about that, too.