Title: Otherworld
Rating: R
Spoilers: No specific spoilers. Set in an unspecified time period after Outo but before Tokyo.
Summary: If dreams are another one of the worlds… then what about nightmare?
Author's Note: Written for the Halloween challenge on kuroxfai_pop, which was to rewrite a horror movie, story, or game with the TRC characters. I'm not going to up front and say which horror game this is, but it should be pretty obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with it.
I was hoping to get the whole thing finished and ready to publish by Halloween, but unfortunately, I have to leave town on a trip today.. :( So here is part 1 of 2 - hopefully I'll be able to finish and publish the second part by 10/31 in the afternoon at the latest.
You wake up in a hospital, to the sight of kindly but strange faces bending over you. The chatter of human voices are all around, the hum of a big busy building at work. You suppress a moment of panic and the instinct to lash out; instead you smother your fear and force a smile onto your face and a polite greeting, because that's what you always do, isn't it?
"So you're awake after all?" one of the ladies - nurses - chatters to you happily. "How are you feeling, sweetie?"
"Oh, fine, I feel just fine," you say glibly, and when she raises her eyebrows in polite disbelief, you hasten to improvise: "Just a little bit dizzy, lightheaded… What happened to me?"
"Well, that's what I was going to ask you," the nurse says, putting her hand on your forehead, then on your wrist to take your pulse. "They found you passed out in the street, and when they couldn't find an ID card or a phone on you or anything else, they brought you here. Is there anyone you want to contact, sweetie? Anyone who might be missing you or worried about you? We have a phone in the office you can borrow…"
Your smile gets a little tight when she asks that, but she's just trying to be kind, to do her job. You say, "Well - I don't need a phone, no. But I need to find my friends. Were they with me? There were two children, a boy and a girl, both brown-haired - and another man, black hair, tall, probably the world's worst patient…?"
"Well, I'll tell you what," the nurse says cheerfully. "I've got to go on my rounds, so I don't have time to look for them right now. But you seem pretty awake and together, your pulse and temperature are normal. Why don't you look around for a bit and see if you can find them? You know what they look like, after all," she says, and winks at you.
Since that was pretty much what you planned to do anyway, you wink back and return her smile, and pull yourself up to the edge of the gurney and let your legs swing over. The room around you is rather busy, other cots and other patients with white-garbed nurses walking briskly along the aisles. It's obvious there's a lot going on; you feel bad to have wasted everybody's time.
"Well, good luck, sweetie," the pretty young nurse says, and pats your hand. "I have a feeling you're going to need it." And with that she walks briskly away, her high heels clicking loudly on the tiled floor.
Stumbling and swaying a little and clutching at the IV stand by your cot, it takes a moment before your natural balance reasserts itself. "Oh - miss!" you call out after her, meaning to ask her to take a message for you, if she sees your friends first after all. You take a few steps in the direction you saw her go, peering between the ranks of hospital beds and crossing paths of the other nurses. "Miss?"
There's no sign of her at all. You can't even hear her heels on the floor any more. With an uneasy frown, you step away and stumble towards the hallway. You need to find your friends.
You wander out into the corridor, feeling a little loss and directionless. In such a big building, with so many people, how are you going to find the others? Nobody you talk to has seen them, although they're all very kind and helpful, sending you on to this or that room. Mokona can't be too far, surely, or you wouldn't be able to talk to them at all. There's something about this place that makes you uneasy; there's a form that moves through the bustling pleasant crowds like a cruising sharp, dark and sharp and angular and smelling like blood. It's never quite there when you turn to look directly at it, but you can feel it there anyway.
You find a little second-floor lobby and ask the receptionist where to find the visitor's lounge. She directs you down the hallway to the right, and you find it soon enough, a big dark room with glass windows and overstuffed dark upholstery; but it's empty and dark and the door is locked, obviously closed. You come back to the reception desk to ask another question, but the lady is gone.
You stop and look out one of the windows, but it's too foggy outside to see much; you can't even see any people in the streets below, only a few tops of buildings poking through the mist, the clear silhouette of a bell tower standing out above the rest.
This hospital is big and busy, but it's not very well-maintained. It seems like everywhere you look there are signs of decay and disrepair; weather stains coming in around the windowsills, lightbulbs flickering or cracked in their sockets. Perhaps this is a small town or an out-of-the-way hospital, because now that you listen for it, it doesn't seem to be all that busy at all. There are only a few voices drifting down the corridors, and half the rooms are standing empty.
There's a set of big double doors at the end of a hallway and you make for them, passing by one last room where a nurse - not yours - is consulting with a patient in the only occupied bed. Beyond the metal doors you can see a stairwell going up, but looped around the handles of the doors is a big metal chain, set with a rusty padlock. You can't get through here.
Back to the last door in the hall, you mean to ask the nurse there if there's another way up to the top floor. But the room is empty. There's no nurse and the bed is empty, sheets flapping in the breeze from the window and IV-lines swinging free. It looks like nobody's been here in a long time.
You break into a run back down the hallway, passing the stations and rooms and corridors where people were just there, they were just there a moment ago, you saw them, you talked to them, you bumped into them in the crowded hallways; but the tile walls and cracking plaster ceiling echo back only silence now, the façade of the hospital rotting away to reveal the bones underneath. And the thing that's there, waiting for you.
You can only hear a few other voices now, separated by walls and doors and distance, calling out; for help, maybe, or for vengeance. One by one, the voices go silent. Soon it'll be just you, the only one alive in this world. And what are you going to do then? What are you going to do then?
I wake up outside, in some sort of park or woodland heavy with gray mists. Visibility shot to hell. The others aren't around, nowhere within sight, and didn't answer to my call. That just figures; another crappy landing thanks to that useless meatbun.
I'm in a little gazebo, wood worn and faded with years of inattention, practically rotting around me. Fog swirls around me; it's so thick I can't even tell what time of day it is. Could be morning, noon or evening for all I know. Little clearer patches swirl through in whorls of darkness, revealing glimpses of the terrain around me; a bench here, a stone statue there, a line of trees bordering a gravel path not far away. No people, no people at all.
Climb to my feet and stumble out of the crumbling wood structure, ignoring the aches and pains of the bad landing. Head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, swimming every time I try to move it to the side - everything's blurry except what's straight ahead. Must have taken a hit to the head, although I don't remember it. "Princess?" I call out, and my voice is a croak; what does it take to get a damn drink around here? "Kid? Wizard? You out there?"
No answer. Guess there's nothing for it but to look for them. God knows what sort of trouble they'll get into if I'm not around to protect them; and I smell danger. This world is dangerous.
One hand on my sword, reassured by the solid reality of the hilt. Hard to believe that Souhi started out as a figment of someone's imagination, a dream made into reality; she feels as real as any other sword I ever held. I set off down the gravel path and it crunches under my feet, louder than anything else in this world, almost louder than my own voice as I call out again: "Magician?"
Movement off to the side, from the darkness between two trees. The fog and the blurriness of my own vision works against me, but they don't know I don't need to see my opponent to sense him, and little rocks spatter from under my feet as I turn and bring Souhi around, the full force of momentum behind the blow, a neat slice across the abdomen from hip to armpit.
A red slash opens up across his stomach as the figure stumbles back, clutching at the entrails that want to spill out of the new cavity in his body; but there's no time to finish him now. Other dark figures are appearing, coming at me from under the trees; where are they all coming from?
Souhi feels familiar, comfortable in my hands like she never has before, like even Ginryuu never did. She feels like an extension of my arm as I dart and parry, whirl and slash. For every dark figure I put down, another seems to pop up from nowhere to take its place; but I have my sword and I have open space and level ground, and I am invincible.
As quickly as they came, the men - bandits, mercenaries, who knows? - melt back into the trees, blood steaming on Souhi and whispering away into the fog. A grin stretches my face, no matter how I'm panting with exhaustion. Good to stretch my muscles again, satisfying to dispatch scum like this back to Hell where they belong.
All the bodies are dressed identical, in black - are these the same guys we saw before? Didn't get a chance to get a good look at them before; step up to the nearest corpse, still bleeding from the slash across its throat like a grinning mouth, and reach out one toe to push back the dark covering over his face. And freeze, the breath turning solid stone in my lungs.
The face is Sakura's.
No, this can't be, this can't… Gulp for air against the surge of panic. The body's all wrong. This body is full-grown, not a teenager. This is impossible; this is a trick. This is some coincidence, just some stranger that looks a little bit like the princess… Lurch from one body to another, fighting back against the scream that wants to build in my throat as each dead face is uncovered.
Syaoran's face. Souma's. Fai's. Tomoyo's face, staring up at me with accusing dead filmy eyes from a face cut to the bone. Sakura's face again. An iron taste fills my mouth, and the gravel path blurs and rushes up as my legs go weak under me, stones biting into my hand as I struggle not to vomit.
Unbelievable. This is unbelievable, and all at once I start to laugh. This can't be real, this can't be happening. This is some - this is some trick. This is a dream, isn't it? I'm dreaming.
This can't be real. This isn't.
This isn't real.
All the voices are silent, now. Except yours.
You run, blind to the floor in front of your feet, not even sure where you're going. Whether you're searching for someone, anyone else in this world, or running away.
Either way, it doesn't matter.
Because it's going to catch you.
She wakes up in a little café, the kind they've seen a lot of in their journeys; small family-run eateries whose food isn't very good, but at least cheap and the waitresses are friendly and don't ask too many questions about where they're from or why their clothes are so strange. The front room is empty of customers except for her, although there's the hum of a radiator and the backwards neon Open sign is still visible in the window; just above it she can make out the letters, Café 52.
Mokona is here, and the little critter looks up at her worriedly. "Sakura?" it chirps, and she can hear the concern in its voice. "Are you awake now? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Moko-chan," she tells it with a confidence you don't really feel, a confidence that soon wavers. "Wh… where are the others? Where are Syaoran and Kurogane-san and Fai?"
"Mokona isn't sure," it says, ears drooping in unhappy embarrassment. "We should have all come out together, but something interfered. We all went to different places… but they can't have gone too far."
"What about… a feather?" she asks, trying to cover her disappointment. "Is there a feather in this world?"
"Yes. Mokona can definitely sense it," the little creature says in a determined whisper. "But… Mokona can't say exactly where."
She bites her lip in worry. "Is it far away?" she asks. If the feather is in some other place, they have to go try to find it… but if they leave the area where they arrived, then the others might not be able to find them…
Mokona shakes its head. "No, it's close by," it says. "But it's very hard to feel - Mokona can't get a clear reading on it. It's almost like it's…" A hesitation.
"Like it's what?" she prompts after a moment.
"Like it's buried," Mokona whispers.
She steps out the front door of the café into the street, heavy with swirling fog, and tries to get her bearings; over the tops of the sharp black buildings, she can see the tall, pointed silhouette of a bell tower. At least there are people in the street, busily walking to and fro and stopping to chat with each other, or bending over the wares of one of the street stalls.
Shyly, she approaches one of the townspeople, reaching out her hand to pluck at his sleeve. "Um… excuse me, sir," she asks hesitantly. "Do you know where I can find -"
As he turns around to look at her she breaks off in a gasp, a little cry strangling in her throat. His face - his face is covered in blood, trickling down from his eyes as though he's crying, pouring in a spout from his nose and dribbling from the corners of his mouth. Bright red streaks smudge along his throat and hands, and the collar and front of his shirt are stained red.
He smiles kindly, clots of blood dislodging from the corners of his mouth and dribbling down his chin. "Yes, what is it, little girl?" he asks kindly. "Can I help you with something?"
He doesn't even seem to notice. She stumbles backwards a step. "N-no - I mean, I'm -" she stammers. "I thought you were, were, were s-someone else, I…"
"Well, if you say so." The man shrugs, giving her a funny look through the bleeding tears, but then apparently decided not to concern himself with it, and moved off.
She turns in a frantic circle, looking from face to face; all the walking, talking, laughing, quarreling, bargaining, busy looking people - every one of them - has blood dripping from their faces. "The people… Oh, God… Mokona… what's wrong with the people…?"
"Sakura-chan?" Mokona pipes up, sounding worried and distressed. "What's going on? What's wrong?"
"The people… they…" She's shaking all over, now, and has to cram her fist into her mouth so as not to cry. "They're all bleeding, and they don't even realize it…"
"What are you talking about?" Mokona's voice is shrill and uneasy. "The street is empty. Mokona doesn't see anybody else here."
"But they're all around us! They're… all…" A sob catches in her throat, and she backs towards the sidewalk, half wanting to go back into the café and just hide there until the others come to get her. She clutches Mokona tightly, squeezing her eyes shut, and for just a moment she wishes that none of this was happening…
No. She can't hide from things, not when Fai and Kurogane and Syaoran are probably all doing their best, too. She takes a deep breath, and blinks her eyes open, although she still has to avoid looking directly at anybody's face. "Maybe… maybe this is normal for here," she says, fighting to keep her voice calm and steady. "After all, people are different in every world, right…? And they… they seem like nice people other than that… Right, Mokona?"
Mokona doesn't answer. Mokona doesn't move.
"Moko-chan…?" Suddenly afraid, she shifts the furry creature around and looks down. Mokona is as stiff and unmoving as a doll in her arms, eyes and mouth closed lines against an inanimate face. It's not even warm any more. "Mokona!"
"Hey, little girl, are you lost?" A voice, kind and empathetic, calls to her from the side of the road; an old lady manning a shop stall, half-hidden by the stall awning, is beckoning her over. "Or perhaps you've lost something? Maybe I can help you…"
She's drawn over by the friendly voice in spite of herself; she still can't bring herself to look into the lady's face, although she still sees drops of blood falling rhythmically from her jaw as she talks. "N-no… I'm… I'm looking for my friends," she says helplessly. "We were supposed to meet up near here… but I don't know quite where I am, and I don't know where they are… H-have you seen…" The tears escape into her voice despite her efforts to hold them back, and she shifts Mokona into her left arm to wipe her face.
"Hmmm… Are your friends outsiders, like you?" She nods. "Thought so; we don't get too many outsiders around here, but we can always tell." A chuckle, and she thinks the woman winks at her, the glint of a dark eye reflecting from the awning. "Well, if you go about town, I'm sure you'll run into them sooner or later; outsiders have a way of getting themselves noticed. Cheer up, little girl, you'll all be perfectly fine. Here, have a tissue."
"Y-yes, thank you." She takes the offered handkerchief and wipes her eyes, and starts to feel a little better. This place is so strange, and the people are so strange; but at least they're nice.
"And you'll want to take this, too, in order to fit in a little more," the woman adds, picking up something from under her table and holding it out. "I'm sure you'll need it."
She feels a sudden shock, and stands there blinking, mouth dropped open. "…oh." She feels a warm, wet trickle down her legs; and looking down, sees the haft of the knife sticking out from where the woman drove it into her stomach.
This is a dream. This isn't real.
They can send as many of you after me as they want, and it doesn't matter. I'll kill them all. I'll kill anyone.
I can do anything and it doesn't matter, because this isn't really happening. No one can hurt me here. I'm finally the strongest.
I am invincible.
He wakes up in a schoolroom, familiar, unfamiliar surroundings. He remembers a place like this from his childhood, learning facts and figures in a cool and dusty room while the desert sun baked the clay roof overhead; but though the purpose is clearly the same, with a cracked chalkboard and a row of desks, there are no other similarities. This place is long abandoned, surfaces covered with a patina of rust or dirt, with trash littering the aisles between desks.
He wanders out into the hallway; it's hard to see anything out here, with no windows to filter in daylight. The lights out here were the long glass tube kind, but they're long since dead, only throwing out the occasional weak sputter of illumination. There's no sign of his princess, or any of his friends; he calls for her, calls for them, but gets no answer.
At the end of the hallway by the front door he finds a janitor's closet, left hanging ajar with the mist filtering in from outside. Rows of unidentifiable debris clump in wet, rotting masses on the shelves, oozing brown liquid down the walls. On the shelf nearest to the door there's a metal cylinder that he recognizes from some previous worlds as a flashlight; when he picks it up and tests the switch a few times, it emanates a feeble glow. This will probably be useful.
In the door to the schoolyard he pauses, tries to think which way to go next. The legend by the front gates proclaim this to be Midwich Elementary; but it seems to have been deserted. He needs to find people, and more importantly, he needs to find his princess. He tries the gates, but they're locked; sharp wire is strung along the top of the fence. He can climb it if he has to, but it would be better to find another way out.
He walks between the buildings, trying to find his way back to the road. The layout of the school grounds is confusing, it keeps trying to funnel him back towards the main building. The rusted walls and roof overhead echo back the sounds of his footsteps; they echo back other sounds as well, faint scratches and shuffling noises that he can't pinpoint.
What he thought was a service lane instead turns into a large, thin-roofed building like a warehouse, or a gym. It's pitch black inside. Pausing uncertainly in the doorway, he hears the scratching noises again, louder than ever. Rats, he thinks, and shines the light around the edges of the walls and corners of the buildings, expecting to see the movement of flashing tails as the creatures retreat from his flashlight.
There's no movement; no sign of anything living at all. He hears the scratching noises again, and looks up.
The ceiling where his flashlight shines is teeming with movement, not rats, not rats at all, but white long-limbed bodies the size of dogs. Agitated, they try to shuffle away when the light hits them, but tangle with each other and lose their perches, falling to the ground of the gym with sickening crunching noises. For a moment they flail on the ground, like beetles turned on their backs, before they manage to flip back over and creep rapidly towards him.
Pale, filmy eyes shine in his flashlight beam; stick-thin limbs and long draggled hair, corpse-white. Rows of jagged teeth set in jaws that open wide, too wide. A high screeching noise comes from the wide-open mouth of the one nearest to him, neck stretching impossibly long towards him; "Pleeeeeeeease," it screams, and the next one picks up the refrain. "Please, please, pleeeeeeeeaase."
More of them are dropping from the ceiling. He turns around and runs, runs for his life, his heart thundering in his chest and feet pounding noisily on the concrete. But the monsters can scuttle on four limbs as fast as he can run on two, and he can't find the way out, all these hallways lead to dead-ends and double back on themselves.
They catch up with him, and he scrambles to place his back to a wall, swings the heavy flashlight in his hand at the head of the nearest one; its head snaps back with a horrible liquid crunch. Another one sinks its teeth into his leg, sending a shock through his body and filling his vision with a tinge of red, He shouts; a useless shout, as there's no one to come to his aid, and no one to warn to stay away.
He drops the flashlight and fumbles to draw his sword, Hien; even now it doesn't come naturally to him, not an easy extension of his body like another hand or arm. His teacher always said that he shouldn't draw his sword unless he's prepared to use it, and sure that he will cut only what he means to cut; but right now he's got nothing to lose.
The monsters are all around him now, crouching to leap and clawing at his legs. The one that he hit earlier is creeping back, dragging itself along on one arm and one leg and leaving smears of blood on the filthy concrete. "Please," it whimpers, stretching out its claws towards him imploringly; "please…"
He grits his teeth and raises his sword, and ignores the sickening noise of the blade as it cuts through flesh; if he's going to save his princess, he must survive, and in this mad world they've dropped into it is kill or be killed.
When he first hears her voice he thinks he's hallucinating; but he spins around to see her, limping across the field towards him, Mokona in one arm and the other pressed across her stomach. He calls out his gladness to see her; but her expression is one of horror, and she's crying out at him to stop, stop, stop. "Why?" he can hear her sob. "Why are you doing this? Oh please, Syaoran, don't, don't…"
"Princess, stay back!" he calls, as he dodges the swipe of claws in his direction and delivers a powerful kick that sends his attacker reeling away, chest caved in with the force of the blow. "Don't come any closer, the monsters will get you!"
"Monsters?" she cries out, and she grabs onto his sword hand, hampering his blow. "Is that what they look like to you?"
"What?"
For a moment, they struggle; he can't understand why she's doing this, why can't she see the danger they're in? She's got a bloody knife in her right hand, and as they struggle, the edge of the blade nicks across his skin, as if by chance.
The mist of the schoolyard shivers and vanishes, as if blown by a sudden fierce wind; and the crowding, clamoring monsters are gone, too, quickly dissolving into the air. The two of them stop, their hands clasped tight, and stare around the suddenly empty courtyard.
"They were children," Sakura says in a tiny voice, the resistance goes out of her arms; instead of struggling against him, she's shivering close against him now. "Just children. I didn't understand why you would do that…"
"I don't understand," Syaoran echoes, staring around the deserted schoolyard. "They weren't - they were monsters, Princess, they tried to eat me. They bit my leg…" He reaches down to rub it, but although the fabric is stained and bloody, the bite wound is gone from above his knee. He stares at it, shaken, trying to comprehend what he sees with what he knows.
"It's this world," Sakura whispers, and shivers again as she buries her face against his shoulder. "There's something wrong with this place I don't understand. Mokona won't answer me at all, and none of the people are - are right. We have to find Kurogane-san and Fai-san as soon as possible and get out of here."
"What about your feather?" Syaoran objects, but Sakura only shakes her head, her face pale and eyes wide.
"We have to find them first!" she insisted. "They - they could be in trouble, too. They might need our help. We have to find them!"
Syaoran wants to reassure her that Kurogane and Fai are both strong, both capable of protecting themselves. But as he looks up over the rooftops of the town to see the sharp outline of a bell tower against the twisting gray sky, he isn't so sure.
He's very close now.
The darkness has closed on you completely; you can't see him, but you can hear him. Scrape, scrape, the sound of the metal blade dragging over the floor.
There's nowhere left to run.
And when he grabs you, you find that you can't even scream.
~to be continued...