26-Oct-2000
Warning: Darkfic ahead! This is my little Halloween horror offering, which I should probably credit to reading too much Stephen King and Ray Bradbury while growing up. ^_^;; Rated R for violence, death, angst, Duo-torture, less-than-pure language, and really, really disturbing stuff.
Note: Spoilers for Episode Zero.
Enjoy! ^_^
"... for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones..."
Matthew 23:27
August 5, A.C. 197
Okay. Gotta write this down. I heard somewhere that writing stuff like this in a journal or something is good therapy, and if I wasn't screwed up in the head already, I sure as hell am now, so if there's anybody who needs a good shrink right now, it's me. Thing is, I don't trust shrinks. They can manipulate you, mess with your brain until you end up worse off than you were before. So that's why I'm writing this down. It's better than a shrink -- pen and paper don't have any ulterior motives -- and a hell of a lot cheaper.
And maybe if I write it all down, I won't feel so damn crazy. I think it's working already. Black ink on white paper. Nice and clean. Normal. Nothing too freaky about this so far. Right.
So. I don't know what scares me more -- that I might be a deranged madman... or that I might not be. That the weird shit that's been going on isn't just in my head, but that it's really happening. I mean, I don't *feel* crazy, but would a crazy person know if he was nuts? Another reason I'm writing this down. Maybe, as I do, I'll be able to sort out the truth of what's real and what's not.
Actually, I sort of hope I'm crazy. That all this junk is nothing more than some advanced case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder messing with my head. Wouldn't that be nice? That way, the nightmares are mine alone, and Heero and the others are safe...
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning. Whenever the hell that was, I'm not really sure. That's why I'm writing this down. To figure it out. What would a shrink ask me? Let's see, he'd probably ask me about my mother, since that seems to be the standard psycho cliche, but since I don't remember her, I guess that's out. Sister Helen, then? She's probably the closest thing to a mother figure that I ever had. And I guess she's as good a place to start as any.
There are a few things I remember about Sister Helen. She was pretty, with a small, full mouth that was often turned up in a kind smile. Her eyes were pale blue. The color of a summer sky, though I never knew that until I came to earth and saw a summer sky for the first time, and then I thought, Hey, that's the same color as Sister Helen's eyes. She also had long blonde hair, though I didn't find that out until the end, because she always wore that nun's habit on her head.
I remember how her hands felt in my hair when she braided it that first time. Gentle. Like I always imagined a mother's hands must feel.
I remember how she didn't get angry with me even when I beat up those boys who said that I was a worthless beggar who smelled like rat shit. When she asked me what they had done, I didn't tell her what they had really said, partly because it hurt to say it, especially since I feared it was true, and partly because you just couldn't swear in front of Sister Helen.
But instead of getting angry with me for beating up those kids, she just hugged me. I remember the sound of her voice in my ear as she whispered that I shouldn't listen to them; that she didn't think I smelled dirty.
The amazing thing was... I believed her. This, when I was still as skittish as a cat in pit full of Rottweilers, and not used to trusting anyone, let alone adults. But I remember the lightness in my heart, the relief, the happiness, the comfort I felt at her words, her gentle touch.
I remember feeling loved. And it changed me, I think. It was the best feeling ever. I knew then that I wanted to feel that way always.
Which only made it all the worse when she died. I still remember what she looked like, that first glimpse of her as I frantically scrambled through the smoking rubble of the church. She was lying on the floor like a broken angel, her golden hair spread around her head in a halo. Just like the statues of the saints in the chapel.
I remember the feel of her blood-slick fingers against my cheek as she asked God to bless me. I remember her smile, that stayed even as she left me, her blue eyes going all flat and lifeless.
I think I remember screaming then. At least, I know I heard someone screaming, and I think it must have been me, because I remember how raw my throat felt for days afterward. But I'm not sure, really.
Sometimes I remember other things from before that time. Better things. Things, like Sister Helen's kindness, that would always remind me of what I was fighting for in the first place when I would pilot Deathscythe. But it's usually just a brief flash of memory of the day-to-day living at Maxwell Church, like eating meals with the other kids around a long table in the dining hall (eating an actual meal was a big, impressive thing for me back then, which is probably why I remember that so much), or listening to Father Maxwell as he patiently tried to teach the Catechism to a bunch of rowdy war orphans with five-second attention spans.
And this is kind of weird, but I have a lot of memories of stained glass windows in candlelight. I've always liked stained glass windows, the way they glow when the sun is behind them, casting rainbow patterns across hardwood floors and pews. I remember sitting on the pews, watching the gleaming colors, listening to the soothing sound of Father Maxwell's patient baritone. Those are the good memories. A bit of nostalgia from the few days and weeks of my childhood when I thought I was safe.
Shoulda known better, really. Nobody is ever really safe. Safety, security... it's all just a big illusion. Anyone who thinks they're safe is just fooling themselves, because you never know when life is gonna turn on you like a rabid wolf and tear you to pieces.
I remember when they buried everyone.
I watched, hidden in the shadows, lurking like a ghost amidst the crumbling, smoking ruins of the church as they removed the bodies. They took away Father Maxwell and Sister Helen first. Their bodies were mostly intact, though I remember how, when they lifted Father Maxwell, one of his legs bent at the wrong place, halfway up the thigh, and I saw white bone jutting out of torn, bloodless flesh. One of the cleanup crew guys threw up then, and left. He didn't come back.
Some of the cleanup was a lot messier. You don't have an explosion that kills over 245 people in one fell swoop without some serious closed-casket cases.
All of the rebels died, of course. I didn't feel too bad about that, because they were the ones who hurt Father Maxwell and Sister Helen before I ran off to steal the mobile suit so that they would leave us alone.
But there were also all the wounded civilians who had taken shelter with us, thinking, as I had, that the church was a sanctuary for peace. Ha. What a bunch of naive fools. All of us.
Then, of course, there were the other kids who lived at Maxwell Church, like me. I remember one kid in particular. His name was Harris. He was my age, about eight years old at the time, and he was my friend. He was a skinny kid. Actually, we were all pretty skinny -- being constantly on the verge of starvation will do that to you. But Harris was tall for his age as well, which made him look kind of like a scarecrow, all thin and gangly. He had a face full of freckles, and curly red hair so bright that you could instantly pick him out of a crowd of a hundred kids.
Harris always wore this old pin on his oversized shirt -- the kind that businessmen wear to keep their ties straight. The tie pin was in the shape of a starburst, and it used to be gold until the leaf wore off, leaving it a tarnished silver color. It had belonged to his dad, back before Harris became a fellow orphan, and it was his most prized possession. But I remember that he still took it off once, just to let me look at it. He never let anyone else even touch it, so I felt privileged. It was like a sacred thing to him, and he shared it with me. To thank him, I gave him three squares of a Hershey bar that I'd managed to pilfer from a Federation supply truck. I'll never forget the look of amazed delight on his face. Chocolate in the colonies back then was almost unheard of; rarer than water, and more precious than gold to kids like us. He made that chocolate last for almost a whole week, only licking it once or twice after every meal, like it was a real desert.
It was Harris's starburst tie pin that helped me recognize him when they took his body away, because his head, with the red hair and freckles, was gone. Along with an arm, and part of his chest. The tie pin was still there, though, stuck through the remains of his shredded, bloodstained shirt like some sort of medal.
And that was just Harris. There were others. Lots of other kids that I knew, my age or younger. A lot of them were my friends. And a lot of them were carried out of the ruined church in several separate sandwich bags, because the bomb hit right smack in the center of the orphanage sleeping quarters, where all the kids, except me, were hiding out while the rebels took over the church.
Thinking about it now, my stomach churns with nausea, and I want to retch all over this damn journal. Back then, though, I didn't even blink. I think I musta been in shock or something, because I just felt numb all over. Like I was dead too, but my body just didn't know it yet. I couldn't even cry. But then, after Sister Helen, I'd sworn off of crying anyway so that suited me just fine.
Anyway, they buried everyone in a single mass grave, because it was war, and they didn't have time to get all personal with a bunch of mangled corpses. At one point, they argued over whether or not they should just burn the bodies, since there aren't very many burial plots in the colonies. When you die on a colony, cremation is usually the way to go, so that your body doesn't take up too much space. Far better that your remains sit in an urn on somebody's fireplace mantle than take up a good plot of land that could be used for something more constructive like, say, a parking lot. However, the clean-up crew decided against burning the bodies because there wasn't a cremation facility nearby, and because of the smell it would cause if they did it in the open air. There are few smells worse than that of rotting corpses, but the smell of *burning* rotting corpses is one of them. And since there were already lots of big holes in the ground, most of them caused by bomb blasts, it was a simple matter to just dump the bodies in a big crater, and bulldoze over them.
I saw them dump the bodies. And then, before they shoved dirt over the mass grave, they went on a dinner break.
I knew that was my chance.
Once the crew left, I crept out of my hiding place, and crawled over to the edge of the hole. And I saw all of them. My friends... Bits and pieces of them. Jumbled into a mass of blood and bone and flesh and bits of cloth... And the smell...
Okay, one thing I know for sure -- if I *am* crazy, that right there is what probably did it to me. I mean, that's a total no-brainer. Nothing scars a tender eight-year-old psyche, after all, like a sight like that. Like having everyone you ever know and love die in horrible violent ways, and knowing that it was your fault. Or at least knowing that you should have died with them. Sure. Real good for a kid's mental development, eh?
So anyway, I'm just staring at the open grave full of the gruesome remains of the only friends and family I had, and I don't know how long I knelt there, just staring, my arms hanging limply at my sides, before I remembered that I had come to say a prayer over the grave.
I reached up and clutched at the crucifix that hung around my neck. A gift from Father Maxwell. I knew he would want a prayer. But as I sat there, I couldn't think of anything to say. All the words were frozen in my throat. My mouth felt dry as cotton, and my mind felt like an empty shell.
And besides, I didn't believe in God. The only god I believed in was Shinigami because, as I once told Sister Helen, I've never seen a miracle, but I've seen lots of dead people.
Lots of dead people.
So I just sat there, staring. Not praying, but wishing I could. Just staring at the open grave.
And then...
This... is where it gets confusing for me, because I can't remember if the next part really happened, or if it was just a dream. I always *thought* it was a dream -- or a nightmare really. A freaky recurring nightmare that I had for years, until I became a Gundam pilot. And that's why I always thought it was just a nightmare, because I kept dreaming it over and over, and of course a messed-up kid like me was going to have bad dreams after seeing something like that. I never really thought it actually *happened.*
At least, not until recently.
But I never really paid attention to it because it was just a nightmare. Just one more horrible thing that scared the shit out of me, to make me wake up in the middle of the night screaming. The nightmare stopped, once I became a Gundam pilot. It was a huge relief, and I always figured it stopped because I was too busy fighting back, determined to end the war on my own terms, to let it get to me.
But now the war is over. The earth and the colonies are at total peace for the first time in centuries. I've moved on with my life, put the past behind me.
Which is why I can't figure out why the nightmare has come back. And I can't help wondering if maybe that's the reason I'm so spooked about it. Maybe now that the war is over, and there's no longer the daily horror of people killing each other... maybe *that's* why it's only *now* that I'm starting to get *really* freaked out by
Shit. I can't even write it. My hand is shaking. What the hell is wrong with me? It's just a damn nightmare!
Okay, if I really believed that, I wouldn't be writing this. Come on, get a grip, Duo.
In my nightmare, the same thing always happens. I'm kneeling at the open grave, trying to pray. And then, from underneath the mass of broken, torn bodies... something *moves.*
Something moves, and all the loose bits of blood and flesh sort of *shift* and come together, flowing like some hideous amoeba-like creature, sifting around and away from white bone and gray skin. And as this is happening, the bodies that still have faces, or parts of faces, all turn and look at me with white, filmy eyes, and those that have lips start whispering, and I can't tell what they're saying, except that some of them are rasping out my name, and at that point I'm scared so shitless that I can't move, not even when the amoeba thing of coagulated blood and flesh lashes out with a whip-like tendril to snag me by the wrist... and starts pulling me into the whispering, writhing open grave.
Gah. I'm sweating. And my hands are shaking so bad, my handwriting has gone to hell. Fine with me, like I really want anyone to read this.
Anyway, that's my nightmare. And of course I know that it didn't really happen, I wasn't really pulled into that grave by some monster made out of the corpses of my dead friends, because I wouldn't be here now, right? And it doesn't really matter that I don't remember anything that happened after that. It doesn't matter that I don't remember a damn thing that happened from the time that I knelt by the grave, until I woke up in a Federation prison cell, from which I promptly escaped. It doesn't matter that I don't remember, because it didn't happen. It was just a nightmare, a dream. Not real.
Did I mention that I'm sitting on a park bench right now? That's right, I'm sitting on a white bench, in the middle of a park, about two miles away from the apartment complex where me and the guys live when we're not out on Preventer business. The sun is shining, hanging low in the sky, and a nice breeze is taking the heat out of the fading summer afternoon. The park is full of people; joggers, in-line skaters, couples on dates, groups of kids overrunning the playground equipment. Right in front of me, there's a family having a picnic. They look so happy, it's like a friggin' Norman Rockwell painting. Mom, dad, brother, sister, baby, and even a frisbee-catching dog. Sheesh.
So why am I here? Because I need people around me. Because even though I don't believe in safety, I still crave the illusion of it. I'm here because Quatre and Trowa are off on vacation, and Wufei is at Preventer Headquarters working overtime as usual, and Heero... Well, he's at home, probably wondering where the hell I am. Poor Heero. I know my erratic behavior the past few days has confused him, even made him angry. He wants me to tell him what's bothering me, but I just can't. Like it would even make a difference. Who am I kidding? How could I explain to Mr. Perfect Soldier Yuy that the reason his roommate is acting so damn skittish is because the recurring nightmares I had as a kid used to just come when I was asleep, but then after the war ended, they *didn't* just come when I was asleep, they started coming when I was *awake,* just a little at first, like a wavering haze that I could only see in my peripheral vision, but now, just in this last week, they've been creeping out further at night as I lie awake in bed, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, sheets soaked in sweat, heartbeat thudding in my ears, and I can hear them whispering again, and I see their milky eyes and torn gray faces, feel the slime of blood and rotting flesh against my skin, even smell them, and how do you fucking SMELL nightmares unless they aren't nightmares at all, unless they're REAL
Shit.
Well, if that wasn't the rambling of a crazy man, I don't know what was. And on top of that, I broke my stupid pen. Snapped right in half, and now I've got black ink all over my jeans and my hands, and just the bottom half of the pen to write with. Oh, and the picnicking family got up and left, right around the time that I started hyperventilating, I think. Shit.
It's getting dark. I didn't notice. Everyone is slowly leaving. The kids are going home.
What do I do now? I'm afraid to stay here. I'm afraid to go home. I'm afraid to sleep, and afraid to stay awake, because it doesn't matter now, they come anyway.
I'm so scared. I think I'm going crazy. I'm afraid I'm not going crazy.
Somebody... help me, please...
Well, whaddya think? Should I continue this, or is it just too weird?
Lady M.
Please send comments to: Lady M