[Yami no Matsuei] "Black Hole" (PG)
Author's Note: Written for Author's choice, author's choice, after the stroke of midnight Featuring Muraki wrestling with his inner demons.
Muraki deliberately took the night shift at the clinic, when no one else wanted it, and given the fact that the worst, most badly injured or direly ill patients often came well after midnight, few of his colleagues volunteered for it very often. Most took his choice as simply a personal choice, due to his sensitivity to daylight, which he tended to avoid when possible.
But he did this as a means of dealing with his hunger, the need for the spirit energy of others which clawed at his insides. He chose the night specifically, because of the terminal cases that arrived; if they passed away, no one would suspect he had eased the sufferer across.
On some of these nights, when few cases came through the trauma ward and if he had not recently found a more sensual means of feeding it, the hunger seemed powerful enough to consume him from within, like a black hole. At times, it felt as though the more he fed it, the stronger it grew. Sometimes he felt hollowed out, as if the void within had already absorbed his internal organs and his very soul, leaving just a thin husk of his outer self. He did his best to keep this hunger satisfied, but the lives he took seemed barely able to quiet it, to bring light to the darkness within.
Some nights, as he sat in his office, or in the ward's common area, listening to the clock ticking or a distant church bell ringing, his face buried in a book, he was not reading but hiding the fact that he sat brooding, wondering if he should give in, if he should stop feeding, if he should give in the midnight darkness within and let the hunger engulf him, destroying him and ridding the night of one creature that could never feel satiety...
Muraki deliberately took the night shift at the clinic, when no one else wanted it, and given the fact that the worst, most badly injured or direly ill patients often came well after midnight, few of his colleagues volunteered for it very often. Most took his choice as simply a personal choice, due to his sensitivity to daylight, which he tended to avoid when possible.
But he did this as a means of dealing with his hunger, the need for the spirit energy of others which clawed at his insides. He chose the night specifically, because of the terminal cases that arrived; if they passed away, no one would suspect he had eased the sufferer across.
On some of these nights, when few cases came through the trauma ward and if he had not recently found a more sensual means of feeding it, the hunger seemed powerful enough to consume him from within, like a black hole. At times, it felt as though the more he fed it, the stronger it grew. Sometimes he felt hollowed out, as if the void within had already absorbed his internal organs and his very soul, leaving just a thin husk of his outer self. He did his best to keep this hunger satisfied, but the lives he took seemed barely able to quiet it, to bring light to the darkness within.
Some nights, as he sat in his office, or in the ward's common area, listening to the clock ticking or a distant church bell ringing, his face buried in a book, he was not reading but hiding the fact that he sat brooding, wondering if he should give in, if he should stop feeding, if he should give in the midnight darkness within and let the hunger engulf him, destroying him and ridding the night of one creature that could never feel satiety...