[Fic] despierto - tres
Title: despierto (tres)
Fandom: Crossroads
Characters: Yomohiro Tomoe, Fujioka Midori, Yomohiro Junichi, Yomohiro Hajime, "Akiyama Kou," and very vague mentions of Kunisaki Chie and Satoshi Kaede | Midori/Tomoe, Kou/Tomoe
Word Count: 3,906 (tres); 15,617 (total)
Rating: M
Warning/s: Please highlight to view the laundry list of trigger warnings. character death, graphic depictions of death and violence, graphic depictions of sex, subtextual incest, abuse, self-mutilation and suicidal tendencies
Summary: One week after she moves into her new house, Tomoe's father dies. Things start happening that she cannot explain. | tomoe and the truths that cannot be obscured
Disclaimer: "Kou" is Miles', Midori is Arah's, Chie is Momo's and Kaede is Kriselle's.
Notes: More in-depth author's notes at the end of the story.
uno. | dos. | tres. | cuatro. | cinco.
.tres.
In her dream she opens her eyes to a dark shadow standing at the foot of her bed.
She jerks awake, perspiring cold sweat through the thin cotton of her nightgown. Her breath mists in front of her and she shivers, tugging down the comforter and stepping off the bed, one foot sliding into a slipper, the other tapping around the floor.
She glances at the clock which glows 3:08AM in bright red blocks, staring at it until the numbers blur together as she lowers herself on her knees and reaches blindly beneath the bed. She skates her palm, first touching the foot of the bed then sliding it in search for her wayward slipper, her fingers running over a part in the tiles.
Her hand pauses.
She sighs and stands up, flipping on her bedside lamp.
She peers beneath the bed and the smooth expanse of the floor is empty.
She purses her lips, pattering out of her door to get a glass of water, and there it is, pink and plain, right at the center of the hallway as if it had been lying in wait for her all along.
Sometimes, she gets the heavy feeling across her nape, that slight tingle of pressure - the sensation of being watched. She'd wrench her gaze behind her and of course there isn't anyone, empty stretches of hallways and vacant rooms; it's probably the stress from work, the fatigue affecting her after the sudden increase in patients and the spike in caseloads, though she had been sleeping quite a fair amount.
Sometimes, she would come home so spent that she'd forget where she put a patient's folder or her box of ballpoint pens. They'd inevitably turn up sooner or later, though in places she would never have expected to leave them - like the top of the stairs leading to the basement or right outside the renovated barn near the pool. Once she had stained glass windows installed in her library wall, the part that overlooked the main staircase, she would sometimes see the lights flickering on and off and then suddenly die when she was within six feet of the door.
There was a time she'd been reading before going to sleep, the few instances these days she could scrounge some spare moments to pick up something non-medical to entertain herself. She could've sworn she had placed it on her bedside table but a week later it turned up in its rightful place in her library, slid among the stacks where it was supposed to be.
Her fatigue, surely.
She had never slept so peacefully as she had in those weeks.
She hums, Will you won't you want me to make you, reaching into a cupboard and pulling out a chopping board, a boning knife. She takes out a slab of meat, still wet and dripping and coating her fingers with its juices, placing the steel edge of the knife against the flesh - there, there just by the meatiest portion - bearing down to slide the sharp blade into all the layers of meat, deeper, deeper, there, metal against bone - I'm coming down fast, she hums - carving off the fat and sinews and flesh-
"But don't let me break you!" she choruses, high-pitched and shrill, the knife's tip digging into the pad of her thumb, deeper, deeper, there-
She yelps, drops the knife, the blade clattering against the sink as she flips the faucet on and washes her wound.
The blood runs into the drain, mingling with water until it fades to a faint rust color. She slaps a bandaid on it, watches as the blood seeps through the plaster, replaces it with another.
That night she dreams this:
She is back in her old bedroom with the red-orange bedsheets and her one-eyed teddy bear, and her head is resting against the pillows with her hair spread out beneath her. She is wearing her thin cotton nightgown, the one she goes to sleep with when the heater isn't malfunctioning and it's not freezing cold in her room, except in this bed her feet dangle over the bottom edge because she is too tall for this type of child furniture.
In this dream it is too hot, and the fabric of the nightgown sticks to her sweaty skin. She shifts and the hem of the dress slides up her thighs, a faint tickling sensation that rustles over her skin. Her eyes flutter shut and she rubs at her shoulder, craning her neck with a soft sigh.
She skims her collarbones and dips slightly into the neckline of the dress, nudging her legs apart and feeling that whisper of fabric on her inner thighs - a slight static, a pleasant thrill. The faint nip of pain as the skin of her wounded thumb stretches.
She shrugs her shoulder, one strap slipping down her upper arm, and it's so much easier now, a tender coax really, to glide her fingers down her chest and cup her breast with her palm, to knead her nipple into a hard nub that buzzes with an electric tingle when she pinches it with two fingers.
The bed dips beside her and she turns towards it but doesn't yet open her eyes, feeling that heavy awareness of being watched once more, a steady pressure that makes her keen at the damp moisture between her legs.
She yanks the other strap of her nightgown down, arching her back to wrench the dress down to her stomach, the air a delicate caress against her sides. She runs her hands over the ridges of her ribcage, coasting her knuckles over her breasts, past her nipples, across her shoulders and up her neck. She bends her knees, spreading her legs further, hot and sodden and moaning irreverently at that wanton feeling of being observed as she slides her finger past the garter of her panties, dips it into the wet, drenched heat of her slit, skating it within her folds - down, to tease at her entrance, up, to circle her clit - throwing her head back and taking her lower lip between her teeth.
She jerks the panties down, so ardent that she foregoes it midway across her thighs, spreading her labia with one hand, with her other plunging two fingers deep, deeper, there - right inside her cunt. She moans - are you watching - riding her fingers close to her ecstasy, spreading herself - can you see this - adding a third finger to slice into her, close, so goddamn close-
She wakes up still aching with a fervent arousal, still tingling and drenched and sopping - and in the quiet of her own bedroom, with her eyes shut tight, she rides her fingers to an orgasm that sweeps through her like thunder, feeling on her skin that phantom sensation of being watched from the shadows.
Her car keys are not in the drawer beside the entryway.
She pauses, not at all discomfited because there's still time to spare and it isn't the first instance she's misplaced something. Her room, maybe. Or the library, as some of her things have eventually turned up in. She places her handbag on top of the side table and slips off her heels, dangling them by her side as she makes her way up the staircase.
The library door is locked.
Odd. She doesn't remember ever locking the library door, not since she moved into the house.
She drops her shoes to the floor, the heels clattering, quite exasperated at her negligence and treading down the stairs once more. Her calves hurt when she walks, not that she recalls exercising any more than usual.
She enters the kitchen, pain suddenly needling up her feet from her soles, and when she looks down there are shards of broken glass spread all over the floor, shattered fragments that crunch when she balances on one leg and lifts up her foot to inspect the damage-
Her skin is unbroken.
She glances down and there's nothing on the ground.
She shivers then, though it isn't cold, and wraps her arms around herself. She retrieves the house keys from behind a cupboard, quietly making her way up to the library.
Only to find the door wide open.
She clenches her fists, digging her nails into the skin of her forearm. The pain keeps her focused, preoccupied, and she eventually finds her car keys on top of a shelf, grabbing them and rushing downstairs, forgetting her heels on the hallway and deciding against coming back for them. She'll- she'll just use the extra pair in her office.
As she drives down her courtyard she glances at the rearview mirror, and in the reflection she sees the curtains of the library window slide shut.
There are things she struggles to explain with logic - because perhaps she's too tired or too stressed or too worn-out, or maybe it's the wind, a sudden gust, just the house settling into place, yes, she's watched some documentaries on these happenings and they always point back to something rational. She is a very sensible woman, an accomplished surgeon, an astute researcher.
There are always explanations to back up physical evidence.
She repeats these things to herself, again and again, as if in doing so she's more likely to believe them.
Still, when she drives by a small shop at the corner of the block, one she'd probably driven by hundreds of times on the way to work and home, she takes note of its name Madame Sueño: Spirits, Séances, et al. and jots it down on a slip of paper.
The neighbor's dogs are dead.
She comes home that afternoon to the elderly lady wailing, hunched on the grass over the bodies of her german shepherds. She reels back and covers her mouth when she sees the dogs lying prostrate on the ground, a huge gash cleaving them open from neck to abdomen, their intestines spilling out and staining the lawn. Their eyes are open, tongues lolling out like pale slices of meat, and she guns her accelerator, not stopping until she's in her garage, turning up the volume of her radio until it drowns out the cries of the elderly lady.
"When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide," the radio blares, "and I stop and I turn and I go for a ride…"
"And I get to the bottom and I see you again," she sings along - loud, louder, closing her eyes to erase the grisly image of the dogs, imagining instead a banquet, a feast of the most succulent food all laid out on the table, hot and steaming, medium raw and oozing their juices on the porcelain.
"Yeah yeah yeah!"
In her dream it's hot, it's hot or entirely too warm and she arches her back off the bed-
She ignores it, ignores the feeling of being observed, the shadow flitting at the periphery of her vision. She disregards these things and yet she cannot stop watching as a vase in her living room topples over, rolling to the side of the desk, back to the center, rolling to the side once again and coming to a complete, total stop.
Rational explanation.
Rational explanation, rational explanation rational explanation-
There is no wind.
Midori visits, bringing a bouquet of roses with an apology on his lips. He holds up a copy of his published journal article and she relents, stepping aside to let him in.
That night, he is languid and careful, taking care to unfasten each button of her blouse and press a kiss to every inch of skin he exposes. He's quiet and thoughtful and he pays extra attention to the hollow of her throat, the valley of her breasts. She is flushed when he lays her on the bed, kissing a trail down the side of her nape and the line of her shoulder. He drags the strap of her brassiere down her arm, following its path with a wet slide of his tongue.
He spreads his fingers over her stomach, his hand big and warm on her belly. It caves beneath his touch and she clutches at his hair, tipping his head up for a languorous kiss. His fingertips trace the ridge of her lower ribs, slipping beneath the wiring of her brassiere and brushing against the underside of her breast. She sighs into his mouth and her eyes flutter shut.
It begins as a buzz of static against her side, a light pressure, just opposite where Midori is skimming a path with his thumb. He reaches behind her and undoes the clasps of her brassiere, tugging it down, her nipples pebbling in the cool air. It's dark, him just a shadow above her, drawing closer until his lips are around one nipple, but she feels exposed, as bare as if she were in broad daylight.
Midori kneads her other breast with his hand, flicking his thumb over a nipple as he draws the other one between his teeth - and that is when she has the dim awareness of being watched.
It is a heavy sensation bearing down on her, an intangible weight, yet when she gazes around the room there is nothing but the outline of her furniture, no one but her and Midori and their loud breathing in the silence. Perhaps it's his ministrations which make her sensitive, and yet she still feels as if there is someone standing at the corner of her room, watching this - Midori's hand slipping in her pants, her hips rocking against his fingers, his tongue tracing a wet circle around her nipple. She arches and moans, and there is an electric thrill that shoots between her thighs.
There is no one watching, of course; she looks again and there are only unmoving shadows. When she closes her eyes, however, the feeling intensifies and she spreads her thighs, grinding down almost desperately to alleviate that sharp ache inside her.
There is only darkness behind her eyelids, a uniformity of unseeing which allows her to imagine Midori on top of her, groaning as she yanks down his trousers and grips his length in her palm, his knees buckling when she jerks down her pants and presses him against her entrance, his cock sinking into her in one eager motion - and just beside the bed, just beside her mattress standing against the edge and looking down, this stranger watching as she pushes Midori onto his back and rides him with a frenzied buck of her hips, his gaze hot on her breasts, her fluttering stomach, down to her cunt, wet, glistening, taking the cock until it sinks deep within her.
It's a ridiculous thought and yet- she chokes out a moan, pinching her nipples and arching her back in a theatrical curve, her voice rising in pitch, lewd and ostentatious, exaggerated. There is no conceivable way to peer into her room at the second floor but she spreads her legs wider, throwing her head back with a flourish that makes her hair cascade down her shoulders like a slow waterfall.
And when she's near, when she almost grasps her climax, she trails her hands down from the top of her breasts to the ridge of her ribcage to the plane of her stomach, nails biting against flesh and leaving stark red marks on her skin.
It's the pleasure-pain which makes her come.
"Sometimes I feel like-"
She tugs on the hem of his button-up shirt, wearing it now, running the base of one button against her cuticle.
He lifts his head up and pillows it beneath a fist, elbow anchored on the surface of her bed.
"Sometimes I feel like someone's watching me."
"Hm." He sits up and reaches for her, wrapping his fingers around hers. "You've been working too much."
She nods and takes her hand back.
"Perhaps. But then there are shadows-"
He huffs a quiet laugh, running a hand through his hair in a gesture that used to be endearing but rankles her now, lights up something livid in her. "You should get more sleep, then. I know you've been staying late at the hospital-"
"Like you, mhm?"
She doesn't know what makes her snap. She feels- furious. Angry. Her nails dig crescent gouges in her palms when she clenches them in a white-knuckled grip.
"Oh wait, no. You haven't been staying late at the university. You've been off, driving to the other end of the country-"
"Tomoe, I don't know-"
"Don't you dare lie to me now! I know you've been away, you've been out of your office screwing some desperate slut, bending her over in your car maybe-"
"Tomoe!"
He looks shocked more than angry, and she realizes she had wanted him to snap and to yell back, to fight with her or hit her or- or-
"Get out. Get out, Midori!" She kicks him, kicks him again and again with hard jabs of her feet until he slides off her bed and walks out of her room, the anger only dissipating when she hears the roar of his engine start and slowly fade.
-or to bend her over and fuck her senseless.
She wakes up to a loud crash - the sound of shattering glass, like things had been swept off a shelf with tremendous force. She glances at her clock, 3:07AM, and belts her robe as she pads to her hallway.
There is the smell of something burning.
She runs down her staircase and almost slips, grabbing the banister to keep from toppling head first, the acrid scent getting stronger when she draws near the kitchen.
She checks her stove, no, not there, beneath her sink at the gas tank, not there either, the burning shifting to a fetid stench of decay as she walks to the back window of the kitchen, peering out, her heart seizing beneath her ribcage when she sees the barn lights on and the shadow of a figure moving through the rooms-
"Look out," she sings frantically, to keep that fear at bay, "look out helter skelter," tuneless now, just a desperate recital, "h-helter skelter-" fumbling with the kitchen phone and dialing "h-helter s- there's someone in my house! There's someone in my house!"
The barn lights suddenly blink off.
Two police officers are dispatched to visit her, and she nurses a mug of cocoa as they inspect the barn and its vicinity.
"There's no one there, ma'am." One of the policemen shoots her an exasperated look. She has an instantaneous urge to smash her mug against his face and swallows past the feeling.
"I-I saw someone."
"Well, they aren't here now." He scribbles something on his notepad. "If you want, we can periodically send someone over. Just in case."
"Just in case," she echoes.
She watches the lights of the police car flash, until they round a corner.
Red-blue-red-blue-redblue-
She doesn't sleep.
At the hospital she stares at her desk, her papers, her pens, her mug of tea-
"When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide," her stereo blares, "And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride."
Her door slides open and it is her assistant, somber-faced, serious, pitching her voice to a low, mournful,
"One of the confined patients just died, Doctor."
She picks her mug up. "Oh."
She tilts the mug over the potted cactus at the corner of her table, watching the liquid trickle down, down-
"That's too bad." She says.
Her assistant waits.
She waters her cactus. A worm, its head no bigger than the tip of her finger, pokes out of the soil and squirms.
The door slides shut.
She wakes up to a weight bearing down on her.
Her wrists are pinned to her sides and she can't move her legs as if they're being restrained, the panic rising in her throat like a wave building in the middle of a vast, endless, dark ocean. She tries to scream but something clamps on her mouth and she twists, struggling, trying to wrench free but it's as if she's locked in ice or bound with ropes or someone is holding her down-
Her heart thuds painfully - Helter skelter, she thinks - and her eyes strain at the emptiness above her - helter skelter, there's nothing - kicking and thrashing, oxygen burning low in her lungs - helter skelter imagination - her head spinning, dizzy, faint - oh god oh god oh god -
And then suddenly she's free, sitting up in bed and gasping for air, clawing at her throat, running across her room with her clock glowing a mocking 6:66 before resolving itself to 3:06AM, that burning scent again, fire and ashes, sprinting across the hallway with the thud thud thud on the walls following her - thud-thud-thud-thummmp - almost slipping on the stairs as the lights of the library flicker on-off on-off on-off - crashing into a side table where a sharp pain blooms up her side the vase toppling over and spinning round round rolling to the edge but not falling-
It stops.
The sounds disappear, the lights flicker off.
She doesn't realize she's crying until she's rubbing at her eyes and her tears and blithering a hasty mess of syllables among recognizable words- imagination and nothing and helter skelter.
When she is more sedate, she makes herself a cup of cocoa.
She could call the police or call Midori or knock on the door of her next-door neighbor, but they won't believe her. They'll look at her like she had said something crazy and she knows this because it has always been like that, ever since she was young, when she told her mother things.
She takes a sip of her cocoa, spitting it out with a grimace.
It tastes like soil and ashes - wet mud swirling inside her mug.
Goddammit, she thinks, getting up to put her mug in the sink, turning on the faucet and covering her nose and mouth at the acrid stench that suddenly wafts up and fills the room with the sour-sweet scent of fester and decay and the moist tang of fresh blood.
She turns around and rears back.
On her table is the body of a german shepherd, split open from neck to pelvis, red belly spilling out spools of intestines, slimy and slick and crawling with maggots.
Oh god oh god oh god-
"Leave me alone!" She yells, "What the hell do you want?"
The darkness seems to shift and pulse.
"Who are you?"
She reaches behind her and grabs her mug, throwing it against the far wall of her kitchen, hearing it smash to pieces, a shatter that resonates with a disembodied, huff of laughter, a quiet amused chuckle.
The kitchen lights snap on.
On the glass panes of the window, her reflection raises its hand and smiles back at her, and just above her shoulder-
a man, red hair wild, his teeth bared in a grin.
In one of her dreams, she sits up on her bed, flushed, her chest heaving.
A red rubber ball rolls across the floor, slowing to a stop at the center of her room.
From outside, she hears the faint voice of her mother, "Tomoe! I'm coming back for you and your brother!" before a door slams shut.
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This entry was originally posted at http://quadrantal.dreamwidth.org/17200.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Fandom: Crossroads
Characters: Yomohiro Tomoe, Fujioka Midori, Yomohiro Junichi, Yomohiro Hajime, "Akiyama Kou," and very vague mentions of Kunisaki Chie and Satoshi Kaede | Midori/Tomoe, Kou/Tomoe
Word Count: 3,906 (tres); 15,617 (total)
Rating: M
Warning/s: Please highlight to view the laundry list of trigger warnings. character death, graphic depictions of death and violence, graphic depictions of sex, subtextual incest, abuse, self-mutilation and suicidal tendencies
Summary: One week after she moves into her new house, Tomoe's father dies. Things start happening that she cannot explain. | tomoe and the truths that cannot be obscured
Disclaimer: "Kou" is Miles', Midori is Arah's, Chie is Momo's and Kaede is Kriselle's.
Notes: More in-depth author's notes at the end of the story.
uno. | dos. | tres. | cuatro. | cinco.
.tres.
In her dream she opens her eyes to a dark shadow standing at the foot of her bed.
She jerks awake, perspiring cold sweat through the thin cotton of her nightgown. Her breath mists in front of her and she shivers, tugging down the comforter and stepping off the bed, one foot sliding into a slipper, the other tapping around the floor.
She glances at the clock which glows 3:08AM in bright red blocks, staring at it until the numbers blur together as she lowers herself on her knees and reaches blindly beneath the bed. She skates her palm, first touching the foot of the bed then sliding it in search for her wayward slipper, her fingers running over a part in the tiles.
Her hand pauses.
She sighs and stands up, flipping on her bedside lamp.
She peers beneath the bed and the smooth expanse of the floor is empty.
She purses her lips, pattering out of her door to get a glass of water, and there it is, pink and plain, right at the center of the hallway as if it had been lying in wait for her all along.
Sometimes, she gets the heavy feeling across her nape, that slight tingle of pressure - the sensation of being watched. She'd wrench her gaze behind her and of course there isn't anyone, empty stretches of hallways and vacant rooms; it's probably the stress from work, the fatigue affecting her after the sudden increase in patients and the spike in caseloads, though she had been sleeping quite a fair amount.
Sometimes, she would come home so spent that she'd forget where she put a patient's folder or her box of ballpoint pens. They'd inevitably turn up sooner or later, though in places she would never have expected to leave them - like the top of the stairs leading to the basement or right outside the renovated barn near the pool. Once she had stained glass windows installed in her library wall, the part that overlooked the main staircase, she would sometimes see the lights flickering on and off and then suddenly die when she was within six feet of the door.
There was a time she'd been reading before going to sleep, the few instances these days she could scrounge some spare moments to pick up something non-medical to entertain herself. She could've sworn she had placed it on her bedside table but a week later it turned up in its rightful place in her library, slid among the stacks where it was supposed to be.
Her fatigue, surely.
She had never slept so peacefully as she had in those weeks.
She hums, Will you won't you want me to make you, reaching into a cupboard and pulling out a chopping board, a boning knife. She takes out a slab of meat, still wet and dripping and coating her fingers with its juices, placing the steel edge of the knife against the flesh - there, there just by the meatiest portion - bearing down to slide the sharp blade into all the layers of meat, deeper, deeper, there, metal against bone - I'm coming down fast, she hums - carving off the fat and sinews and flesh-
"But don't let me break you!" she choruses, high-pitched and shrill, the knife's tip digging into the pad of her thumb, deeper, deeper, there-
She yelps, drops the knife, the blade clattering against the sink as she flips the faucet on and washes her wound.
The blood runs into the drain, mingling with water until it fades to a faint rust color. She slaps a bandaid on it, watches as the blood seeps through the plaster, replaces it with another.
That night she dreams this:
She is back in her old bedroom with the red-orange bedsheets and her one-eyed teddy bear, and her head is resting against the pillows with her hair spread out beneath her. She is wearing her thin cotton nightgown, the one she goes to sleep with when the heater isn't malfunctioning and it's not freezing cold in her room, except in this bed her feet dangle over the bottom edge because she is too tall for this type of child furniture.
In this dream it is too hot, and the fabric of the nightgown sticks to her sweaty skin. She shifts and the hem of the dress slides up her thighs, a faint tickling sensation that rustles over her skin. Her eyes flutter shut and she rubs at her shoulder, craning her neck with a soft sigh.
She skims her collarbones and dips slightly into the neckline of the dress, nudging her legs apart and feeling that whisper of fabric on her inner thighs - a slight static, a pleasant thrill. The faint nip of pain as the skin of her wounded thumb stretches.
She shrugs her shoulder, one strap slipping down her upper arm, and it's so much easier now, a tender coax really, to glide her fingers down her chest and cup her breast with her palm, to knead her nipple into a hard nub that buzzes with an electric tingle when she pinches it with two fingers.
The bed dips beside her and she turns towards it but doesn't yet open her eyes, feeling that heavy awareness of being watched once more, a steady pressure that makes her keen at the damp moisture between her legs.
She yanks the other strap of her nightgown down, arching her back to wrench the dress down to her stomach, the air a delicate caress against her sides. She runs her hands over the ridges of her ribcage, coasting her knuckles over her breasts, past her nipples, across her shoulders and up her neck. She bends her knees, spreading her legs further, hot and sodden and moaning irreverently at that wanton feeling of being observed as she slides her finger past the garter of her panties, dips it into the wet, drenched heat of her slit, skating it within her folds - down, to tease at her entrance, up, to circle her clit - throwing her head back and taking her lower lip between her teeth.
She jerks the panties down, so ardent that she foregoes it midway across her thighs, spreading her labia with one hand, with her other plunging two fingers deep, deeper, there - right inside her cunt. She moans - are you watching - riding her fingers close to her ecstasy, spreading herself - can you see this - adding a third finger to slice into her, close, so goddamn close-
She wakes up still aching with a fervent arousal, still tingling and drenched and sopping - and in the quiet of her own bedroom, with her eyes shut tight, she rides her fingers to an orgasm that sweeps through her like thunder, feeling on her skin that phantom sensation of being watched from the shadows.
Her car keys are not in the drawer beside the entryway.
She pauses, not at all discomfited because there's still time to spare and it isn't the first instance she's misplaced something. Her room, maybe. Or the library, as some of her things have eventually turned up in. She places her handbag on top of the side table and slips off her heels, dangling them by her side as she makes her way up the staircase.
The library door is locked.
Odd. She doesn't remember ever locking the library door, not since she moved into the house.
She drops her shoes to the floor, the heels clattering, quite exasperated at her negligence and treading down the stairs once more. Her calves hurt when she walks, not that she recalls exercising any more than usual.
She enters the kitchen, pain suddenly needling up her feet from her soles, and when she looks down there are shards of broken glass spread all over the floor, shattered fragments that crunch when she balances on one leg and lifts up her foot to inspect the damage-
Her skin is unbroken.
She glances down and there's nothing on the ground.
She shivers then, though it isn't cold, and wraps her arms around herself. She retrieves the house keys from behind a cupboard, quietly making her way up to the library.
Only to find the door wide open.
She clenches her fists, digging her nails into the skin of her forearm. The pain keeps her focused, preoccupied, and she eventually finds her car keys on top of a shelf, grabbing them and rushing downstairs, forgetting her heels on the hallway and deciding against coming back for them. She'll- she'll just use the extra pair in her office.
As she drives down her courtyard she glances at the rearview mirror, and in the reflection she sees the curtains of the library window slide shut.
There are things she struggles to explain with logic - because perhaps she's too tired or too stressed or too worn-out, or maybe it's the wind, a sudden gust, just the house settling into place, yes, she's watched some documentaries on these happenings and they always point back to something rational. She is a very sensible woman, an accomplished surgeon, an astute researcher.
There are always explanations to back up physical evidence.
She repeats these things to herself, again and again, as if in doing so she's more likely to believe them.
Still, when she drives by a small shop at the corner of the block, one she'd probably driven by hundreds of times on the way to work and home, she takes note of its name Madame Sueño: Spirits, Séances, et al. and jots it down on a slip of paper.
The neighbor's dogs are dead.
She comes home that afternoon to the elderly lady wailing, hunched on the grass over the bodies of her german shepherds. She reels back and covers her mouth when she sees the dogs lying prostrate on the ground, a huge gash cleaving them open from neck to abdomen, their intestines spilling out and staining the lawn. Their eyes are open, tongues lolling out like pale slices of meat, and she guns her accelerator, not stopping until she's in her garage, turning up the volume of her radio until it drowns out the cries of the elderly lady.
"When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide," the radio blares, "and I stop and I turn and I go for a ride…"
"And I get to the bottom and I see you again," she sings along - loud, louder, closing her eyes to erase the grisly image of the dogs, imagining instead a banquet, a feast of the most succulent food all laid out on the table, hot and steaming, medium raw and oozing their juices on the porcelain.
"Yeah yeah yeah!"
In her dream it's hot, it's hot or entirely too warm and she arches her back off the bed-
She ignores it, ignores the feeling of being observed, the shadow flitting at the periphery of her vision. She disregards these things and yet she cannot stop watching as a vase in her living room topples over, rolling to the side of the desk, back to the center, rolling to the side once again and coming to a complete, total stop.
Rational explanation.
Rational explanation, rational explanation rational explanation-
There is no wind.
Midori visits, bringing a bouquet of roses with an apology on his lips. He holds up a copy of his published journal article and she relents, stepping aside to let him in.
That night, he is languid and careful, taking care to unfasten each button of her blouse and press a kiss to every inch of skin he exposes. He's quiet and thoughtful and he pays extra attention to the hollow of her throat, the valley of her breasts. She is flushed when he lays her on the bed, kissing a trail down the side of her nape and the line of her shoulder. He drags the strap of her brassiere down her arm, following its path with a wet slide of his tongue.
He spreads his fingers over her stomach, his hand big and warm on her belly. It caves beneath his touch and she clutches at his hair, tipping his head up for a languorous kiss. His fingertips trace the ridge of her lower ribs, slipping beneath the wiring of her brassiere and brushing against the underside of her breast. She sighs into his mouth and her eyes flutter shut.
It begins as a buzz of static against her side, a light pressure, just opposite where Midori is skimming a path with his thumb. He reaches behind her and undoes the clasps of her brassiere, tugging it down, her nipples pebbling in the cool air. It's dark, him just a shadow above her, drawing closer until his lips are around one nipple, but she feels exposed, as bare as if she were in broad daylight.
Midori kneads her other breast with his hand, flicking his thumb over a nipple as he draws the other one between his teeth - and that is when she has the dim awareness of being watched.
It is a heavy sensation bearing down on her, an intangible weight, yet when she gazes around the room there is nothing but the outline of her furniture, no one but her and Midori and their loud breathing in the silence. Perhaps it's his ministrations which make her sensitive, and yet she still feels as if there is someone standing at the corner of her room, watching this - Midori's hand slipping in her pants, her hips rocking against his fingers, his tongue tracing a wet circle around her nipple. She arches and moans, and there is an electric thrill that shoots between her thighs.
There is no one watching, of course; she looks again and there are only unmoving shadows. When she closes her eyes, however, the feeling intensifies and she spreads her thighs, grinding down almost desperately to alleviate that sharp ache inside her.
There is only darkness behind her eyelids, a uniformity of unseeing which allows her to imagine Midori on top of her, groaning as she yanks down his trousers and grips his length in her palm, his knees buckling when she jerks down her pants and presses him against her entrance, his cock sinking into her in one eager motion - and just beside the bed, just beside her mattress standing against the edge and looking down, this stranger watching as she pushes Midori onto his back and rides him with a frenzied buck of her hips, his gaze hot on her breasts, her fluttering stomach, down to her cunt, wet, glistening, taking the cock until it sinks deep within her.
It's a ridiculous thought and yet- she chokes out a moan, pinching her nipples and arching her back in a theatrical curve, her voice rising in pitch, lewd and ostentatious, exaggerated. There is no conceivable way to peer into her room at the second floor but she spreads her legs wider, throwing her head back with a flourish that makes her hair cascade down her shoulders like a slow waterfall.
And when she's near, when she almost grasps her climax, she trails her hands down from the top of her breasts to the ridge of her ribcage to the plane of her stomach, nails biting against flesh and leaving stark red marks on her skin.
It's the pleasure-pain which makes her come.
"Sometimes I feel like-"
She tugs on the hem of his button-up shirt, wearing it now, running the base of one button against her cuticle.
He lifts his head up and pillows it beneath a fist, elbow anchored on the surface of her bed.
"Sometimes I feel like someone's watching me."
"Hm." He sits up and reaches for her, wrapping his fingers around hers. "You've been working too much."
She nods and takes her hand back.
"Perhaps. But then there are shadows-"
He huffs a quiet laugh, running a hand through his hair in a gesture that used to be endearing but rankles her now, lights up something livid in her. "You should get more sleep, then. I know you've been staying late at the hospital-"
"Like you, mhm?"
She doesn't know what makes her snap. She feels- furious. Angry. Her nails dig crescent gouges in her palms when she clenches them in a white-knuckled grip.
"Oh wait, no. You haven't been staying late at the university. You've been off, driving to the other end of the country-"
"Tomoe, I don't know-"
"Don't you dare lie to me now! I know you've been away, you've been out of your office screwing some desperate slut, bending her over in your car maybe-"
"Tomoe!"
He looks shocked more than angry, and she realizes she had wanted him to snap and to yell back, to fight with her or hit her or- or-
"Get out. Get out, Midori!" She kicks him, kicks him again and again with hard jabs of her feet until he slides off her bed and walks out of her room, the anger only dissipating when she hears the roar of his engine start and slowly fade.
-or to bend her over and fuck her senseless.
She wakes up to a loud crash - the sound of shattering glass, like things had been swept off a shelf with tremendous force. She glances at her clock, 3:07AM, and belts her robe as she pads to her hallway.
There is the smell of something burning.
She runs down her staircase and almost slips, grabbing the banister to keep from toppling head first, the acrid scent getting stronger when she draws near the kitchen.
She checks her stove, no, not there, beneath her sink at the gas tank, not there either, the burning shifting to a fetid stench of decay as she walks to the back window of the kitchen, peering out, her heart seizing beneath her ribcage when she sees the barn lights on and the shadow of a figure moving through the rooms-
"Look out," she sings frantically, to keep that fear at bay, "look out helter skelter," tuneless now, just a desperate recital, "h-helter skelter-" fumbling with the kitchen phone and dialing "h-helter s- there's someone in my house! There's someone in my house!"
The barn lights suddenly blink off.
Two police officers are dispatched to visit her, and she nurses a mug of cocoa as they inspect the barn and its vicinity.
"There's no one there, ma'am." One of the policemen shoots her an exasperated look. She has an instantaneous urge to smash her mug against his face and swallows past the feeling.
"I-I saw someone."
"Well, they aren't here now." He scribbles something on his notepad. "If you want, we can periodically send someone over. Just in case."
"Just in case," she echoes.
She watches the lights of the police car flash, until they round a corner.
Red-blue-red-blue-redblue-
She doesn't sleep.
At the hospital she stares at her desk, her papers, her pens, her mug of tea-
"When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide," her stereo blares, "And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride."
Her door slides open and it is her assistant, somber-faced, serious, pitching her voice to a low, mournful,
"One of the confined patients just died, Doctor."
She picks her mug up. "Oh."
She tilts the mug over the potted cactus at the corner of her table, watching the liquid trickle down, down-
"That's too bad." She says.
Her assistant waits.
She waters her cactus. A worm, its head no bigger than the tip of her finger, pokes out of the soil and squirms.
The door slides shut.
She wakes up to a weight bearing down on her.
Her wrists are pinned to her sides and she can't move her legs as if they're being restrained, the panic rising in her throat like a wave building in the middle of a vast, endless, dark ocean. She tries to scream but something clamps on her mouth and she twists, struggling, trying to wrench free but it's as if she's locked in ice or bound with ropes or someone is holding her down-
Her heart thuds painfully - Helter skelter, she thinks - and her eyes strain at the emptiness above her - helter skelter, there's nothing - kicking and thrashing, oxygen burning low in her lungs - helter skelter imagination - her head spinning, dizzy, faint - oh god oh god oh god -
And then suddenly she's free, sitting up in bed and gasping for air, clawing at her throat, running across her room with her clock glowing a mocking 6:66 before resolving itself to 3:06AM, that burning scent again, fire and ashes, sprinting across the hallway with the thud thud thud on the walls following her - thud-thud-thud-thummmp - almost slipping on the stairs as the lights of the library flicker on-off on-off on-off - crashing into a side table where a sharp pain blooms up her side the vase toppling over and spinning round round rolling to the edge but not falling-
It stops.
The sounds disappear, the lights flicker off.
She doesn't realize she's crying until she's rubbing at her eyes and her tears and blithering a hasty mess of syllables among recognizable words- imagination and nothing and helter skelter.
When she is more sedate, she makes herself a cup of cocoa.
She could call the police or call Midori or knock on the door of her next-door neighbor, but they won't believe her. They'll look at her like she had said something crazy and she knows this because it has always been like that, ever since she was young, when she told her mother things.
She takes a sip of her cocoa, spitting it out with a grimace.
It tastes like soil and ashes - wet mud swirling inside her mug.
Goddammit, she thinks, getting up to put her mug in the sink, turning on the faucet and covering her nose and mouth at the acrid stench that suddenly wafts up and fills the room with the sour-sweet scent of fester and decay and the moist tang of fresh blood.
She turns around and rears back.
On her table is the body of a german shepherd, split open from neck to pelvis, red belly spilling out spools of intestines, slimy and slick and crawling with maggots.
Oh god oh god oh god-
"Leave me alone!" She yells, "What the hell do you want?"
The darkness seems to shift and pulse.
"Who are you?"
She reaches behind her and grabs her mug, throwing it against the far wall of her kitchen, hearing it smash to pieces, a shatter that resonates with a disembodied, huff of laughter, a quiet amused chuckle.
The kitchen lights snap on.
On the glass panes of the window, her reflection raises its hand and smiles back at her, and just above her shoulder-
a man, red hair wild, his teeth bared in a grin.
In one of her dreams, she sits up on her bed, flushed, her chest heaving.
A red rubber ball rolls across the floor, slowing to a stop at the center of her room.
From outside, she hears the faint voice of her mother, "Tomoe! I'm coming back for you and your brother!" before a door slams shut.
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