Dreams that never woke/nightmares never spoken
WHO: Galatea, no pretenses, no titles sightlessgod
WHAT: The first nightmare: turning man into monster.
WHERE: Her home.
WHEN: Late at night, long after the excitement of the day...
Galatea rarely slept. She rarely needed to, such was the gift she'd been given during her hybridization. And she could barely sleep anyway: the screams from the journals, Sachiko, Matsuri washing up on the shore of the beach...
She leaned back against a wall, an old, worn habit, and closed her eyes. Matsuri would come back. She'd come back before. Sachiko was at home, safe. Nothing had happened. These were dreams--disturbing ones, dangerous ones, but everyone would live. Everyone would be fine. She was not positive of this but it was best to think this way. She knew where "what ifs" led to: uncertainty led down the road to fear, and further there was insanity. She could not afford to lose that. Already she walked a tenuous line between man and beast. To tip too far on the other side was a risk she was not willing to take.
These thoughts blurred for a moment, and her eyelids fluttered briefly before her eyes closed again. She hadn't slept in a week it seemed. It honestly felt as if she hadn't slept since Matsuri returned: distant and strange and cold. She would sleep. A few hours, and then she would be fine.
Just a few hours, and everything would be fine--
-----
--she was seven or eight or nine years old, too young to fend for herself and too young to be sold to brothels (if she'd been any older, that's where they would have thrown her, those secret dark places in towns that always smelt of musk and something unhealthy and sick), but she was too young and so they dumped her out on the outskirts of town (or sold her, she couldn't remember because this place was so cold and dark and she was frightened), and the men in black had taken her
(scooped her up like the legends of Hades pulling from the Earth in a mist of black smoke and taking Persephone down, down, down into the underworld)
to this (cold, dark) place that smelled of metal and when she breathed she could catch the scent of something else, acrid and strange
(yoma)
a smell that they couldn't cover up with anything, not even the sharp, medicinal scent of antiseptics and rubbing alcohol. She was shaking so badly her teeth chattered, and as they dragged her in the room she caught a glimpse of her eyes in the smooth metal of the door handle. Blue, and this was the first memory, a memory she would recall long after color had been lost to her.
Above her head a lamp creaked and flickered weakly, and her second memory was that noise, that steady
(unsettling)
creak of the lamplight. The way it seemed to die and then return in fervor, then flicker again, and she had a wild, panicked thought: they intended to tear her open in this poor light?
She didn't think to struggle until they lifted her on to the table, and then she kicked, screamed for her mother and father
(who had been torn apart by the yoma while she watched from a closet, biting her fist to stifle the panicked, choked screams)
but they threw her onto the table anyway, and strapped her legs and arms down with leather. Later, they would replace it with metal, when the yoma blood mingled with her own, bleached her hair white and stole the color from her eyes. She had one, unceasing thought:
(I don't want to die)
And they gave her but a moment to brace herself for the pain. This was her final memory, this baptism in fire. It was worse than any pain she had ever felt, and the last thought she had before she mercifully lost consciousness was
(i don't want to die)
that if she died, it would be a mercy.
(please god, don't let me die)
-----
Galatea managed one choked, wheezing gasp of air before the shock barreled into her in what seemed like an explosion. She immediately tried to clamp down on her yoma energy, which came in a sudden, violent burst. The pain came then, in rich, exquisite waves, each worse than the next, and she couldn't help the sob that tore from her throat. Her body felt as if it was aflame: the fire that raced through every vein in her body, every nerve. Where was the journal? She had to find the journal, then someone--anyone would be able to help her.
She reached down to touch her abdomen, to touch the place where the pain originated, and recoiled almost immediately. The flesh there pulsed, and when she pulled her hand away she didn't even need her eyes to know that it was wet with blood. There was no one here that she wanted to see that, no one.
It's a dream, she thought, almost hysterically, it's a dream, and if you keep thinking that, it'll pass. It will pass.
So she curled up on her side, rocked herself in that dark room that was so much like the one in her dreams, and waited for the pain to pass.
WHAT: The first nightmare: turning man into monster.
WHERE: Her home.
WHEN: Late at night, long after the excitement of the day...
Galatea rarely slept. She rarely needed to, such was the gift she'd been given during her hybridization. And she could barely sleep anyway: the screams from the journals, Sachiko, Matsuri washing up on the shore of the beach...
She leaned back against a wall, an old, worn habit, and closed her eyes. Matsuri would come back. She'd come back before. Sachiko was at home, safe. Nothing had happened. These were dreams--disturbing ones, dangerous ones, but everyone would live. Everyone would be fine. She was not positive of this but it was best to think this way. She knew where "what ifs" led to: uncertainty led down the road to fear, and further there was insanity. She could not afford to lose that. Already she walked a tenuous line between man and beast. To tip too far on the other side was a risk she was not willing to take.
These thoughts blurred for a moment, and her eyelids fluttered briefly before her eyes closed again. She hadn't slept in a week it seemed. It honestly felt as if she hadn't slept since Matsuri returned: distant and strange and cold. She would sleep. A few hours, and then she would be fine.
Just a few hours, and everything would be fine--
-----
--she was seven or eight or nine years old, too young to fend for herself and too young to be sold to brothels (if she'd been any older, that's where they would have thrown her, those secret dark places in towns that always smelt of musk and something unhealthy and sick), but she was too young and so they dumped her out on the outskirts of town (or sold her, she couldn't remember because this place was so cold and dark and she was frightened), and the men in black had taken her
(scooped her up like the legends of Hades pulling from the Earth in a mist of black smoke and taking Persephone down, down, down into the underworld)
to this (cold, dark) place that smelled of metal and when she breathed she could catch the scent of something else, acrid and strange
(yoma)
a smell that they couldn't cover up with anything, not even the sharp, medicinal scent of antiseptics and rubbing alcohol. She was shaking so badly her teeth chattered, and as they dragged her in the room she caught a glimpse of her eyes in the smooth metal of the door handle. Blue, and this was the first memory, a memory she would recall long after color had been lost to her.
Above her head a lamp creaked and flickered weakly, and her second memory was that noise, that steady
(unsettling)
creak of the lamplight. The way it seemed to die and then return in fervor, then flicker again, and she had a wild, panicked thought: they intended to tear her open in this poor light?
She didn't think to struggle until they lifted her on to the table, and then she kicked, screamed for her mother and father
(who had been torn apart by the yoma while she watched from a closet, biting her fist to stifle the panicked, choked screams)
but they threw her onto the table anyway, and strapped her legs and arms down with leather. Later, they would replace it with metal, when the yoma blood mingled with her own, bleached her hair white and stole the color from her eyes. She had one, unceasing thought:
(I don't want to die)
And they gave her but a moment to brace herself for the pain. This was her final memory, this baptism in fire. It was worse than any pain she had ever felt, and the last thought she had before she mercifully lost consciousness was
(i don't want to die)
that if she died, it would be a mercy.
(please god, don't let me die)
-----
Galatea managed one choked, wheezing gasp of air before the shock barreled into her in what seemed like an explosion. She immediately tried to clamp down on her yoma energy, which came in a sudden, violent burst. The pain came then, in rich, exquisite waves, each worse than the next, and she couldn't help the sob that tore from her throat. Her body felt as if it was aflame: the fire that raced through every vein in her body, every nerve. Where was the journal? She had to find the journal, then someone--anyone would be able to help her.
She reached down to touch her abdomen, to touch the place where the pain originated, and recoiled almost immediately. The flesh there pulsed, and when she pulled her hand away she didn't even need her eyes to know that it was wet with blood. There was no one here that she wanted to see that, no one.
It's a dream, she thought, almost hysterically, it's a dream, and if you keep thinking that, it'll pass. It will pass.
So she curled up on her side, rocked herself in that dark room that was so much like the one in her dreams, and waited for the pain to pass.