The Pissabed
Title: The Pissabed
Rating: K+
Word Count: around 1,020 (plus some preface)
Characters: Kurotsuchi Nemu, Kurotsuchi Mayuri
Warnings: mild violence, some suggestiveness if you squint
Notes: Italicized definition of 'plain' from merriamwebster.com .
Summary: Nemu and dandelions. And Mayuri.
1: archaic : EVEN, LEVEL
2: lacking ornament : UNDECORATED
3: free of extraneous matter : PURE
4: free of impediments to view : UNOBSTRUCTED
5 a (1): evident to the mind or senses : OBVIOUS (2): CLEAR : BLUNT
6 a: belonging to the masses : COMMON b: lacking special distinction or affectation : ORDINARY
7: characterized by simplicity : not complicated
8: lacking beauty or ugliness
1.
If something is common, then that makes it plain.
If something is plain, it is common. It is dull. It is nothing, because it is seen in everything.
Nemu computes these definitions effortlessly, seamlessly, and for a moment they don’t register, because she doesn’t bother. But then, the kickback in her programming: she registers. She thinks. In the same way that she smells the moldy, gluey paper of the fat dictionary (and likes the smell) she understands these words.
I am plain.
It’s easy enough, and it doesn’t sting too much.
She must be broken. It stings, a little, because what is she?
Her temper is level, her mind is even. Even her mind is plain.
2.
Matsumoto-fukutaichou walks by with a jingle of her necklace and a swish of her silky pink sash. Nemu’s eyes dart up to the doorway. Even after Matsumoto-fukutaichou disappears from view, Nemu has the image of that pink sash on her eyelids.
3.
She traces the red choker on her neck. It’s slashed right across her jugular, clinging skintight all around and around. She traces with focus - this is no habit, because she is not really a person, with humanity's nervous habits and vices; she is not a person, just a want. Long, thin, dark hair. Lithe frame. Quiet as a mouse. Masochistic as the lamb in the fable. Dead as the sleeping girl in the myth, comatose, not-really-there, sometimes, with eyes that take in everything, with hands and tongue that work on command.
Occasionally, Mayuri tells her the story of her birth. He tells it smugly, but with an air of excitement, almost as if he were proud, almost as if he really were her father:
“And then I popped it into the mouth,” he says, “and the body opened its eyes and blinked. Near perfection, my greatest work.”
He finally looks at her as he ends, sees her tracing the cloth gash on her neck.
She notices then - how he imperceptibly cocks his head to the side.
She lowers her hand.
Blank.
It has to be perfect.
4.
She’s so obvious, so simple, and most of them feel an uncomfortable sense of pity for the poor (artificial) soul, the oddity that no one speaks to because when she speaks she speaks of the perversion and violence, like they are her only interests.
Some days her face - something in her expression - annoys Kurotsuchi-taichou so badly that he begins to snap at her, and although no one gets close enough to hear the words, they guess well enough.
Later, the seventh seat of the tenth division stumbles upon the girl in a corner of the Seireitei, crumpled up like a child, staring down at a crack in the path. More accurately, she stares at a dandelion poking through the crack. He stares some more at the fuku-freak of the Seireitei while she reaches toward the dandelion and strokes it, like it were a pet or a baby. It would be an absent gesture but, though her eyes are elsewhere, her movement is deliberate. She doesn’t pick it. Only pets it for a moment, then withdraws her hand, still staring blankly at the wall across from her.
He’s so freaked out that he bolts immediately. She looks like a typical girl (sure, one with a good rack and nice legs) but there’s something about her that’s distinctly standoffish and bizarre. She’s too clear. Humans aren’t that clear.
5.
“Yes, a dandelion,” he says, when she inquires. “ A few were found in the greenhouse the other week. Malicious parasites, all of them. You find them everywhere, rotting up gardens and perfectly good medicinal plants.”
Nemu clutches a little tighter to the tome she holds in her brittle arms. Mayuri, with a sick kind of pleasure, can almost hear them cracking. Or he imagines. He knows better; her arms are thin, but he made them from hard, tough bones.
In a perfectly level voice, Nemu says, “You say that they rot. That’s not accurate, they are a plant just as any other is.”
Mayuri stares at her for a minute. A smile smashes wide across his face.
Nemu does not compute.
“Oh, dear, you’re using symbols, aren’t you? Searching for self? Oh, dear, dear, me. My.”
Nemu does not understand.
“They call them ‘pissabeds’. Pissing in beds. No one likes the bed-wetter.”
Nemu excuses herself, leaving Mayuri chortling.
“You’ve got the wrong metaphor,” he says aloud to his work, after she leaves. “You’d be the paper flower, all prettily taped together. The one with the heartbeat.” The anomaly pleases him even more than the thought of her arms cracking, and he starts to hum.
Nemu, walking back to their room, feels nauseous and yet still thinks of dandelions.
Or pissabeds.
6.
She blends in so well that she almost gets knocked down. But she is so ordinary, so scrubbed clean, that she cannot possibly mingle in the crowd for too long.
7.
She doesn’t even know why he’s doing it, but he’s faster than she is - faster, bigger, stronger, everything more - so he smacks her in the face before she can do anything, and then, quick as electrostatic discharge, he yanks her by the collar and shoves her down.
She kneels and looks up, eyes wide. A nasty bruise is blooming on her thigh, she can feel it dimly. Her left cheek is red, probably swelling.
“Are you going to hurt me now?” he asks her, completely civil.
And he laughs.
He laughs, he laughs, and he laughs.
As if this is all were very funny and a great way to relieve tension.
A little part of her violent, perverted soul wilts. She would never hurt him. He knows that. She would never. He is everything more.
He looks down at her, always an afterthought, but then he stops laughing. He turns away, disgusted.
8.
She looks at her reflection in his eyes, and sees the cut across her cheek. It’s the same color as her choker. It doesn’t ruin her. It doesn’t make her dramatic, either. It’s just there. The same as she is.
The same as the pissabed in the crack.