InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Black Cherry ❯ Nice To Meet You? ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two

 

Nice To Meet You?

 

 

The air around me flowed down my throat like a type of thick syrup and clogged my windpipes horribly. And the fact that my tormenter was wearing cologne didn't alleviate the situation any.

 

“Please…let me go,” I pleaded hoarsely, “Please…”

 

Silver hair tumbled down my tormenter's shoulders like a waterfall of rich silk that could've landed any person who got their hands on it a pretty penny. It formed a curtain around me, a sinister and roiling curtain that made the tension, the fear, unfurling inside my chest grow to an unbearable degree. Right then, I wanted nothing to do other than to wrench the long, beautiful, silken strands from his head and make a run for it while he squalled out in agony, pure, sweet agony.

 

The barrel of the gun had grown warm against my temple. I stopped struggling a long time ago against my tormenter's bind because I was getting tired and it was beginning to bleed through my expression, apparently.

 

He began to laugh at my reluctant show of weakness. I frowned and tried to slow down the rapid pacing of my heart, but it was useless.

 

“I should shoot you right here and now,” he murmured, foreboding and sadistic undertones blackening his voice.

 

He shoved the barrel closer against my skin to where I could feel the scorching heat that still clung to the metal after the last shot. I winced and once again he laughed that devilish, arrogant laugh.

 

“Such frailty…” he said, voice still dark and low, “Such foolish nerve in the face of danger…such…stupidity and weakness,” he sighed, “Keh. You humans are all alike.”

 

You humans? And what exactly is he I wonder?

 

I forced myself to look my tormenter straight in the eyes and, suddenly, I realized that the name “My Tormenter” had a certain ring to it that left a bitter taste to linger in the back of my throat. But such a `strong' and `honorable' title befitted one like him. To have a gun pressed against the skull of some helpless woman who didn't have any kind of weapon to protect herself with…

 

Yep. He was a real tormenter all right. He had all the dominative aspects and may've even graduated from Tormenter School with straight `A's up the wazoo. A[Z]IRIS

 

He makes me sick already, I thought and grimaced, which seemed aimed more at the gun rather than at the guy on top of me.

 

“Would you rather die here, Kikyo,” his words floated above me like a cloud threatening to rain deadly needles at any moment, “or tell me where he is and be successful to leave unharmed and not full of bullet holes?”

 

Something in me that was living and squirming, guided by the life-line of stubbornness in my heart, died right then. Was it the thought of actually leaving there, body spitted with so many holes that I wouldn't even be able to drink water without it spurting out of me in countless waterfalls…like in the cartoons? No, that couldn't be it. It had to be something else, something more vile and heinous.

 

Gasp. What if he—he…

 

With a shriek, I shot upwards, instinctively kneeing my tormenter deeply in the groin without putting my actions under any hard reconsideration. I heard him growl, a sound that scraped off the edges of his throat like the furious hiss of a cat whose tail had been stepped on quite unpleasantly. He reared back, his silver hair lunging over his shoulders and cascading wildly down the arched plains of his back.

Thump.

 

I felt something cold kiss the tip of my right index finger. I glimpsed down, still dazed by all the events that had transpired before me in quick, mind-reeling flashes.

 

The gun! It was right there, completely dead to the world as its deadly barrel gazed at the wall off to the side.

 

Hesitantly, I reached for the handle.

 

ii. Interlude

 

“D-Dead?”

 

The words wrapped around the sloping backside of her my like ice, biting, nibbling it away slowly, but that was nothing compared to the pain that my mother's solemn reply inflicted.

 

“Yes, dead.”

 

Yet, there were no tears easing down the contours of her silken cheeks. There were no droopy eyes or hitching breaths of anguish or slip-grabbing of the chest in sheer heartache. No, there was none of that. None at all.

 

Suddenly, I felt anger flood through me, surge through my veins like wildfire.

 

My head bowed. “You didn't care, did you?” then my eyes, edges sharp as those of broken glass, veered upwards and I boomed, “You just didn't care!”

 

 

iii. Encounter

 

 

At first, the gun tipped and wobbled in my jittery hands as I tried to restrain my heart from bursting through my chest. I was trying to aim the thing at the silver-haired guy before me, who had just stopped whimpering and adopted a perfectly prostrate state amidst the burgundy throw pillows and the cherry-wood headboard.

 

I looked at him with fretful intent. I was still determined to shoot him whether he was alive or had somehow even dropped dead from the blow to his groin. Though the gun continued to shake in my tiny hands as if to say, “No, don't do it. I'm so tired of being used as a weapon, as a killing machine,” I dismissed its puny words and reed-pipe voice and looked onward, feeling a change begin to overtake me immediately.

 

I felt like Death. I felt like the almighty Death who closed shut the curtains of life, never to reopen them again. I felt so supreme, so omnipotent. I felt…all powerful.

 

My grip suddenly held fast, clenching the gun handle as if it were the last, tangible thing on Earth to hold onto. “I'm going to shoot you now,” I murmured beneath my breath, and paused, half-expecting an answer and half-expecting a theatric, “Heh, yeah right. You don't even have the guts to kill me.”

 

No matter what reply would soon be thrown my way, I cocked the hammer and settled my index finger firmly against the trigger.

 

Maybe it's the sound that a gun makes that intimidates me—

 

I aimed the gun at the guy's head—a clear shot!

 

—“Boom Boom!” it roars, “Boom Boom!”—

 

My index finger wrapped more and more around the curve of the trigger, making for a perfect fit as I pulled my finger harder against it.

 

—Maybe it's the fact that guns kill, that it causes screams, many screechy sounds of death.

 

A screechy-scream noisemaker! That's what it is!

 

I pulled, and pulled, and pulled…

 

Boom!

 

 

iv. Interlude

 

At the age of 13, things begin to seem a lot clearer, but not because you want them to.

 

At the age of 13, you begin to see things happen that you've never seen before and it makes you wish for the innocent comforts of waking up each morning and being “your parents' baby” once more and squeezing in long and pleasant naps in between each stint.

 

I understood why my mom didn't care about my dad. It didn't take a fool who barely knew past Adam's Apple to understand the situation.

 

She was a whore, a slut, an “escort” who went out with men occasionally to many upstaging festivities; however, her favorite ones by far were the slumber parties. During then, she wouldn't come home until daybreak, yet she never wore what she went out in last night. She'd always come back home, clean, primped, and showered, smelling of something beautiful and sweet.

 

She had class, I'll give her that. Lots and lots of it!

 

And she was always a good mother to me. In fact, she could've won Mother of the Year if it wasn't for her job.

 

…but, without that job…she would've never met…

 

Ah yes…my father, the man who wired a lot of cash to me and my mother with apparent attempts to keep Mom from “wasting away” her body.

 

A note was always enclosed to each envelope. They were all the same and I memorized them well.

 

Kumiko,

 

Take this money. If you don't want my love, take my generosity instead. Just remember, I will not keep sending letters. One day, I hope to confront you face-to-face, just once more.

 

Sweet love,

Ren

 

Mom would always say the letters weren't addressed to her, that they were addressed to someone else. I would then scrutinize the letter hard before she snatched it away from me with plans of mailing it straight back to the sender.

 

I was stuck in ill quandary. And, unbeknownst to me, to the strike of 18, her words will still plague me.

 

Maybe I was right. Maybe she just didn't care.

 

 

v. Add-On

 

The gun made itself known, an unwanted intrusion between the reticent carcass and the quivering blob of skin and bones that was me.

 

But there were no rivers of blood crying from open flesh wounds, no earsplitting screams of pain, not even a sound or sight of anguish. I felt my back grow rigid and taut—A deadly omen is about to emerge, I thought as I squeezed the gun handle, seeking comfort amidst the cold planes of metal.

 

A solitary blink of the eye was all it took. In that short flash of a moment, I was rendered helpless, terrified and literally helpless!

 

Long, slender fingers found both my shoulders, holding stead-fast and with merciless will. I shrieked, the gun dropping with ease from my fingertips as I was hurled off the bed like a stack of dirty laundry. I both heard and felt myself skid, knee-to-back-to-floor, across slick, wooden tiles, left in a broken heap of whimpers and nerve-numbing pain when friction finally kicked in and stopped me.

 

“You should've shot quicker,” came his voice, full of darkness and raw impiety, “Maybe then you would've had a chance.”

 

“Good,” I mumbled weakly, breathing hard, “Next time when you pull a stunt like that, I'll be ready…ready to put a full-blown cap in your ass.”

 

I heard a soft snicker fill the room and, after that, I heard footsteps approach me slowly from up ahead. I subdued the desire to look up.

 

“I see. So you're not Kikyo.”

 

It wasn't a question, just an obvious statement stating an even more obvious fact.

 

My, my, I wanted to say, How very perceptive of you. But the words stuck like strong adhesive to my throat and I was left without any leeway for sparing my negative remarks. If only I could move my leg and send a low-sweeping kick to his ankles. God knows he deserves it for pushing me off the bed.

 

“But, if you're not Kikyo,” the guy stooped down and we made stiff eye-contact with one another, “…who are you then?”

 

I just barely opened my mouth to reply before I heard a high-pitched melody fill the hall outside. Just then, I remembered that the bedroom door wasn't closed and that the raucous that had emerged during the scuffle between me and the silver-haired man adjacent to me was never left completely unnoticed.

 

The melody mounted steadily in volume and, soon, I could hear the gentle tapping of footfalls heading for the gawking door. But I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Somewhere in-between, the tormenter-turned-guy-turned-man, looked up to where his eyes met the open doorway with raw intensity. Though, in that one movement, my eyes drifted to land on his, to observe every facial feature that seemingly graced him without knowledge of the beast that lie dormant inside him.

 

As my eyes traveled, I could feel them widen with each feature that they boldly trespassed. Finally, when the pressure became too unbearable, I gasped as I feasted on the sight of his amber eyes, which burned with a furious light. But it didn't take long for my eyes to find something even more interesting, something even more incredible and, furthermore, inhuman. I watched as his lips parted slightly, revealing sharp fangs, the kind that Dracula bared right before he sucked his victims dry of their blood.

 

So sharp, I thought. He's definitely not human.

 

“What the…!”

 

In a flash, I snapped out of my trance to turn my head and greet the entrance of the bedroom, which was currently being blocked off by a handsome, young man, probably no older than twenty-five, with bronze skin and clothing uniform to the attire that the other man next to me was wearing. I became extremely lost in his infinitely dark, smooth strands of hair, which was pulled up into a neat ponytail that stopped just midway of his backside with a tiny scruff of hair neglected to serve as a bang.

 

So handsome was he, and so lost was I in his features that our eyes soon met and I felt my body freeze completely.

 

“Ka—Kagome,” he murmured softly, “…is that you?”

 

Oh no. Not again.

 

 

vi. Interlude

 

A year and two months later, a little while after my fourteenth birthday, I found myself standing over my mother's body, which was coated in blood and washing ashore onto the beaches of my shoes. I stood there because I knew she was alive and was just playing a game…

 

…a god-awful game that was never meant to be played.

 

While I stood there, hands balled into loose fists and weak frame shuddering uncontrollably with unshed tears of grief, I felt a mannish hand grip my shoulder tenderly, yet firmly.

 

“Take care of her,” I heard, “Please, take good care of her, Kouga.”