InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Therapist ❯ One Of The Damned ( Chapter 8 )

Disclaimer: I don't own "Inuyasha".




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The morning sun shining through the window was almost too bright for a gloomy Winter day. Somewhere in the background Sachiko Taji heard the ringing of the school bell. She blinked in confusion, and then remembered that she had a test during the morning class. Soon the familiar faces of her fellow students started filling the empty classroom.

The test came and went, and in a little while school was over for the day. Like clockwork, Sachiko walked home with some of the girls from her school. Kyoko, Yoko and Momoko - the names of her friends were etched clearly in her mind, like it was yesterday. After all, was it not yesterday when she last saw them? Sachiko wrinkled her brow. She was sure that there was something that she had forgotten, but she could not remember what it was.

Time flew by and soon it was the moment for all of them to graduate from high school. As Sachiko walked out of the school gates for the last time, she was filled with a sense of accomplishment. Unlike on previous occasions, her friends were not with her. Somehow she knew that she would be taking this walk alone, and that she had to take a lengthy detour and walk through the city centre, passing by bustling shops filled with wonderfully wrapped goods.

She passed by a scruffy-looking young man lounging beside an electronics store. Instinct told her to lean her arm in his direction. Suddenly, in a completely unexpected move, he reached out a grubby hand and yanked her bag from her shoulder. With perfect timing, Sachiko screamed and fell to the ground. She quickly got up and ran after the thief, shouting for help at the top of her lungs.

Then he appeared, as she had expected, a young man in a smart suit and an air of rebellious danger. He jumped on the thief and wrestled him to the ground. Sachiko felt her cheeks turn red when she got her bag back from the dashing young rogue. Deep down inside, her subconscious mind watched the entire scene unfold with dispassionate familiarity. It knew that Sachiko would find out that the young man was called Hibiki and that she would fall in love with this gangster despite the protestations of her father, who was her only family.

The death of Sachiko's father from cancer took place in the following year. Her mother had died when she was 10 and her father never remarried. Both father and daughter weren't particularly close to any one of their relatives, so his death left her all alone in the world.

She married Hibiki one year later. Perhaps it was because she felt lonely and lost after the death of her father, that she married young. However, whatever the reason might be, she was happy, at least for the first year of their marriage.

Then Hibiki started drinking and his debts from gambling started to accumulate. To make things worse, he borrowed a great deal of money from the yakuza and was unable to pay. Almost on cue, Hibiki's temper started getting worse and he often took out his frustration on his helpless wife.

But Sachiko already knew all of this; just as she knew the shame and agony she would feel when she sold herself for the first time to pay off his debts. Walking back through the pouring rain to her little, dark apartment after her first "engagement", she wondered why she made the same lousy decisions again.

Again? Had she done this before?

Stopping under a damp, gloomy underpass Sachiko strained to remember. Deep inside the cavern of her mind were years filled with memories of herself pacing through the seedy streets of Tokyo looking for clients. Years that she had never ever lived through. So how could she have seen her future? It was more than just a simple feeling of deja vu, she knew that something was misplaced.

"Want to have some fun, pretty lady?" A man in a long overcoat and outstretched hands had come up right beside her while she was deep in thought.

Sachiko screamed and hit the lecher with her handbag before running away quickly, heels splashing in muddy puddles as she raced through the rain. The feeling of uncertainty she had felt soon turned into a sense of foreboding. She needed answers, and continued running through the poorly lit streets wishing that this horrible nightmare, which was her life, would go away. That would somehow come to a place where she could find warmth and security.

A loud screech and the furious honking from an annoyed driver wakened her from the trance-like state she was falling into. Looking around in the fuzzy rain, Sachiko saw that she had recklessly dashed across a small street. As she stopped to catch her breath, she noticed that she was back in the neighbourhood where she had grown up. Instinct took hold of her as she quickly stumbled towards the apartment block where she remembered her family home was. Despite the lateness of the hour, the life lobby was still lit and she could even see a light shining from the windows of the apartment where her family once stayed.

Her hand trembled as she lifted her finger to press the button on the elevator and tears sprung to her eyes. How she wished she could see her parents once again. Going up in the elevator, she soon arrived on the floor where the lit apartment was. The long narrow corridor with its peeling paint and dusty floor seemed more austere than she remembered.

Slowly, with the clip clop of her high heels ringing out loudly in the silence, Sachiko made her way to the lit apartment that was her family home. She stopped in front of the door and pulled out the key that she had never bothered to get rid of. Sliding the key into the lock, she turned it easily. Clearly, whomever it was that was now living there did not change the locks.

Quietly she entered the front door and was about to call out to the owner of the house when she heard an all too familiar female voice.

"Is that you, dear?"

A huge lump formed in Sachiko's throat. It was a voice she had not heard in over 10 years.

"M-m-ma ma?"

A woman in an apron with a spatula her in hand came out of the kitchen.

"Who are you!"

No matter the length of time that had passed, Sachiko could still remember the face of her mother. The face that now confronted her with a puzzled look. It was her mother as Sachiko remembered her, every single detail unchanged since she day she died.

Sachiko's eyes widened. This was impossible!

"I said, 'Who are you!'"

"Mrs Taji?"

The woman frowned, "How do you know my name?"

Sachiko opened her mouth to come up with some kind of plausible excuse. However, the fear and confusion that was building up inside did not allow her to say anything other than, "I - I'm Sachiko, your daughter."

The woman, her mother, frowned and then the frown deepened into anger. At the corner of her eye, Sachiko saw that the woman was no longer carrying a spatula, but a knife.

"You are NOT my daughter! My daughter isn't a whore!"

The woman took a lunge at Sachiko, knife stabbing downwards into her soft flesh. As she tipped backwards from the blow, she felt her breath turn cold and saw the ground split beneath her feet. The woman continued to stab at Sachiko, her faced turned from a creamy beige into the putrid green of a fiend.

Then the ground opened up as she felt the last of her warm breath leave her mortal body. She fell into the darkness into heat and fire and the screams of the souls of the damned. As the heat scorched her skin, Sachiko felt her clothes burn away and heavy chains, formed of some noxious, shadowy substance formed around her neck.

She landed on her knees before a slimy demon with blue-gray flesh that seemed to be in the process of decay. The demon's grating laughter crackled in her ear as he pulled her by a length of thick, ebony chain towards him.

"Welcome to the rest of eternity, worm," the demon's forked tongue flicked and hissed, making his words seem all the more sinister.

Sachiko smelt her own skin burning as she was dragged across molten rock to the stony platform where the putrid demon stood. The heat was so intense that it was possible to see wavering ripples in the air around them.

"Why?" Sachiko choked out her response.

"Why? Why?" the demon laughed. "The paradise of the heavenly realms has no place for a soiled woman."

"No! It's not fair!"

The monster yanked her so that she flew through the air and landed at his feet. Flicking his tongue in her face, he spat, "Of course it is. You asked for it."

"No, I did not!"

"You did the moment you decided to bind your fate with that ruffian husband of yours."

"It's not..."

"No? You knew he was trouble the moment you laid eyes on him," the demon hissed. "Your father warned you didn't he? But did you listen?"

"No! NO! It didn't happen like that!" she screamed, shaking her head desperately.

"Even after your father's death, there were opportunities for you to leave him, but did you? You could have said no and walked out on your useless Hibiki when he started beating you, but you did not."

The demon forced Sachiko down onto the stony surface and mounted her. She felt the creature push something large and slimy in between her legs and into her body. Although she could not see it, she could feel black tendrils working their way deep into the recesses of her soul.

"In the end," the demon's words dripped with venom. "You made the choice to pay for his mistakes. That's why you were sent to me, to be my plaything forever. You deserve it."

You deserve it...

...deserve it...

NO.

Deep inside her psyche, the dispassionate observer that watched Sachiko's entire life clenched her fist in anger. She rose out of the ethereal slip that was the woman's soul and moved through the different layers of consciousness till she was face to face with the demon.

"No."

The demon blinked in confusion. Such as thing had never happened to him before.

"So what if I made all the decisions that brought me here..." Sachiko felt a strange fire sparking off inside of her.

"So what if I'm a filthy woman cast away by heaven..." the fire inside of her grew hotter with each word she spoke.

"So what if my soul is indeed blacker than the pits of hell..." the fire now burned with the intensity of a sun.

The thing that was inside of her burst forth, turning her fingers and flesh into a living inferno.

"I don't have to lie here listening to a maggot that both heaven and earth cast aside!"

With a viciousness that was eerily natural to her, Sachiko thrust her flaming fingers into the skull of the demon. She felt the tongues of fire reach into his mind and pull at the black stuff that must surely be the demon's soul.

"We are both equally damned. Denied forever the joys of the celestial paradise. That makes us both monsters. But, I KNOW that I'm better than YOU. I walked the road, I chose the fate, however unknowingly, I came here through my own doing."

"YOU... on the other hand, did not choose. You were made a monster, an affront to both gods and mortals, and an abortion in the face of creation. Apart from inflicting evil wherever you go, what other purpose have you?"

"You are nothing! A finger puppet of the universe. A glitch of fate."

The clarity and vehemence of her words surprised Sachiko. She had no idea that she was capable of such malice and wasn't too sure why she said what she did.

The demon screamed in agony at her words. Something she said seemed to have touched a nerve. Determined to press her advantage, Sachiko grabbed a firm hold of whatever it was she was feeling inside the demon's mind, and ripped it apart.

Suddenly the firestorm around her began to swirl like a reflection on a puddle of water going down a drainpipe. She found herself releasing the demon as both of them fell into a quiet blackness without sound or form.



"Heh. That's something you don't see everyday, eh, Kanna?"

Hearing a human voice, Sachiko quickly opened her eyes. A young man with jet-black hair and red eyes was gazing downwards at her.