Spirited Away Fan Fiction ❯ A Different Beginning ❯ It's Just a Dream ( Chapter 2 )

It's Just a Dream

Chapter 2

 

Chihiro looked back toward the direction she and her parents had entered the strange town, trying to find a hint of life beyond the cleanliness of the restaurants and the food that seemed to have come from nowhere. The dirt street was empty though, so she headed right, wanting to go deeper into the town to explore. But she stopped and glanced back at her parents before she shook her head and sighed.

I've got a really bad feeling about that.

She continued on, though, making her way to the steps at the head of the main street. At the top of them sat a rather strange structure that may have been a sign or a greeting, but the kanji painted on it was ancient, a dialect she wasn't familiar with. The architecture itself was similar to the clock tower where they had come in at, so there was no doubt in her mind that this town and the clock tower somehow had something to do with each other.

For a moment she examined the old kanji, then when she glanced to her right her eyes widened. Wow.

It was an aburaya, a huge aburaya. Similar to the clock tower in shape but much larger with green tiles on the sloped roves and large sliding doors on the sides. The entire thing was gigantic, but at the same time it looked rather squat, like a fat little person, if that made any sort of sense at all.

“Weird,” she commented, walking towards the wooden bridge that connected the aburaya to the town of restaurants.

The aburaya looked to still be open despite the rather abandoned appearance of the town. Great black streams of smoke plumed from the chimney, the windows were clean, rattling in the wind. There was even a waterfall of sorts, though the water itself looked kind of gray and murky. The whole place was just strange, she decided once she was standing on the bridge and looking over the side of the railing.

Chihiro heard the scream of a train whistle and then a two-car train came chugging out of a dark tunnel in the side of the plateau which the town and aburaya sat upon. Her eyes brightened and she smiled stupidly, “There's your train, Mom.”

She hurried to the other side of the bridge, standing up on the lower beam of the handrail as she watched it speed away. For a few seconds she just stood there, running the tips of her fingers over the smooth surface of the wood until she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. When she looked over she quite nearly fell down.

To her right, not but a meter and a half away stood the most gorgeous man that Chihiro had ever laid eyes upon. He was inhumanly fair, but not so much that it looked sickly, and he had the most intriguing emerald eyes; the kind of eyes that demanded your attention immediately. Once she managed to get past the shock of his eyes she noticed his clothes, nobody wore those kinds of clothes anymore. Deep blue hakama and a white yukata with a blue haori underneath, tied with a blue sash.

He gasped and moved closer to her, a look somewhere between surprise and shock covering his features. Immediately, she stood up a little straighter, blinking out of her momentary trance and halfway noticing the shadows as they shifted on the bridge behind him.

The man looked at her with an angry sort of frown, “You're not allowed here. Go Back!”

A confused expression crossed her face and she backed away from him a little as she dropped from her perch on the railing. “Wha ...?”

“It's almost dark!” he told her, still advancing, “Leave before it gets dark.” Then he looked back in the direction of the aburaya, his perfectly straight dark green hair swaying as he moved. “They're lighting the lamps.”

They? she wondered, following his gaze, they who, there's no one here.

But before she had the chance to voice her question he was looking at her again and had somehow managed to push her off the bridge in the direction of the town.

“Go!” he urged her. “I'll distract them. Get back across the river!”

By this time Chihiro was already halfway running back into the town, but she glanced back at him a few meters from the bridge to find that he had turned around. She noticed something white and shiny flow from in front of him before she looked where she was running again.

The neon sign for the cafe on the other side of the standing structure flickered and began to glow, the lights on the inside and the red paper lanterns around it turning on as well. She practically flew down the first half of the steps that led back to the main street, signs and interior lights and lanterns coming to life all around her as the sun set. Then she stopped on the brief landing in the center of the flight and turned to look back once more.

“What's his problem?” she asked to nobody in particular before continuing on down the steps and towards the alley shop she'd last seen her parents in, or rather, where she'd left them.

Shadow-like things began to rise up out of the ground all around her, but she either paid them no mind or didn't notice them at all. She had to get to her parents and leave this place. The shadows were everywhere, though, in the restaurants, in the streets, on the wooden stools. Wherever they came from, they were only making the bad feeling in her gut grow more and more. Something really bad was about to happen if it hadn't happened already.

“Dad!”

They were right where she'd left them, she noticed with a small sigh of relief as she skidded around the corner. But ... they looked a little different ... like they were bigger or something, and their skin looked kind of pink. That didn't matter though, what did matter was that they hadn't stopped eating long enough to notice all the strange things going on around them.

“Dad, we gotta go, let's go home,” Chihiro urged, taking hold of his arm and pulling, trying desperately to get his attention. “Let's go, Dad!” she nearly growled at him in her urgency.

Then he turned to look at her and she shrieked in horror. Her father had the face of a pig, large nose, small beady eyes, and pig's ears! That explained why he looked so fat from behind, but ... he couldn't be a pig, he was a person! There was no chance that this ... thing could be her father, despite the fact that it wore his clothes and sat where he had not but twenty minutes before.

She immediately let go of its arm and backed away, her eyes wide as her hair stood on end. The pig thing went back to eating, hardly taking notice of her at all. Most of the food was gone though, so it dug further into the remaining items, nudging the dishes with its long snout. Several of them fell to the ground with a crash, soy sauce running from the counter to the broken porcelain below.

Oh Kami! she internally screamed, stuck between horror and disgust as she looked on. This is insane, I've lost my mind!

A strange whip-like sound came from behind the counter and when she looked back up she saw an arm, green, with webbed fingers and warts here and there, smack the pig-creature with a fly-swatter. It was only then that the teenage girl noticed the steam clouded kitchen, the same kitchen that had been empty when she and her parents first got there.

The pig ignored the fly-swatter, digging for food more eagerly than before until the frog-like arm hit it again and again right in its face. It fell from where it sat on the stool onto its back, landing in the food remains that were either half-eaten or had fallen when the plates did. The food flew everywhere from the impact of the pig's massive size and weight, landing a few feet away from where the pig squealed its upset.

Chihiro pushed herself up against a support beam to the overhang of the restaurant, unable to look away in her horror. Her grayish-blue eyes widened even more and she cried out, then finally pushed away from the post. “Iia!” She ran back out onto the main street, looking around desperately for any sign of her parents.

“Dad! Mom! Where are you?!”

The inhuman shadow-creatures moved up and down the street all around her, hardly noticing the presence of the slight human girl. They writhed with eyeless faces and soundless moans as they went. Some were incredibly tall, others just looked like stretched out balloons and other seemed to resemble centipedes. The last kind were the ones that frightened her the most because they were at least five times her size coupled with her adamant fear of insects.

The shadows waved from behind some of the counters while others just kind of crawled here and there, the fact remained that whatever they were, they sure as hell weren't human. They were like black, featureless ghosts, only they didn't float or glide; they were completely opposite of what she'd envisioned ghosts as when she was younger.

Her heart was racing as she glanced around the street, “Mom!” Then she noticed the strange black shadow behind her and sprinted down the main street towards the clock tower, thanking Kami-sama for every brutal and agonizing soccer practice she'd ever had to endure.

Please let them be there, please, she prayed.

Darting in between the shadow-creatures, she made her way to where the stone frog sat at the top of stone steps. As she skipped down them, she noticed water gushing from its mouth, but she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. Her foot caught on a step and she fell forward, bracing herself for a fall down the rest of the stone steps. Instead, she fell into a body of icy water and was completely submerged. Then when she broke the surface she gasped, her skin feeling as if she was being shot through with hundreds needles over and over again.

“It's water?!” Chihiro sputtered as she tred her way back up to the steps and pulled herself out, her hands slipping on the stone of the steps.

Noticing the reflection of lights in the water, she looked across the river, clutching her arms across her chest and shivering slightly.

Then she clenched her fists into her sleeves when she saw a faerie moving slowly across the water's surface. She pounded her fists against the sides of her aching head, trying to erase what was in front of her.

“This can't be ...” but when she looked up, the lights, the river, and the faerie were all still there. “I'm dreaming, dreaming!” she declared, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, but when she opened them again, nothing had changed.

Chihiro shook her head, pressing her fists to her eyes. “Wake up! Wake up!” she crouched down, burying her face in her knees. “Wake ... up ...” Then she was rocking back and forth, “It's just a dream, a dream. Go away. Disappear.”

She felt like she was going insane. Nothing that was happening to her was possible; the pigs, the frog arm, the lights, the lake, the faerie, the man with the emerald eyes ... none of it. Her stomach lurched and the need to empty what little contents contained within was overwhelming, but she couldn't just get sick all over the steps, that'd be disgusting. So, she swallowed and took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes with tingling fingers ... Wait. What was wrong with her fingers?

Looking down at her hands she gasped, they were going transparent! So she raised them up against the light of the faerie to make sure that her eyes weren't playing tricks with her. But she could see the faerie almost perfectly through her hands.

“I can see through!” she cried out in shock, trying to rub the color and solidity back into her limbs. “It's a dream, it's got to be.” Then she covered her eyes with her hands and gasped her shocked frustration when she could still see through them. Nonono!

When she heard the boom of the faerie as it landed, she looked over cautiously. It can't get worse, she thought, it can't possibly get any worse.

Then a wooden ramp came down and the doors flew open all on their own. A single sheet of white paper at a time exited the doors, floating maybe five and a half feet over the floorboards. Once they got to the ramp, strange red cloaks appeared on them, having melted into existence like wax, and then purple hat things appeared on their heads in the same manner. But it wasn't necessarily the clothes they wore, no, it was the fact that they had pieces of paper for faces and no other distinguishing features. So she backed away from them and looked down at the lake when she noticed pieces of movement out of the corner of her eye. It was those shadow-things ... they were coming out of the water!

It's worse. It's worse! her mind screamed as she tried not to and she bolted up a hill, away from all the worse-ness that had decided to inflict itself upon her.

There was an old wooden fence at the top of the hill and on the other side were several old buildings, most likely the sides of the restaurants. The corner was dark and looked like no one had been around it in ages, but then, so had the train station, or rather, the faerie launch. It didn't matter, though, it was vacant and she sure as hell didn't want to see or be seen by the freakish creatures that she knew were all around the town of restaurants. There weren't any strange creatures and for that she was immensely grateful.

So she ran over to the side of the building and leaned up against the wall, breathing deeply to calm her frazzled nerves. Then the events of the day caught up to her finally and she slid down the wall and buried her face and transparent hands into her knees. She had great reason to believe that her mother and father had turned into pigs and even if they hadn't, she was all alone in the abandoned theme park. Which wasn't quite as abandoned as her father had said it was, not to mention the fact that a whole ton of weird creatures were coming in by faerie, the field was now a lake and she was disappearing. All in all, it wasn't a good day, it was actually a pretty bad day. Who was she kidding, today just plain sucked.

Chihiro sobbed silently, not knowing what to do. I'll never be a pain in the ass again, she promised, if someone will just help me get out of here in one piece, I swear I'll never be a pain in the ass again.

Almost twenty minutes later, when she'd finally given up hope of having her silent prayer answered, she felt a hand on her arm and one across her shoulders. Her head snapped up and to her surprise, she found the man from the bridge looking back at her.

“Don't be afraid, I'm a friend,” he soothed, pulling her slowly closer to him.

"No, no, no,” she said, her arms clasped to her chest and she was trying to back away from him.

She saw him reach into his haori and take out something that looked like a berry; he held it out to her, “Open your mouth and eat this. Unless you eat something from this world you'll disappear.”

“I don't want to stay here!” She cried out and covered her mouth with her arms, “No, no, no.”

When she tried to face mush him away with her hands, she was shocked to find that her arm went straight through. It shifted through his face and hair and she moved her fingers just to make sure it was really her arm. Not a hair shifted as she did so, he wasn't affected by this at all.

Ha! Take that you nasty physics teachers, she thought with a sort of sick satisfaction.

“Don't worry. It won't turn you into a pig,” he told her, pressing it closer to her, his hand passing through hers and his other still on her shoulders. His fingers maneuvered past her lips gently as he pushed it into her mouth. “Chew it and swallow.”

Oh Kami that's bitter, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut and doing as he said, though rather unwillingly.

“Good, you're fine now.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him skeptically, not quite believing that s single berry had the ability to make her solid again. Not that she even knew why she had gone into an anti-solid state to begin with.

He held his hand out with his palm facing her, “See for yourself.”

Rather timidly, she touched her fingers to his palm, hoping that she wasn't being tricked. As she felt the skin of his hand she sighed in relief, looking up to see that he was still looking at her with the same stoic features, “I'm all right.”

“You see?” he asked, taking hold of her hand, “Now come.” He stood, pulling her with him.

But she pulled her hand back, “What's going on? Where are my parents? They didn't really turn into pigs ... did they?”

The man looked down at her, “You can't see them now, but you will.” Then he narrowed his eyes and looked off into the sky as if he were searching for something.

What are you looking for? she wondered curiously, though a bit annoyed that he hadn't even bothered to give her a real answer to her question. A rather confused expression crossed her face and she glanced up to see what it was he was trying to find.

Suddenly, he crouched down in front of her, hiding her from whatever it was that he had seen.

“Wha ...?”

“Quiet!”

Then she saw it, a black bird with the head of a woman that wore her hair in a huge puffy bun, an enormous monstrosity of a bun actually. How the hell could she fly with that thing on top of her head like that? The face was hideous, though, sharp and terrifying features, not to mention the mouth full of jagged teeth. She inhaled sharply, fighting the urge to scream in her all-consuming horror.

The man pulled her closer as he pressed their bodies up against the wall of the building behind them, his left arm across her shoulders and his right braced against the building. Her heart beat sped up dangerously at the closeness that she'd never been bothered by from a boy before ... it shouldn't be so different. The man hiding her couldn't be any more than two years older than she ... so he was more of a young man if she thought about it. Thinking, however, was now out of the question, though, he was so damn close to her ... And just as she forgot how to breathe, the bird-thing flew off, the green eyed man watching it until it was no longer visible.

He pulled away from her a little, "It's looking for you.”

Say WHAT?! she so desperately wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.

But he stood suddenly, his telepathy obviously needing some work, trying to pull her up with him. “There's no time, let's run.”

Chihiro pulled herself up, or at least she tried to, but when she found she couldn't she looked disbelievingly at her legs. “Of all the times to fall asleep ... this is impossible.” It wasn't the same though, she could tell after she noticed that there wasn't a tingling feeling of numbness, they just wouldn't work. “What the ... I-I can't move!”

He crouched back down in front of her and looked directly into her eyes, startled grayish-blue against calm jade. “Calm now. Take a deep breath.”

She gave him a well-how-the-hell's-that-supposed-to-help look, “What ... why?”

“Do as I say,” he told her, as if he wasn't to be questioned and that's just the way it was.

And resisting the urge to punch him right in his pretty face, she did as he said, inhaling deeply. Not at all believing it would work for the first half of a second, but then she remembered that was the exact same thing she'd thought about the berry. What could it hurt? Besides, he'd done nothing to deserve her skepticism, so she'd trust him ... a little. It wasn't like he'd turn into a dragon and eat her or anything.

The green eyed young man extended his hand and ran it over her leg, making it feel warm and something akin to butter or jelly-like. “In the name of the wind and water within thee ...” he spoke and his hand took on a bluish glow. “Unbind her. Get up!”

She blinked, rather surprised that she didn't feel and different, and she was about to ask if she was supposed to but he pulled her up into a standing position. I guess it worked, then, she thought.

Then he started running at what felt to her like the speed of sound. The wind was rushing through Chihiro and she could have sworn that she heard it as they passed. Together, they headed down a dark alleyway toward the metal door at the end with red writing on it that she didn't have the opportunity to read. The man waved his hand and the door opened all on its own just before they ran into it.

Now that was odd, she thought as the door shut again behind them.

The room beyond the door was full of huge barrels which were filled with ginormous rocks of which she couldn't fathom a use for. The man practically drug her down a flight of wooden stairs and past several enormous black jugs with red coverings over the lids. Then they were in the butchery and she thought she was going to be sick. She'd never been good in dealing with surroundings like that. It wasn't the blood, no, blood didn't bother her at all. She'd had enough cut knees and skinned arms during the soccer seasons to last her a lifetime. It was the cut up animal sides hanging from hooks and chains in the ceiling that really bothered her; for some reason, it just made her sick to her stomach.

There were giant fish sides here and there, sides of pork and Kami knew what else. And the next second she felt like she was going to freeze. They were in a large freezer, full of frozen fish and other sorts of things. When they ran through the door that lead out, it too closed behind them all on its own.

This is getting really weird now.

Not that a freezer or butchery was weird, but the contents were. Where the hell did one find fish that big? Some of the fishermen back home ... not that it was home anymore ... would love to get a catch that big. Of course, this entire place was odd, maddeningly strange, and a bit unnerving all in the same ten minutes. She'd give just about anything right now to be back in her father's little blue Audi, listening to the Miyavi CD, and on her not-so-merry way to the house her family had been forced to move to given their financial situation. If her father had just gotten a normal desk job, it would all have been all right. But noooo, he had to become a job contractor for demolition and construction. Drain the river, build apartments, tear down the apartments, build a shrine, tear down the shrine and build more apartments.

“It's a new job in Tochinoki,” he'd said, “it's not that far.”

Oh but it was, it was far enough that he'd decided the night after that they had to move so the commute would be shorter. If he would have just left the damn river what's-it-called alone, then they would still be at home. Not in this abandoned amusement park that's really not abandoned because, oh yeah, these weird things that look like shadows pop up out of the ground and then pig-things are just randomly sitting on stools at the restaurant where her parents had been eating, and let's not forget that the field had turned into a lake with the faerie and the things that came out with nothing but sheets of paper for faces.

Before she knew it, they were running through a huge pig pen, filled with enormous pigs which squealed at them as they passed. They lights from the ceiling illuminated their pink skin and Chihiro gasped.

There were hundreds of them, all crammed into the separate pens together like sardines in a can. That couldn't possibly be comfortable, not at all. It did, in fact, look incredibly uncomfortable. Then she vaguely wondered if the pigs she'd seen at the restaurant were in there, and despite the fact that she looked from one to another, she couldn't tell any of them apart. They were all the same. As the man lead her to the exit on the other side of the pens, she noticed where he was taking her and wanted to pull away so she could run back the way they had come.

He's taking me back to the aburaya?! she internally screamed, the lights glowing sharply in the distance. He's lost his mind, didn't he tell me to get away from there?