Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Der Rabe ❯ One-Shot

“Der Rabe”

Fanfic by: Omni-sama

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Disclaimer: Weiß Kreuz, as far as I know, belongs to Koyasu and Project Weiß.

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Rated: R

Note: This is for the MediaMiner.org Evil Spring Contest 2005

 

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Note: Microsoft Word says I have under 4000 words (since there's a 5000 word max limit), but MM.org says I have over 5000… So…um…?

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We all have our little monsters, you know. Every goddamn one of us. Some ignore the little bastards. Some are consumed by them. If you let yourself get consumed, you go crazy. There's no two ways about it.

 

Sighing, I watch as the lights from passing cars leak through my curtains and dance across my ceiling. It's about three in the morning. The rest of Tokyo's sleeping now, except the partiers and the graveyard shift workers… I could be out there with the former right now, actually… I could be drinking, losing myself in the music of some random club. Maybe I'd even get laid, driving away the monster's face with the much more appealing face of another. I don't really want to go out, though. Because no matter how hard I try, the monster still comes. It stalks me through the streets, watching me from every shadowed alley. Every time I turn to look, it's gone. Always existing right there in my peripheral vision. Not even the clubs keep it away. The lights are always dark there, shadows made sharp and contrasting from the strobes and colored spotlights. So it's there, too. In the shadows. It leaves me far too distracted to even pick up anyone.

 

There's a rap at the door. It's soft, barely audible. Closing my eyes, I try to block it out. This isn't the first time it's happened. I know no one will be there if I answer the door. No one ever is. And, like usual, the rapping's getting louder, more insistent. I open my eyes and once again focus on the lights moving on the ceiling. It's all in my head, I tell myself. It has to be. Eventually, the knocking stops and there's a moment of pure silence. A silence so loud that it even blocks out the city sounds seeping in from the window. Somewhere in the back of that silence, I can just barely make it out…a soft sound like the brush of fabric or the breathless whisper of words. I'm saved from those soft sounds by a car horn sounding on the street outside. The absolute silence is broken, the city breathing life into this room once again. Relaxing muscles that I wasn't even aware I had tensed, I roll over and at least attempt to get some sleep.

 

*****

 

Everything is dark. It's as if someone spilled ink all over the world, blacking out everything and causing it to blur into one. Except her. She's still visible. The only thing visible. It's as if there's a spotlight coming from somewhere, shining down on her. Her back is to me and she appears to be hunched in on herself, arms wrapping around her own thin frame as if she's hurt or scared. Unkept hair tumbles down her back, some sections chopped up to be shorter, some streaked with different shades of brown or black or even blond. The hem of her white dress reaches almost to her ankles, and she appears to be wearing socks that are made up of different material stitched together.

 

I feel myself take a step towards her, see my hand reach out to her, and I know I'm trying to say something but I don't hear my voice. She tenses as if she had heard me and slowly turns her head to look over her shoulder. That's when I stop short, staring at the stitches across her cheek, up over her forehead and elsewhere… Dark, ugly stitches that twine their way over her face and down her neck. Glancing back at her ankles and feet, I'm struck with the sickening realization that those aren't socks. But the skin tones don't match. It's as if she's made up of bits and pieces of different people all stitched together.

 

“I'm lonely,” she says softly, and suddenly I find myself face to face with her. “You should stay here…with me.”

 

It's only then that I wake up, sheets damp with sweat as I sit there panting. My stomach lurches and I quickly stumble out of bed, tripping on my way to the door and out of my room. I make it to the bathroom just in time and dry heave into the toilet. After a while, once my stomach has calmed down and the sweating and panting eases up, I sit back against the wall opposite the toilet and sigh. I fucking hate that dream.

 

Somehow I manage to pull myself up on shaking legs. I flush the toilet then strip off my boxers. Usually I'd sleep totally in the nude, but ever since the first time I had that dream and had to rush out to the bathroom immediately following, I decided the others here might appreciate some modesty. I brush my teeth, doing my best to not look in the mirror as I do so, and then take a shower.

 

When I get down to the shop, I silently go over and grab my apron. Ken greets me, asks how I am, but I just shrug him off. Aya hasn't even looked up from his work as he arranges flowers for an order. I don't see Momoe-san anywhere, and Omi's most likely off at school. Attempting to focus on the mindless job of watering flowers, I go about blocking out the rest of the world. The others know something's up. They aren't stupid. But, despite their individual efforts, none of them managed to get anything from me. I can't tell them, they'll think I'm crazy. Even though I most likely am. I mean, seriously…ghosts? No. Just my little monster fucking with me. No big deal. It's probably just the job getting to me again. That's all it is. Everything's all in my head. That's all.

 

*****

 

Shit. I'm in some back alley, it's pitch black, and I don't know where the rest of the team is. I just completed my part of the mission, and I thought this was the way that led to the place where we were going to regroup. But, no, it's some fucking back alley that I didn't even recall seeing on the blueprints. Shit.

 

“Bombay,” I call over the comlink, “Bombay, this is Balinese. Requesting directions.”

 

Waiting for an answer, I start to fear that the com isn't working, or that somehow there's interference and he won't be able to hear me. That none of them will be able to hear me. But then Omi's voice comes through with a relatively clear “Bombay here. Where are you, Balinese?”

 

“Fuck if I know, Bombay. Some alley… I thought I went the way we planned. In fact, I'm sure of it. But it led me to an alley.”

 

There's silence for a short moment before his confused voice says, “Alley? Balinese, there's no alley in the plans…”

 

“Yeah, I know. But I'm in one.”

 

“Well, can you double back?”

 

Hell, why didn't I think of that? I turn to go back the way I came, only to stop short. “Shit… I would, but I can't remember which door is the one I came out of…” And it's true. There's like ten or more doors stretching down this alley. Which is odd, because alleys don't usually have this many doors…or stretch on this long. It's almost like a hallway outside. I know I'm outside, though, because if I look up I can just make out the inky night sky framed by the tops of the buildings to either side.

 

“What do you mean, Balinese? You really can't remember which door you came out of?”

 

“Er… No, sorry. There's a lot of fucking doors.”

 

“In an alley?”

 

I sigh. “Yeah, kid, I know it's weird. I'm not the one who built this fucking place, though. I'm just the one stuck here.”

 

“Alright, well… I'm doing what I can to pull up any updated blueprints and maps of the area. Stay put and I'll contact you once I have it figured out. Just try to stay out of sight in case you guys didn't get everyone, ok?”

 

“Rodger.”

 

So, I listen to the kid. I go over and find a particularly dark area, then crouch down in the shadows to wait. I wish this hadn't happened. It would have been much easier if I could just quickly get to where the others are, head home, then do my best to forget this. Maybe drink. I've still got that bottle of scotch under my bed. Maybe read. There's a few books I have waiting for me. Or watch a movie… Play a video game with Ken… I don't care, just something. Anything. I don't want to give my brain time to itself. If that happens, it'll start to think about things I really don't want to fucking think about. Like this mission.

 

There's a soft crinkling sound and at first I think it's Omi trying to contact me through the com. But it's not coming from my earpiece. It's come from down the alley. Squinting, I try to see through the darkness and the shadow. The sound grows subtly louder as the moments pass. Wait a minute… That's not crinkling. It's like… It's like the combination of feet on wet ground and rustling fabric. Someone's coming. Shit.

 

I press myself against the wall and keep my breath shallow, hoping the shadow I'm hiding in is enough of a cover. The sounds continue to get louder, but I see no sign of anyone coming from either direction. Shit. Shit shit shit… This is not good. Glancing back to my right, I think I see something shift in the shadows. I freeze, my breath stopping in my throat. Someone's there. Whoever it is moves a little more, walking slowly, then stops. There's barely any light coming into the alley, but in what little bit there is I can see a form standing a couple of meters away from me. It's pale and slight, with choppy, unkept…hair..

 

“Fuck!” I gasp before catching myself. Not that it matters, she obviously sees me already.

 

“I'm lonely,” she breathes. It's not really a whisper. Too soft to be a whisper.

 

“Who are you?” I ask her, finally facing this little monster. She's in my head, I tell myself, she isn't real.

 

I merely blink, and she's closed the distance between us. The patchwork woman is standing right in front of me, her brown and green eyes turned up towards me. “I'm lonely,” she repeats, as if that's the answer to my question. A hand covered in different shades of skin all stitched together reaches up to me. I can see her so clearly now, despite the low light. Suddenly I realize that it's like in my dream, where everything is ink black except for her. I can see her as if there is light from somewhere shining only on her. It doesn't even touch the ground around her. It only illuminates her body, her dress, her hair.

 

“What are you?” I press myself back against the wall as much as I can, so much that it hurts. She's still slowly moving her hand up towards me. I don't want it to touch me. Can't let it touch me…

 

“I'm lonely…” Stop saying that. Fuck! What the hell are you?!

 

Her fingers are almost touching my chin. There's a strange cold radiating from them, a cold that surpasses the chilled cement building at my back. I can't do anything but stare down at her, and at the hard black crisscrosses that run jagged across her face. Wait…it's wire that's holding her together… It just appears black in the dark light, but it's wire.. I scan her features in search of something familiar. Maybe she's inspired by someone… Some target's victim, or a target herself? Maybe she's inspired by-…no…she doesn't resemble her. Her face has features that don't match up, as if her bones were pieced together from different donors like her skin was. Who is she? What does she want from me? If she is just in my mind, why the fuck did I think something like this up?

 

Just as I feel the first light brush of her fingertips, a blinding light surrounds me. I have to close my eyes to block it out, and even bring an arm up to help shield them. What's happening? Am I dead? Did she kill me? With just a touch of her fingers?

 

“Balinese!”

 

Wow… Demons in Hell sure sound a lot like Aya…

 

“Goddammit, Balinese, get in the fucking car!”

 

Wait a minute… I lower my arm and blink, squinting against the light. It's headlights. The headlights of Aya's Porsche, in fact. He's standing there by the open driver's side door, dressed in his mission clothes, any and all blood from tonight hidden against the dark fabric. Looking around, I see I'm not in an alley anymore. I'm right where I should have been to begin with. The rag doll of a woman is nowhere to be seen. Aya calls out to me again, but I ignore him in favor of tossing back my head and laughing. I can't help it. I just found out I'm totally insane.

 

*****

 

We're home, but it seems I won't even have time to take off my jacket before Aya starts chewing me out…some more. I had already gotten an earful on the drive home. Even though I made up an excuse of having been lost in an alley, then somehow finding my way back to where I should be, I still got bitched at. Am still getting bitched at.

 

“Yohji, are you even listening to me? You know that all of our communicators have tracking devices. Omi said you were in the same place the entire time. Why haven't you explained that?”

 

Wait, what? Shit…I forgot about that. He stares me down for a few minutes as I stand here silently staring back at him, attempting to think of some response that won't make me look crazy. Nothing is coming to mind.

 

“I have no explanation, Aya.” Might as well go for the honest answer.

 

For a moment I worry that he broke. He hasn't moved, except to blink. Then instantly, his brows crinkle, he tilts his head, and says, “Excuse me?”

 

“You heard me. I have no explanation. I was in an alley one minute, and then I wasn't. If I didn't move, then I didn't move, but I'm just telling you how it was.”

 

He's quiet again for a moment, then a frown forms on his lips. “Yohji, are you high?”

 

Oh hell no! He did not even suggest that! “No! I don't do that shit. I drink sometimes, yeah, and you know I smoke like a chimney, but I'm fucked up enough thanks.”

 

“Are you drunk, then?”

 

Ok, that's it. My tolerance for this shit has been surpassed. Without another word, I turn away from him and head up to my room. Fucking prick. Grumbling to myself, I kick my door closed and strip out of my duster. I suppose the good thing about using a garrote wire as a weapon is that there usually isn't any blood on my clothes afterwards. Not like Aya with his katana, or Ken with his bugnuks. At least I can be thankful of that. Even so, I don't feel comfortable until I'm totally out of my mission clothes. Leaving the clothing in a pile in the corner to deal with later, I slip on a loose pair of sweatpants and head for my bed. I want that bottle of scotch.

 

But when I get to my bed, I pause, an irrational fear of the dark space underneath wrapping itself around me. I laugh at myself, shaking my head. I'm a fucking killer, and yet I'm afraid of the monster under the bed? Come on, Yohji… You're not five anymore.

 

Despite my personal chiding, I still find it difficult to kneel beside the bed, and even more difficult to pull the bedspread up and look underneath. My hand remains frozen on the fabric for a while, my heart beating in my ears. Get a grip, I tell myself again. Before I can change my mind, I pull the blanket up and look under the bed.

 

Nothing. There's nothing there. I let the breath out I'd been holding and laugh at myself again. Then I frown. My bottle of scotch isn't there, either. I guess I already finished it off… Oh well, it's off to the store for me, then. There's no way in hell I'm going to sit here alone in my room tonight and be sober. So, I get up and change clothes again, this time into a pair of comfortable slacks and an oversized t-shirt. A far cry from my usual, much more revealing attire, but I don't care. I'm just heading down the block for a bottle of something alcoholic.

 

As I head downstairs and towards the backdoor, I hear the others arguing about me in the kitchen. Omi's trying to blame my “strange behavior” on Asuka's death again. He's a sweet kid, that Omi. Always trying to make excuses for me, even though I never ask for it. Sometimes he'll just look at me with an expression in his eyes that seems to say, “Oh, Yohji, I understand… You had to watch the woman you love die twice, the last time by your own hand. It's ok; we all have our issues. You're allowed to be a little loopy after all that.” Yeah, his eyes say a lot, even when he doesn't say anything at all. As I slip out the door, I hear Aya yelling something, but don't catch the actual words.

 

It's extremely late, or really early, depending on how you look at it, so the streets are rather dark. Streetlights and signs cast the sidewalks in different colors, but leave large lingering shadows. Across the street some woman who's clinging to a guy's arm laughs a really loud, annoying laugh. Her heels click loudly on the concrete, echoed by the man's duller footfalls. Cars drive by, a taxi stops to drop someone off, and a drunkard stumbles around the corner and passes by me on wobbly legs. Just another city night.

 

I keep my eyes away from the shadows, trying my best to focus on lights of any kind. Doing this, I make it to the little store without incident. No little monsters hiding in the corners of my vision so far. This place doesn't have much of a selection, but it's the closest one that I know of that's also open this late. I find something cheap and strong, pay for it, then start the short trek back

 

A few sakura petals are blown on the breeze and land in front of me on the sidewalk for just a second before the wind picks them up again, causing them to swirl about. I had almost forgotten it was that time of year again. Been too caught up in things to notice the changing of the seasons. I watch the petals dance on the wind, until I see something out of the corner of my eye and freeze. She's there, across the street, watching me from an angular shadow cast by a protrusion in the building's architecture. I turn to fully look at her, and she doesn't vanish this time. She just stares, unblinking, as a car will eventually come between us. A few people walk past me and her, but no one seems to notice either of us. Absently, I think to myself how she's early. Usually the ghosts come out in the summer, not the spring...

 

“You can see her, can't you?” I hear a gravely voice say from behind me. Turning, I look down to see an old bum huddled in the entryway of a closed shop. He looks up at me, his small black eyes seeming almost surprised. His face is weathered, old, and drooping, and he's missing a few of his crooked teeth. “You see her?”

 

I don't want to answer. I don't want to believe that he sees her, too. Because if someone else sees her, then she isn't just in my head. She's outside of my head. She's real. I don't want that to be true. It can't be true.

 

“No,” I say, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

 

His eyes widen a little, then he looks across the street, and I know he's looking at that same shadow…at that same nightmarish woman. “But you were looking just now…” He murmurs, not believing me or my lie. “She saw you, too.”

 

“No,” I repeat, and start to walk away.

 

“You don't know what she is, do you?” asks the old man, and I can hear him shifting around, most likely to watch me as I leave. I slow my steps and stop for a moment, wondering if he's going to continue. He does. “We're not the first to see her, you know… Others have, too. A person's got to be bad enough off, though, to see her. She's drawn to people like that… The dark ones.”

 

“Sounds like some silly children's story,” I say over my shoulder to him. Because it does. Like an evil Santa Clause. If you're a bad little boy or girl, then the rag doll spirit will visit you! I want to laugh. I also, oddly enough, feel like throwing up again.

 

“Maybe,” replies the bum, and I hear him shifting around again, then a yawn. “Maybe that's all it is, then. Maybe we're both crazy, you and I. We're just the same kind of crazy, is all. Same kind of crazy, see the same kind of things.”

 

“Maybe,” I echo, and then I keep walking. Maybe…

 

Once I'm back, I find that the arguing has ended. I hear TV sounds and the light clinking of dishware. Quietly, I head up to my room and change back into my sweatpants. Grabbing my bottle of cheap release, I crawl onto my bed and prop my back up against the headboard. I don't even get halfway through the bottle before the sound starts. Glancing at the clock, I notice it's right on time. The soft rapping. I hold the bottle in my lap with one hand and cover my face with the other. Why couldn't she have waited until I was farther gone? I'm not drunk enough for this shit now…

 

The soft knocking stops, but when the strange silence doesn't follow, I look up from my hand. Fuck! Absently, I feel the liquor splash me and then hear the loud clunk as the bottle hits the floor.

 

She's standing at the foot of my bed.

 

“I'm lonely,” she says with the airy voice. Or is there even a voice? Just wind. Just the escape of air making words. But it's real. She's real. I realize now that she's never going to go away. No matter where I am, she'll be there. She's drawn to the dark ones, he said…

 

She's drawn to the dark ones.

 

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The End