Welcome all to another edition to the TG fandom and to my personal contributions!! I know for those of you following me you know that I am super far behind with everything, I promise I haven't abandoned anything. I hit a mean case of writers block and I started a new job so thats been taking up alot of time. I'm sorry and I will get right to it ASAP! One last thing, this is an idea that I've had for awhile. It's an AU where everyone is human.

Enjoy!!! :)

-000-

I've always wished I could go up and find out what it was like to fly in the clouds. Science tells us that the air is too thin up there for us to breathe properly and that the temperature is too far below zero for our bodies to survive very long. Besides those two minor details though, there's a host of other problems associated with flying in the clouds unaided by conventional technology. In short though, the answer is no, I won't be flying in the clouds outside of a plane anytime soon.

Despite all those facts flying through my mind, here I am soaring against the bright blue sky. No planes in sight, no parachute weighing me down. Just pure unencumbered flight, and I love it. The feeling of the warm wind whipping at my face, the scorching sun shining on everything, the way the clouds tickle my hands and forearms.

I almost don't want to stop. Almost.

Nothing can harm me up here, I think to myself. Nothing can disturb me.

Perfectly on time, the universe reminds me of the fallacy in my thinking. I feel a sharp stab of nauseous pain in my stomach that shoots up into my chest an instant after I notice it. The skies become even more red than the blood that pumps in my veins. The clouds take on a painfully purple hue and become angry like rain clouds.

I look around myself in confusion and pain wondering why my beautiful world is being turned into a world of horror, a world where my fears are far too real.

"It's okay Kaneki-san," a disembodied voice says behind me. I try to turn to see who it is but a cold has settled over me freezing me in place, preventing me from any movement.

"Who?" I manage to say hoarsely.

"Relax Kaneki-san," I can hear the malicious smile in the slightly female sounding voice. Something about it feels so familiar but I can't put my finger on it. "I'm taking over now, you just let go of the wheel."

The voice is so enticing that I actually feel myself let go of whatever I had such a firm hold on. At that moment, I remember the voices face. The face that holds all the malice and evil intent possible.

With my tremendously weakened voice I utter the words I thought would be my last. "Rize…." And then everything goes dark, I can see and feel nothing.

I am nothing.

-000-

I wake up with a gasp. I don't remember the day or the time or where I am even. I look around but I can't see anything, it's too dark. I'm covered though and I try to push the thin sheet off of myself but I feel that there's something on top of it, something warm.

That's when I remember everything. I'm in my house in my bed in the middle of the night. I reach over to the lamp on the night stand to remind myself of the last detail. The light comes on with a slightly orange hue throwing an orange tint on everything. There's a glint of light off in the corner of my eye. When I turn I see the form of my dear beloved Touka and ring that shone from the lamp.

I can never get used to how relaxed she is as she sleeps, like she'll jump up at any moment as if she was never actually asleep. I wonder what she's dreaming about tonight.

Kaneki….

That voice, I remember now. That voice that was so malicious and so enticing. I can be strong, I can ignore it. I must!

Kaneki, can you hear me?

My heart betrays me, it tries to listen to the voice. Before I know it, I am under the spell it weaves, lost in a sea of illusion.

"What do you want Rize?" I try to say with confidence but my soft-spoken voice betrays my fear.

I listen to her laugh, so sweet and yet so evil at the same time. Her form appears before me. Her hair is so pungently purple it's bold even in the low light. She is wearing the white gown that she always appears to me in. It has short mini sleeves that only cover half of her shoulder. To top it all off she is wearing those red framed glasses that which were at one time attractive to me with her hands behind her arched back making her chest look more pronounced than it is.

There's no doubt about it, she is trying to seduce me.

"Kaneki-san!" She says in a sing song voice that I used to love, now it makes me sick. "It's been so long since you've played with me! I feel so lonely!" She wears an expression of mock sadness with her bottom lip poked out. It makes me want to grab her by that lip and rip it off just to watch the blood roll down her chin.

I take a deep breath to steady myself. Focus, you're not that type of person anymore.

At that point, I looked over at Touka and imagined what she would want me to do if she was here with me. The lamp light still shines off of the ring I gave her all those years ago.

"Kaneki-san! You're ignoring me!" Rize chimes in distracting me from my thoughts. I close my eyes and count to ten as I try to convince myself that she wasn't there, that Rize was just a figment of my imagination.

"Oh I know! We could play a game! I'll call your name and every time you don't respond you owe me a kiss on my lips." She says the last part slowly and sensually, her finger tracing the heart shaped pattern around my lips. My eyes pop open and stare daggers into her very soul.

She of course she doesn't even flinch at the looks I'm giving her but she doesn't move either like I've frozen her with my sheer power of will. That doesn't last long though, as she soon after throws her head back and cackles sweetly.

That's something that I've never understood. How can a person be so evil and have such an obviously vile laugh but still have such a soothing sound to it, I wonder.

I pay no mind to her advances and walk into the kitchen deciding that I'm not going to get much sleep tonight. I don't look back or listen for her footsteps to figure out if she's following me into the kitchen, I just know that she is.

As I walk into the next room, I'm greeted by a very unwelcome sight. As it turns out, Rize wasn't following me. She was sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for me. "So those new pills you're taking, do they work?"

I look over at her suspiciously. She isn't doing that annoying singsong voice and she doesn't have a ridiculous school girl look on her face. Her face has more of frustrated expression right now actually, like she's struggling to understand something.

Tentatively, I answer her with my first response to anything she's said since my dream. "I'm not sure."

Her new facial expression is even more confused so I elaborate even more. "I couldn't tell anything was wrong before, so how would I be able to tell now." I ponder my words for a moment before I continue. "Touka doesn't have the same problems as me, she always can help me see the truth."

"So as long as you have Touka, you don't really need those pills do you?"

I freeze in my tracks. Her logic surprises me, that's not good. I continue preparing a cup of tea for myself, hoping that she'll disappear in a few moments.

After a long pause in which I finish preparing my tea, she speaks up again. "Kaneki, do you care for me?" Rize eyes stare intently at the ground.

I fumble with the spoon I'm using and it falls to the floor with a sharp clatter and then silence. Her question pierces the silence in the air, it immobilizes me. I can't move, I can't think. All I can hear is the question, do I care for her?

I shake the thoughts from my head. "Of course not Rize, you mean nothing to me." I say with an uneasy voice. "My love, my one true love is lying in our bed, waiting for me. What place is there for you?" I declare with more force.

She doesn't look up from the ground. "I'm not asking if you love me, I know that we don't have a relationship like that anymore. I want to know if you still consider me a friend, if…." She pauses with the growing tension in the air.

"If what?" Trying to sound authoritative but it comes out weak and needy. I can see her exhale uneasily, preparing her mind.

"If you still think that I'm real." She concedes. It's not a declaration, it's a question. She expects me to answer.

"No, I know that you're only a figment of my imagination." I feel a slight pain in my chest as I speak. "I can't make you go away and I don't want you to stay, you're just a nuisance to be dealt with is all."

"Then that means you don't think I'm real?" She says, I can hear the tremble in her voice so I know she's about to cry.

"Of course," I say closing my eyes. "I don't want you and I don't need you."

At first she looks dejected, her head is hung and her posture is deflated, but then I hear the chuckle. The slightly pleasant but unnerving sound of her laughter. It's a quite normal sound, without the malice behind each breath at least, but the longer it goes on, the more unmistakable the subtle virility becomes. Soon her laugh echoes in my head and chills my bones.

It becomes almost omnipotent, separate from her entirely.

"Stop it." I whisper.

Her laugh only becomes louder.

"Stop it!" I try to yell but it feel so much weaker than a whisper.

I start to lose consciousness but then it all stops. The laughter is gone, the ringing is gone. All that's left is me covering my ears. I look up to see Rize still sitting there smiling, pleased with herself.

"I just wanted to remind you," She begins, standing up off of the counter. "You won't forget me, you won't lose me. I'll always be in the back of your mind, pulling strings you didn't know were there."

She kneels down to me and holds my teary face with her cold hands. "There is no escape for you."

I don't know what to do, Rize has always been strong willed, but she never made me feel this helpless. There is nothing I can do but bend to her will.

She must be able to see the resignation on my face because she looks down at me and smiles. She leans in toward me and presses her lips to mine.

What can I do?

All I can taste is her lips, her mouth.

I'm so tired, I don't want to fight anymore.

I feel her smile as her tongue penetrates my lips.

Please someone save me.

Like a prayer from heaven, Touka calls me. "Kaneki?"

I feel Rize's heartbeat quicken. She lifts herself off of me and looks up into Touka's eyes with fear and dread in her own.

Touka rushes over to me and and shakes me like I'm not awake. "Kaneki, what's wrong?" Rize jumps away from her like she's made of lava. Once Rize isn't touching me, I regain control of my body. I slowly turn my head to her.

"Touka." I say breathlessly.

She freaks out. "Kaneki! What happened? Why are you on the floor? Was it Rize?"

I smile at my savior. "You saved me," I say in my weak pathetic voice. "And that's all that matters."

At first she was yelling for me, but now she seems like she's scolding me. I don't mind though, I've come to learn that this is simply how she loves and what kind of fool would I have to be not to accept it in whatever form she's willing to give?

I can't hear her voice over the loud piercing screech in my ears but I can't still see her fussing over me. The edges of my vision are starting to darken and the last thing I remember is looking at her hair and thinking: purple, painfully purple.

-000-

I awake with a cover draped over me and a warmth pressing against my back. The curtains haven't been drawn but the light still bleeds through them so I can see it's finally daytime. The night is over and I have survived.

I haven't accomplished it on my own though. Nuzzling my way through the covers toward the warmth, I seek my love. She has buried her entire body under the covers so I have to shield myself underneath them too so I can see her. With the little light that passes through the covers, I can see the lines, curves, and colors that make up her face.

The subtle pink of her lips that aren't too big or too small, the slight hills of her cheeks and cheekbones, the small flaps of skin that shield her beautiful eyes, I want to kiss it all and love her in a way that nobody else in the world can. Her hair so painfully purple it makes me want to take her now. Not yet though, it isn't time for such things.

I raise my tired and aching body up off of the floor carefully so I don't disturb the sleeping beauty that is my wife Touka, and I tiptoe into the bathroom.

Once inside, the first thing I can't help but notice is my appearance. My hair is disheveled beyond a bed head, my eyes have bags underneath, and my shirt is dirty and unkempt looking. I guess my decision to stop taking the Seroquel pills had some unexpected consequences.

It was hard to stop taking them in the beginning, but Rize convinced me to stop. I slowly and gradually started taking them less and less, until I hadn't even thought about taking them. Starting over again will be difficult but as long as I have her and her painfully purple hair, I think I'll be alright.

I open up the medicine cabinet, pull out the orange bottle of Seroquel and take the first one I've had in a long time with a gulp of water. After taking one I don't feel any different than before, in fact I feel slightly worse. I can almost feel Rize's cold embrace reaching for me, but when she's close enough to physically make contact, all I can feel is the warmth of hands soaked in love.

Touka won't let me sleep through that gentle night, I have every confidence she and her painfully purple hair will rage with me throughout the dying of the light.

-000-

Please tell me, someone understood that Dylan Thomas reference. It's okay if you didn't, I thought it was kind of dumb anyway lol. If you couldn't tell, in my story, Kaneki suffers from depression and Schizophrenia. He only hears one voice in his head that voice is Rize's. She's only a hallucination. I hope you enjoyed it and for those of us who had a bit of a break this weekend I hope you enjoyed that. If there was something you liked about this story, something you didn't like, or you just want to shout into the void, leave me a review.

Thanks!!! :)

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