The rain falls as it has always fallen, and its given presence bathed in the light of the clouds' accompanying lightning only serves to give it all the more notice. Not that rain needs notice, as too little in an area of drought will be praised and lauded savior, while too much in an area of saturation shall come to be known as a plague upon the land… a destroyer… while in other parts, it is just unwelcome. For in the city streets below, the rain is nothing more than a burden. As the figure well above the streets could relate, tonight's rain was nothing more than an annoyance.
Even so, rain soaked and uncomfortable… he was happy.
The years of confinement had passed, and change was about the air… or rather, things were starting to move. Actually, that wasn't right either. For things had already moved, which pushed him from hiding and into the open once again.
Things had brought him here after all… back to Tokyo.
He couldn't help but smile a hidden smile. Even with the world a complex networking of crimson pulses, the rain and its effect didn't change. Nor did it change that of the city and its complex simplicity.
It didn't even change the memory…
Rather, other than the color change, this was almost exactly like that time… almost.
Chapter 1: Begginings
-Ten years ago-
Rain falls.
It seems like it always does… these days.
Has it been a week… two weeks? Maybe even three? Has it?
That long… it could be.
Regardless, I don't know.
It seems like an eternity… me, staring at the city skyline. The bright lights, the tall buildings and the blue colors… the white colors… it doesn't matter.
That city… a city that looks peaceful. Should be peaceful, as it is christened the "City of brotherly Love"… or something like that. Philadelphia… More fitting would be the "city of fat people" the people hold onto the principles of the marks of the independence which they hold onto… yet realize none of the meaning associated.
It must be nice.
I… actually wouldn't mind living in that city. But that's merely a pipe dream. After all… there's nothing left for those like me, who live on the "other side".
Heh… what is this 'other side'?
What isn't it?
Other side of life, of law, of right. The other side of happiness, of hope, of family. The other side of the river?
I don't know… we just tend to call this place Camden… Camden, New Jersey.
It's funny… In all of the U.S., out of all the cities and the scum that live there… Camden is top dog… and has been. For the many years I've lived here. The most dangerous.
It's too funny… and it's sad.
But I see it… I see it everyday.
This place is shit.
During the daylight, it is literally a ghost town. Streets are mainly empty, sidewalks are barren. Parking lots are deserted, buildings look derelict and abandoned. You'd think you were in another country entirely… I don't understand.
At least I didn't… until I lost everything.
I lost my one person… I lost my life… my Katrina… my only light.
I've lost my heart.
…now there's nothing left for me.
Nothing but darkness in what was life.
An empty shell of an existence. I feel…
…Hollowed out…
With that last thought lingering in his mind, the young man closed his eyes and leaned back against the cold bricks of the building behind him.
Fool as he was, with no care for thoughts of self or even to seek shelter, he had settled for the alley as a resting spot. One with view of the city across the river, where he could see it even through the rain. While above his head, a partially covered floor of a fire escape landing provided his only roof. And the garbage cans at his side the only friends.
There wasn't even a rat to pass by. Not even a stray.
He had nothing.
Nothing save for his memories and his clothes, which were soaked through and cold, clinging to his clammy skin in the early spring chill. And even then, they weren't much for him.
Black and torn, his t-shirt clung to him faithfully, doing its best to hide his defined chest and abdomen from the elements… but failing miserably. Equally failing were his faded jeans and his makeshift belt. As well his worn Nikes and socks.
Aside from his clothes, he was just as equally un-kept in his appearance. With his brown hair all matted and disheveled, his sculpted face made worn by his fatigue and famine, and his unshaven stubble giving him all the characteristics of a depleted and abandoned fighter. For though weakened to the state of nothing more than trash, he held scars upon his hands and exposed body that held scars of combat. Of a past that spoke of days that consisted of events more than wasting away with rain and dirt, days that spoke volumes of invigoration.
Surely now… days like that were gone forever.
Surely.
It wasn't that his body was the sole proof, or even that his mind was failing him… rather, that his soul itself felt heavy… it felt dead. With dead weight like that, how could one even think of living? How could the body even think to breathe?
…
How could it take the essentials away, yet leave the pain the only part left?
He grimaced as his face screwed up in pain and his eyes and teeth clenched close. His heart… it hurt. His soul's heart hurt… if possible. He gripped the wet cloth tightly to his throbbing chest as another wave came again, more vicious than the first. A pain that pushed out his tears and lolled him into unconsciousness darkness.
A darkness that embraced him wholly.
In a world of darkness, naught is light… for light is a distraction to the waking world. Light is what makes the world run, keeps it active. In the world of light, people strive to live as only those who live go. But such is never true for the world of darkness… a world in which sleep is the precedent, and dreams are life. No mention of pain seeps into the thought of the world of this all encompassing darkness, for pain is for those living.
The dead have no pain.
Yet to embrace the darkness is to lose pain… or so thought the man who arrived. Yet to compound his grievances, he learned far too well that the darkness he had found neither brought death, nor relieved his pain.
Rather… the truth was far from it.
A silent scream of agony tore lose from the core of the man's throat, of his being.
Doubled over in pain, his path to the darkness did nothing for his heart… for its throbbing he felt against his ribs was a pain solely matched by the pounding in his ears and against his temples. That, and another feeling, a sensation that as much as he chose to fall he could not. As much as he wished to put his hands to his head to contain his very brain which threatened forced exit from his skull, he could not!
Why not?
For the love of anything or one holy, for the sake of all that was held dear… why?
Unable to move, unable to voice pain or despair. Shackled by invisible manacles and binding chains, he struggled for naught. His very process in itself a vain and hopeless action of a forgotten reaction that had long since crumbled to dust.
And why was that? Why could it? Nothing he did made sense in the world where he was simply blind to the light that he had long abandoned. For it became all the more clear as his face ran with a pulsating warm fluid, his mouth and lips bleeding the same.
Then he doubled over, as much as impossible as before it was something changed, and he was able to choke upon the bile that had instantaneously come to his mouth. The very bindings upon him allowed him to grasp at his chest and seize upon that which had been inhumanly inserted within his chest, and bolted on with a plate of metal so cold that he felt his fingertips grow numb at the touch of it.
Shock and recoil could neither befuddle nor deter his action as he groped the darkness, wiped the blood away from his eyes and spat that which clogged his mouth. Found his query and wrapped his hands about that chain that kept itself fastened to him, locked within him.
That which bound him would keep him prisoner no more!
Free is the one who removes the chains that bind and progress on! Free is he who chooses. Free is the person who delivers pain upon themselves to deliver their spirit free from that which forever grounds the heart. That pain itself that holds his heart in the cavity that was once a chest with which his love comforted herself against.
In this end, his intentions were still the will for her and her alone. For she, the one who had already saved his life before, and the only one to give him passion.
She… Katrina, the only one to care.
For her, his action was made. His mind was clear. And the pain which he held in his chest…
…was overwhelming.
Given no further option, he pulled hard… as the pain screamed release… and the blackness of the eternal night, burned red.
The image of red faded from his eyes as they opened slowly and grasped the coolness of that rainy night.
A night still with rain.
But finally… for whatever the reason, his pain had subsided… for the moment. As any indication his hands gave, their shaking could only mean a temporary reprieve. Surely…
…pain would come again...
…and…
He stopped.
Though the quick pace of his heart was drowning out most other sounds of the night, he swore he was hearing literal absurdities. He swore he could hear the shadows… moving…
No.
It was a lie… had to be a lie.
He wasn't messed up like this; he didn't suffer delusions and wasn't tortured by dreams like this.
Katrina…
When Katrina was… alive, he didn't have this, and he shouldn't have it now.
It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense.
Nothing… nothing at all!
Without discerning his next action, he lashed out in pain at the nearest object to deliver abuse, and sent a trashcan reeling across the alley, littering junk along its path before coming to a loud and drawn-out stop at the other side.
It was funny, and because of it he started laughing to himself. His hand was so numb from the rain and cold, that he couldn't even feel the strike. He had no feelings in his nerves.
Then why…?
Why did he hurt so much if he was already beyond pain? It… it…
It made no sense.
Pain gripped him, hounded him… yet he was free of pain.
Impossible!
Was it his mind in which the pain located, hid itself? Was his mind the sole bearer of his agony and his body silent, or was it his mind numbed and his body screaming?
Too many questions… emotions, feelings…
He gripped his head in the madness of the moment. Did it throb? Cause pain? Disillusion, disorient, or dislocate thought and the reason behind it?
And this pulsing... the pulsing from dreams dreamt came forth from the sleeping world to the land of the waking. Granted not all at once, yet seemed to bleed/seep into this world through the gateway of subconscious thought, a backdoor of reality… reality displaced from logic and reason. A pulsing not just of his eyes, which seemed to submerge into red darkness periodically at random, but his body or the essence of it, which resonated separately from his physicality.
It wasn't that it wasn't normal, as nothing was to begin with, but it felt more distant than anything else. More alien.
What was it… what was happening to him?
K-Katrina… help… m-
"GAAH!" he screamed short for temporary release, spraying saliva and spit from his already foaming mouth, as though he wasn't simply ill, but rabid as an alley dog. Some of the thicker white foam falling away as he seized and doubled over. The flashing pulses in his vision and body core getting worse.
It felt like any given moment would be his last.
Mentally succumbing, he prepared for the worst, and welcomed the unseen death.
A death which journey fell interrupted at an approach in the darkness. An approach heralded by a voice he had come to hate.
"Heh", came a snide and uncompassionate laugh that floated upon the still night air. Air which was free of the rain which had hindered him so, though when it had stopped, he didn't know. Knowing was an impossibility after all.
"What the hell is this? I come to the streets and find that a dirty stray has dirtied my turf with its shit." The man, still tucked in the shadows, motioned to the pain stricken mass in front of him. He then turned to his companions, which exact number was yet unknown. "What the fuck did you give him! That and the dose… if he ODs on that shit then there's no fucking way in hell he'll have any worth.
"Not that he had any to begin with." He bent down and grabbed the pained man's hair and wrenched his head until their eyes met. "Isn't that right? Taylor…"
The eyes filled with pain could do nothing to help their owner, let alone the owner to give enough strength to voice a reply. Given the silence in the moments that followed, the hostile figure released his query's hair and threw him aside.
"Pathetic…" he growled low in disgust. "To think I had thought better of you all those years ago. Still pathetic…" he voiced in a lighter tone of reminiscence, "but the potential was there. Then again, it wasn't there at all. No, a stray is a stray 'til his dying days, yet those of the smarter caliber pack together to tackle the larger prey, scavenge a bigger area, have strength in numbers… and… only go alone if they go towards death."
The sky chose that moment to part its clouds just enough to wash the ambient light of the moon over the alley, bathing all members of its party in fleeting luminescence. Seven figures regarding the eighth body of the fallen man, still shaking with man and wet numbness through his body.
That aside, of the seven themselves, there was no clear appearance in apparel or self that gave them any distinction of being part of the same group other than the fact that all wore the common street clothes of the mid '90s, though most physical aspects were concealed by clothing, hats, and hoods protecting them from chill and rain. In retrospect, only one seemed to expose his head completely to the elements. One dressed mostly in clothes that all but became black in the shadows of the night, jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket.
Splashed with what little light available, a young man's face worth with hardships of life. Short, black hair, cold eyes, and a sinister smile, as well as the simple fact that he seemed delighted simply to hear himself speak. It was the same man who continued to speak now.
"For whatever the reason, it seems as though your days of survival nears a close. I've said it before, but this is your last chance." He paused and extended his arm to the man shaking before him. "Self survival is simply not possible. You run with us, I can give you a future; I can erase your past. I can give survival.
"Otherwise you'll die a dog's death. Just like that bitch before you!"
The shaking man's eyes widened slightly as he struggled to speak the name of his love. And only managed with a shadow of his former voice. "K-k-katri-na…"
Even though she was gone, even if she was beyond his reach, he felt as to say her name was to move closer to her being. Closer to the world she was a part of, closer to the world beyond this one.
"Heh…" laughed the leader, "I told you already, Scott Taylor. She's dead… left you… she couldn't even take care of herself. How could you even think of her after leaving you to rot?"
"S-she… was my… everything." Scott proclaimed, his level of defense rising, as he pushed against the ground which he lay upon. "I would… gladly give myself to her… trade places… just if it meant so much as a passing word. Again!"
"ENOUGH!" The man in the leather jacket swooped down upon Scott and grabbed him the front of his shirt and pushed him up against the wall, knocking aside what garbage cans sat there and spreading additional mounds of trash across the alley. The light of the moon long since faded as the darkness became all the more overbearing.
"That girl… that fucking bitch!" spat the man angrily as he slammed Scott once again into the wall, with enough force that his skull could be heard resounding off the brick face. "Fucking forget it! Fuck her! Any 'memories' you have are nothing but shit stains! I alone can give way to a future, I alone can give you the drugs to put the past behind you! Money, drugs, food, anything…" He stopped his raging long enough to gather his cool again, and to collect his wits. "Just quit fucking around…"
Whatever the reason, Scott could do nothing but smile. Though the pain now numbed from the assault, he felt his conscience sliding into the darkness of mental oblivion, and the world from his eyes was left awash with the waves of red pulses from before.
All in all… it seemed like nothing mattered anymore.
Loathe as he was to admit it… Katrina was dead. She was never coming back to him. That was the simple truth of reality. But that was one truth he didn't want to accept, regardless of the level of truth behind it. To him… Katrina was alive… still alive… even though he couldn't see her.
Even though she wasn't there…
Even though…
He stopped, and the smile faded from his face.
Between every pulse of red, he could see something there that wasn't there. He saw again that which had been lost in the distraction before. He could see the shadows. And they were…
Moving.
Rather, a trick of the light? No… there was no light. And these shadows… were white?
His eyes widened, and the pulses seemed to increase with his heartbeat. Pulses of red. White shadows. Moving figures behind those of the living.
Or was that wrong? That there were only seven before? And not ten? Or was it fifteen?
People bathed in white light. The seven before bathed in redness from the pulses… like infrared only not with heat… with… blood? The absence of it? He held up his shaking hands, in which every pulse he could see his veins exposed as though the skin wasn't there. Yet it was incomplete… as were the other seven.
He grabbed his chest. His heart… no… or was it… his lungs? Regardless, his chest hurt. It was hard to breathe.
So hard… to breathe!
What was happening… to him?
Drugs… he had received drugs? Hallucinogens… manufactured, chemical? But even so, why the endless pain? No, this wasn't related; it felt more like a heart attack. Like his heart, was going to explode… disappear.
Why… Katrina!
At that thought, he looked up… just as spiritual fire burned an unseen hole in his chest. And among the people gathered in the crowd of white, one of a golden aura caught his eye, and smiled.
A young woman with long trailing sunlit brown hair that flowed as though part of the wind, over the delicate but resiliently beautiful muscles of her upper back and past the upper cut of the low sweeping silken nightgown. With a soft, yet firm face and keen yet gentle deep blue eyes. Those factors coupled with a moderate figure and a footfall that would leave moss untouched, she was surely that of an angel come to Earth.
KATRINA!
Impossible… then he was…
He grabbed his head in agony as the last remainder of the spiritual flame died out in his chest, and his world and vision plunged into spiritual hell.
There he saw his love covered in blood, yet smiling with eyes full of more life than she had when alive. She was older, but not by that many years, and standing in a sea of white skull-like masks of vast variety in shape and size. All around her were signs of death and debauchery. Yet more than anything else, the feeling he felt at the time was the best he ever had… it was of freedom.
A freedom that came with a plunge into a brighter light than the sun.
Though a light that left deliver into a world as desolate as the one before. A world of masks… broken and whole, and the creatures that bore them fighting for dominance of all and everything.
And the last look upon the face of his beloved was one of horror, as one of the masked beings descended from the darkness… stark white save for the emerald eyes and the blood-stained distended jaws.
Just before pained nothingness.
"GYAAAAAAHH!"
An ungodly scream ripped through his throat as he opened his eyes again to the waking world, his physical heart threatening to break his ribs, and an agonizing pain more severe than any of the night thus far. Pain which as indescribable as pain could be, combining internal and surface as his internals literally felt as though they were being scooped out from the inside, as though something beneath everything was attempting to break free, and an overwhelming restriction in complete being.
Was this it? Was this death… because for whatever pains that racked him, he felt his world slipping away… as though conscious thought was no longer a restrain for which he had to entertain as a notion of the living. He felt like this struggle to the end was over… and he had already lost.
For to confirm it all, through his final washes of sight, Katrina dissolved from his vision and trailed away in a forgotten and tantalizing golden light.
A golden thread of life… fleeting and forgotten.
Despite his thrashing agony, he smiled.
It was over.
Time as an independent has no structure but to those who have chance to behold it. For what in reality passes as mere minutes, to those of those minutes, it could feel as though an eternity had passed them by…
…In just a single heart beat.
Where in just that passing moment, reality as it exists, could pass unfazed… or in this instant, completely unravel.
To the man known as Scott Taylor, who stood amidst the bloodied bodies, spent bullets, and confused senses, reality as it was… no longer had any meaning. Where the only truths to be concerned with now took the form of a black hilted, silver and gold double edged broad sword imbedded in the ground beside him, and the form-fitting, eye-less… mouth-less…
…white mask, which upon his face… served as the only protection he had left….
…from the harsh realities he had escaped, and the unknown future which waited in the darkness.
A/C 9/16/06: To those following the previous version of this story, I apologise, but it was a little too sparse on detail and made it difficult to continue. Rather than send the story to oblivion, I chose to start again in the style I'm more used to. So hopefully this story will progess steadily once I catch up to the prior point. Due to sheer length increase... it may take a little while yet. (But better than no update ever again)