Capítulo 34: Nightmares/dreams
A dream is said to be the psychological manifestation of one's wishes. It is a doorway to the subconscious and is able to unveil a person's deepest and darkest desires. Truly, dreams are the reflection of a person's soul.
However, it is those dreams that sometimes, in the moment of ultimate desperation, can show a person their very own nightmare. A nightmare so close to their very being, so horribly familiar, that a person would not be able to stop himself from doing anything but wish the nightmare would go away. To hope beyond hope that it would somehow spare him.
And so did I...
I can still remember how everything came down in a flash, the memory melted in my mind like fresh snow marred by warm blood. I would have avoided it if I could but the girl lying next to me wanted otherwise. I can still see her smiling at me, coaxing me with her droopy eyes. Her hands lie on my stomach, feeling pleasantly cold as she lays still. She remains still, completely motionless, enraptured by this moment as much as I am. Her face remains emotionless, eyes not quite focused on me and mouth hanging slightly open. But I made sure I only can see the love emanating from deep inside.
I try to look around but I find that too difficult. For the first time I try, I can barely lift my head up. The second attempt however proves successful. I slowly rise, my body shaking from the cold outside, and a pang of pain shoots up my spine. But I ignore the pain and glance sideways. An unappreciative creak resounds in my head that nearly makes me bawl over.
I embarrassingly glance at her, and imagine she is laughing. She doesn't. So I sigh with relief that I have not lost my manly ways. I try to grab her by the shoulders but nothing happens. My arms don't listen to me. And I cannot help but feel the urge to laugh as my thoughts become muddy and unfocused like a slurry of dark mud.
I try again.
And again and again. Finally, in my fifth attempt, I muster enough to return to her sweet embrace. As I touch her across the shoulders, butterflies start fluttering in my stomach and I feel the pleasing numbness of my love for her. Numbness that could have made me explode.
I quickly lean in to steal a precious kiss from her lips. As though I feel the time is slowly slipping out of my grasp. But even then I am careful, and delicate in my approach. Afraid she would wither away from my touch.
I unjustly believe she won't. But all she does is look me dead in the eyes, not uttering a word. Urging me to remember what happened before the end, even as her body grows colder and colder. Unable to support myself any longer I crash down to the ground, tired as a log.
As for the second time, an unsoundly crack comes from my bottom. Black spots begin to mar my vision again.
Now all I can do now is look at her clothes. They appear to be covered in something. Something thick and sticky, covering her whole body in its stench. It's on her face, her chest, her arms, her legs, everywhere. The clothing seems to have lost its original colors, appearing more darker now against the contrast of the great white surrounding us.
My own description entices my mind to think of something perverted to distract myself.
Nothing comes to my mind,
I think again, denying the reality however I can. But reality hits me back with a haymaker.
Unable to keep my thoughts in check, I take a last look at her and... throw up. Even though there is nothing underneath, a tang of bile rises above and enters my mouth. Hot, bitter with a pinch of iron, it sloths around in my mouth as I lay upright, overflowing and spilling into the ground. And though my tongue turns numb and the viscous liquid starts choking me, I can only bring myself to focus on the slimy, sharp contents that my stomach had just ejected, feeling like a messy and thick chicken broth.
"She wants me to remember it", I manage to gurgle, beyond the point of caring what was happening to me.
I look into her loving dead eyes, beyond her sculpted exposed gums, pearly white, and her torn-off face as beautiful as an angel.
My own vomit chokes me while I cough out bubbling bits,
"Of course my dear..."
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"So what do you want to do now?", I ask Hiro. Knowing that the more time I give him, the more he is going to spiral out of control.
"What do you mean?"
Deadpan as usual huh? This was one of the few times I had seen him completely out of it. Usually, I would ask something, He would crack a joke and the girls would laugh at our foolishness. Usually... yes.
But now, despite not knowing him for a very long time, I can feel how worn down he is, physically and mentally. Ragged clothes, face dried out and taught with tension, eyes out of focus more times than I would like to admit. As of now I literally have to pry out answers from him and that too seems to be getting slower by the second.
"You know what I mean". Talk. Keep talking to him. Just make sure he is still... alive.
"It's nothing. Just take me back to the city and we're good. Besides, I think I have an arrest warrant already issued to my name by now."
"Why? Just because you stole and ate corn from his cornfield? That's really petty!", Aqua chimes in from the side as if she too understands somehow, at some basic level that Hiro needs this conversation.
"Yeah, for just a piece of corn". Hiro chips his lips as he says like he was trying to hide his face, ashamed. Yet no ounce of guilt shows through his eyes, instead, they are filled with rekindled rage. Great! It's only getting worse.
"Don't worry Hiro! As a crusader, I will make sure to protect you from any unjust allegation pinned on your name!" Darkness hits her chest plate with a thump as she screams about her accomplice in HIro's crime. She doesn't even realize that a crusader should also not protect wanted criminals.
"Yeah! And I could even blow up that fathead's big mansion with my explosion. Besides, I have been dying to try it on a hard and sturdy thing for a long time!" And what can I say about this child? She thinks blowing up the evidence along with the whole police depot will solve everything.
"That won't be necessary. I can handle things on my own. Besides, you all have your own PROBLEMS to deal with"
"Quit being a downer dude! I am sure we can-"
<Bang> Something slammed into the cart hard. I barely manage to keep reigns on the horses as we all were slammed to the right side of the wooden vehicle. For a moment, I hear nothing but ringing bells in my ears. As the world revolves around me and then screeches to a halt, I am caught in a standstill, unable to process what the hell hit us. The wind is snatched from my lungs upon impact and only begins its slow descent inside as I lift myself up, clearly disoriented.
I managed to stop just in time before we got toppled over. Phew, guess my extreme luck must be acting up. We could have definitely been thrown off the Mountain Ridge by that hit. And I am sure nobody wanted to plummet to their painful deaths down the valley just yet.
However, now that I look back, I think we would have been better off just jumping off.
"Is everybody alright?". I wait for a bit before all my tension is relieved when several yes and ouches resound from inside the cabin. As obvious, the next action I take is to push the heavy plank of wood that was nearly crushing my legs. I quickly slither out and am surprised to find myself without injuries of major notice.
However, as I gave out, a silent scream tears itself out of my throat.
A man was lying flat on the road, upside down, covered in blood from head to toe. I can see blood everywhere. On the creases of the road, on the now black entails of dirt beside him and on the left wheel of the cart. My eyes widen so much, I could swear I felt they would pop out of my skull.
Without realizing it and lost in my own damn thoughts I had killed a man. In cold blood.
"He-hey! Are yo-you all right?" I barely manage to speak out loudly. As I expected I am not graced by a reply. The man is either dead or unconscious.
I assume the worst.
I quickly move towards him. I need to get him to whatever hospital and healing center this world has before he bleeds out completely. Maybe, just maybe he is alive in there.
"Please be aliv-"
<Grab> As a sudden hold traps my leg, I look back into the cart. Only then I can see a hand holding my leg. The hand is stained with even more blood than I saw earlier. My eyeballs are quick to follow the entails of blood on the hand to the face of his owner Hiro.
He pulls himself out of the darkness of the cabin and his body... oh his body... A giant wooden splinter juts out of his torso, a part of it going straight through his shoulder as if he had been impaled. He looks up at me, his face betraying his pain and every other emotion coursing through my veins. The corners of his mouth rise up into a reassuring smile as he tries to talk to me.
One side of his whole face has been ripped off. Like squashed noodles, they stick and slither off his face and stretch whenever he goes to open his mouth. His right eye...dangles lifelessly out of where it should have been, looking painfully like a ripe grape covered in fleshy sinew.
However, now that I see it I have realized that when I first saw him on the ground, he was facing away from me, so I couldn't see it. The horror of what had happened.
But no words are exchanged. We both stand there completely silent.
Hiro grabs my face before I can react and with great strain, he shoves it to the other side. He knew it... how despite wanting to help, I couldn't bear looking at him.
But there amidst the receding shadows of my blurred vision, I see the girls. They were completely fine... Completely fine! obviously saved by Hiro.
But I do not have time to think my options through as I turn and frantically try to stop the blood sprouting out of him like a fountain. I quickly lie him down and apply pressure to the wound. Though I don't know much about first aid, I know enough to understand that dislodging the piece of wood from inside him would only make matters worse.
"I am okay. Just check *cough* on the girls. Make sure they... aren't injured. The last thing I want is for the only person capable to heal... us to be injured. "
It only takes me a second to figure out who he is talking about and yet already knowing this earlier could not have stopped me from screaming.
"AQUA! YES AQUA! She can fix this!"
"Yes *cough* Just wake her up *cough*..."
"Right! She will be able to fix the both of you!"
It must have been the fear and panic. That MUST have been the reason I could not have seen it at that time, how Hiro's face dropped when I mentioned Aqua. How his eyes widened and there was a genuine look of fear on his face. The reassuring smile he had earlier erased without any trace.
"WAIT! JUST RUN OKAY? RUN AWAY!" Hiro grabbed me by the arm and refused to let go.
What the hell was even happening? One second ago I was about to help him and now he's telling me to run away? He isn't making any sense!
So I shook him off and ran, the only logical conclusion my mind could come to... I didn't listen. I didn't want to listen. I wasn't about to have the murder of a man on my hands if I could help it. Now that I have come to this world and actually have the chance to legitimately save somebody...
"LISTEN TO ME KAZUMA! PLEASEEEEEEE!!!"
I didn't. The next moment I looked back, the screams had stopped. Hiro was on the ground lying flat... still... like he was... dead.
For a moment, I almost wished he had died as I ran towards the man bleeding over the ground. Hiro was outing me as a murderer to the whole world. Besides he was also trying to make me abandon a dying person. I couldn't just do that.
Hiro didn't even know what the fuck he was talking about! The concussion must have damaged his brain or something!
But it's no use thinking about what could have happened. Hiro was already unconscious.
<Grab>
I quickly applied tourniquets to the man's bleeding arms and legs using the very little clothes he had on himself. Next, I woke Aqua from her unconscious stupor and made her heal him. She was a goddess for fucks sake. If anyone, she should take her role seriously.
It was beside the point that, when she came to, she immediately freaked out seeing the massive piece of wood jutting out of Hiro's chest.
She tried to heal Hiro first but I had to force her.
'Was I purposefully stalling Hiro's treatment? Even waiting just to see if he would die? What the hell was happening to me? I was hoping to be friends with Hiro moments ago... Thinking about how I could help him and now... now I am wishing he would be dead?'
I went on to look after Darkness and Megumin without giving into that school of thought. I couldn't even dare entertain it.
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I would come to know later, that this decision of mine would end up in a disaster.
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