deadendsmile | In Logic, the Symbolic Dream

In Logic, the Symbolic Dream

It's been a few months since the situation with Rust and Irezumi was settled. No dreams or unexpected trips to another person's mind happen. No monsters that don't obey the laws of physics and reality appearing. As far as everything was concerned the world went on without knowledge of who the Oni or Rust was. Almost as if those horrors never existed. But that isn't going to last.

It's any old day and any old situation when this begins. Hiroshi could have been in class and nodded off. He could have been going to sleep or just about to wake. As long as his eyes close for a period of time, he will feel a tug like a sudden thought in his mind before being pulled into that same void. The fall down the pitch black abyss is long and cold but the impact with the ground is surprisly soft this time.

The area he finds himself in is much like the one in Irezumi's mind, a black void that emits occasional static like a faulty TV set. Unlike his, however, is the color of the ground. Blue is scattered around like scribbles in a book or rather, as the image may invoke, scribbles drawn on the floor and ceiling from a place that's probably very familiar by this point. The door before him is the exact same as the one to the entrance of the mansion as well. But there's no shaking the feeling, regardless of the set up, of warmth in this place. It too was familiar in a way that Hiroshi has been here before. It's his own home, his own mind this time, without being connected to anyone else. But as always in this place, someone or something is watching.

Welcome back to the Nexus.

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"I... I don't know. WAS someone watching me? It wasn't just Irezumi? I..." He was beginning to sweat. All these unanswered questions. Why hadn't he pursued them closer? Why hadn't he thought about all of this? The thought of it was beginning to make his head swim.

And it's the Oni who asks the final question and it..smiles as its 'voice' pops into Hiroshi's head again.

"And if it's watching you...where is it now?"

That's a good question, isn't it? If someone was watching him, where did they go? Hiroshi might feel a prickle of dread in his mind and it's painful. There's something around that his mind is having a hard time processing.

But the answer crawls into his mind even without thinking. It's not in this dream world or the Nexus. Its standing right outside the front door to the school. Knock Knock....

Where is it now... where is it now...

The words echoed in his head, bouncing around like a bullet in a body. He grabed his head at the pain, and as the sudden answer poped into his mind, an abject terror he hadn't felt in a while suddenly coursed through his whole body.

The front door...?!

He had to wake up. He suddenly knew that in the core of his being. The action that came next came almost instinctively, something he wouldn't have time to ponder until later.

He pinched his cheek.

Hiroshi has a disjointed second or two to see the real world before he was yanked back down into the dream world, much like someone drowning, slamming into the ground of the dream library. Hopefully it doesn't hurt too badly because the landing isn't so nice this time.

The library has become even more maze like than before but all the side rooms have been shut tight. There's no getting into those even if Hiroshi wanted to. Blue scribbles are all over the floor but they seem to be leading somewhere.

It looks like pinching won't work. But if he recalls from his last adventure, Ochiki had opened up an invisible door in the Nexus that had led out through a copy of Hiroshi's own bedroom. Perhaps that would work.

Meanwhile, it begins to move, aiming towards the real library. Its like Smile. No one can see it. No one can hear it. No one could save Hiroshi if it caught him.

He swore at the impact, feeling it through his body even despite the fact that he was in a dream. He could tell that it SHOULD have worked, but whatever was targeting him right now had ensured that it didn't. This was bad. He was vulnerable like this, and he knew it. He needed to wake up. SOMEHOW.

The scribbles, as unsettling as they were, seemed like his best option. His home base had them all over the place. Perhaps in this case, they would save his life rather than signal something that would end it. Either way, he didn't have any other leads. So he followed, running. Something was coming; he didn't have much time left. He needed to get somewhere safe.

As he ran, books fall off the shelves that once held them and cracks begin to appear in the floor. The cracks luckily enough don't interfere with the scribbles but they begin to open up wider and wider to the point where tripping on them ran the risk of spraining his ankle. Oddly enough, for something that seems to be his own mind breaking apart, the crack don't bring any pain. None of this does unless he falls again.

Laughter rings out and it's the dolls laughing, the Oni's inside Hiroshi's head and the rest on the outside and they're laughing at him. They are close even though he left them far behind.

Eventually the scribbles lead to a door. It's hard to open but it will eventually.

There's a knock on a door outside of the dream. It's here. Knock knock knock...

Like he's got time to fall!

Hiroshi feels a horrible sense of deja vu at all of this. The running, the need for quick, careful movements. Just like that time in the facsimile of the mansion in Irezumi's head. It's difficult not to stumble a little, but he manages to avoid falling completely.

He stumbles a bit prior to the door, though, causing him to twist his ankle a bit. Shit. SHIT. But there's a door here, he's safe, he's... shit, why won't it open WHY WON'T IT OPEN...

He jimmies at it frantically, trying to work it open, the pain in his ankle ignored as best he can. He can hear it. Oh God, he can hear it. Wake up wake up wake UP...

The door finally swings open and at the same time he could hear the door in the real world open. Going through it will make all the terror and fear of whatever is outside just...stop. It's not there. It never was.

The door leading to the copy of Hiroshi's bedroom is already open for him in the Nexus. It seems even his part of the dream world recognized the danger he thought he was in.

Now, if he goes through that door, he'll simply wake up to an empty library in the real world. However there is suddenly a presence behind him the minute he approaches the door and if he turns to look it will cause him horrible pain. His mind will not be able to process whatever it is but the pain will wake him up too, even if he falls out of his chair as a result.

He stumbled through the door, panicking. I'm not going to make it I'm not going to make it --

And then the sensation stopped, leaving him short. Had it all just been a nightmare? Some sort of lingering fear in his subconscious? The door to his "home" was open, at least. (Strange, to think he had a door like that. He wondered if everybody did.) He walked toward it...

...and suddenly felt something behind him. He turned, and --

Pain. Searing pain. Before he knew it, he was awake, falling out of his chair -- and hurting again as he hit his head on the floor. Ow ow ow...

The girl helping run the library put a finger up in front of her lips. Shh! Embarrassed, he unsteadily pulled himself up, muttering an apology. She shrugged, knowing him as a regular. Just don't do it again.

Hiroshi watched her leave, then looked down at the book he'd been reading, pondering. Whatever any of that was, it wasn't normal. SOMETHING had been there, he was sure of it. Writing it off as unscientific superstition would be a terrible idea, and somehow he knew it. The problem was, he didn't know a thing about what he was dealing with.

But he knew someone who might.

Leaving the book behind for a page to shelve, he exited the library, heading out into the school corridor and towards the front entrance. As he moved, he pulled out his cell phone. Time to contact a friend of his, someone who might know a thing or two about dreams. That person was the one who had, however briefly, been a dream demon himself.

Irezumi.

It will take more than three calls to actually contact him. During the attempts, a sort of whispering can be heard over the phone. Who or what they're saying is unclear - not even clear enough to tell if it's in English or not - but it's there. Crawling. That seems to be the only way to describe it. There is a severe lack of descriptions to things lately, isn't there? But however creepy it may sound, it doesn't sound hostile at least.

Finally, when he answers, it stops. Irezumi sounds flustered and out of breath. He had his dream too and it frightened him. He hadn't wanted to go back there again...

"H-hey, Irezumi here! What's up?" It almost sounds like he answered the call without knowing who it was, to be honest.

Hiroshi's anxiety ratcheted up with every failed call. Was he out? Was he okay? Those sounds... were they all in Hiroshi's head, or something else? Despite the fact that the whispering made his skin crawl, he kept trying, feeling increasingly worried with each attempt.

When Irezumi finally answers, Hiroshi let go of the breath he hadn't even been aware he'd been holding. "Irezumi? Are you okay? Were you out somewhere? I apologize if I made you rush back," he replied.

"Yeah...yeah, I'm fine. I was just sleeping. What's up?"

'Just sleeping' and his tone of voice may set off a few alarms. A dream that went from frightening to not and then back again in the real world, perhaps?

The whispering, meanwhile, has gotten just a little bit louder. It's much like the 'voice' used for the Oni in Hiroshi's dream, neither male nor female but a voice none the less. What exactly they're saying is still not clear and it might just be something in Hiroshi's head because Irezumi hasn't said a word.

Or maybe not.

His brow furrowed. This was entirely too coincidental. He was asleep too? In the middle of the day? Was he always that much of a napper, or...

Those voices were creeping him out. Talking over the phone seemed increasingly like a bad idea. "Can we talk somewhere else? There's a coffee shop not far from the school. Perhaps we could meet there?" he asked, the tension obvious in his voice. Caffeine right now sounds like a very good idea.

Not really, not after Rust. And Hiroshi should ask himself at some point, was he really one to fall asleep in the middle of the day while reading?

"Sure, I can meet you there. But are you alright?" Irezumi could read the tension in his friend's voice and it bothered him. Had something happened?

And again with the voices, one word is now clear: Don't. Over and over again. Don't don't don't don't....

Oh boy. Whatever was on the phone, it was starting to show some active interest. "Not here. We'll talk later." He hung up abruptly, sticking the phone in his pocket. Telecommunications, it seemed, were not a great idea right now.

He headed outside, walking swiftly to his bike. Something was targeting him, and quite possibly targeting Irezumi too. This was going to require speed, he felt. Sometimes, he felt like everything required him to move quickly of late.

He was already at the shop by the time Irezumi shows up. He looked anxious, a cup of coffee next to him already next to him, and fingers drumming. "Irezumi. When you fell asleep, were you doing something you would normally fall asleep during?" he asked, getting straight to the point.

Even when the phone is silent, Hiroshi could here one last 'Don't'. While the gender of the people speaking is still unknown, they sound a little desperate. Maybe, while they were undoubtedly creepy, they meant no harm?

But them aside, Irezumi was worried as hell so he came to the shop as soon as he could. A bike was useful but living in an obscure part of town didn't help with matters of speed.

"I was..." It was telling, to him at least, when he was drawing a blank from his memories. "Playing a game. Shinsouku Neko. I can't remember actually falling asleep."

Which scared him. It was the same when he fought Rust, the bits he saw of reality.

He doesn't know what it meant. He couldn't know what it meant. Now was not the time to take chances on whether or not the voice was benevolent, though.

At the shop, Hiroshi pushed up his glasses. "I see. And... did you dream, by any chance? Something disturbing, and frightening?" he asked.

"Yeah, I...."

He paused and looked down at his hands. It had been an awful dream and Irezumi wished that who or whatever owned that place would stop messing with his head. It felt gross on his skin, drowning.

"...I was in my house, but it was bigger than usual. A bunch of side rooms that had kid's toys in it and cassette tapes that talked about Rust. And in the basement Sabitsuki, Yuki, Ochki and Rust were there...and..."

Irezumi ran a hand through his hair. At the time, seeing them and Rust together had made it difficult to answer what they had asked of him, too concerned with the disease's presence.

"They asked me a couple of questions about what happened when I was infected. Then the house started to fill up with blood and when I got outside...something caught me."

So the events were different but ended the same. Irezumi had looked back.

"Is that so..."

In other words, Hiroshi's worst fears confirmed. "About that, Irezumi..."

And he began to detail his own dream, including how he too had fallen asleep in a situation where he would not normally have expected to, and also about the voices over the phone as he'd called him. "I had hoped you might be able to provide some insight about what might be happening, what with the dreams and all... but it would seem you too have been caught up in this."

He crossed his arms, thinking. "...Rumors..."

"I'm not sure I can. It felt a lot different from the dreams I had when Rust put me in the Memory Door."

It felt less crowded for one and more safe. Like the Home Door had, if he hadn't triggered the blood trying to drown him maybe it could have been a peaceful dream. It probably felt that way in Hiroshi's before things went sideways too. A quiet place with interesting books, science and silence. A safe home with fond, if old, memories.

"What about them?" Irezumi asked.Had he heard another rumor that lead to this sort of thing?

Hiroshi crossed his arms. "Rumors. Whatever was in my head made me realize something. When... my friends and I went to the mansion. I never once asked where the rumor my friend Takeshi heard came from. I just took it for granted it was nonsense."

He looked at Irezumi. "But... Irezumi, did Rust really just plant the rumor about the doctor's house in your head, or did you hear it from somewhere else?"

He had to stop and think about that. Where had he heard that rumor? The series of events that lead him to that house were easily chalked up to Rust's manipulations - and he had chalked them up to that. It was easy, far far to easy to leave it there. Why didn't he question it?

"I think I heard it from someone and looked it up. There was a site for rumors and after Ochiki couldn't cure Rust, there was one going around on it that he moved to the house so he wouldn't be interviewed about it. I only thought about actually going there a day after, but that might have just been Rust."

Irezumi scratched at one of his scars, thinking deeply. There was a theme to those questions that followed something. They had questioned what they didn't.

"You know...those dolls in my dream, they kept asking me questions along this line and then asked me what Rust was. I...couldn't answer that one."

But the answer should have been clear. It was a disease. So why couldn't he answer?

Edited 2014-03-25 03:33 (UTC)

Hiroshi drummed his fingers, thinking. The Oni and Rust. Both seemingly obvious what they were, and yet when pressed for an answer, neither of them could answer. What did it mean?

"...Do you suppose... others have experienced something similar?" he asked finally, almost hating to put the idea out there.

He disliked that idea and for some reason it was uncomfortable to hear it out loud. The air shifts and that "Don't" is heard again.

"....maybe. Everyone dreams...and these rumors get around. But what really bugs me is that no one is looking into them besides us."

Irezumi had been for sure that he would be arrested for what happened. It was clear that he had killed all those people but there had been nothing more than a quick questioning on why he was there and that was it. No follow up, no nothing.

Hiroshi frowned at the voice. What was that voice so insistently trying to keep him from doing?

"...When I arrived back, there was an initial questioning. And then... nothing. My friends' parents never bothered to raise a fuss or anything. There was suspicion I might have had something to do with it, but nobody important ever followed up..."

He felt sick. Why? It made no sense. Surely the logical thing would have been for every major news channel to be on these sorts of stories. So why...?

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