Verklempt

Stage Six - Remembrance

A cloud of bright, white lights killed the stars around me. In a fountain filled with coins, I rinsed the blood out of my hair and fur, making sure that every last drop was washed out. I didn't use soap on myself that night. I only ever used soap at home, but I didn't want to drive all the way back to my house covered in blood again. Last time I did that, I completely stained the driver's seat. I looked over to my truck, eyeing the shiny fabric sheet that was covering the roof of the bed. Hue's corpse was under that sheet, though I wished it was the corpse of someone else.
          That someone else being the one I had known my entire life. The one who wailed like the annoying child he was. God, I hated him. I hated his silkier-than-silk fur. I hated his living strands of hair (rumor had it, his hair wasn't actually hair; it was the tails of parasites that multiplied between his scalp and skull), the way his tail remained curved to his right side as if it had a mind of its own, not to mention how his fluffy mane almost reached the ground. I hated his eyes, shiny like diamonds and as vivid as a tulip. I hated his voice, so low and gentle, so deep and clean it sounded outside of Reality. I hated his teeth-oh, my God, they were ugly-how they would multiply at least thrice a week, and he would have to pull the extra ones out, including his canines. I hated how tall and slender he was, how often he would go without eating anything for two days straight, and how thin his skin was, so thin it felt like a rock if one were to punch his ribcage. I hated how much power he possessed, being able to cast a shockwave with his own heartbeat and morph organisms inside out, turning them into fleshy blobs.
          Each and every day, I hoped and prayed that that boy would die a horrific death, one that would vibrate both worlds and stretch across the Universe, possibly escaping into another. I wished I had the courage to just rip his bony face right off of his unbreakable skull, but I knew that even if I tried, it would only result in my cheeks being inflated with dirty water. Oh, how much I despised myself, AKA the traumatized robot that ate the bodies of malevolence, crushing their organs with his ugly teeth, using their hair as fuel in his fireplace, utilizing their bones to craft jewelry and decorations, sometimes using them as construction materials, such as boards and pipes (yes, I drilled the fleshy elements out of their bones). I was a monster, and I hated that monster, and I wanted to kill that monster so Goddamn bad.
          I stepped out of the fountain. My pelt was soaked. I shook like a dog as an attempt to get the excess water out of my fur. In a sudden crash of distant thunder, I hurried back into my truck, catching a view of colossal clouds flashing like stage lights. Instead of blood, water darkened the driver's seat. A single twist and a few coughs later, a louder crash of thunder startled me, though I never came close to flooring the gas. Thunder was becoming less and less frightening as time passed. Year after year, the only thing I feared was UNO.
          Speaking of UNO, allow me to share with you a story of the past. Be warned; this is no ordinary tale of woe...
On the night of June 17, 2315, I was transcended into a world that was disconnected from both Reality and the Nebula (more commonly known as the "Dream World"), a realm named Abstract Thought, and UNO, being my guide, subjected me to a game of Red Door Yellow Door. This mind game, compared to what its rules were three centuries before, was cursed, so much that there was a recommendation that it was to be avoided. UNO, being UNO, disobeyed that statement, turning me into one of his "instruments", and sent me into Abstract Thought to play the game.
          UNO set up an environment for me based on a story I began writing years before, only he added some things that I would dare not add into the story if I knew about them beforehand. Cat Scratch, another mind game and Red Door, Yellow Door were fused during the dawn of the Nebula back in the early 2100's, and that is what UNO made me play. The rules of Red Door, Yellow Door remained as they were, but there also came a cat, long as a humpback whale, that prayed upon those that invaded its territory.
          However, the cat, although deadliest of the Abstract Thought monsters, was the only thing that killed you in the trance without killing you outside of it. Everything else killed you in every world you existed in, leaving behind a bloody mess in Abstract Thought and your body untouched in Reality and or the Nebula, wherever you played the game. One thing about the cat one had to be cautious about was the result of its efforts on mangling your body. The first wounds it gave you were the wounds that appeared on your body outside of Abstract Thought. That was the effect Cat Scratch had on you before it was fused with Red Door, Yellow Door, only in this version of it, pain existed.
          To my surprise, I survived everything the game had to offer. Well, except the cat, which helped me awake from the trance. What I endured during those 28 hours of dissociation had a deadly effect on me, mentally and emotionally, which, for whatever reason, was worse than the sting from the four fresh cuts on my back. It was enough to make me ignore the feeling of my blood dripping down the side of me when I stood, but I knew that emotion grew tremendously the more I endured. And the damage UNO did to my abdominal area during my last minute of the nightmare was proof.
          The light of the dying sun disappeared as the garage door closed. It was silent now, and only my steps broke through it. I removed the sheet from the bed of the truck, threw it behind me, and opened the trunk door. There he was, dead as a doornail. There was no fixing Hue Chu of Despereaux. And I was thrilled. I chuckled at my efforts of killing him in the park, grabbing a hold of his face with my fangs. His right eye was just about to disconnect from his brain as it hung over the bed, dripping the delectable blood I enjoyed swallowing when I bit deep into his throat. That event was an example of one of the three things that brought me to life.