[Yandere Meowscarada x Reader] I'll Make Them All Disappear!

75 | The Abyss Strider

A boy grasps the grass at his feet, pulling only gently, but even that is enough to tear it from the earth. In the palm of his hand lay the severed blades boasting an otherworldly green color, not like that of the world beyond the mist—up there, the grass is darker and smells of days gone. He looks at the grass in his palm, plucking a few blades with a fingertip.

"Look at you," he whispers. "Still so healthy and young. It's a miracle your color never grows dull, even in a wasteland like this." Wasteland, he says, but he knows well it is nothing of the sort. That is an insult to the paradise spreading out around him. "I wish I could say I was as beautiful as you still. You could say I'm envious."

As though it were in response, the feeble shreds of grass tremble slightly against his hand. If the earth could hear, he thinks—if the world could open its ears to his heart, what might he say then? He thinks he might freeze there like a scared Deerling, his lips trembling as he wracks his brain for any coherent words that might appease the world.

A crooked smile finds his mouth. He stands from the hill he sits upon and gazes up at the mist spreading over the sky—an impenetrable blanket of white, like a veil of thick snow, but at the very least he can vaguely make out the shape of the sky above the crater through it. A wave of nostalgia runs warmly through him, the soft breeze blowing his dirty hair around his face.

"So young. So healthy." He touches his face, tracing a fingertip along the length of a scar running from his temple down to his jaw. "I wonder if you would say the same for me, Invidia."

✦

He hasn't had much to do in the time he's been bound to these depths, although the young boy still takes great pleasure in exploring the plains he's ventured across a hundred times now, making gestures with his hands at the Pokémon nearby or far-off like he's taking photos of them. It isn't the worst life a person could possibly live, but there's no denying it's still miserable. He frequently finds himself daydreaming of having found an escape, a way to pierce the clouds that condemn him, but these are only dreams—they last no longer than a few moments before he is back on his feet and headed to the next corner of the abyss.

He shakes away those daydreams as he descends the passageways into the deepest reaches of Area Zero, the walls covered in clusters of jewels dense enough to reflect his image perfectly as he strolls by. He pauses at the middle of the wall, turning to face his gem-bound reflection.

That. That is a face not even a mother could love.

The boy feels himself grimacing. Scowling, even, at his own reflection. While it's true his face lacks the purity and youth it once had, he might still pass as... well, perhaps an actor for a horror movie. Not just any typical horror movie that can hardly be called horror, what with its lack of genuine emotion and godforsaken CGI, but a truly horrifying film. He might cut it as the monster itself. Something between a hack-and-slash flick and the boogey-man. Although, now that he thinks about it, he can't really remember the last movie he watched.

Thankfully my face isn't the worst thing, he thinks, turning his attention to his rather small body, veiled in white cloaks he managed to gather from the old laboratory a few years back. Under these garments, I'm probably the most hideous thing anyone could possibly lay eyes on. Not that they'll ever see me, anyway. It's fine.

He continues on, refusing to pay anymore attention to the reflections glittering from his sides, from every angle. The tunnel descends into a wider chamber, adorned still by many crystals the boy has seen too many times to count—as though they were family, he has even considered naming the clusters. He stops at the mouth of this cavern room. At the far end of the chamber where the path meets the gullet of a tunnel and loops down into the grand chamber, as he calls it, there is a gargantuan Pokémon standing directly in the way. The young boy looks the creature up and down, from its sparkling tail to its broad metallic jaws. Green lights peek out of the creature's flesh—though flesh isn't the word for it.