Kingdom Hearts: Ghosts of Loss Contest Edition

Kingdom Hearts: Ghost of Loss Chapter One

If white is the totality of colour, and black the absence thereof, then surely grey must be its antithesis, Demyx muses as he winds his way down a featureless corridor, passing by a wall of battered lockers of unknown vintage. For all he knows, he has been going aimlessly around in circles for hours now, for all the variation in the scenery. Narrow stone passages of some nebulous shade between ash and bone chapleted with Gothic arches, dilapidated metal storage cabinets which seem to have sprouted like mould from the walls in which they are ensconced....

He thinks that he might have passed by a pair of shower stalls and an old-fashioned blow-dryer, but he cannot substantiate this. Besides, such things would be too whimsical, too frivolous for a realm such as this. Still... He gives a quick glance over his shoulder.

Antique pendant lights of undefined age shed their anaemic light about the claustrophobic space, spewing diseased shadows on the dismal grey concrete floor. The pallid conformations resemble nothing more than blighted patches of leprosy, and Demyx shudders involuntarily at the thought. He moves on, hoping to escape his own morbidity.

He can hear the continuous drip of water or some other liquid somewhere nearby and swears he can hear muffled sounds overhead. Almost against his will, he peers above him, not sure what, if anything, he will see. He chuckles silently at his own susceptibility.

Corroded pipes gird the barren walls and ceiling like the ribs of a primaeval beast. He wonders what purpose they serve, what they carry, where they go. He stares up at them for several seconds before moving on. He files away the information for later, a remnant of his past life doing reconnaissance work for the Organisation. Old habits die hard, he supposes. He hopes he dies just as hard if he has to die at all.

He can feel the cold and damp sinking into his bones, and he wraps his arms around himself. He shivers and tightens his grip, trying desperately to preserve what little warmth he can. His teeth chatter, and he wonders how much is actually physical, and how much is mental. He presses ever onward.

The world is colourless, as though filtered through grey-scale. Demyx feels self-conscious, a blemish on this otherwise perfect achromatic landscape. His vesture, cobbled together from various odds and ends he had found during his travels, whilst perfectly serviceable elsewhere, here only prove him an outsider more than anything else would. Perhaps he had thrown away the Cloak of the Organisation a bit prematurely, for surely such a garment would be well-suited to a location like this. Still, in any other world, such vestments would mark him as an acceptable target for extermination, and there is no real reason to suspect that this dimension would be any different. Suffering a bit of embarrassment is a small price to pay for continued existence, Demyx is sure.

There is no need for discomfort, he tells himself. After all, he has yet to see a single living soul here, aside from the hordes of Heartless he mindlessly wipes out, more out of habit than anything else. (Though the Munny they drop is incentive enough, he reckons) There isn't even the vermin one might expect to find in an abandoned building. This in and of itself gives him cause for concern. He shakes his head and tells himself that he worries needlessly.

He ignores with great effort the sudden pressure building behind his eyes and the buzzing in his skull like a hive of madding hornets. He pushes past the nausea that threatens to engulf him, his insides writhing like maggots. Finally, he relents and leans against the cool stone of the wall and waits for the episode to pass. He tells himself that he has simply come down with something, even though he has never been sick a day in his life, as far as he can recall.

He forces a weak smile to wan lips. Sometimes you catch a cold, and sometimes the cold catches you, he thinks, another wave of illness crashing down upon him. His legs buckle beneath him, and he finds himself crumpled in a heap on the cold floor. He drags himself up into a sitting position and tries to convince himself that he feels better like this, that he cannot feel the clamminess seeping through the thin fabric of his second-hand blue jeans.