K: Midnight

Chapter Eight: The Shadows

January 2, 2009

Shizume glittered wistfully in the dark, reflective from the rain, monochromatically clean: a fresh cool scent wafted through the pristine air to me. I shivered, though it was not an unwelcome shiver. Rather, it conveyed to me the feeling of dispelling something old: a dreary fabric, making way for fresh new folds of silk that slid against my skin like water over glass.

The rain had all but fallen in a downpour moments prior, and nothing but a drizzle pattered down in airy pellets on the hood of my metallic-lustred raincoat blending in with mirrored stone and windows, pale against the moon.

My steps, a clicking resonance across the tightened echo of the night, were all that I could hear aside from those slight, misting raindrops tapping on my jacket, and the whooshing hum of sweet precipitation twirling through the air.

The city lay asleep, or so I had assumed. I sensed a presence lingering above me, then behind me, then intrinsically beside me.

"What are you doing out here all alone?" A voice addressed me. So near it was, it seemed as though my hood were not a barrier between us. I caught a warmth of breath along the nipping chill that numbed the tri-pierced edges of my ear.

My boots came to a moderate, splashing halt amidst a shallow puddle on the pavement. Turning, I discerned a crafty smile staring down at me. "I could protect you, you know," it said.

Another presence rose, then another, and still yet another, creeping from the shadows, and while I could not see them, my eyes shifted side-to-side, sensing the emergence of an aura. Somehow it had changed from what I knew of it before. It wasn't quite the same, their coming there to me. Despite their oaths conveyed much like the one the voice had made, I did not feel protected nor assured. On the contrary, I felt unequivocally detained, stuck, somehow locked away; the air did not feel so refreshing anymore but cold, biting, weighing me with sudden apprehension. Is this their doing? I wondered, shrinking inwardly.

I peered out at that same familiar face belonging to the voice, the roguish grin encompassing a devious expression all too eager to prevail on me an imp-like disposition ever-wavering as the wind: a creature well-acquainted with the artistry of vacillating precepts and perceptions.

I then understood, frowning into lifeless flashing eyes. "Why are you doing this?" I asked, and the voice erupted in a laugh, a mocking laugh, a laugh that said, "Oh dearest one, but don't you understand? I am doing this — we are doing this — because it is you. It is as simply put as that."

An inner shudder chilled me to the bone — this time not a welcomed chill but sharp and uninviting.

My hands balled into fists inside my pockets, slowly burgeoning with darkness, power icily enraged and rumbling into being. Without a word, I drew them out, igniting shards in screeching waves as that of shattered glass: streams of polished onyx, inky coils: glorious translucence in the dark.

I took off in a run, zipping through the streets and splashing over puddles mimicking the sky. My hood was whisked away and all the long white tresses of my hair blew outward in a flourish, caught up in the breeze.

I was grateful for the dark, for winding, branching streets as like a maze: a web of narrow alleyways and alcoves strewn about the city; though I, a rat that scurried through whilst others quickly followed: the thought of this did little to revive me of my confidence.

The fog of thickening mists gave way to hollow echoes that pronounced the rhythmic panting shedding little clouds of breath into the air as I ran first down one long alleyway, then up a narrow star, round a curvy lane; and then the voice appeared again as though it never left me but had kept with me the length of my retreat.