[Ranma][FanFic][Dark] Hold Me Until It Sleeps

[defwood]

Warning: Contains scenes of violence
and a very dark psychological theme.

Where do I take
this pain of mine?
I run but it stays
right by my side
So tear me open,
pour me out
There's things inside
that scream and shout
And the pain
still hates me
So...

~~~~~~~~~
Hold Me Until
It Sleeps

by defwood
~~~~~~~~~

-- bled

-- bleed

-- blood

"Dammit."

Ukyo Kuonji winced at the sharp pain and muttered under her
breath. The small knife clattered to the wooden cutting board
next to the onions, half-sliced and already forgotten. Grimacing,
she placed the index finger of her right hand to her lips, a
coppery-tasting warmth spreading on her tongue. When the sting
began to subside, she gave the finger a cursory inspection.

A thin line of red quickly appeared, running from the tip halfway
down the pad to the first joint. Rising to the surface like some
crimson crude, the blood seemed to pause. And then, passing
surface tension, it nearly ran down the side of her finger before
she stuck it in her mouth again.

Not that deep, she thought with a sigh, but deep enough if she
didn't dress it right away. Not a good idea to be bleeding in the
kitchen. Unsanitary. And should a customer happen to see, bad
for business.

Ukyo glanced out the rectangular window of the kitchen, looking
past the long metal grill to the dining area. Konatsu, with rolled-
up sleeves, was sweating over the intense heat to prepare five
separate orders. Beyond him, Ranma stood near a table, chatting
amiably with some of the customers while he wrote down orders on
his little notepad. Business had been unusually steady all day.

Finger still in mouth, she glanced at the first-aid box hanging
next to the cooler. It contained everything needed in an
emergency, and considering how busy they were, she knew it
would probably be best to use that one. But aside from the
immediate need for a Band-Aid, she was also plain beat -- with
all the customers coming in, taking a break had been out of the
question. A respite before the bathroom cabinet upstairs, even a
brief one, would be a welcome relief.

With a wave, Ukyo caught Ranma's eye and indicated the finger
in her mouth. Then she pointed up and pressed her hands together
in a gesture of pleading, her eyes very wide and child-like
innocent. A little smile pursed his lips as he shook his head. But
then he merely nodded, at last turning his attention back to the
customers.

Grabbing a paper towel from the roll hanging over the sink, Ukyo
wrapped the finger tightly. At the tip where the cut was hidden
now, the paper darkened almost immediately. With another sigh,
she started for the stairs.

As she walked, she pressed her free hand hard to her back to try
to ease the discomfort of the eight months' belly. There were
good days and bad, as her friends had said there would be in the
third tri-mester. But just lately, when the twins really started
kicking, it felt as if they were already practicing some form of
fetal kata, with her organs the punching bags. And today had
been one such day, when the glow of pregnancy everyone said
she supposedly possessed only succeeded in masking a very
tired expression.

She winced again, as the pain of her finger began to throb now
in synch with her heart. The cut was a stark reminder of how
careless she'd been the past few days. Just yesterday, while
chatting idly with Konatsu, she'd almost placed her hand on the
grill by accident. The ever-alert ninja had stopped her with a
surprisingly strong grip, sparing her from a trip to the emergency
room. But she had been shaken by the nearness of it. If he
hadn't been there, it could have been very bad.

On the wall leading to the backstairs hung a calendar. As she
was about to pass, Ukyo paused before it and stared. Above was
a black-and-white photo of a cute kitten sleeping in a hammock,
however her eyes were not drawn to that, but to the days below.
Little wonder then, she thought to herself, that she had felt so
agitated lately.

June 20th.

June 22nd.

June 29th.

Although the dates would never be circled to remind someone --
such things were meant to be mourned, not commemorated --
they didn't have to be. Memory held them now...uneasy yet
steady and always unforgiving. And perfectly encased in the
amber of synapses they would remain. Trapped forever, those
days in June, and trapped forever as well, those forced to recall
them.

This year would mark the third anniversary. She and Ranma
always grew edgier when that time of approached. Even
Konatsu, who had barely known them, seemed to be affected by
it more than he would admit. But of the three, she always
seemed to fare the worst. With the return of those terrible
memories to the forefront of her thoughts, she grew susceptible
to a dazed daydreaming at the most inopportune moments and
prone to errors in the most menial of tasks.

The first year she had been almost to the day. The second had
started a week early. And now here it was three weeks before
the third and she was already making stupid mistakes like cutting
her finger while preparing vegetables. Of course this year, unlike
the previous two, she was pregnant. And maybe that was why
the jitters had returned early. Hormones or something, she
thought idly.

At one time, though, Ukyo knew that she wouldn't have dismissed
it so easily. If the images had still been as fresh as the month
in which they had happened, or the weeks that followed when she'd
had her breakdown, she might have pondered what that shortening
progression intimated. Did it mean that in ten years' time she
would have been a round-the-clock basket case, with every day an
unwanted anniversary of memories best laid to rest and forgotten?
And if it had been three years before, she might have feared
answering yes.

Maybe then...yes. But not now. The distance of time had given
her many good reasons to doubt such a terrible thing. After all,
she had the two restaurants to keep her busy, and recently there
had been thoughts about starting a franchise. And there was
Konatsu, dear Konatsu, who had given much of his abundant
reservoir of strength and support when it had been needed. And
of course there were the twins seemingly fighting with each other
in her belly. But most important of all, there was Ranma.

Ukyo paused on the first step leading up, looking out between
the edges of the curtain on the entry to the kitchen. There -- at
her husband, smiling as a customer cracked some joke she
could not hear. Although the edges of his mouth curled upwards
in a hint of amusement, his laughter did not possess the
conviction to reach his eyes. It seemed that Ranma couldn't do
that anymore, smiling with his eyes, not as he did when he was
sixteen and carefree. Where his eyes used to dance with
amusement while he laughed, now the dark circles set in
a face that was still-too-thin and worn seemed to impair that.

And yet there had been a time when feelings of any kind had
been questionable at best. A time when grief was all that he had
left to hold on to. A time, still not that far past, when a part
of him had died. An amputation with no warning it had been.
Considering all that, if he could smile at all now, whether it
touched his eyes or not, showed just how profound was his inner
strength.

Three years of healing, six months of those married, and with it
the joy of imminent fatherhood, had helped to blur the memories
and the pain. But of course some things just would never be the
same. How could anyone expect otherwise after what had
happened?

Although Ranma always insisted that things were better now,
that he had put most of that pain behind him, still there were
times, when in certain light or in quiet moments when perhaps he
thought that others were not watching, that something small and
wounded slipped out into the open. And only then did it became
apparent that time had played a terrible trick on him -- that time
had somehow aged him differently than others of his years. Now
he was neither boy nor man, but seemingly lost somewhere in
between -- his face still young, yet with dulled eyes just a bit too
old for the passage of a mere thousand days and nights.

And what about herself? she thought. Could anyone say that she
had fared any better? If a younger Ukyo could have looked in a
mirror and seen what she would look like in three years, would
she even have recognized herself? Probably not. She knew they
were both different now, both older in ways that life had not
intended. But at the very least, what had been lost had been
balanced by what had been gained. And, with each other for
support, they had learned to live with it. To accept that neither
would ever be the same.

The staircase leading up was narrow and dimly lit by a lone bulb
above the landing at the top. Ukyo ascended with care, brushing
a hand along to steady herself. The wall on the left was covered
in framed photographs and her fingers paused in the spaces
between them like crevices on a cliff.

Waiting there in the ill-fitting light, she saw the momentos of days
past that she and Ranma and even Konatsu had collected. A younger
she with her father standing beside the family cart. A nervous
Genma and a smiling Nodoka. The Tendo family in better days.
Konatsu's step-mother. Many more faces that with each passing year
seemed to become little more than a children's game of "Remember
that time when...?"

Near the top of the stairs, she paused before the last three. An
invisible line seemed to separate them from the others. And
linked though they were to each other by nearness, it was a link
broken from the others by the distance that very nearness
caused. However, Ukyo knew that was deceptive. In some ways,
the three were linked now more than ever to the ones that came
before them.

The first photo caught Akane in a moment of surprise. Smiling
and laughing she was, perhaps at some forgotten schoolgirl
silliness. Sometimes even at her angriest, all it had taken was a
joke or a funny face to bring her around to a giggle. And that was
the way she would have wanted her friends to remember her.
The happy times, the good times. But not at the end...no, she
wouldn't want to be remembered that way. Not alone in some
garbage-strewn alley. Not blue and stiff and cooling and so very
much alone.

Ukyo shuddered. Such a display of insensate violence it had
been. Even after three years, the memory of the crime scene still
held the power to make her stomach cringe and want to empty a
river of fire into a wastebasket. How terrible to be murdered in
such a fashion. Almost animalistic it had been. How horrible...

The piano-wire garrote had not been a clean or a swift act.
Perhaps instinct had raised Akane's fingers to her throat the
instant before the loop was drawn tight. But it had not mattered
in the end...such action had not stopped the inevitable. Merely
delayed it, merely made the suffering worse. In his report, the
police coroner estimated that the struggle had lasted for five
minutes.

Five endless minutes of desperate ever-shortening breaths,
knowing that you were going to die. Was there any more horrible
way of dying than that? Ukyo wondered again. The struggles
winding down like some child's toy running low on batteries, the
iris of consciousness blurring around the edges and then
growing gray and fading fading fading...

And then the screaming, ravening madness manifested in the
bludgeoning post mortem, until dental records had been required
to pinpoint the identity of the pulped remains. How could a mind,
Ukyo thought for the millionth time, how could a human mind,
even a disturbed human mind, have conceived such a thing?
The sheer insane brutality of the act simply defied the
imagination.

And why did Akane have to die? What was the thought process
that had led to that conclusion? For what reason was her death
found necessary? For a purse, that was all. A stinking lousy
black cloth purse containing 500 yen, a half-used eighty-minute
phone card with a picture of a panting puppy on it, an old
pink compact with a broken hinge, a tube of "Candy Apple" brand
lipstick, a yellow long-handled hairbrush, a faux alligator-skin
address book, a tan-and-black Velcro wallet with a Furinkan student
ID and a washer-faded library card.

Was that all her life had been worth to someone? Trinkets and
change? Even after all this time, it still refused to make any
sense to her, and maybe in a strange way that was a good thing.
Maybe, Ukyo supposed, there were just some things that normal
human beings were not meant to understand.

But whether it was understood or not, the violence had left
everyone devastated. Inconsolable -- Soun, Nabiki, Ranma,
Genma, and Nadoka. Inconsolable. Kasumi had collapsed and
then been hospitalized for weeks afterwards, eventually released
with the thin glue of therapy and drugs the only thing holding her
psyche together. But when broken things were fixed, sometimes
they were not as strong as before. The lingering cracks left them
inherently weaker in spots.

It saddened her to admit how difficult it still was to look at the
thinly pale and skittish person that had seemingly replaced the
eldest Tendo daughter, like an imperfect replica from a broken
copier. After all, Kasumi was not to blame for what had had
happened. And yet how awkward it had been to meet her on
the street that first time, to speak almost pleasantly of small
things for a few moments of time, and to pretend as if nothing
had happened. Sad then to watch helplessly as Kasumi's eyes
slowly began to wander from the conversation, perhaps following
spirits that only she could see. Spirits to whom she would
sometimes whisper with a soft scolding to "Wait your turn..."

After she'd shamefully bolted away on some flimsy pretext, tears
burning the corners of her eyes, she recalled now how she'd
thought it was a kind of death itself -- what Kasumi's life had
become was like a living, breathing death that never ended.

On the wall, Ukyo's fingers brushed the glass gently, feeling that
same wistful sadness that trailed the image like a shadow --
attached, but a step behind. And if it had ended there, with
Akane, the pain merely would have been unbearable. But it had
not -- it had just kept getting worse. Less than forty-eight hours
later, hardly enough time to even register the shock of the first
tragedy, the wound still fresh, another had struck. Slowly, her
fingers moved on to the next photo.

Shampoo, riding her delivery bike. Shampoo, the free spirit.
"Hussy," Ukyo had called her, and worse. But If she remembered
correctly the lessons from school, *joie de vivre* was the French
phrase for it. A quality that Ukyo, even as she criticized her for it,
had always secretly admired. Perhaps because -- through nature or
nurture -- she did not. Maybe she and Shampoo had not been friends;
maybe they had disliked each other, even. But that did not mean
she had wished her ill will. And she would not have wished Shampoo's
fate on her worst enemy. So while she could not say that the feelings
evoked by the photo were as clear with Akane's, still she could not
deny they were there.

Cologne had found her, not the police. Reticent to have anything
to do with the authorities, they hadn't even been apprised of her
disappearance. They were not notified until her body had been
found, a tiny purple and white cat growing stiff in the dank
basement of a condemned apartment building, where her great-
grandmother had quietly wept for many hours.

Of course, the coroner had not autopsied a cat. Somehow for a
short time after death, the curse remained active, and she had
been changed back a final time for her final farewell. Standing
there on the stairway, her fingers pressed tight to the photo,
Ukyo wondered again what would have happened if she hadn't
been found in time. Would she have been buried that way,
locked in the cursed form as the arms or legs of a corpse grew
stiff with the onset of rigor mortis?

But it was a human body that had been buried, not a cat, so
pursuing that line of thought was pointless. Yet while certain
questions had been skillfully averted, that Shampoo was
eventually laid to rest among the honored dead of the Amazon
Village did nothing but confound the coroner who detected the
rat poison saturating the settling melted stew of her viscera.

Poisoned, yes. Murdered, yes. Dead, but once again that did not
prove enough to satisfy the terrible hatred that refused to die
*with* that death. Pondering the events many months later, when
it *was* possible to think of them, with a pain that was at least
bearable, Ukyo had come to the conclusion that perhaps it would
have been better if Shampoo *had* remained in her cursed form.
Better...kinder...so that when Mousse, with a strangled cry of
anguished grief and rage, had flung open the coffin at the wake,
he would not have seen that which no mortician, no matter how
skilled in his somber art, could entirely conceal. And then
perhaps Mousse would not have...

But it had seemed that no one was to escape that June without
scars. Tragedies within tragedies within tragedies, she thought, a
tumbling downward spiral of pain and disbelief. For everyone.
And most especially for her. Ukyo had never feared for her own
life; the deaths, occurring so soon after each other, had left her
too stunned to consider their further implications. It was only
later, after Akane's funeral, with Shampoo's to be held the next
day, that she began to wonder -- were they only random crimes,
or the unveiling of some terrible pattern?

But the police had hardly given her any time. Perhaps it was only
inevitable that they would suspect her. After all, the link to the
two murders was irrefutable. Maybe in the back of her mind,
she'd even known when she'd gone to the door of the closed
restaurant that day that they would be there, searching with their
skeptical eyes and disgusting insinuations. But knowing had not
make it any easier. And it had not made the pain of accusation
any more endurable.

But Ranma had been there. Even when it seemed that his pain
had nearly broken him, he had believed in her. Perhaps it was
guilt that drove him, guilt that he hadn't been there to protect
Akane. Or Shampoo. But that didn't matter.

Ukyo smiled, remembering how Ranma had stood by her side
and defended her. He had never believed the thrust of the
investigation that had followed in the days after the murders, and
he had never wavered in his support. Even when she was placed
under 24 hour surveillance, he had stayed with her while she
was being watched. And when less than a week later Kodachi's
body had been found floating face down in the Kuno's moat, the
focus had shifted elsewhere. And his faith had been vindicated,
though terribly, and not in any way he or she might have wished.

Her fingers brushed the final photograph. Kodachi. She had
been brutalized in the same fashion as the others, the water of
the moat gone pink with her life's blood. But as had been true at
the time, now after running her hand along the three photos,
there was simply nothing left to feel. Just as she had been
numbed then, she was in a way still numb now.

Ukyo hesitated a moment more, as if reluctant to sever the ties
once again. But then the torn and bleeding finger, silent for a
while or perhaps merely mute in the presence of deeper wounds
to which it could only pay faint obeisance, began to throb again
in earnest. With a sigh, she lifted her feet to the landing, opened
the door, and stepped into the apartment.

When the door closed behind her, the sounds downstairs subsided
to a subliminal murmur. That in itself was such a relief, she
could feel the tension and heat draining out of her body. As she
waddled over to the bathroom, she happened to catch her reflection
in the full-length mirror next to the dresser. Pausing in surprise,
for perhaps only the thousandth time since she had started to show,
she ran her hand gently over the swell of her belly. *Is that really
me?* she thought. Again. For the thousandth time.

Save for the light coming through the half-drawn shades, the
apartment was dark. She moved to the bathroom quietly and
flicked up the light switch. Looking into the mirror, Ukyo sighed.
There were bags under her eyes from too little sleep and too
much work, and the hair that had looked so pretty only that
morning in this same mirror was wilted now with heat and sweat.
The strain of the past few days in conjunction with the growing
nearness of all those terrible memories once more was starting
to take its toll on her. As selfish and petty as it made her feel to
admit such a thing, the truth was she could hardly wait until the
dates had come and gone, so that she could reclaim her life for
another year.

It had been worse, though -- one morning a few weeks after
those days in June, she had woken up crying. And as hard as
she'd tried, she found that she could not stop. Post-traumatic
stress, the doctor had said, and then he'd prescribed some
medication to help her sleep and offered the phone number of a
therapist. But while the pills had taken the edge off and returned
some small semblance of normality to her life, it had not solved
everything. At times she'd still felt too fragile, and the most
inconsequential things still held the power to bring those
emotions surging to the surface. At first, she had dismissed the
idea of therapy; that had been too close to Kasumi for her
comfort. Yet as the days rolled on and the pills dwindled, she
began to consider it more seriously. But once again Ranma had
been there for her.

Maybe the only good that had come from it all, she thought, was
that Ranma and she had found comfort in each other. She did
not even want to guess what would have become of her without
his support -- perhaps she would have simply gone quietly
insane. But she hadn't. He would not let it happen. When they
each needed each other the most, they had been there for each
other. The support, the strength, at first they'd found merely in
each others' presence, and then each others' arms, and finally in
each others' bed. And that comfort that they'd both craved had
gradually matured to a deep and abiding love.

And perhaps in some way, that was what Akane or Shampoo or
even Kodachi would have wanted -- to see the rise of something
good from something so terrible...to know that something good
could still survive in the presence of so much pain and evil. Was
that not the greatest way to remember them? she thought, not
for the first time. To remember them not through photos or
memories, but just to keep on living...to find happiness. Perhaps
somehow their spirits derived some comfort from the knowledge
that she and Ranma had done just that.

*Are you happy for me, Akane?* she wondered as she twisted
the knob on the water faucet. She unwrapped the finger, wincing
as the blood stuck to the paper peeled off. *We miss you so
much. Still. Forever. Please be happy for us...*

There was no answer of course, nor did she expect one. But
knowing Akane as she had, there did not have to be. Ukyo
placed her finger beneath the faucet's cold running water. The
blood was instantly diluted, running from the cut in tiny pink
ribbons off the sides. When the tip grew numb enough to apply
the bandage, she withdrew the finger.

And she stared. For the blood was still there. Yet she had not
seen it well up again through the cut; it was simply still there, as
if the water had not even been applied. And for some reason it
still hurt. Numbed nearly white from the cold, nonetheless the
finger still throbbed with hidden pain. But somehow different
now. Before it had pulsed in synch with her heart, but not now.
Now the pace was off somehow, as if it beat with another heart
or even a life of its own. And even as she pondered this,
confused, the divide between her heart and the throbbing finger
seemed to stretch wider and wider.

Frowning now, she placed the finger again under the still-running
faucet. Once again the blood was dissolved into the sink, swirling
around the white porcelain, the pink strands almost clear as they
disappeared down the drain.

Yet when Ukyo examined the tip of her finger a second time, still
the blood remained. And was it just her imagination? or did it
seem that the blood was increasing in volume? But surely that
was just a trick of the light...a suggestion of a tired mind? After
all, the cut had not been that deep to begin with, had it?

Perhaps, she thought a little worried now, she had nicked a vein
or something. No cut could bleed that much, could it? For a third
time, she placed the finger beneath the running water. But where
she fully expected the water to wash away the stain, it only
seemed to make it worse. Now no longer merely a line of red,
the blood was eagerly running off the side of her finger and even
down her palm.

Quickly, but trying not to panic, she opened the medicine cabinet
with her other hand. Bottles of pills and tubes of cream, anything
that got in the way of her fingers, clattered to the tile floor as she
blindly groped for a gauze bandage...a gauze bandage because
a normal one just would not do anymore...not do anymore to
staunch the thick growing flow of blood...the flow of blood which
stubbornly refused to go away...refused to go away as if it were
not liquid anymore...not liquid anymore but something hard and
dark...dark dark dark red like a scab that had to be peeled away
with pain and wide eyes...wide eyes even as she watched with
wide eyes in a kind of creeping horror, the blood began to pour
forth from the wound, great gouts of bubbling crimson spewing
from the wound, so much forcing its way through the narrow
severance of flesh that it seemed to be tearing the skin even
wider in its frantic pulsing pushing to GET OUT! GET OUT! GET
OUT!

Ukyo nearly screamed as she grabbed hold of the gushing finger
and crushed it in her grip, her mind racing incoherently -- she
was going to bleed to death! how could that be? how was that
even possible? she was going to bleed to death in the bathroom
of her apartment! She tried to spin around to get helphelphelp,
not seeing, but living the images that flashed before her eyes.
And the sink was spattered a madman's painting and the
wallpaper was streaking and running with the heartbeat spurts
and the tile was slick and treacherous beneath her feet with
sticky wet red footprints spinning around and around and the
toilet was and the wastebasket was and the curtains were and
the drain was backing up with too much water and blood and
blood and blood and blood covered the mirror, streaking her
reflection with red-gore-splatter until it looked as if she had
just stepped out of an abattoir

--bled

or a garbage-strewn alley

--bleed

or an abandoned building

--blood

The memories burned through her conscious mind, searing
images sleeping but always there. Content to fester in silence
those memories had been. But now, raw wounds open once again for
her terrible contemplation, they were the red-rimmed hive of
hungry buzzing flies come to feast on the putrescent discharge.
And then like the blood itself, born from the marrow, the
trembling began again bone-deep. Jittering and endless, it bored
up unmolested through the cracks in her now-shattered facade,
through muscle and sinew and viscera and vein, until her body
shook with the sheer violence of the forced remembering and slick,
greasy sweat paled her skin.

And then, very clear it was, there was a sound like something
popping, but it was not like that at all, for it was not in her ears
but only in her mind. And the blood ceased to flow from the
wound. And disappeared from the sink and the mirror and the
wall. And all that was left in the room was Ukyo Kuonji and her
labored breathing and her hitching sobs and the unclean feeling
that she had been raped.

Stunned and now terribly frightened, she looked up at her
reflection. As her vision struggled to perceive through the prisms
of tears, she thought she saw something else in the mirror. Just
off behind her left shoulder it stood, stood slumping almost
hidden, a faint, wavering yet steady presence, like a ghost...or
perhaps another misplaced memory. But this half-seen thing was
not shaking uncontrollably as she herself was. Instead it seemed
to be scrutinizing her, and giggling silently in some secret humor,
almost like a child, as it did.

As the trembling of her body grew and grew, like the stomach-
clenching insistence of vomit, the shadowy creature in the mirror
became more and more distinct, until finally it solidified into a
visage of gibbering lunacy and horror. And she knew this face, the
face of someone once forgotten, now remembered in all-too-terrible
clarity. Staring back at her, this face. Seeing her, this face. This
face...*knowing* her.

And standing there beside her reflection she saw -- a malformed
hunchback with hands crippled into painful claws. And she saw --
a rat's nest of long dark hair caked with dried blood and bits of
brain matter. And she saw -- half of its mouth twisted limp with
stroke and a drooling, obscene passion. And she saw -- multiple
rows of yellow teeth filed to a cannibalistic fineness. And she
saw -- one eye floating dead white with cataract, while the other
stared still bright and well-versed with a beast's cunning.

And in its breast, where a heart should beat strong, brooded
instead a hollow vessel. Dark with disease, hardened and
cracked like some ancient gourd of wine gone to vinegar, this
shriveled organ of deceit pulsated with a slow and hypnotic
malevolence.

From the darkened hallway behind, Konatsu watched in silence
as Ukyo slowly slipped to the floor and began to weep in great
gasping sobs. The point of the angled shaft of light coming
through the doorway almost touched the hem of his kimono. Almost
but not quite. In shadow, he stood unnoticed.

Once, out of sympathy and love, he might have gone to her, but
it was no longer his place to. She was married now, with child
now; and although he wanted more than anything in this world to
go by her side, such demonstrations of compassion were
forbidden now in his eyes.

And even if he could have gone to her, to hold and to speak soft
words of solace, he doubted if it would even matter. From the
moment when he had discovered Akane's purse in the restaurant's
garbage can, and then quietly disposed of it, he had always feared
what he now knew was true -- that the suffering of Ukyo Kuonji was
beyond the reach of simple human comfort. Forgiveness, both his and
even whatever her unsuspecting husband could have provided...if he
but knew the truth, and if in the knowing he did not turn away from
her in hatred and revulsion...were no longer enough to keep the ghosts
at bay.

And so in shadows and silence, Konatsu could only wait for it to
pass for another year, sadly aware of the ever-shortening
interval between, but equally helpless to know what to do to stop
it. Within the shadows and silence that had been his home for nearly
three years, he could only stand witness yet again as she writhed
and moaned on the bathroom floor in her annual moment, in a mental
agony as real as the birthing pains that were so soon to come.

And as she wept, so too did he weep for her. And as he wept for her,
so too did he weep for himself. But inwardly, silently. For how well
did he know the anguish and self-loathing that seized her body in
its terrible grip. And how intimate was his knowledge of the tragedy
of True Love and the lengths to which one must go in the servitude of
that awful god.

For although the stain on his own hands was not as pronounced,
still the skin was never free of its taint. Like some terrible
creature, hibernating in a silence broken only by its stertorous
breath, it was always there, ever patient for its feast. Waiting
and, yes, sleeping. Perhaps -- yes -- even smiling righteously as
it dreamed.

And yet Konatsu had stopped trying to clean his hands a long
time before. Even with bleach and steel wool and scraping
scraping scraping for as long as he could bite back the
screaming pain of flesh and nerve, he had discovered that it
served no purpose, save to make the skin raw and cracked and -
- ironically -- bleed for real.

But those other stains, the false ones that only he could see, and
the ones that only Ukyo could see now, simply refused to fade
no matter how hard one tried...or begged...for them to do so.

Some things just could not be washed away that easily.

Just like a curse,
just like a stray
You feed it once
and now it stays
So tear me open,
but beware
There's things inside
without a care...

--Metallica

========

Based on characters and situations created
and owned by Rumiko Takahashi, et al.
Used without permission.

Excerpts from "Until It Sleeps"
copyright 1996 Creeping Death Music.
Used without permission.

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