ravi is a (locksmith) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-01-17 22:07:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | atsuko chiba, in arkham, paprika |
and other drugs (narrative)
In the beginning, there was nothing.
A sea of black, both opaque and velvety. No light, no shine, no breath of life.
Until a hand dared protest and it grunted as it slapped itself onto the absent floor and heaved its body up. With a gasp for breath, Paprika tossed her head up and grabbed onto the floor with a second grip. She felt as if her legs were fluid, as though a heavy wind or an inky sea was moving them and tugging her away from the black rocks.
But she pulled herself up and grunting again, she forced her upper body onto the surface and crawled forward. And when she could feel her legs, she pushed her knees onto the ground and forced herself up.
When she looked up, a slam echoed into the darkness, and she gasped as she hurried forward, crying, "Wait, wait!!" making a dash towards oblivion. She mustn't have ran for a long time, she knew, but dreams were strange places with a bizarre time pace. Before she knew it, the wall was upon her, and she slammed onto it with an audible thud but she didn't give up. Raising her fist, she slammed it against the surface in front of her. "Open up! I said, open up--"
She must have broken the opacity, somehow. Thick webs of dark threads clung to her fists and she squirmed while she shook them out of her fingers, stumbling back so that the wall drew back into itself and behaved. Paprika spent a few moments rubbing her skin free of anything that might have stuck to it before she huffed and frowned at the wall ahead of her.
She looked around. "Hello?" her voice echoed as she spun round her heels and stretched her ears for anything but beyond silence, there was only a thick quilt that enveloped her, so soft, it consumed every step she took. "Hellooo!" she called again, spun again.
No one was answering.
Well, there was possibly no way Paprika could just stand there and do nothing but wait, could she? With a brave slam of her foot against the wall, she forced his hands through the thick goo and forced it open with a deep grunt. A lip began to form, and through that lip, a sparkle of sunshine burst through and she only tore the black wall harder as she grabbed tighter onto the seams and ripped the wall apart.
After what seemed like forever and with a hard gasp, Paprika stumbled backward and watched the wall fade away into brightness, a hot flare of white ripping the scene into shreds only to fade away into a golden view, decorated by piles of sand and falls of glittering dust.
She held her breath to herself as she peered into the new place from the dark lands. With a light foot, she stepped into the shimmering dessert, then brought in her other one as she walked further into the new zone and looked around. There was a white fog that covered the skies for her and hid the source of the trail of sands although the feel of the quilt was still around her.
"Is it nonbenzodiazepine?" Paprika muttered to herself as she tiptoed into the foreign land, careful lest she get sand into her sneakers. The effects were very familiar, though. The oozy feeling, the "falling apart" sensation (as she'd like to call it).
But whose dream was this?
There was a face peering through the wall of sand, something tight and squished and she gasped when she saw the smile in-between the man's fat cheeks, a name flashing itself in her mind in an instant. "Tokita?!" she exclaimed as she hurried towards the face. "Tokita, is that you?! Tokita!"
With a hop, Paprika landed herself on the pile of dust collecting under the flat picture and she brushed through the falling sand in search of the face's arms and hands but there was none to be found -- just awkward bricks to take their place. His lips were moving but his voice wasn't coming out. "Tokita, what are you doing here?! Get out, get out of there!"
"Let's go out on Sunday and hit the beach!" the wall-face said to her.
"I know, I know!" Paprika muttered behind gritted teeth as she clawed at the space between the bricks and began to pull them out in spite of her breaking fingernails. "I keep telling you, we'll go after your diet sessions!"
"But At-chan, you always say that!"
"At-chan?" Paprika asked with a gasp, her hands freezing as she stared into the steady face that smiled at her. At-chan? Now if that name isn't familiar, she...
Tokita-face parted his lips open and a huge hole opened up in the wall and a mannequin toppled out. Paprika took another step back as she stared at the black bun-knotted hair and the white coat and she stepped cautiously forward as she leaned forward and looked at the doll from a side.
A tight gasp squeezed itself out of her when she whipped her head back at the sound of muffled voices coming from the dark. With no time to lose, Paprika hurried to pull the dummy out of the black hole and carried it by her left side as she looked over her shoulder where the sound came from and hurried past the growing piles of sand, keeping her feet light and smooth while she hopped past the desert.
She felt like such a mouse she thought, sneaking away cheese or what as she moved from one pillar of the gothic mansion to another, hurrying her pace lest the voices from the giant shadows catch her with her treasure and take it away from her. Fifteen hops later, she found herself at the end of the hallway where it was dark and cold and she fell to her knees as she dropped the white mannequin.
"At-chan!" she whispered loudly as she shook the sleeping doll. "At-chan, get a grip of yourself. At-chan! At-cha..." she gasped as she looked behind her again, the sound of moving metals grating and echoing.
Paprika turned back to the white figure and resumed shaking it. "At-chan, they're coming closer! You've got to get a hold of yourself now. At-chan...At-chan!" She shook harder.
"Atsuko!"
With a gasp, the doctor parted her eyes open, feeling her heart race at the sudden movement of her shoulders but her body remained heavily dependent on the cold wall she was propped against. She felt no mood to move as she remained dreary and lazy.
But Paprika was right, it was time to wake up. The doors were parting open and frozen in her place, Atsuko watched the silhouette...or silhouettes stand in the middle of the space between her door frame.
Was this still a dream?