𝐇(𝐀)𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 | yandere! dazai osamu

12 / 15

When you wake up and roll to your side into complete darkness, you bolt up onto your feet.

'It's not morning yet?'  You're seriously starting to lose your mind, your head throbbing and your entire body hurting from exerting so much pressure against unmoving doors.

You look down and look back up—you're still in the library, having fallen asleep on the book's page, your candelabrum still flickering from embers. You snatch it up and look at the wall opposite of you: no hole.

Your skin prickles with goosebumps and you can feel hot tears brimming in your waterline, fear beginning to stream through your bloodstreams and overwhelming your throat, head, and lungs. 

You drop the candelabrum and sprint into the main foyer, running past the sofa and your phone lodged in the cushions and ramming your shoulder into the main doors.

It's locked. You pull and push, shove and yank, run back and try to kick it open—yet it remains close, unmoving, apathetic to your pitiful cries before you slide down against the wooden surface. Your eyes flicker up to the foyer and notice an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Its gems were so dusty that it looked like coal was embedded into the fancy structure, reminiscent of a head from a giant beast. It swung occasionally with every beat of your fist against the door, ominously creaking as if threatening to fall.

You stand up and try to open the windows by the side of the door—you bash your shoulder against the window and yet you bounce clean off.

You run to the hallways and click the switch for the attic stairs, yet it gets jammed halfway through.

You collapse onto your knees in the middle of the hallway, alone and swimming in darkness, and start to cry into your hands. Your shoulders shake with the intensity of your sobs, eyes burning with tears. A noise of pure animal grief pouring out of your throat, body lurching forwards, unable to hold its own weight against the despair in your sobs. Your cheeks are soaked in your tears as you rock yourself back and forth. It almost seemed as if this house read your mind, can read it, or there is no route out of this labyrinth of a house, shifting as you move through it because it's more alive than you are; in a house that doesn't love you, angry at you, like an Old Testament God, glaring down at you.

When the worst of your sobs have died down and you feel lethargy fogging your brain, you decide to go to the bathroom and wash up. Your face felt sticky with tears and dust.

You stand in front of the mirror. You look at it. Hard. You sigh, then duck down to cup a handful of water before splashing it over your face. While doing that, streams of water fell and soaked your sleeves. Your brows furrowed in disgust.

You look back up.

Something was behind you. It looked like a blurry you, with your exact features and the likes, but older, meaner, colder. It stares at you with such baleful eyes that your instincts to attack were instantly alerted. Yet it stepped back into the ambiguous darkness without a single word. Your eyes flickered back to your own face before squeezing your eyes shut. 

When you open them back again, it felt like everything was warping, your face twisting and turning into strange shapes, features growing out of proportion, eyes horrified before apathetic, mouth upturned then downturned. As if you were walking through the house of mirrors in an amusement park.

You take a moment trying to swallow your fears. You clench your fists so that you can throw some fucking hands if someone tried to touch you from behind that fucking bath curtain. Hot anger boils underneath your skin. You scrub your face again, this time so hard that you felt like your skin was going to peel straight off.

You bend down and wipe your face with the old dress fabric, walking in the direction of the room with the clowns and puppets. Something falls out.

It's the photo you picked up, but when you look at it more closely, it's almost as if the man in the photo lowered himself so that you could see a bit more of his neck. You can see the slight point of a chin, but there was no long hair that reached there.

You examine it closely under the dim light of the moonlight before slipping it back into your bra. You walk back into the room where puppets were staring into space. You're reminded of how creepy this room was again. You look around for any spare clothes,

Yet upon closer inspection, the puppets and clowns look more human, and then you realize: these are people, real humans.

You decide to just stare straight into one of the eyes of the puppet as you pull over your dress, staring at the assortment of clothes in your bra and panties. Yet the more you stare, the more unsettled you are: you're on the hill that recognizes these human beings as human beings, but there was something wrong about them.

They all had varying degrees of wounds.

From slit throats to bullet wounds, and at the end of the room was a giant bronze statue.

Akutagawa committed mass murder-suicide. You remember that. You're about to take a pair of pants that was underneath one of the puppet's feet before a crack of the jaw unhinges:

"ADMIT IT! (FIRST NAME) WOULD STILL BE SICK IF IT WASN'T FOR YAKUSHI'S HELP! IT'S BECAUSE OF HIM THAT SHE CAN GET UP AT NIGHT!"

You stumble backward at the familiarity of the voice, heart racing in your ears, but the one behind you opens their jaws.

"YOUR SO-CALLED MENTOR IS GONNA KILL HER ONE DAY! YOU'RE BEING FUCKING SCAMMED!"

"AS IF YOU'RE HELPING AT ALL! MAKING HER SICK INTENTIONALLY SO YOU CAN "NURSE" HER BACK TO HEALTH. YOU'RE A FUCKING SICKO. YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO BE A MOTHER!"

You fall onto the floor and clamp your hands over your ears.

You can hear their jaws click together.

"IT'S NOT MY FAULT OUR FUCKING DAUGHTER'S A FUCKING LUNATIC! IT'S ALL BECAUSE OF YOU! I FUCKING KNEW YOUR BULLSHIT WAS HEREDITARY, NOW LOOK AT HER!"

Glass shattering.

You can see mouths opening and closing in front of your vision, the sharp words of your parents' words sinking into your skin like hot air, and before you know it, you're screaming all sorts of apologies, begging to be accepted again, promising you won't be such a fucking lunatic anymore.

Mommy, mommy, I'm so sorry, please let me go home please

And then it's quiet.