Dancing Through Darkness (ON HOLD&EDITING)

Prologue

"Mommy, what did we need at the store again?" Mother looked at the list in her other hand once more, reading off the items. Myu had already heard her repeat these items over eight times now, all upon her request of course. She loved to grasp every word that Mother spoke, the words that were pronounced and begged to be repeated. Myu appreciated the 'understanding' she had with letters, and other ideas and physical objects as well, frankly. Sometimes, Myu would sympathize with an empty sofa, and murmur phrases that she just heard back to herself just for the sake of grasping them.
"Ginger, eggs, honey, sea salt. " Mother continued to hold Myu's hand as they walked. Myu's hyper skips moved her mother's arm but their hands still clenched the other. Her hyped hops were much that of a playful young fawn, then again, a child she was, five and three quarters to be exact.

"Ginger, eggs, honey, sea salt..." Myu echoed back, mainly to herself, with her giggly smile glued to her face. Mother glanced down at her and then back to the street. Her parents worried about her, trying to convince themselves that she would grow out of it. Although it wasn't as bad as they thought it to be, they had been told her schizophrenia would only grow worse as she grew. At least, that's what the psychologist said, along with the doctor and countless counselors. They continued to walk down the sidewalk, passing little shops and driving cars.
2, 7, 10 Myu counted the cars as they passed, and rubbed the bracelet mother wore on her wrist. It was a bunch of amber, purple and blue beads followed by a few metal pieces in a pattern. Purple, metal, amber, metal, blue. Myu would repeat that to herself as she felt the waxy texture. Mother adjusted her purse on her shoulder. They rounded the corner together and continued on their way. This part of the street was pretty empty this part of the day, and an empty Coke can rolled along the street, the occasional truck, crushing it. They began to approach another corner.

A shoulder inched from the corner but before Myu could say anything or knew what to say, she shreaked. A man had jumped out from the wall, a gun in his hand. "What do you have?!" The man mumbled, his eyes bloodshot and wide as he held out the gun, and his brown sweatshirt sagged on his scrawny body. Myu's eyes were wide with terror, and her mother gripped her hand, forcing Myu behind her. "Sir." Mother said evenly, though her voice trembled and she began to step back making Myu step as well. "What do you have lady!?" The man began to yell. Myu watched him closely. His hair was thin and graying, he looked aged, but she could tell he was no older than twenty five. I wonder what he took? Myu thought that to herself becoming distracted, but only for a moment before returning to her horrified state as he advanced more aggressively, the gun's barrel closer to her mother's throat.

Mother swallowed, sweat beading on her body as she frantically searched her purse best she could with her chin in the air. "Come on!" The man rushed, taking peeks between the street and the purse. She quickly took out a wad of one dollar bills, totaling in only fifteen dollars. Myu would know, she always counted out the money mother and her would need before leaving the house. He ripped the money from her trembling hand and threw it into the wind. "I don't want your dirty money! Pills! Where are they?!" The man yelled in mother's face, causing her to cringe. "Stop! Please!" Myu shreaked, tears bubbling in her eyes, but the man only gave her a crazed look told her to shut it. Mother tried to search her purse deeper, throwing out tampons, and bandaids, and even a few wrappers, but nothing that took the interest of the crazed man on a high. The sweaty man twitched impatiently and dug the barrel into mother's chin, causing her to drop her purse. "You don't have to do this!" Mother cried out as the head dug into her chin, and she squeezed Myu's hand. Mother's bracelet slipped onto her wrist, and she felt its waxy beads move down her hand. But then mother let go.
"Myu run!"

BANG
• • • • •

Myu's ears rang and she did her mother comanded. She ran as fast as she could, the tears running down her cheeks. A single tear fell down mother's lifeless face. Her body dropped in slow motion, it seemed, and the crimson liquid was a watery illusion. Myu stopped at the end of the street to look back and saw that the man dropped his gun and began running the other way. The body on the ground was nothing but a vegetable now, Myu told herself. It's not even that, but a rock, a paperweight. She shook her head, her bottom lip began to quiver. "...Momma?..." Nothing. "It's not real....reality is a hallucination, just like the other things the doctors talked about...and I don't like it." Myu stayed there a moment, eyeing the lifeless body but after a few moments, the body seemed to vanish and all that was left was a crimson colored pond. That's all. Myu then sniffled and walked home. Of course the body of her mother still lay there, but because Myu didn't want to see it, she couldn't, because to her, it was never there.

She walked inside the house and her father rounded the corner dumbfounded. "Where is mom?" He asked Myu, kneeling in front of her. She didn't flinch, and although tears and snot still dribbled from her chin she wasn't crying. "She's gone, " Myu began, as her father's face twisted. "Along with the man who took her away. "

"Away, Myu?" She nodded and walked out the door. She then led him to the place of which the crimson pond sit, and he choaked and ran to the watery grave. Her father hunched over the limp body and sobbed, and his tears fell into mother's light copper colored hair, the top of her head darkly stained. Myu couldn't see it, however, because she didn't want too. So she stood and watched her father cry into the little crimson pond, of which she started to imagine the coy fish flopping to and fro. Father later ran hands through his hair after Myu had explained what she had witnessed. His eyes were dark and stormy, and puffy from crying. He had filed it in with the police and they were said to have done all they could do.
He clenched his fists. "What did he look like, Myu?" His voice was deep and rough now. Myu recalled his image carefully "He had on a large brown hoodie, he had black and grey shaggy hair that flopped over his eye. And his eyes were red....why?" She tilted her head towards him. His shoulders hunched and his knuckles popped, startling Myu. "Sometimes people get hurt and when that happens, they get sad and angry." He kneeled near Myu, and gently touched her shoulders, looking her in the eyes. "This man who hurt mom, hurt me."

"So you're sad." Myu concluded.
Father stood. "Emotions are dangerous. You don't hurt people, Myu. You'll be the one hurt in the end..."

POP

That's the muffled sound she heard from the alley outside the kitchen window. She had looked down to see the man she had seen three years ago, a burnt out cigarette fell from his hand, and a new crimson pond began to form. In the dark four o' clock moon,  his brown hoodie seemed to soak it in. The man in front of the body was in a dark hood, and dropped the gun onto the ground once the shot was taken. Father stepped back, pulling back the hood of the sweatshirt disheveling his thinning caramel hair. Myu watched from above as the pond grew wider. Like her mother's, the body soon vanished from her vision and instead, coy fish overflowed the widening stained river. Father for the past few years had seemed distant, away, alone, making Myu feel the same. She was concerned for him. His feelings took over him. That would never happen to him again, and Myu's trust in her own father had seemed to leave her. She grabbed the phone and dialed the emergency number that mother had taught her and still sat next to the window. It rang. Father began to step back from the body and looked around.
"911: what is your emergency?"

"My dad just killed a man."

The police took father away that night, and DHS took Myu. Everything she had was left behind except the clothes on her back, her bracelet and her imaginary raven, Dr.Lork. Pain had been brought to her life but she refused to feel pain. If pain is what drove father to murder she would never feel pain or anger, or sadness, or fear. Happiness was the only possible feeling for her to maintain life, and she would feel only that or emptiness. And if she didn't want to hear, see or feel something then she wouldn't.

Because it wasn't there.