Black Water | Tokyo Ghoul

Chapter 20: Invasion

Someone was strangling him.

'No way.'

That was impossible. Every night, he grabbed the window sills and pushed its edge into the wall until there was nowhere left to push it into. He rattled the doorknob twice every five minutes before going to sleep, and forced his window open just to make sure it really was locked. He racked his brain for any loopholes in his own home but there was no way this killer could be sitting right above his stomach, pinning him down, and strangling him to death.

His eyes strained through the room's dark haze, trying to adjust to the darkness just to see his assailant's face but everything betrayed him tonight. When he tried to move even just a fraction, the killer squeezed his neck tighter, pressing thumbs deeper into the hollow of his throat.

He gagged, feeling bone tenderly press up against the smooth muscle in his throat.

'No way. no fucking way.'

It was impossible for it to be happening but there he was, strapped to the bed, immobilized and suddenly too weak to even just let out a scream. A second later, he was sitting up.

The room was still the same – dark and silent enough to be mistaken as nothing more than an abandoned home. He thought he was truly alone and was about to convince himself that it was all a dream until he felt something solid struggled right beneath him.

He whipped his head down and stilled at the sight of his own hands wrapped around a familiar neck.

"Stop..." the man underneath him wheezed, weakly clawing at his arms as if doing so would stop the man from twisting his hands even more.

Underneath the filtered sliver of moonlight streaming into the room in thin lines, tears shone before they slipped down the man's temples.

"Rin...stop..."

It wasn't until the man spoke that his conscience finally realized what was going on. The man he sat over and threatened with death looked almost entirely like him. But unlike Rin, this man's hair was so light, it could be mistaken as part of the moonbeams. His eyes were almost the color of bronze and were painted with betrayal.

"Jin?" Rin heard himself whisper.

The small thing in his heart twisted and churned, begging his body to snap out of whatever hypnotism he was under but his hands seemed to be in another world. They twisted cruelly around Jin's neck, making him gag and gasp for the air Rin desperately wanted to give him. But as if he was being controlled by some heathen god, Rin could do nothing but continue to kill his own brother.

"Please..." Jin wheezed as he clawed harder at Rin's arms, struggling and flailing faster and faster before he finally stopped moving.

Rin woke up with a sudden breath that practically choked him awake.

Jumping and gagging on his own panicked breath, Rin coughed hard against his pillow as he struggled to sit up from the bed. Easier said than done. For the first time in his life, Rin was so scared that his entire body was shaking tremors through the sheets. And all because of a nightmare to boot.

He had handled nightmares before. Being who he was, they weren't really a surprise. But it was the first time he actually dreamed of killing his own brother. An unforgiveable and heinous crime he couldn't even bear to think about. But even with the tense shudders coursing numbly through his muscles, Rin shut his eyes and simply did the only thing he know could work against nightmares.

Gritting his teeth, he sat up, straightening his back as he carefully breathed in, taking a full four seconds to take in all the pure air before slowly huffing a deep breath out through his nostrils. Pulling his eyes open, he desperately hoped that he was alone and that he was actually lying on just his mattress and not the lifeless corpse of...