Weary and confused, Marron opened her eyes, blinking several times. She felt as though she were half dead; her entire body was aching and burning from the run to her uncle’s cabin. She sat up, stretched her sore muscles, and looked around the room. It was dark outside; she could see that the night was black and unapproachable outside the glass of the cabin windows. She didn’t know how long she had been sleeping, but it must have been quite awhile. The formerly-roaring fire that was next to her had dimmed down to nothing more than a small, persistent flame, and the lights of the cabin were all aglow. She slipped the blanket off of her and shivered when she was hit by a chill. Now that the fire was no longer so big and hot, it was quite cool in the cabin. She decided to take the blanket along with her, wrapping it around her shoulders as she stood up.

She could smell food, though she couldn’t determine what it was. Juunana-gou wasn’t anywhere to be found, but since there was a pot boiling on the stove and something in the oven as well, she was certain that he hadn’t gone far. He was pretty responsible about those kinds of things, especially if she were in the house. He liked to take good care of his belongings, and since basically his entire home was made out of wood, she was sure he would not leave something burning in the oven. Still dragging the blanket along with her, she went to investigate the kitchen and hopefully find some scraps that she might be able to snack on. The kitchen table had been set with his simple white dishes, aligned perfectly across from each other on the table. The napkins had been folded in half and placed neatly under the forks. She smiled, thinking about how strange her uncle could be sometimes, and glad that he had decided to make her dinner.

Just then, the door of the cabin opened up and Juunana-gou came into the light, carrying an armful of logs for the fire. He noticed her standing there and gave her a slight smile, dropping the new logs onto the hungry fire.

“How long have I been sleeping?” She asked him, and she took a seat at the table.

“A long while. It’s actually dinnertime now. I didn’t know what to make for you, so I just decided on some soup and rolls.”

Her stomach growled at just the mere mention of it. “That sounds great.”

He stepped away from the fireplace and headed into the kitchen, stopping momentarily to move the pot off of the stove. When he lifted the lid, she was hit by the warm and comforting aroma of chicken soup. Satisfied, he grabbed a ladle, then carried the pot over to the table. “I called your mother so that she wouldn’t worry. I didn’t tell her why you came or anything. I just told her that you needed someone to talk to. She said that you could stay here tonight if you’d like and that she would pick you up tomorrow.”

“Good.” She said with a sigh of relief. She picked up her spoon as he filled her bowl with steaming soup. A basket of rolls was placed on the table as well. “I didn’t feel like running back. I think I really hurt my leg while I was running here last night. It’s pretty sore. Now that I think about what I did last night --- running all the way here, I feel really silly. Sometimes the things that I think are completely adult at the time seem incredibly childish afterward. I didn’t really need to run over here like I did. You were right. I should have waited until I was calm and rational. I just don’t think before I act, sometimes.”

“That’s understandable.” He agreed, sitting down as well. He picked up his spoon and began to sip his dinner while talking. “We all get like that sometimes. Hardly anyone ever thinks about their actions anymore. These days it seems like we’re all mindless machines.”

“I guess.” She murmured. His words struck her as odd. “I wasn’t being careless or thoughtless, though. I think I was just so concerned about Mama that nothing else really mattered. I was kind of blinded by the fact that I was so worried about her.”

He leaned back for a moment, wiping his mouth. “Now, what’s this about your mother being sick?”

She paused, swallowing thoughtfully. “Well, ever since that night that we were here and we played chess against each other, she has been acting really strangely. And I know that she can’t really be sick, because she is jinzouningen. It’s not possible for you to be sick, is it?”

Juunana-gou shook his head. “No. It’s not.”

“Then….then I think that there might be something wrong with her. You know how if you pour water on something electrical, it sizzles and spouts smokes and stops working? I think something like that might have happened to her. Papa is really concerned too….He tried to get her to go to the doctor, but she wouldn’t go. I can’t talk to him about it because I don’t think I’m even supposed to know anything; he’d be really disappointed in me if he knew that I had listened in on their conversation. They always try to keep things from me and protect me.”

“Has she ‘sizzled and spouted smoke’ yet, as you said?”

“No, she’s just been acting strange, like having nightmares and---”

He held up a hand to stop her, smiling warmly. “I wouldn’t let it bother you so much, Marron. Your mother is very resilient. She was built to be resilient.”

“I know that when she was built she was meant to be perfect.” She said. “I’m just afraid that maybe there is a glitch or something. Maybe there is a part of her that isn’t working the way it used to.”

“I’m sure you’re just overreacting, Marron. I can’t imagine that anything would be seriously wrong with her. Like I said, she’s very resilient. It’s possible that it’s just one of those women things. You’ve seen her throw tantrums before. She’s likely to shoot someone just for looking at her when she’s in one of her moods.”

Annoyed, Marron nearly dropped her spoon, looking into his ice blue eyes. “This isn’t a tantrum, though. This is different. She is --- ”

He met her gaze steadily. “Marron, if there were something wrong with your mother, then there would be something wrong with me as well. We were made from the same mold, created by the same mind. And I’m perfectly healthy, aren’t I?”

“I suppose so….”

They fell into silence as they finished their dinner. Despite her earlier hunger, she ate slowly, thinking. It was true, Juunana seemed to be healthy at the moment, but she couldn’t forget the fact that he had ‘blanked out’ that night while they were playing chess. Her mother hadn’t been the only one that scared her that night. She and Juunana-gou had both seemingly shut down, appearing to her like broken dolls. It could be just a coincidence; after all, he seemed normal now. But there was a small, traitorous voice in the back of her head that was demanding she think more deeply about the situation. She chose to ignore the voice, pushing away her soup bowl and wiping her mouth gently with her napkin. He was fine now; he didn’t appear to be suffering through any of the things that her mother was. It was rude of her to think such thoughts, especially when he was taking such good care of her.

As if reading her mind, he suddenly spoke up. He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and stood up from his chair, grabbing both of their empty bowls. “Listen, why don’t you go change out of those clothes and put on something of mine? If you want, I’ll throw them in the wash so you don’t have to wear home dirty clothes in the morning. Go change into something more comfortable, come back out, and we’ll roast marshmallows over the fire and talk about it some more, okay?”

She agreed heartily, glad that he wanted to at least continue the discussion. Her uncle might appear to be cold-hearted and emotionless sometimes, but whenever she was in need, he always seemed to be there. If she didn’t care about her parents so much, she would want to live out her in the forest with her uncle, for she furiously loved the man. Next to her mother, she would say that her uncle was her best friend. He was so much like her mother and every way, and it was a comfort just to be around him. But, she would never give up her parents for him. In fact, at the moment she really missed them. She missed her dad’s cheerful eyes, and the way that her mom patted her head when she said something or did something good. They were good parents; the best kind of parents that any girl could ask for. And that’s why she was so concerned now, concerned about her mother’s safety. She just wanted her, wanted both of them, to be okay.

As her uncle cleared off the kitchen table, she traced her way back into his bedroom, in search of some clean clothing and a brush.

Idly, he picked up the dishes off of the table, bringing them to sink. He always liked to do the dishes right away; to get them clean and into the cupboards before he began another project. He worked proficiently, turning on the facet and letting warm water fill the sink, adding dish soap to the stream of falling water. He dropped the dishes in one by one, and began to scrub. Usually there were far fewer dishes. When he was by himself, it took him almost less than a minute to clean his dishes. But because Marron had been there to eat as well, the process was taking longer than usual. Bored, he looked out of the kitchen window into the darkness of the night. It was impossible to see, because of the glow from inside of the cabin, but still his light blue eyes searched anyway. What he was searching for, he did not know. He strongly felt that something was out there though. That someone was watching over every move that he made.

Turning his eyes back to the dishes, he thought about what Marron had told him. Juuhachi-gou was feeling it to, whatever it was. According to his niece, she had been having nightmares --- if you could call them that, much like he had been having. He didn’t think of them as nightmares so much as flashbacks, remembrances from long ago. There was no way to tell if they were true or not, no way to know if his mind was playing tricks on him, but in his heart he felt that they were real. They were horrible, more horrible than any nightmare he could come up with on his own --- they haunted him even in the daylight. The doctor’s words kept coming back to him, as if he were slapping him against the face again and again.

“I’m building you to be resilient. I’m building you to be irreversible.” Juunana-gou murmured out loud, his eyes blank and distant. The memories were coming back again, and the sickness of them, absolute horror of them, was enough to make him want to retch into the sink before him.

It all came back, and a change came over him, slow, but strong. It was something he didn’t want, and he pressed his hands against his temples, trying to squeeze it out. His head began to pound, blood pulsing through his body quick and hard. His eyes, stale and ice blue, stared transfixed and unblinking at the wall in front of him. It hit him again, the desire and the command, and there was nothing that he could do to stop it. He doubled over, crashed to the floor, unconscious and quivering.

He slid in and out of consciousness; his mind was wet and slick and seemed to slither out of his grasp like a snake every time he tried to hold onto it. He floated in a haze of black and red and purple, seeing stars and swirls and waves of color. He felt weightless and free, as if there was no body, as if his mind were separate and detached from his physical being. He liked it here, liked the way it made him feel. He was forgetting things. They were flying out of his mind like bats, flapping around in whatever lay outside the boundaries of his own mind. He was floating, and flying and free. And though this feeling of euphoria was good --- though he seeped it into his heart quickly and greedily, he felt that there was something very bad attached to it. The bad feeling was the feeling of fear, and it was hunkered down in the shadows and mists of red and black and purple, ready to attack.

Slowly, awareness began to creep back in, moving stealthily across his nose and ears and eyes. First, there was the smell of antiseptic, sharp and putrid in his nostrils. It swept over him, and though he could not feel his stomach before, he felt it now as it flopped and churned, taking in the fetid smell. Then there was the sound. There was steady dripping, of water, of rain, of blood --- of liquid hitting metal. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it was steady enough to mock the hands of a watch. He could also hear the sound of slicing; the sound that a knife makes when it pierces something soft, like a fresh piece of fruit or fresh human skin. Lastly, his eyes began to wake. Ice blue orbs opened slightly, allowing light to burst in and make him squint. He strained through the brightness, tears forming a watery shield, and found a light, a lamp. It shone down on him from the ceiling, burning into him, scalding his skin. Vaguely now, he was aware of cold, unforgiving metal on the surface of his back. Metal that was slick with something warm and wet. The lamp shone down into his eyes seemingly brighter, and he blinked hard, trying to shut it out.

When he opened his eyes again, it was darker, and he could only see a tall, lurking silhouette. The doctor was leaning over him. He stared at him dully, watched as the doctor raised one arm up, an arm that was red up to the elbow, stained with a dark, red sticky liquid. The hand attached to that arm moved slowly, fingers wiggling joyously and playfully, in a way that reminded him of how a puppet master wielded his doll.

Fuck you. I’m nobody’s fucking puppet. It was his last coherent thought. The same dark red liquid dripped off of the hand, and he felt it hit his face, warm and sliding and on skin.

He drifted off again, his eyes involuntarily closing as a haze of red appeared. He tried to concentrate, tried to keep his mind of sliding away from him, but it slithered out of his hold once more. He floated in and out of the wisps of red and black and purple, unfeeling, unbelieving and inhuman. His memories, his mind, his heart and soul --- All of it flittered away, leaving him sputtering for breath and grasping at the few strands of it that he could still feel. He managed to touch them, could feel them hit his fingertips as he desperately tried to cling to them, but they slipped away, rushing down and out and away. He fell. He could feel the weightlessness sink into his stomach, weighing it down and pushing the nausea up. He tumbled through what remained of his life, scared and helpless and alone. In the end he was left with nothing; nothing but a blank, empty mind, a cold, lifeless soul, and a face splattered with his own blood.

And when he awoke again, he was different. He was changed. He could feel that there was a change, because his body felt so alive, so full of adrenaline and power. But he did not know what was different, or what had changed, because this was all that he had ever known. He had no life, he had no family. He had no feelings or emotion or pain. There were no memories, there were no dreams, and there were no hopes. There was no love, no concept of love; no trust, no faith, no reason. There was only one single thought, and it repeated in his mind over and over again until it drove him mad.

Kill.

Kill them all. Kill them all and watch them die.

Marron pulled off the heavy sweatshirt that she had been wearing, carefully folding it and placing it on her uncle’s bed. It was neatly made of course, the simple linens pulled tightly across the mattress. Like everything that her uncle owned, it was orderly and spotlessly clean. It was a simple room with absolutely no decoration, but it was still comfortable nonetheless. The only thing that might even be considered frivolous was the soft rug under her feet. However, she deemed that it was probably necessary, because the hard wood floor of the cabin was bound to be freezing in the mornings. And no one liked to step out of a cozy, warm bed onto what felt like a sheet of ice. Besides the rug, there were a few books stacked on the dresser, and a clock as well. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a small chair that she was certain her uncle had probably made himself.

His pants were all too big for her, so she regretfully kept her jeans on, but rolled up the cuffs so that they weren’t dragging on the ground. She replaced the sweatshirt with one of his flannel shirts, and sat down on the bed, grabbing the pair of socks that she had found. She pulled on the warm, wooly socks, wiggling her toes into them, and winced as pain shot through her leg. She couldn’t wait until she was home again and could put a wrap on it and ice it. It was probably going to be really sore for at least another week. She had sustained injuries like this in school before; unfortunately, she was not a fast healer. It would be a long while before she would go running about the forest again.

Faintly, she heard a crash coming from the other room, but dismissed it as nothing. Juunana-gou was probably just doing the dinner dishes. Knowing him and his borderline neurotic cleaning tendencies, he had probably started on them as soon as she left the room. She didn’t know why he cared so much about such trivial things, but suspected it was because this cabin was all that he had. All of these belongings and even the house itself were all things that he had either made or worked very hard for. He probably just wanted to take good care of them.

She smiled, thinking of that as she lifted a brush off of his dresser. Her hair was probably a lost cause by now. Just the thought of looking into a mirror scared her. But she attempted to tame her pale blond strands anyway, gripping the brush tight as she pushed her way through the tangles. She tied it back into her ponytails, doing the best she could without the help of any kind of hair products, then set the brush back down on the dresser where she had found it. There were a few stubborn strands that insisted on slipping back out, but she ignored them. It really wasn’t worth the hassle. Besides, she was beginning to get hungry for dessert, and the marshmallows that her uncle had promised her were sounding awfully good.

She slipped the sneakers back on her feet, buttoned up the flannel shirt over the tee shirt that she was wearing, and opened the door.

The lights were off, but she didn’t think anything of it as she wandered through the dark cabin. Often when they were just sitting in front of the fire talking, they turned the lights out for effect. When she was younger, he used to tell her scary stories then; stories that would give her nightmares for literally months, until she had begged him to turn the lights back on. Now though, they usually just sat and quietly talked about their lives; she was too old for ghost stories now and often enjoyed the darkness. Besides, the fire produced enough of a warm glow so that they could see what they were doing.

She paused for a moment, squinting through the darkness, trying to spot her uncle. It was deadly silent, so quiet that she could actually hear the ticking of the clock in the other room. She couldn’t hear a thing, and couldn’t see her uncle anywhere. It was as if she had stepped out of his room and into an abandoned cabin.

“Juunana?” She asked, puzzled.