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Eri ran down the dark hallways away from the shadow monster. It was strange. It looked eerily familiar, an elongated face with furry shoulders, but it was all the same dark colour. She didn’t know how she knew what she was running away from, since all she could see was its shadow cast across the floor tiles, but she did.
She scampered around corner, avoiding the dead ends as much as she could. It was weird. Really it was. There weren’t any walls, merely shadows that sketched out a maze across the contrasting tiles.
Her feet pitter patted against the floor, but the noise didn’t make any difference. This wasn’t a fair maze. It didn’t matter if the monster could hear her, because it could see her. It mattered if she chose a wrong direction though, because any seconds she lost to finding herself stood in a darkened corridor was noticeable in the shadowy figure that stook large strides towards her. It wasn’t fair.
She couldn’t walk into the shadows, she didn’t know how she knew, she hadn’t tried, but she just knew. She couldn’t walk into the shadows, but the monster was gliding through them like they were nothing. It felt like she was imagining a maze that made her step carefully, but because the monster couldn’t see the walls or the winding pathways, she was being followed at an impossibly fast pace.
What made it worse though, was she knew it wasn’t getting any closer. The shadowy figure was still as far away as it had been in the beginning. It was still “chasing” her, but somehow it was still in the same spot as before. It’s shadow though, was constantly nipping at her heels. So, even through her refusal to look back at the shadow monster-man she was trying to escape from, she ran. She ran and she ran and she ran.
And then she woke up crying. She bit her lip, drawing her knees up to eyes, sobbing into her legs quietly as she hugged them closely, searching for the smallest amount of comfort in the small, cold room. She tried to imagine that the walls weren’t closing in on her as she tried to calm her breaths.
She tugged at the bandages on her arms, rubbing the fabric between her fingers, feeling the texture of the woven fibres.
She couldn’t risk waking anyone up. Nothing good would happen if they woke up. They might not do anything tonight, but later, when she had to go to the chair, they’d hurt her worse than usual.
Eri didn’t want to hurt at all, but if she could save herself a little pain, she would be quiet when she cried. She just had to hold on.
Survive one more day. That’s all she had to do.
One more day, and any number of things could change. Maybe she’d be saved, or she’d escape, or something bad would happen to everyone that hurt her, and she’d be free.
It made her feel gross when she thought things like that, but for some reason, they never stopped. She didn’t want them to be hurt, or to die or to experience even half of the things she’d imagined for them, but when she found herself upset or alone or sat in her dark room wishing for a better life, sometimes she thought it would be better if something bad did happen to them all.
She imagined that they were in the chair, that they had all the little cuts and ugly marks over their legs. She would wish that they were tied down by their arms, unable to get up, that if they were bad, or if it hurt so much they screamed or sometimes had an accident, they were the ones that were mocked for being childish.
Eri tried to tell herself that thinking those things didn’t make her a bad person, because they were just thoughts, and she didn’t try to think them. She told herself that the thoughts might be in her head, but they always made her heart hurt, so she was still a good person.
It never worked. It just made her feel worse, because if she was really, really a good person she wouldn’t think them at all. If she was a really, really good person, then her heart would win the battle, and her head would stop telling her that she should push Hari down the stairs when he next tried to take her to the chair.
Then her heart wouldn’t let her head tell her that it would feel good to take one of the needles to Chisaki’s eye before he put it in her arm.
Eri knew she wasn’t a good person, but she still wanted to live. Just like she knew the people here weren’t good, but she wanted them to be alive too. She just wanted them to stop hurting her.
So, one more day… then things will change.
Just one more day.
*
Eri hurt. Her arms ached and her legs were pulsing uncomfortably. Her fingers felt wrong, like they were crooked, and her forehead felt too big, like it had swollen but the rest of her head was the normal size. She had another nightmare last night, and then Hari took her to the chair, and she had bad thoughts about everyone again.
She felt icky and wanted to scrub at her arms, but they’d been wrapped up super tight and she couldn’t get the cloth off them. She’d tried for ages, she’d tugged at them and even tried to tear at them with her teeth, but nothing she did got the fabric off. Somehow, her efforts only managed to tighten the fabric further, making them constrict even more.
She wished they’d come off because the bandages were squishing her arms and her legs.
It was dark in the room, and Eri thought that meant it was night-time, but she couldn’t be sure. She had a tiny, barred window she could look out, but it faced towards another building, and she had to step on her tippy toes if she wanted to see the sky. She couldn’t stand like that for long because her toes started to get tired and she’d get all wobbly.
Eri didn’t want to fall over. If she fell over and got hurt, then everyone would be mad at her. Especially if she started bleeding and lost all the precious blood again. They were worse when they were mad.
So instead, tonight, she sat on the floor with her blankets laid out underneath her, trying to look at the different colours on the wall of the other building.
She couldn’t really see anything, but then again… she hadn’t expected to see anything. She wished she could see the stars though.
The stars always made her feel a little warmer and a little happier.
They were so far away from everything, little burning lights in the darkness, and they made her a little less scared.
When she was sat in this room, the lights off because she was supposed to be sleeping, the little burning balls of light offered a strange kind of distant comfort. She used to try to reach out, hoping that by some miracle, they would move closer, and she’d be able to touch the light, that maybe they would be the things that would save her, but it never worked.
Even so, each night she would look out the window and stare at the stars.
She would wish that they’d come to save her, that the stars would take her away, that she could run in the sky, dodging the beams of light and sinking into the warm blanket of the darkness where she would be safe and able to watch the stars play with one another.
Sometimes, if she was lucky, she would see the stars in her dreams. Sometimes, when she was even luckier, she would see the stars in her nightmares, and they’d scare the shadow monsters away, or they’d light a new path for Eri to follow.
But every morning she would open her eyes and see nothing had changed yet. So, she’d survive the day, just to be thrown back in the room at the end of it all. Each night she would look at the stars and wish they’d visit her in her dreams. She would fall asleep, and sometimes she would see the stars, sometimes she wouldn’t.
The cycle would always repeat though.
No matter how many times she wished, no matter how many times her wish never came true, she would continue to wish.
She wished something would change, that the stars would save her, that she’d get to see the light up close, and maybe even touch it one day.
Then she had a thought. She wished for something new, something she hadn’t thought of before. She wished, that when she was older, she would be someone she could be proud of. She wished she could be strong and kind and someone that would save people like her.
But for now, she would wish to live just one more day.
And she would.
It was the only wish that ever came true at least.
Just one more.
*
When Eri first met the light, she hadn’t expected it. She was awake, but it felt like she was living her nightmares. She was running away from the Shadow monster -from Chisaki- and she was crashing into brick walls, stumbling around sharp corners, trying to find her way through the maze of shadowed corridors.
Except it wasn’t a nightmare, and she knew she was awake, because she was outside, and the sun was in the sky, and she could hear Chisaki’s footsteps as he chased her down the alleyway.
She wished that was all she could hear, but she could hear him calling out to her, telling her how disappointed he was, how she would be punished when they got back, how if she wasn’t careful, she would curse someone again and they’d die because of her because she wasn’t good.
Eri was scared, but she kept moving, just like she always did in her nightmares. She didn’t look back, she just ran, her eyes screwed shut as she ran for the edge of the alley where the light was overwhelming.
For a second, she thought that maybe she was wrong, that she wouldn’t get in trouble, because this was another dream after all. Because there hadn’t been a wall that had cut her off from the light, but she had just ran into one, and that happened a lot in her dreams. The stars led her to the exit, but the shadow monster was always waiting for her and never let her leave.
Naturally, when she looked up, aiming to look the shadow monster in the eyes before it bared it’s teeth and she woke up, she was surprised when the eyes were wrong. They were green.
The glowing body was different too, she had never seen it before. It was haloed by the daylight, making it appear dark, but it was lacking the usual beak, and the shoulders weren’t furry and she thought it might have even been smiling.
But then Chisaki was behind her, telling her to leave the busy heroes alone.
And, for just a moment, Eri thought she would be saved, because these were heroes, and heroes saved people, and the green bunny one seemed like he didn’t want to let Eri go, but then the yellow one stepped forward saying it was rude to try to take a child away from their parents -which was wrong because Eri wasn’t his- and then Chisaki was removing his gloves and Eri felt sick, and before she could even think, she was moving to chase after Chisaki, because she wanted to be safe, to be saved, but she didn’t want anyone to die. She most definitely didn’t want the nice hero to die because of her and her curse of Chisaki’s attention.
It felt like a cruel irony, that the day she finally met the light she had been reaching out to for so long, she had to turn her back on it to protect it. Because Eri knew what Chisaki did to light. Chisaki killed it and crushed it and absorbed it into his darkness, and Eri couldn’t let him do that to the heroes too.
Not if Eri could stop it.
So Eri followed Chisaki, and they went back to the room, where she was left alone and in the dark once more.
She found herself curled up in the corner, hugging her knees once more. It felt like the walls were collapsing in on her, like with every breathe taken, it grew a little smaller. The room was shrinking, but Eri was still the same size, and if nothing changed then she’d be squished into an Eri jam.
Being pressed into the corner helped a little at least, because this way she knew two sides of the room were already touching her, so she thought she had more time before the other two got that close to her.
She took gasping breaths, wishing for the heroes, for the stars, for the lights, for anything to come save her.
A second was all it took for her mind to wonder, and through the fog of emotion, to stumbled over to the door and reached with shaking hands for the handle.
The door was locked.
She bit her lip as hard as she could as tears fell down her face and dropped onto the hard, wooden floor.
She waited for the walls to finish shrinking, waited for the pressure to come from more than just her arms and legs. She wondered if anyone would care when she was turned into nothingness, or if Chisaki would just find someone else.
She wondered, maybe, if she was squished enough, maybe she would just disappear, and then she could be saved that way instead.
She looked over towards the window.
One more day.
Just one more.
*
At first, when she woke up in the hospital, she wasn’t sure what was happening. She thought that maybe everything had been a dream. A cruel, cruel dream that promised her everything she could never have and everything she had ever wished for.
But then the nurses came in, and they were touching her, taking her temperature, and checking the machines that were connected to her arms.
It was weird for things to be so similar, but so different at the same time.
Her arms and legs were still wrapped in bandages, but there were tubes that were woven through the bandages, and somehow seemed to be connected to her, she wasn’t sure how though. She couldn’t even feel them against her skin.
The room was empty, the walls were the same colour as the tiles on the floor and ceiling.
She knew she was out, but everything was still so similar. It hurt to think that she’d just traded one white room for another.
Her heart was telling her that the room was different, but Eri didn’t really trust her heart, so instead she trusted her head. Her head told her they were the same, that things were okay now, but if she was bad, then the tubes would fill with a weird liquid that would make her hurt.
Eri didn’t want to hurt again, so she did what the nurses told her to. When they brought her food and told her to eat, she did. When they opened the door and told her they were going for a walk around the building, she followed where they led. When they told her to sleep, she tried. She really did, but after laying down in the bed and closing her eyes, she found herself just lying there. All of a sudden, the walls were closing in and she was crying and there was a loud beeping noise.
There was an alarm.
There was an alarm that told the nurses when she had been naughty. She’d been naughty and now she was going to be punished.
When the nurses came running into the room, much as Eri had expected them too, she found herself breathing even harder, tears rolling down her face.
The people in the white and blue clothing were all standing around her, talking in loud voices, and then one of them was reaching for her. Without thinking, she flung herself backwards, away from the grasping hands.
She only realised what she had done after the hands had frozen, and the person the monster was looking at her with wide, surprised eyes.
Eri was ready to be punished, ready for the grasping hands to return, for someone to inject some weird liquid into her veins, for fire to flare throughout her body, spreading like poison.
Instead, a man she remembered seeing before, during the fight, knelt in front of her. He looked tired, but his voice was soft as he spoke to her, telling her that everything was okay.
He stood out so incredibly in the white room. He was dressed all in black, and much like Chisaki, he looked like he could melt into the shadows without being seen. Unlike Chisaki, he seemed kind. He even smiled at Eri.
It was a strange thing to experience.
For so long, Eri had looked at the stars and the light as her saving grace. She had been locked in dark, small rooms and told she was bad and cursed.
But here, in this large hospital room, the entire thing a blinding white, lit up with the strip lights that lined each tile, it was the man shrouded in black that offered her the most comfort.
Just one more day.
Just one more.
Suddenly, “just one more” didn’t seem like such a hard goal.