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no6secretsanta · 5 years ago

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On the morrow he will leave me

Hey gecko (@lostemotion)! I was your secret santa this year! I took your prompt to heart and came up with this fic. I hope you like it! Happy holidays! <3 - Ace (@hi-im-secretly-satan) Word count: 2161 Warnings: none Summary: Nezumi has a tendency of leaving Shion behind without saying where he’s going, or when (if) he’ll come back, leaving Shion to simply having to trust he will return. Nezumi’s wandering spirit as seen through Shion’s eyes. Title from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

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The first time Nezumi had left him, Shion was twelve years old.

The rat had crashed into his life, soaking wet, and filled a void Shion hadn’t even known existed. As soon as he woke up alone in his bed (suddenly way too big for just one person) and saw the two empty cups of hot cocoa on his desk and the open window (the only traces of Nezumi’s presence), the emptiness crashed over him like a wave and had left him incomplete, always yearning for that missing piece. It was almost like Nezumi had not only taken the checkered flannel and the first aid box, but also his innocence.

The months following their strange encounter had been hard. At night Rashi’s face flashed through his mind, with his cold smile that never reached his eyes. Asking questions like “why” and “where”. Why had he taken in VC103221? Where did VC103221 go? Buried deep under the covers, Shion asked himself the same questions. Why had he let that bleeding boy in? Stitched his wound, fed him his own food, clothed him in his own clothes? And where had Nezumi gone? Each time Shion relived his memories searching for answers, he only found more questions. If he could turn back the hands of time, return to his old room and watch the hurricane crashing down on the city, would he still open the window if he knew the price he would pay? Save Nezumi while knowing it would cost him his prestige and his comfort here in Kronos? No matter how many times Shion thought about it, turned it over, analysed every bit of data at hand, he always came to the same conclusion.

Yes, he would.

But after all the wondering and pondering, the question he found nagging at him the most was “Will I ever see him again?”

Oh, how Shion longed to unravel the mystery that had thrown his life upside down. He needed to see Nezumi again; gather more data than his memories contained. In those grey eyes raged a storm he wanted to lose himself in. He wondered what could have scarred Nezumi’s back at such a young age. Wondered where and how Nezumi had learned to effortlessly, coldly, render him motionless, ready to kill if needed. There was so much Nezumi hadn’t told him and Shion wanted nothing more than for Nezumi to take his hand and show him this new, mesmerizing world he had never known existed.

Meeting Nezumi again was everything and nothing like Shion had hoped. He had not expected Nezumi to come to his rescue, but then again he hadn’t expected to be labeled a criminal either. It surprised Shion how little he cared about having to flee No.6. As irrational as it was, he had a feeling that as long as Nezumi was by his side, he’d be able to survive anything. After four years of living with a memory, the real Nezumi was within his grasp and this time Shion would not let go so easily.

Nezumi was still the same contradictory enigma he had been when he was twelve. He told Shion not to be kind to strangers, yet he had given Shion’s flannel to one of the children living nearby. He told Shion to let go of his memories, yet clung to his own past. But the one thing Shion couldn’t wrap his head around was how Nezumi had kept an eye on him for four years, watching him from the shadows and keeping him out of trouble, yet now he seemed almost hostile. They got into fights and every night Nezumi left him. Nezumi left him just like he did all those years ago. Whenever Shion asked why, where to, or when he’d get back, he dodged the questions.

One night, a month or two after Shion had arrived in West Block, he was alone in the underground room again. Nezumi had run off somewhere without telling him where the day before, and hadn’t come back. The stew Shion had made earlier that evening was cooling down on the stove. He hadn’t wanted to have dinner alone, but it was getting late and his stomach growled. He had never known hunger back in No.6, had never known how hard it was to ignore, making it impossible to focus on other things. His clothes were baggier on him than he remembered them being. Another growl echoed through the vault and Hamlet chirped on his shoulder. Shion smiled and reached up to scratch its head.

“We can’t eat yet. Nezumi isn’t home,” he said with a sad smile. He put down his book, the enchantment of the “Lady of Shalott” broken by hunger and worries. He ran his fingers over the spine of the book and stared at a stain on the open page. Hesitantly, as if speaking the words out loud would make them come true, he asked, “Do you think he will come back?” The mouse chirped again, seemingly reprimanding him. Shion chuckled and shook his head, scolding himself for even daring to think Nezumi wouldn’t come back. This was his home, after all. “You’re right, of course he will.”

He loved his new life with Nezumi but he couldn’t deny it was lonely when Nezumi wasn’t here, even though he had the mice to keep him company. With a sigh, he closed his book and pushed himself off the floor. Right when he had turned the stove back on to heat up their dinner, the door opened and Nezumi stepped inside, a gust of wind accompanying him. It seemed to storm wherever he went.

Immediately all of Shion’s worries melted away, the tension flowed out of his body and he sent Nezumi a bright smile. “Welcome home.”

He had been foolish to doubt Nezumi. Of course he would always come back. No matter how many times Nezumi left him, he always came back. Even when Nezumi had collapsed on stage, when Shion feared his life had been taken by a parasite bee, Nezumi had opened his eyes and called out Shion’s name.

So surely Nezumi must come back to him now as well. That was the thought that grounded him as Shion stared at his hands, painted red with Nezumi’s blood. A sight he’d never expected to see since he had stitched up his shoulder. It was a silly thought, but after Shion had watched Nezumi survive so many perils that were sure to kill him, he had come to think it was impossible for Nezumi to die. He had forgotten Nezumi bled just like humans do. He had forgotten that Nezumi was human. Nezumi, who laughed, danced, fought, bled, was human.

And now here he was, lying on the floor of the Correctional Facility, his pale skin crying crimson, sluggishly gushing bloody tears, his breathing shortening and pulse slowly, slowly, slowing down. Dying like humans do.

A vague voice in the back of Shion’s head yelled at him to get up, drag him to safety, tend to his wound like you did all those years ago. Shion slowly tore his gaze away from his bloodied hands, stared at Nezumi’s face which was growing paler by the second.

Get up! the voice screamed. After you have saved each other so many times, do you really want to let him die now?

“He killed Safu….” Shion murmured.

You know that is not true. You have both killed people. You are both drenched in sin. Now get up and save Nezumi, otherwise he will never come back to you.

A soft whimper, impossibly loud in the cacophony of death and destruction around them, snapped Shion’s attention back to the bleeding body in his arms.

Right. He had to save Nezumi. He had to save Nezumi and get out of the Correctional Facility. Inukashi and Rikiga were waiting for them. His mother was waiting for them. And together they’d return to that room underground - to their home.

Shion hooked his arms under Nezumi’s armpits and started dragging him to the nearest room, wincing as he watched another wave of blood flow from Nezumi’s chest. He was going to save Nezumi, even if it would cost him his own life.

Even before he was fully awake his mind had registered every cell in his sore and battered body screaming in pain. But as he opened his eyes and recognised the storage room that also used to function as his bedroom, the memories of the past few days slowly washed over him and the pain turned into a pleasant ache. The injuries were almost a trophy, proof that he and Nezumi had destroyed the Correctional Facility, destroyed No. 6 and received a second chance from Elyurias.

Nezumi.

Shion looked over at the other side of the bed and found it empty. Although they had shared a bed in the West Block as well, he was no stranger to waking up alone, for various reasons. But today, waking up without Nezumi was a punch to the gut. After everything they had been through, the horrors they had witnessed and survived, he couldn’t bear being alone. He had to know if Nezumi was still alive.

A breeze caressed his cheek and he glanced at the window. Karan had opened it last night for some fresh air and they hadn’t closed it. Shion sat up, blankets pooling around his waist, and stared outside. Was this a repeat of four years ago? Had Nezumi really left him already? Again? Or had it all been an eerily realistic fever dream? He did not know which would be worse.

The relief he had felt when he had found Nezumi standing in the door opening, a cup of coffee in his hands and a gentle smile on his face, his hair swaying in the breeze and fondly greeting him with his usual “your majesty” was nothing compared to the feeling of rejection that shook him to his very core when Nezumi had told him he wanted to travel. The sparkle in Nezumi’s eyes when he spoke of discovering distant lands made Shion envious, wishing Nezumi would look upon him with the same wonder as he gazed at the landscapes.

But as much as the truth hurt, Shion knew deep in his heart that this was for the best. The idea of making a home here was paradise to Shion, but to Nezumi it would be a prison. He was a free spirit that should not be caged. Still, that did not stop him from pleading Nezumi to stay anyway. As they stood in the fields and Nezumi checked his provisions one final time, ready to leave on a long trip to unknown destinations, it was suddenly hard to breathe.

Before he could stop himself, he grabbed Nezumi’s hand and called out his name. “I’m begging you. Please don’t leave, Nezumi. A world without you means nothing to me. Nothing, Nezumi. There isn’t any meaning at all.“ The words tumbled over his lips in a desperate attempt to convince Nezumi to stay. He half expected Nezumi to scold him for saying weird things again, but then gentle fingers on his chin lifted his head and Nezumi’s face was suddenly a lot closer than it had been. He barely got to protest before Nezumi pressed his lips against his. A hand came up to cradle his jaw and Shion squeezed his eyes shut, not caring about the tears that spilled over his cheeks. As one who is shipwrecked clings to a piece of driftwood that once belonged to the ship that carried and guided him over the vast oceans in life, so Shion reached up and clung to Nezumi’s arm like it was the only thing capable of grounding him. Sorrow, yearning, anguish, love, and more feelings he could not even identify rushed through him and threatened to drown him.

When he finally came back up for air, Shion almost didn’t dare to ask for fear of his heart shattering. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He doubted he ever would be. But more than that, he could not bear the thought of never seeing Nezumi again. He did not know what he would do with himself if Nezumi truly never returned to him. He couldn’t-

“It was a promise,” Nezumi replied with a gentle smile. He carefully untangled himself from Shion and pocketed his hands. “Reunion will come, Shion.” Nezumi sent him a final, longing look and with that, he turned away.

As Shion watched him casually walking down the rocky path like he was simply going out for a stroll, he thought of the questions he had asked himself when he was thirteen, hiding under the covers, and the answers he had gotten during their winter together. He realised most questions still went unanswered, but that was all right. As long as one question would be answered, nothing else mattered.

Will I ever see you again?

#hi-im-secretly-satan #lostemotion #no6 #no.6 #no. 6 #no 6 #submission

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justbloggingit-blog · 7 years ago

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The 10 Best Horror Movies of 2017 (So Far)

So far, the best horror movies of 2017 have, only (admittedly) four measly months into the year, cut a wide chasm between extremes—between films that explore the limits of obscenity and the quietest of character musings, between well-tuned homages to old-fashioned thrillers and those that feel completely, breathlessly new. And we still haven’t even seen Flying Lotus’s Kuso.

As early in the year as we are, it’s already clear that, however much we have and have yet to lament, 2017 will prove to yield plenty of great—maybe classic—films in a genre (or genre inherently open to a mash-up of genres) typically friendlier than most to giving a voice (and budget) to underrepresented filmmakers toiling at the fringes of the industry. In other words: Horror movie-making is important, now more than ever:

Here are the best horror movies of 2017 so far.

10. Split Director: M. Night Shyamalan Split is the film adaptation of M. Night Shyamalan’s misunderstanding of 30-year-old, since-discredited psychology textbooks on Dissociative Identity Disorder, but if we deign to treat it with scientific scrutiny, we’ll be here all night. Suffice it to say, don’t go looking at anything in this film as psychologically valid in any way. But do go see Split, because it’s probably M. Night Shyamalan’s best film since Signs. Or maybe since Unbreakable, for that matter. And if there’s one way that Split reinvigorates Shyamalan’s stock most, it’s as a visual artist and writer-director of tension and thrilling action. The film looks spectacular, full of Hitchcockian homages that remind one of Vertigo and Psycho, to name only a few. It’s a far scarier, more suspenseful film in its high moments than Shyamalan’s last film, The Visit, ever attempted to be, and it may even be funnier as well, although these moments of levity are sown sparingly for maximum impact. Mike Gioulakis deserves major props for cinematography, but the other thing that will stick in my mind is the unexpectedly great sound design, full of rumbling, groaning metallic tones. After so many films that relied on the kind of overwrought twist ending that made The Sixth Sense so buzzy in 1999, it seems like Shyamalan has finally gotten over the hump to make the kinds of stories he makes best: atmospheric, suspenseful potboilers. Here’s hoping that this newfound streak of humility is here to stay. —Jim Vorel / Full Review

9. The Void Directors: Steven Kostanski, Jeremy Gillespie Viewers should grade writer-directors Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie’s The Void on a curve: While the low-budget Canadian production earns an “A” for ambition, its mélange of The Thing-inspired body horror, ‘80s nostalgia and Lovecraftian cosmic terror doesn’t quite cohere into a satisfying whole by the time its chief antagonist peels away his skin to reveal a bodysuit that looks like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’ Lord Zedd. The first half of the film demonstrates much more restraint, building tension as triangle-branded cultists isolate a mismatched group of (mostly) innocent people—led by Aaron Poole as an out-of-his-depth small-town cop—in a (mostly) vacant hospital. Kotanski and Gillespie build in too many potentially conflicting twists—who, exactly, is impregnated with what?—but the grotesque practical effects and descent-into-Hell structure at times pass for a solid Silent Hill adaptation. Some of horror’s most recent, popularly memorable features (say: It Follows, The Babadook) have wisely employed relatively narrow scopes. Instead, The Void attempts to push audiences into another dimension, but manages at least a few successful frights along the way. —Steve Foxe

8. The Lure Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska In Filmmaker Magazine, director Agnieszka Smoczynska called The Lure a “coming-of-age story” born of her past as the child of a nightclub owner: “I grew up breathing this atmosphere.” What she means to say, I’m guessing, is that The Lure is an even more restlessly plotted Boyhood if the Texan movie rebooted The Little Mermaid as a murderous synth-rock opera. (OK, maybe it’s nothing like Boyhood.) Smoczynska’s film resurrects prototypical fairy tale romance and fantasy without any of the false notes associated with Hollywood’s “gritty” reboot culture. Poland, the 1980s and the development of its leading young women provide a multi-genre milieu in which the film’s cannibalistic mermaids can sing their sultry, often violently funny siren songs to their dark hearts’re content. While Ariel the mermaid Disney princess finds empathy with young girls who watch her struggle with feelings of longing and entrapment, The Lure’s flesh-hungry, viscous, scaly fish-people are a gross, haptic and ultimately effective metaphor for the maturation of this same audience. In the water, the pair are innocent to the ways of humans (adults), but on land develop slimes and odors unfamiliar to themselves and odd (yet strangely attractive) to their new companions. Reckoning with bodily change, especially when shoved into the sex industry like many immigrants to Poland during the collapse of that country’s communist regime in the late ’80s, the film combines the politics of the time with the sexual politics of a girl becoming a woman (of having her body politicized). And though The Lure may bite off more human neck than it can chew, especially during its music-less plot wanderings, it’s just so wonderfully consistent in its oddball vision you won’t be able to help but be drawn in by its mesmerizing thrall. —Jacob Oller / Full Review

7. A Dark Song Director: Liam Gavin In Liam Gavin’s black magic genre oddity, Sophia (Catherine Walker), a grief-stricken mother, and the schlubby, no-nonsense occultist (Steve Oram) she hires devote themselves to a long, meticulous, painstaking ritual in order to (they hope) communicate with her dead son. Gavin lays out the ritual specifically and physically—over the course of months of isolation, Sophia undergoes tests of endurance and humiliation, never quite sure if she’s participating in an elaborate hoax or if she can take her spiritual guide seriously when he promises her he’s succeeded in the past. Paced to near perfection, A Dark Song is ostensibly a horror film but operates as a dread-laden procedural, mounting tension while translating the process of bereavement as patient, excruciating manual labor. In the end, something definitely happens, but its implications are so steeped in the blurry lines between Christianity and the occult that I still wonder what kind of alternate realms of existence Gavin is getting at. But A Dark Song thrives in that uncertainty, feeding off of monotony. Sophia may hear phantasmagorical noise coming from beneath the floorboards, but then substantial spans of time pass without anything else happening, and we begin to question, as she does, whether it was something she did wrong (maybe, when tasked with not moving from inside a small chalk circle for days at a time, she screwed up that portion of the ritual by allowing her urine to dribble outside of the boundary) or whether her grief has blinded her to an expensive con. Regardless, that “not knowing” is the scary stuff of everyday life, and by portraying Sophia’s profound emotional journey as a humdrum trial of physical mettle, Gavin reveals just how much pointless, even terrifying work it can be anymore to not only live the most ordinary of days, but to make it to the next. —Dom Sinacola

6. We Are the Flesh Director: Emiliano Rocha Minter Emiliano Rocha Minter’s death-gurgle provocation We Are the Flesh is successful because it provokes not for the sake of provoking, but to an end. The list of would-be shockers lurking at the edges of horror history is long: A Serbian Film, August Underground, Martyrs, all the way back to Cannibal Holocaust and Nekromantik. Few of these movies have a purpose beyond revulsion— which, look, is totally useful in its own right—and We Are the Flesh takes its sweet time getting to its point, wallowing in the kind of fluid-soaked, perverse murder-fucking that fills Georges Bataille’s transgressive literature staple Story of the Eye. Not coincidentally, Bataille, along with Andrzej ?u?awski, gets a shoutout in the film’s credits, offering a window into Minter’s politically agitated thematic preoccupations. The unsimulated sex, the full-view throat-slittings, the only close-up in cinema history of a scrotum gently contracting—these images are wielded to enrage as much as to disgust, and even if you don’t buy into the undercurrents, We Are the Flesh’s furious obscenity is galvanizing on its own. At a tight 79 minutes it immediately abandons you in its vaguely defined, possibly post-apocalyptic world and doesn’t let up until all is over, climaxing with a scene which echoes Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s beguiling 2015 Evolution (or, um…The Village) in its abrupt reorientation of everything you’ve just seen. Immerse yourself in filth. —Zach Budgor

5. The Transfiguration Director: Michael O’Shea Michael O’Shea’s The Transfiguration refreshingly refuses to disguise its influences and reference points, instead putting them all out there in the forefront for its audience’s edification, name-dropping a mouthful of noteworthy vampire films and sticking their very titles right smack dab in the midst of its mise en scène. They can’t be missed: Nosferatu is a big one, and so’s The Lost Boys, but none informs O’Shea’s film as much as Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson’s unique 2009 genre masterpiece. Like Let the Right One In, The Transfiguration casts a young’n, Milo (Eric Ruffin), as its protagonist, contrasting the horrible particulars of a vampire’s feeding habits against the surface innocence of his appearance. Unlike Let the Right One In, The Transfiguration may not be a vampire movie at all, but a movie about a lonesome kid with an unhealthy fixation on gothic legends. You may choose to view Milo as O’Shea’s modernized update of the iconic monster or a child brimming with inner evil; the film keeps its ends open, its truths veiled and only makes its sociopolitical allegories plain in its final, haunting images. —Andy Crump

4. Prevenge Director: Alice Lowe Maybe getting close enough to gut a person when you’re seven months pregnant is a cinch—no one likely expects an expecting mother to cut their throat—but all the positive encouragement Ruth’s (Alice Lowe) unborn daughter gives her helps, too. The kid spends the film spurring her mother to slaughter seemingly innocent people from in utero, an invisible voice of incipient malevolence sporting a high-pitched giggle that’ll make your skin crawl. “Pregnant lady goes on a slashing spree at the behest of her gestating child” sounds like a perfectly daffy twist on one of the horror genre’s most enduring contemporary niches on paper. In practice it’s not quite so daffy, more somber than it is silly, but the bleak tone suits what writer, director, and star Lowe wants to achieve with her filmmaking debut. Another storyteller might have designed Prevenge as a more comically-slanted effort, but Lowe has sculpted it to smash taboos and social norms. Because Prevenge hates human beings with a disturbing passion—even human beings who aren’t selfish, awful, creepy or worse—in it, child-rearing is a form of real-life body horror that’s as smartly crafted and grimly funny as it is terrifying. —Andy Crump / Full Review

3. The Blackcoat’s Daughter Director: Osgood Perkins Looking at his first two horror features, it becomes clear that director Osgood Perkins seems to have a distinct distaste for both plot and film convention. His films defy easy description, as anyone who watched I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House on Netflix could attest. The Blackcoat’s Daughter, meanwhile, was completed and exhibited as early as 2015 under the title February, but has been floating around in limbo ever since until A24 decided to finally give it a limited release this spring. Compared with Pretty Thing, Blackcoat’s Daughter is at least easier to grasp and marginally brisker, which makes it more effective overall. Perkins’ style is languid, atmospheric and deliberate, favoring repetition and a slowly multiplying sense of unease and impending doom. The story follows two high school-aged students who are both left relatively alone at their uptight Catholic boarding school over break when their parents fail to pick them up. As one descends into what is implied to be either madness or demonic possession, the events are interwoven with another story about a young woman journeying on the road in the direction of the boarding school. The two stories inevitably intertwine. The film’s pace sometimes leaves something to be desired, but patience is largely repaid by its final third, which contains several moments genuinely disturbing in their violence and transgressive imagery. In the end, The Blackcoat’s Daughter comes together significantly more neatly and logically than one might consider while watching its first hour, rewarding careful attention to detail throughout. —Jim Vorel

2. Raw Director: Julia Ducournou If you’re the proud owner of a twisted sense of humor, you might tell your friends that Julia Ducournau’s Raw as a coming of age movie in a bid to trick them into seeing it. Yes, the film’s protagonist, naive incoming college student Justine (Garance Marillier), comes of age over the course of its running time; she parties, she breaks out of her shell, and she learns about who she really is as a person on the verge of adulthood. But most kids who come of age in the movies don’t realize that they’ve spent their lives unwittingly suppressing an innate, nigh-insatiable need to consume raw meat. “Hey,” you’re thinking, “that’s the name of the movie!” You’re right! It is! Allow Ducournau her cheekiness. More than a wink and nod to the picture’s visceral particulars, Raw is an open concession to the harrowing quality of Justine’s grim blossoming. Nasty as the film gets, and it does indeed get nasty, the harshest sensations Ducournau articulates here tend to be the ones we can’t detect by merely looking: Fear of feminine sexuality, family legacies, popularity politics, and uncertainty of self govern Raw’s horrors as much as exposed and bloody flesh. It’s a gorefest that offers no apologies and plenty more to chew on than its effects. —Andy Crump / Full Review (for a slightly different take on the film)

1. Get Out Director: Jordan Peele Peele’s a natural behind the camera, but Get Out benefits most from its deceptively trim premise, a simplicity which belies rich thematic depth. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) go to spend a weekend with her folks in their lavish upstate New York mansion, where they’re throwing the annual Armitage bash with all their friends in attendance. Chris immediately feels out of place; events escalate from there, taking the narrative in a ghastly direction that ultimately ties back to the unsettling sensation of being the “other” in a room full of people who aren’t like you—and never let you forget it. Put indelicately, Get Out is about being black and surrounded by whites who squeeze your biceps without asking, who fetishize you to your face, who analyze your blackness as if it’s a fashion trend. At best Chris’s ordeal is bizarre and dizzying, the kind of thing he might bitterly chuckle about in retrospect. At worst it’s a setup for such macabre developments as are found in the domain of horror. That’s the finest of lines Peele and Get Out walk without stumbling.

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