. . . : : Wonderland : : . . .

a dream of gray

2008-10-06T20:16:07Z

Yes, this is what I have been working on!

MaryRose Pleasance woke up with a jolt.

She could hear her mother busying herself in the kitchen with the soft clatter of kitchen wear drifting down the halls. Her father was probably seated over on the left hand side of the table, sipping his dark black coffee with his left hand, his right hand holding the morning paper in a posture that had never changed. Her mother had a fresco pink white-trimmed apron with a small tag that always stuck out of the bottom, which her mother always wanted to cut off but never did.

Narrowing her eyes, she drifted her eyes from the white washed walls of their hallway to the red clock on her bedside table. Exactly 6:30. Like clockwork.

Shifting out of the covers, she begrudgingly pulled over her sleeping shirt and picked up the flimsy white blouse that was enjoying its life on the floor probably as much as she was enjoying her life in the comfort of her soft, warm, bed.

MaryRose tripped over her knee socks on the way to the bathroom across the hall, pulling up her skirt and opening the door while she did so. She frowned at herself in the mirror, holding a lock of strawberry blond hair in the mirror at arms-length, almost sneering at it in the early morning silence that had settled over herself. If her mother would have let her, she would have died it to brunette. She eyed the freckles that dotted around her nose, and the way her just-too-big brown eyes had dark smudges under them from lack of sleep. She remembered the clear blue of someone else’s, and the way they sparkled and glimmered in a way hers didn't.

Summer probably wouldn't have had those.

She frowned at herself; hands fiddling around with the red slim fabric that was meant to tie into a bow at her collar didn't want to move.

"Mary? Mary! Come down for breakfast!"

MaryRose--or Mary--rubbed her face one more time before dashing out of the bathroom and half-running half-skidding down the stairs.

Her mother was standing with her apron on, just like Mary knew she would, one hand on her hip and the other one holding out a piece of toast. The middle was buttered, but the edges were missed. She knew that would happen too.

Impatiently, her mother handed it to her and pointed to the front door where her backpack lay in a heap of blue material. "Well, don't be waiting around, you've got to be off before seven or you'll be late!"

She nodded absently, hastily reaching for the toast before grabbing her backpack and slinging it over her arm.

"Bye!" She called out over her shoulder half-heartily.

Her mother was calling out to her but she shut the door and hopped over the front steps, dancing into the sidewalk as she hopped on one foot to pull up her sock with the piece of toast held in her mouth.

This was how Anna Lynn Rachels found her as she herself hopped onto the side walk, standing against her family's white picket fence, red hair blending in with the roses that crept over the edges. MaryRose frowned a little, but made sure her toast hid it. She didn't like Anna much, but they were next door neighbors and their parents adored each other. Before Mary could talk she and Anna had been placed in a play pin with each other, and that, was that. No say, no options.

Mary was sometimes pressed to just ignore her completely, but in a small gated community like the town they lived in, it was hard to ignore anyone.

“Oh, this morning my little brother accidently hit his head on the breakfast table! Mary if you had seen it you would have been laughing too—

She pattered on without a hesitant moment, jumping into the conversation the way Mary remembered her older brother used to jump into a swimming pool, swift and fast and not very elegant at all. But when Mary remembered her brother’s messy blond hair and the way he smiled in mirth at everything, tousled in sleep and tan and their shared freckles dotting his nose, she realized there was a certain artlessness quality to her brother that no one else seemed to have.

“Hmm, Mary? You listening?” Anna stopped her chattering to gaze at her questioningly, waiting for the light to turn red at the crosswalk.

She nodded absently. “Your story reminded me of my brother.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Anna clapped her hands. “How is Johnny? Did you get a letter from him yet?”

She sent a sideways glance at the girl, nearly willing for it all to stop. “No, not yet. He said he wouldn’t be able to send again until May.”

“May?” The other girl frowned. “That’s such a long time! I hope he’s enjoying the Air Force.”

“I’m sure.” For once, Mary was happy that Anna couldn’t pick up on the undertones of speech, and couldn’t tell sarcasm from literal.

When she had started her useless chatter again, Mary began to think of other things. Her brother’s name was John Andrew Pleasance, and for the most part, everyone just called him JP or Johnny.

In the town of Clear Water, names were everything.

MaryRose Pleasance and John Andrew Pleasance. Long, perfect, balanced names. Anna Lynn Rachels. Another perfectly symmetrical and perfectly normal name. If you weren’t a John, or a Mary, or an Anna, then you were probably something else that was as equally run-of-the-mill as those. No one was named something unorthodox, because in truth, there was no one who was ever anything but normal.

The city was awash in gray undertones, life was in those same undertones, if something was out of the ordinary then that was bad.

But of course, there were people like that who did exist.

“Oh hey Mary, what are you doing on Saturday?” Anna asked over her shoulder, the school house coming into view.

The blonde of the two shrugged indifferently. “I don’t know, maybe visit Summer.”

“Summer?” Anna shriveled up her pointy sprite nose. Somewhere inside of Mary, she felt something boil and growl at the movement. “That girl who lived down the block?”

See, that was the thing, everyone knew everyone, bad or good.

Summer Alice Liddell was not a normal person.

She didn’t have a normal name, she didn’t act like every other girl in the town, and she didn’t care about it either. Her parents moved from across the bridge (to almost everyone who lived in the town, ‘across the bridge’ meant somewhere else in the world, the bridge in actuality, was the stopping point of Clear Water) into the city, moving into the baby blue-shuttered house across the block from Anna and Mary. Like all the white-picketed flower-coated house children, Summer came out to play.

But this was when the normality stopped.

Like when Kathrynne Lauren Allen moved two houses down, she too had come outside, bearing freshly baked cookies and a yellow sundress, and had greeted the neighborhood kids just like everyone else who moved to Clear Water, Anna and Mary went down to the house after the moving truck clattered off. Summer Alice Liddell wore a pair of blue jean shorts, the hem dangled a little bit in some places and her baby blue shirt that matched her eyes had a stain on it.

She didn’t immediately greet Anna and Mary the way that Kathy had, she instead settled onto her driveway and asked them if they wanted to play chalk drawings.

Interested in things that were different, Mary had joined in, but Anna had looked quite scandalized and had went home.

“Yeah.” She remembered to answer Anna’s question.

Said girl now brushed the orange red hair out of her face, rounding the corner past the school gates and the two of them went inside.

Before they reached their first class, Anna had turned to her in a rare moment understanding. “Are you alright?”

Mary shifted uneasily, not wanting to say anything to Anna. “I…just had a weird dream.”

And it was true.

A dream, of a dream, of a dream.

A dream of nothing but normality and nothing but a city that misted in the grayness that over swept it.

My Own Worst Enemy.

2008-10-03T20:52:52Z

Its been sitting on my computer for a year now, So I guess I might as well post

Naruto stared down the smirking form of himself in his bathroom's cracked mirror.

Or attempted to, at least.

There were subtle differences between the two of them, the threads of red that weaved through the sunshine hair atop his haird was one of them, contrasting with the flaxen hair with its vibrant crimson. The whiskers lining his cheeks that were once bare threads of lines, were more pronounced, more shadowed, more deep. And even then, there wasn't much of a difference between the two of them, same body type, same fragile looking hands and same tanned skin. The real difference--and maybe the only true difference--was the eyes.

Naruto had always prided himself for his eyes.

Even with all the talk of demons, and hell-spawns, and monsters, no one had ever said something bad about his eyes. Even the old batty woman who took care of him at the orphanage. She'd hit him, and talk horrible about him, give him the worst bed and feed him after everyone else, she never said a word about his eyes. In fact, no one ever did. Because, there was nothing wrong with them. And so, no one commented on them.

They were perfect. They were pretty and blue and shiny like finely spun glass, like the ocean's water where it met the azure sky.

And now, they were red.

Red like a monster, like a demon with no remorse. Like dripping blood, shredded skin, and shattered hopes.

He stood, shaking in unbridled fury, clenching his fists over the broken glass, watching as his reflection split like angel's wings down the center of his face, the blood from his hands splattering onto the fine surface and sliding down its surface.

But the reflection was still there, still smirking with pointed canines and a smile full of teeth.

The monster had taken away everything from him. And now, it even took away those.

Br...

2008-10-02T21:03:20Z

It annoys me how AC doesn't get a lot of reviews depending on the day I update them. I was thinking about updating it on Saturday cause you know on Saturdays ffnet trafficking is like a highway on crack.

fruitandcandy99 @ 2008-06-21T17:15:00

2008-06-21T21:17:05Z

Yeshh, the full is on my fanfiction profile withRainyEyes and its only a preview. The full first (and its only the first!!!) is up now.

synchronicity

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

t h e f o x

- - - - - a n d- - - - - - -

t h e b o y

((…they stood side by side, a line stretching between them…))

((…yet they didn’t know the other was there…))

Naruto stared at the broken black linens that covered his stomach in what once resembled a spiral pattern. Its edged curled around in what used to be the great Shiki Fuuin, however now it looked more like a sharpie swirled by someone with their eyes closed. And the first thing the boy realized as he stared hazily at the seal’s reflection in the mirror was that whatever happened last night to the seal could definitely not be good. It looked as if it had been hit by something and literally shattered into different pieces. The seal looked nothing like it did before.

He examined himself with his shirt up. “What in the hell-?

His alarm made its presence noticed, it ringing braking into the tense cobwebs of confusion laced over his head with its obnoxious ringing.

POPO-CHIII-POPO-CHIII-CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA—

He scrambled out of the bathroom and nearly crashed into his bedside table as his fingers fumbled with the many buttons on his clock. The digital 9:00 that blinked in neon laced red letters as if they were literally his death blinking unholy at him. Well, he supposed it would be if Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi were there before him-but it couldn’t be that bad, right? Hell, Kakashi was late by hours everyday, so it shouldn’t matter.

He felt his stomach curl into heavy knots, and he leaned over the table.

Naruto winced, holding a hand to the broken seal on his stomach.

Definitely not good. It hurt like something was gripping his stomach and pulling it around—

9:15

POPO-CHIII—

He slammed the red button again before it got too irritating. Did he just spend fifteen woozy minutes leaning over his desk when it felt more like a few seconds? He wondered if there was something wrong with his stomach-seriously wrong. Maybe it was only physical…he doubted his mental stability would affect his stomach.

Or worse…the beast inside it.

Naruto shook his head. He didn’t want to think of that.

His stomach swirled again.

9:30

POPO—

Dammit.

He sprinted out the door with nothing but his orange pants and a black shirt, forgetting the jacket slung over his mussed bed sheets as he tumbled down the stairs in an attempt to be there before Kakashi was. Now, he wasn’t so sure, one thing he was though, was that his sense of time was slipping out of his fingers and onto his floor somewhere. He’d have to pick it up, very, very, soon. Because it wouldn’t do to become Kakashi.

The looming towers of his fate made its presence known by its vibrant red color. Not to mention the three people waiting for him.

Naruto glowered.

Kakashi was here before him.

“Naruto!!! You’re late—

“I must say,” Kakashi chuckled. “I hadn’t known I was such a role model.”

No one laughed, but Kakashi continued sheepishly anyways.

“Care to tell us why, exactly, you are late?”

“Uh—well I…umm…” Naruto sputtered. “I—I got lost on the road of life.”

“Really?” Kakashi rebuked, with an odd glint in his eye and scratching his chin. “I wonder why I didn’t see you there…”

“I was going the other direction.”

“It isn’t a two-way street, Naruto-kun—

“Oh, enough!” Sakura screeched, pulling them apart. “Sensei, can we just please train today? Please?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Well, it’s why I’m here!”

Sakura jumped in joy, Sasuke nodding somewhere in the backdrop between rushing water, a red railing and shadows. Naruto, however, outside of his usual persona, was having a rather peculiar dilemma. Like this morning, and the many times as he raced over to his team’s meeting point, his seal swirled again in an odd manner, a bit like it was stretching apart or… grating open.

It was an odd feeling, like he was an island and he was drifting into two, he saw the other side as he stood on the other, watching it float carelessly into a watery abyss—

“Naruto? Naruto? Naruto!”

He fell off his daze as Sakura stared at him, looking rather annoyed.

“C’mon!”

Actually, they were all staring at him, each with their own eyes.

“Naruto-kun,” Kakashi began. “Are you alright?”

“I—

Naruto blinked, slowly, confusingly.

He wanted to say he was fine. He wanted to train. Wanted to banter with Sasuke again.

Oddly, those weren’t the words out of his mouth.

“I think I’m a bit sick.”

They stared with blank faces.

Naruto…sick? They were talking about Naruto…right? When everyone was struck down with the flu last year he was still standing waving sheepishly at everyone else as they moaned in pain and fever. Naruto, who brushed off lung punctures as flesh wound, and wouldn’t notice a kunai lodged into his arm until they were half way to Konoha. Naruto, who ran around half naked when it was freezing rain to buy ramen because he had realized he was out.

Naruto…?

But Kakashi only nodded. “Well we can’t have you trying to exert yourself and ending up in the hospital. Get some rest. Come back tomorrow and see if you’re any better.”

Naruto nodded, turning away slowly as silence elapsed the trio on the other side, a gray kind of fog that seemed heavy and thick.

“Well, in the meantime, Sakura and Sasuke, why don’t you two train?”

“Sasuke-kun!!!!”

The other boy groaned, but Naruto was too far to see.

-----------------

Naruto went home to an empty apartment, awash in gray undertones and the shutters mismatched so light seeped through the overturned ones, paneling the floor with speckled light. The kitchen was filled with ramen, and although there were other things in there, most was still, ramen. His room and just about his entire apartment wasn’t very furnished, because he never saw the need too. There was a bed, and as thus, just about his entire necessities right there.

He had crossed the threshold to his room when he felt his stomach churn again. He tumbled to the floor, gripping the doorway with loose fingers in attempt to stabilize himself.

Closing his eyes, he tried breathing in and out slowly.

When he opened his eyes, it was already 2:37

“What the hell?!” Naruto couldn’t help it.

What seemed like minutes, turned out to be a couple hours.

Naruto shook his alarm clock as if it would help, as if there was simply just some digital malfunctioning and the neon lights that made numbers were just flickering in different directions. There was nothing wrong with him, nothing. He didn’t keep spacing out for what seemed a few seconds that actually turned to be a few hours, minutes…where was his head going??

“Maybe,” He mumbled to himself, laying on his bed. “Maybe it’ll go away soon.”

Again, that strange sensation like something was tugging at him, pulling at his stomach and moving him in two different directions came again as he lie on his bed.

It was almost like he was surrounded in pastel hues of gray and blue, maybe water? Or fog? It was hard to tell. He saw himself—different, smile, hair, eyes—looking at him as they held up a hand, locking it with the others. And then, they drifted apart, nothing changing but the entwining of fingers—

POPO-CHIII-POPO-CHIII-CHA-CHA-CHA

He lurched forward, tumbling head first over his bed and onto the hard floor.

With a groan, Naruto picked himself in a lanky mess off the ground, spewing curses at his stupid alarm clock that he knew he should probably throw out soon because of its annoying tendencies to wake him up with aggravating noises though. His colorful thoughts were interrupted, however, when he gaped at the numbers that blinked at him owlishly amidst the loud chorus of whines.

“What…

…the…

…hell?”

10:45. AM.

His brain stopped functioning.

He brushed his teeth.

He pulled on pants (that weren’t orange???)

He ate cereal and milk that was actually still good.

He didn’t blink.

He didn’t smile.

And he certainly wasn’t going to look that the clock.

…He had taken a catnap that spanned for almost a day from 2 in the afternoon to 10 the next morning…

But, the one thing that was very out of his daily routine that came upon him as he quested to stop looking at the clock, was that he didn’t go to training either. As much as he loved the blood, sweat and bruises, he didn’t think he’d do very well in a fight right now. He’d just space and…and then where would he be?

It was like a very horrible lapse in judgment.

He leaned against his counter, after placing the milk in the sink behind him, washing away the little bits of Milk and O’s into the bottom of his drainage tank, and had begun to massage his temples. When he opened his eyes, his vision kept focusing and unfocusing, like the curl of a cats paw. He couldn’t keep it steady, pupils dilating in a steady dance as if someone’s fingers zoomed with a camera.

Suddenly, he pitched forward.

He picked himself off, turned around to give himself a steady balance, and read the clock that innocently colored itself in neon blue lights on his microwave.

It had been around 10 AM or 11 AM, April, 17^th. It was officially 6 AM, April 18^th.

Oh god.

He placed himself on the couch warily.

There was a knock at the door.

He felt he didn’t have the energy to cross the room and answer it. Luckily, Kakashi had already begun speaking.

“Naruto-kun?”

Kakashi-sensei.

“Can we come in?”

We?

He heard whispers from the other side of the door. Strange…he could never hear them before.

“Sure…” His voice was low, almost a whisper.

The door opened easily, Kakashi standing with book in hand, Sakura peering behind him, Sasuke off to the side, leaning on a wall and looking as if he didn’t care whether or not Naruto was feeling good or not that day. Kakashi sauntered in, Sakura following him along with Sasuke as they peered around his very unfurnished apartment. There wasn’t any litter on the floor, although there was a thin sheet of dust blanketing everything.

Naruto was curled on the couch, in a tee shirt and shorts, his eyes were rather blank, hands curled around his stomach as he fixated on the wall behind them with a gloomy look that matched the house.

“Are you feeling alright, Naruto-kun?”

He was about to say he was perfectly okay, but, something stopped him.

“I think…I’m just a little under the weather.”

Kakashi raised a brow, but he said nothing to rebuke that. “I see, I hope you get better soon. We came to check and make sure your getting rest.”

He looked over to his teammates owlishly, trying to grin at them but failing miserably.

“Oh sorry…” He looked at their features indifferently. “I’ll try to get better so we can train.”

“Yeah!” Sakura nodded in agreement, as they trudged out of his apartment with the same abruptness they had come in with.

When they left, Naruto sighed. His head hurt so badly that his vision was swimming like he was in a murky pool without goggles. Deciding that the bed was better than the couch, Naruto crawled off of it tentatively, taking baby steps into the other room. So far so good, past the threshold and—

—He never remembered hitting his bed.

The next time he woke up, a dark hue of orange lit up his bedroom, tinged with a nice fresco pink and accents of purple. And, in other words, dusk.

He didn’t even want to look at the clock, but he did anyways.

7:47 PM, April 24.

Almost a week.

He tried to calm himself down, through a still begging for sleep mind, and a body that wouldn’t comply-too tired-he tried. Breathing tactics that Kakashi had once suggested when trying to meditate, the exercises he did when trying to calm himself from the villager’s rage.

None of it worked.

His body was just so exhausted, that even getting the blood pounding in his ears and his heart pumping seemed to drain him.

He ended up collapsing again on his bed, closing his eyes as his stomach turned in different directions.

--------------------------------

Naruto woke up in cold sweat. This time, with determination etched onto his face, he marched straight out his door and down the street. Sometimes, the world would fuzz out, and the people on the street changed as if it were a screen, but he made it to the hospital. He was afraid though, looking at the looming glass doors of the hospital.

Would they think he was a monster?

Would they think he was Kyuubi?

He felt like there were voices in his head.

In the end, he ended up turning around and walking home. This wasn’t going to work. They would think he was a monster, send him home. Worst case scenario, they’d think that with the fading seal he was Kyuubi, and end up kicking him out of the village.

He could see Tsunade’s face, shaking her head gravely as he pleaded with her to let him stay.

Kakashi not even bothering to look at him as he flipped a page in his book. And when he did, it was the hate filled stare that could only be directed to the Village’s demon.

Sasuke and Sakura had moved on, talking with their new teammate. More than they ever would him.

Iruka didn’t even stop to look at him as he brushed past him to his new class—and to a smiling blond boy without any whiskers that was starting the academy this year.

Naruto shook his head.

He couldn’t go to the hospital.

----------------

It was morning again, and still, parts of his day seemed be spaced into oblivion when he felt tugs at his stomach.

After one tug-around six in the morning, which lasted till seven, he rushed to the bathroom to check the seal.

It was almost completely gone.

The shattered bits of it were turning to specks of black, nearly invisible to anything short of the trained eye. Its once intricate design that swirled from the center of his stomach outward was now nothing but dots, specks even, here and there with the occasional cropped line it an oddly curved shape. Sometimes you could see the faint Kanji that had once been so intricate and undecipherable now nothing more than faded gray like an old washable tattoo off a gum wrapper.

Nothing like its former glory.

“How did this happen?” He whispered to himself.

He had decided, after many minutes, that he couldn’t think on an empty stomach and he should get some ramen—

It was sudden that he was jerked by something in his stomach that forced him into his knees.

His body flew back into the bathroom door, his mind crashed into a hard stone wall.

Naruto opened his eyes.

There were rusty bars the color of dried blood obscuring his vision of an unpleasant seen of pipes and sewage water. The drips echoed down the musty scented hallways, covered in a thick slime of disgusting green. It was odd, the hallway seemed different somehow, like his mindscape had been shifted. It wasn’t the way it usually looked, usually that one pipe was to the left and the other to the right and—

—oh god.

He was inside Kyuubi’s cage.

He blinked again and could see himself in his bathroom mirror, but it was a third person view.

His hair had an accented look of crimson to it, small wisps of red ocher blending gently with the stream of sunshine yellow blonde hair that sat unruly atop his head. His whiskers were more pronounced, not like jagged streaks running on his cheeks, but they were definitely darker. Did he seem a bit tanner? It might be the angle of which he saw himself. Certainly not by his two eyes, it was like he hovered a bit in front of himself.

And then, the eyes opened.

…

That was not him.

The once delphinium blue eyes like the line where ocean water met azure skies, had turned into a deep sunset of crimson and blood swirling around a knifed pupil.

He whispered only a word.

“Kyuubi.”

The demon outside of the mindscape examined itself with an amused glint in its cat like eyes. They were even scarier than Orochimaru’s (if Naruto had met him at this point he would have thought so) maybe because of the way they pierced through flesh and clothes, looking straight into your very soul with nothing more than a long stare. He grinned, the canines looking much sharper, nearly lowering into his bottom lip. They weren’t as large as they were with a full transformation though.

“Well,” The demon grinned. “It seems we’ve switched.”

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could catch them and shove them back in. “What are you going to do?”

Another feral grin. “What should I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Hmm,” The demon leaned back, a much more suave and elegant looking Naruto than before. “I suppose I could start by killing off everything, and then I could go for a nice meal of human flesh—like that Sakura wench—and maybe call upon the other demons-

“You can’t!” The blonde rattled the large bars. “You can’t!”

“I can.”

Why

2008-05-28T20:25:29Z

by ayaka. Amazing.

Finally got a Live Journal Account!

2007-04-01T20:29:06Z

Thank god! It took me forever to get a live journal, and I'm happy I have one now! I have my fan-fiction.net account so I'll probably use my live journal for whatever lemons I post and new story previews and stuff like that. Everyone I know has a live journal, so I guess I just decided to get one! Just follow the flow I guess...