(Imma split this up)

one

"What happened?" My freighted friend had asked.

In the suffocating silence of the dimly lit room, the dread thickens, engulfing the very air as I breathed every short second. My frightened friend inquires about what happened, an utter of just one chilling word, "Vampire."

Brought everything back.
It was on that dreadful night, a regular shift like all the others.

The casino was closing a little later than usual, and as people were finishing up, I was walking past the bar going down a dark hallway. This may be the hallway I grow to hate. Why, you may ask? Well, as I unlocked my locker, a peculiar sunflower fell out.

What's this, a sunflower? I thought to myself at the time, unknowing of the many things I would be greeted by. I picked the beautiful flower up. And I sniffed it; my nose was to be filled with the sweet smell of crisp summer air. Dazed by the aroma, a green caterpillar scares me. I shrieked, then burst out laughing to myself. Laughing turned to soft-held chuckles. I hold the sunflower to see if there's anything else.

"Weird..." I said to myself looking down to my locker.
Only my personal belongings lay untouched. I kept investigating the small bag I left. 
But when suddenly a glass shattered in another room I had my bag right by me and pulled out my only Glock for emergencies.

Turning off the light, I slowly creep towards the hallway. Stopping in the light, noises came from the main room of the casino. I hear rash steps that scurry away into the darkness, sending vibrations down the hall. The loudness shakes my core. "Halt! Leave now or take your chances." I called what I assumed to be a wandered off drunkard.

"Why would I take my chances with such a beautiful indescribable woman?" A man's voice responds slick, projecting his voice throughout the lingering echoes of the halls. I move back as the person is revealed. The eyes appear to be the clearest, deepest, and most vibrant of rubies. Streaks of pink with bloodshot reds mix fragility caress the deepest of pupils.
With a head filled with purple against the palest of skins.

"State your business or leave." I exclaimed as I stepped into the light.

"Well... What business would I have when you're here..." he reaches out to play with a piece of my hair. I grabbed his scrawny wrist and said, "I'm not interested." I keep eye contact, staring back fiercely. After moments of silence, eyes only inclined with curiosity.
He charges at me.

Slamming me against the floor, my glock the only thing that ushered any paranoia slid away from my grasp as I cried out. He fastened his grip around my throat, for blood was sure to cover the tiles in dark blood seeping into the cracks. I gasped yet again, trying to move as he personally contained me.

With his overbearing weight, I punched his face, his grip loosening through many overwhelming squirms. He pulled back instantly. I had broken his nose.

I shot his face multiple times, the bullets only grazing his shadowed face as each canister dropped to the floor; all were empty. I throw him off me, making a run towards the door.

But I slipped, and it all came crashing down.

He tore my skin, dragging my body into the wasting darkness. Nonstop yelling only faded into what seemed to be a never-ending hall. A prey in its predator's claws, and I was the prey.

I screamed for him to stop as tears rolled down my face.
He was too strong.

The shear monster dug its nails into my back.
As I screamed in throbbing excruciation.
It broke my bones.
And that snap everything, it drove me crazy.

My eyes became blurry with the grotesques tears and suffering.

Digging within my organs, I let out a blood-curdling screech. That voice was to be no more. I became unconscious of anything that was to happening in the moments that would soon follow. 

Nothing besides what was me.
I laid alone regaining consciousness.
I was disregarded, bare, in the silent shadows.

I ran, trying to get as far away as I could from that thing. If it anywhere close I was sure I wouldn't wake up again. I pulled my torn cloak from the middle of the hallway. Putting it over my cold, frail body, I saw Okada, my boss, above me.

The only friend I would perhaps ever truly trust.

He would question me later.
Okada took me to his apartment. Here I sit on his toilet, watching him decide whether or not to turn on the shower. He leans on the sink, searching for answers, in this bathroom of his, that was horrendously too small for him.

He looks down at my cut and bruised legs.

The man lifted himself off of the clean sink.
His apartment felt like a hospital.
Clean with nothing to hide yet so artificial it felt as if nothing was truly there.

Quite like Okada leaving only the outlines of fragmented memories him and I shared. 

He finally turned on the shower. He takes off his shirt, revealing scars and what seem to be acid burns. He holds out his hand, and I slide my hand into his. Slowly, he takes off my torn dress that was held so tightly to my body. I stare into the mirror. My lips had been peeling for the past week.

My hair has a tone of split ends, and my eyebags are darker than before.
I was a stressed-out worker.

There I was, naked.
In the flesh.

All my worries sat with my dirty skin that stretched over the fatty meat that was sure to rot soon as I laid in the dirt again. Okada felt along my disgusting hips, avoiding the rips in my skin tissues. I turned around and saw Okada with that plastic yellow prosthetic mask. And that stupid hand drawn-on smile.

Even if we had known each other ever since I moved here to live in my grandfather's house.
I still felt embarrassed.

My body was darkened by his overcasting shadow. My frizzy hair with dried blood, alongside my chalked-on smudged makeup. I stood, holding onto his arms. Okada was cautious, with my body helping and guiding me inside the shower. The water was cold, freezing like ice. I held my breath as I succumbed to the harsh rapid coolness.

I could hear his scared breaths. The sound as his hands unbuckled that decorated prosthetic I knew as I heard the mask drop to the floor. He really cared about how I was doing. Okada came into the shower.

I didn't bother to look back. We never talked about it. After that house fire, it was like he lost himself. It was never the same. Always hiding behind the mask. (har har har har freddy fazbear)

He instantly grabbed my waist, yet again helping me stand.
Little did this specific friend know I was exploding with pain and I winced at his touch.

He held me close warning me about how it may hurt.
Nothing was said after that. He cleaned up my back while handwashing with a bucket. He washed my hair, my arms, and my skin in every crevice you could think of.

I didn't mind. We were close, probably even closer than my own siblings. When it came to helping me, it was like an unconsolidated order. That was the mentality he got from his father I presume.

'Help is what you are. Or you're nothing.'
At least it's a good thing from his father at the market, no wonder he's a good...boss now.
The butcher down the road who finally died three years ago.
Nobody wanted him alive not even Okada and he knew it.

He held out though the last thing he said was,
"Bastard you took her away from me."

I assume it was his mother but who truly knows when it comes to a deadman.
Especially a deadman who killed like it was nothing.

Especially if that's the way it is.
An animalistic quality to survive.

The only thing I could ever gain from speaking of Okada's old man is what Okada gained.
What did little crybaby Okada do with all those animals after his father died?
That of course wasn't my business. 

Soon the water stopped, and he wrapped me in a white, clean towel that I knew would be marked with my blood. He whispered softly, saying he would bleach it after I was gone. Stitching me up, he questioned everything.

"That's what happened..."
I muttered, hoping this "friendly" interrogation would end. I hold my arms together, shivering, in the stiff room. Even if we had known each other ever since I moved here to live in my grandfather's house.

He was a hard person to hide from. He hugged me from behind.
"You're alive," he murmured, letting me hold his hands.

"Now what should we do about the break-in? Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk." A worried look comes across his face, I could see it in the picture of his family. His hands picked up the prosthetic buckling and concealing his face from the world once again. 

"Well, let's get you a shirt now that you're all cleaned up."
Okada assured me, despite the nerve-racking stillness.
His hands gently moved up and down my body.

He tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. He moves my hair back and pats my shoulders.
His expression changed to a lighthearted buzz of relief.
He stands, leaving me alone on his bed.

I watched him open his closet taking out a fresh clean musky red shirt. He held up my arms throwing them over his wide shoulders. I was practically naked, and he didn't care. Those entrancing eyes were all on me.

It was weird. 
Being observed.

The night lay still. Okada went to bed, and I left the room. I watched the moon from the balcony window. I was on the couch again with my feet kicked up and a crochet blanket on top of me. Laying my head back, my eyelids become heavy, and I start to remember the times I and Okada were younger, running around the old community garden. 

The state it's in now is unkept, loose, and out of control I imagine. 
My Grandfather was the only one to keep it in check it was in our name.
It seems like a constant example of the stillness of today, despite its underlying chaos.
Practically what I'd explain the story of my life.

The garden is yet but a decaying memory of a life that is yet a whisper of what life is now. I was abandoned as a child. I looked back at Okada, standing with an unsettling dead gaze, ending my inner train of thought.

"Hey Okada...?"
I questioned him.

"You're painting again? Nice, what are you painting?"
Okada gave a smile as his eerie demeanor instantly changed like a light switch. He bolted over behind me, ignoring my question. Something was overwhelmingly off.

Even if my adrenaline was exploding throughout my entire body.
I decided it would be better to leave it be.

He hung his head right beside mine, holding and squeezing the life out of my shoulders. As if he were examining my fragile body instead of the painting itself. My throat swelled as he breathed into my ear.

"Yes."
I mumbled, slurring that single word in the silence alone, only accompanied by the running electricity. I didn't know when or even how I got a canvas. It was just there.

"You know, you should really use your words."
Okada, my friend said gruesomely, He shifted with his words; his body rose as his stiff, rough hands wrapped around my neck. He felt every inch holding up my jaw.

He caressed me with a glint of sadness in his eyes that seemed more like pity behind those unwelcoming echoes of uncharted, tangled, pained eyes.

"Scared?"

...

WRITTEN AUG 10TH 2023/ EDITED SEP 18TH 2024