Yuri Worlds

[12] Visions

Haruka finished helping her family on their way and soon turned her attention to their guests. The trio wound up on the couch in the living area. It was sparsely decorated, with a flat-screen TV against the wall atop a compact display unit. Plants in large pots flanked the window, with the drape half drawn.

A large, white plush with a wide, open mouth sprawled out on the end of the couch. It made her think of a screaming, bleached whale. She wrapped her arms around it like a pillow and restrained her yawn long enough to press a hand in front of her mouth. That was the polite thing to do. Same with laughing. Cover your mouth. A notion that didn’t feel quite so alien lately.

It was so difficult to keep her eyes open, and when they did pop open, it was like a smoky haze stretched over the world from what had to be little tears in her eyes. Everyone had enormous peepers, so why couldn’t she see better than this?

Vaguely, she noticed that her friends were focused on some gaming system that Haruka brought out. It resembled the most recent Nintendo hardware. She hooked it up with just a handful of cords and wires. They talked about retro titles, and she recognized that Chika had to carefully stem her enthusiasm and consider her words. She so often simply spoke her mind on stream and had a cool confidence in the store. Misaki smirked and suspected that this had to be so hard for her.

She was only vaguely aware of what was going on around her as she snuggled the weird whale plushy closer. Haruka passed out controllers and said something that sounded like an adult voice in a Peanuts cartoon. Misaki didn’t bother paying attention to it. Her eyes fluttered open a few times. She couldn’t remember if the way darkness spread when she closed her eyes was how it was supposed to be or different. Light and darkness rippled out like little concussive waves, crashing into one another.

Moments or minutes later, from her perspective, she noticed that Haruka was standing over her with a thin but sizable pink blanket with lacy ornamentation on the edges. Misaki motioned to thank her, but no words came out of her sleep-paralyzed mouth. Despite that, Haruka slightly bowed her head and told her it was no problem. She shook out the blanket and gently laid it across her.

Misaki dimly deduced from the care with which she placed the blanket that this was something she did often. Responsible older sister putting the younger one to bed when it was late. She appreciated the fact that the cloth wasn’t sealed around her but rather allowed cool air from the window to circulate but not settle.

Haruka leaned right next to her, against her ear, and softly whispered, “Please, take care of my sister. She’s in great danger. We all are. Rest well…”

Before she could even attempt to ask for clarification, Misaki found herself completely enveloped by an even heavier, intangible blanket and sunk into sleep. The next thing she felt was a clinical, harsh voice far above her.

“Extraction complete. Subject restraint holding. We’re in the green.”

Jagged sounds pressed into Misaki‘s ears, with the canals scoured by shards of glass. Warped echoes hurt even more, like Franklin’s distant memory of being drunk with college friends. She struggled to both clear away some intangible wax and plug it. Bleary fragments of white and silver wandered and contorted in her sight. Where was she? It vaguely resembled the waypoint of Travel Anywhere. Sci-fi, sterile, and expansive.

Her first inkling was the dismal notion that their journey had failed, and she’d been rendered unconscious on the floor of one of the portal arches. That meant all the gorgeous and alluring sights had simply been imaginings from the depths of unconsciousness. No Yuka, no anime city, no cheerful house. At least all the frightful visions of a black monster never happened. Although, she saw that creature last Friday. Had that been a part of this experience, just like with those dreams that fed back into themselves? What was she experiencing?

She struggled to shift in place and get more comfortable. Something was holding her in place, like the tightest vice imaginable. Her heart pulsed and vibrated against the unnatural constriction.

“We have movement! Weapons at the ready!”

Weapons? That couldn’t possibly be referring to aiming weapons at her. Why would there be weapons? What the hell was going on?! Blinking against the strange haze did little to provide clarity. Franklin once had a college roommate pop a pair of glasses on his face just to see what it looked like. But they were another roommate's prescription lenses. Everything looked distorted, bordering on blurry. He flailed around to take them off, irrationally terrified that, if he kept them on, his eyes might stay that way. It all went back to normal, but he had to apologize and clean them for that roommate. Nothing was on her face.

She tried to form words, but it was like her mouth was stuffed with sand that just kept sinking further down her throat every chance she took to cough it back up. Gagging felt glacial, as though the sand was hardening into a suffocating cement. How was she going to breathe? Dentist’s office. This was just like the dentist’s office!

“Raise the electrical field to the next level. Let’s see what happens.”

That voice changed, getting stronger and vibrating every inch of her. Not piped in through speakers, but echoing against cold walls and filtered through oppressive plastic. Her next effort to get any words out was crippled by breathtaking pain. Franklin only once accidentally activated a wall socket when attempting to repair it. This was so much worse than that horrifying moment. A weird tingling pressed through her like a burrowing wave. It rapidly went beyond rough pins and needles and felt more like a thousand hands were trying to carve biting holes in her body.

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Screw calm; they were trying to kill her! Misaki flexed, pressed, shook, and wrestled with her confinement. More words echoed with cavernous malice. She didn’t care what they were saying. She had to get free right now! Bashing everything she had against the restraints revealed a wiggle. No matter if it meant she would have to wound herself loose, she would be free. With rhythmic efforts, she managed to leverage the wiggle into a wobble, and that wobble into a creak, and that creek into…

SNAP! Yes! She tumbled over herself, a heaping mass of exhaustion. Yells and frantic, high voices crashed everywhere. Faceless figures filled the blurry horizon, getting larger and larger. She swung around, fighting to get some clear sense of this color-blob world. Who was coming towards her? Where were the walls and the doors? She had no idea what to do but just charge and swing.

Somehow, that seemed to work. Shouts echoed over the mottled space. Some anesthetic must’ve been used, she suspected, because she had no clear sense of her body as anything but a mass of marshmallow tumbling over itself again and again. Like falling forward constantly and just barely catching yourself. She had to keep going and let whatever sense this was supposed to make emerge later. Where were Guy and Dwight? Chika and Namiko, if they did actually make it through. Nothing bearded, no long light-brown hair, and no sense of purple or pink. That was the best she could do with her current senses. Calling out their names didn’t produce the sounds she wanted. What had the fucking company done to her?

After a long stretch of running, she plowed right into a wall. Thankfully, with the painkiller, she didn’t feel it, although she suspected it was going to hurt later. Despite being right up against it, the only thing she could be certain about was that it was a hygienic, blindingly featureless white. Distant klaxons sounded and rattled the ground.

She moved laterally to the wall, searching for some break or difference in its texture. Soon, she discovered a door a few shades darker than anything else. It was left half open. Nothing about this instilled her with confidence or relief.

Checking in all directions made her feel stuck in a cloud. Except for the floor behind her. She received the sickening intuition of blood spreading behind her and turned away. If she was bleeding to death, then it didn’t matter where she went. She pushed through the open door.

The space beyond narrowed with dark squares she guessed were computer monitors. They appeared to be inactive. Shapes she deduced to be office chairs slowly spun in place or had been tipped over. She cautiously maneuvered around and between them.

The space soon shifted and expanded into something larger but not quite as big as the first area. It extended to the left and to the right. Larger hallway? That was all she could think.

Unsure whether to head one way or the other, she paused for a quiet moment, then sprinted to the left. She had no idea if she was making progress or walking into a trap. The space started to curve, and she followed it from the outer edge to get the best look ahead. Not that peeking, with the current state of her vision, revealed anything. One strange thing she noticed was that she couldn’t hear her breath or feel her heartbeat. It should’ve been racing out of control, and she should’ve been panting. Just one more thing to be terrified about later.

There was someone there. A human figure. Small, but easy to see. She slowed her pace and approached cautiously with careful steps. Woman. A young girl. She was sprawled across the floor as though she had fallen. She practically blended into the aesthetic of the space. She had white, snowy hair around her head. Haruka?

Before she could attempt to make words again or get closer, a burning sensation invaded her entire body. She wanted to scream. The pain was so sharp and unrelenting that it chased away all thoughts. She tried to yell out and beg for mercy, but she couldn’t. Something was grabbing her, and it was even tighter than the first trap.

“Do it now!” A voice came from somewhere, not as scary as the other one but overwhelming her. She was being swarmed in all directions. She tried to struggle, but nothing worked. No leverage. Figures trapped her. None of their features were visible, but she could just make out dangling lab coats draped across them. It was like a sea of people had come out of the walls. And they were all trying to hurt her. She struggled to stay on her feet as she summoned every ounce of her strength to get away.

One of the figures in lab coats crouched beside her. They were holding something sharp and metallic right against her leg below the knee. She wanted to beg them to stop, but no words came out. The knife, or whatever it was, slammed hard against flesh. She screamed.

“Misaki!”

She was sitting, sprawled out, and covered. Everything was hot, sweaty, and stifling. The blurriness was gone, but she still had no idea where she was. Couch, television, window… turning to her left, she saw a lab coat—one of those awful lab coats. She didn’t think; she couldn’t think; she just threw herself off the couch and reached out for them. She couldn’t let them go; she couldn’t let them get away, not after what they did to her!

“What are you doing?!l” Chika’s voice. Chika was here. Where? She was aggressively leaning on someone, and they both appeared to be sprawled out on the floor. Their face wasn’t familiar, but it was twisted up in a distressed grimace. A blanket was twisted around her, almost like a cape. Misaki leaned back and got off the girl.

She was back. Back in the Sasaki house. Wrong. She hadn’t gone anywhere. It was just a dream. A terrible nightmare. It had to be.