InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Statues Without Eyes ❯ Affliction ( Chapter 1 )

A/N: Well, here's the next chapter. It's nowhere near as long as the prologue, but hey, at least it's something. Oh, and if you notice a fluctuation in writing styles between the beginning of the chapter and the rest of the chapter, that's because I first wrote the beginning of the chapter…last year. So, yeah, different writing style now.

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, its characters, or its plot and I write this fanfic with the highest respect to its creator. I do however own my own original ideas, plots, and characters. Chapter title and quote belongs to AFI. Story title belongs to Kill Hannah.

 

 

 

Affliction

 

Every night devises new heights of genocide. Lover, I am loveless. All my friends and I toast health and suicide. Lover, I am lonely.

 

 

 

 

One Month Later

 

 

 

“Hey, earth to Kagome! You coming or what?”

 

“Huh?” She looked up from her computer, annoyed at the distraction, and still slightly dazed from getting pulled into her own writing.

 

“It's almost ten o'clock. Everyone's already left, `cept us,” said Inuyasha. He may be her boss now, but he still treated her more like the friend he had met through his girlfriend's grandmother several years ago.

 

“Oh. Well, I'm just going to stay for a while longer if that's ok. I'd really like to go ahead and finish this article while I've still got some momentum. You go on ahead,” she said distantly, already looking back at her annoyingly bright computer screen.

 

“If ya say so, but just remember that the article isn't due till Friday,” he said, looking apprehensive to leave her alone again; he still felt guilty after what had happened - and had almost happened -- to her last month.

 

“I know, I know,” she muttered, typing furiously. She only wrote a small entertainment column that printed in the Sunday paper, but that little column was syndicated in almost every newspaper in Japan. So she tended to feel panicked if she didn't have it done at least a day before the deadline. Anything later was cutting it a little too close for her.

 

This week's column was about, of all things, the revival of classical music in the public eye. What revival? Honestly, she liked Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor just as much as the next girl, but this was just ridiculous. After several minutes she paused in her typing to take a sip of her lukewarm coffee - and noticed that a certain someone was still standing behind her.

 

“Uh, Inuyasha, are you just going to keep standing there?”

 

He seemed to snap out of whatever trance he had been in and looked up at her. After a moment he smiled and said, “You know Kagome, I was thinking…”

 

“Yes?” she said. She wondered what it was. He had looked like he had had something on his mind for the past month.

 

“Well…” he trailed of again. She just looked at him expectantly. She was impatient to get back to work, but knowing him it was a miracle that he would share anything at all that was on his mind.

 

After a second or two he seemed to regain his normal cocky attitude, “Well, I was thinking, since you are dating that idiot, you might as well take advantage of the opportunity and start grilling him about what's going on with these murders. I know you've always dreamed of being an investigative reporter. You could have the top of page one all to yourself, instead of just page eight,” he said in a somewhat mocking voice. Somehow, she doubted that's what he had been going to say.

 

“You're right; I would love to be an investigative reporter. There is just one problem with that little plan of your's, Inuyasha. I'm not dating Kouga.” Yet, anyway. They were still in the “let's be really good friends and see how this works out” stage. But she wasn't going to say that to Inuyasha. He was already getting annoying and almost seemed jealous, but she tossed that idea quick as it came. “And besides, Kouga is far too professional to leak details of the investigation anyway.”

 

This received an annoyed huff, followed by a grunt as he walked out. Ah, finally, some peace. Slight smile on her face, she turned back to the desktop.

 

 

~~~~~

 

Article complete and fingers aching from typing all day, she was finally heading home an hour later. Ever since the incident last month she had taken to riding a taxi home after late nights at the office, or riding home with someone else if she hadn't been the only one to stay late.

 

“So where to, miss?”

 

“Ah, the Yazawa apartment building,” she said as she slid into the backseat. To be quite honest, she hated taxis. They smelled like things she didn't even want to think about and the drivers creeped her out most of the time - though this one seemed fairly polite. Still, they were safer than walking at this time.

 

“Ooh, that's that new place. The one they knocked down that dilapidated church to build, right? Did you know that there used to be an old Buddhist shrine there before the church? Or was it a Shinto shrine? Ah, oh well. What was that, 130 years ago? Say, is that place really haunted? Like, with demons and junk?” Okay, so maybe this driver wasn't creepy. Maybe he was just annoying.

 

Wearily, Kagome shrugged and leaned her head back against the headrest as the driver kept on talking. She so was not in the mood for this right now. She had already heard the urban legends surrounding her home enough times that she could write a book about it. But that's all they were, simple urban legends. Probably made up by some bored teenagers during school. In all honesty, the most `supernatural' thing to happen to her was the fact that she lost her keys on what seemed like a daily basis.

 

And, really, that's the way it should be. Not that she should lose her keys, but that nothing happen. With what she had been through in her teens, she deserved a lifetime long break from the supernatural. There was that one freak vision last month, but she attributed that to the stress of the night and nothing more. So when people tried to make her apartment into the horror story of their dreams, she did little more than simply brushing them off. She didn't need the excitement like they did. She was perfectly happy with her new normalcy.

 

Suddenly a shrill ringing interrupted whatever the driver had been saying and jolted Kagome out of her thoughts. She really needed to change that ringtone. It was annoying as hell.

 

“Moshi moshi,” she said, giving the driver a fake apologetic smile as he watched her in the rearview mirror. Okay, getting to creepy now.

 

“Kagome, look, I really don't know why, and I don't agree, but the chief wants me to get you over here. Now. So where are you?” The voice on the line sounded tense and more than a little angry. But it still held the rugged gentleness that she had become accustomed to in the last month.

 

“Kouga? What's going on?”

 

“I'll tell you when I see you. Just tell me where you are right now.”

 

“Um, I'm in a taxi heading home,” she said nervously. If the chief of police wanted her then it in all likelihood had something to do with her vision from last month.

 

A rush of breath. “That's great. Look, tell the driver to bring you to the subway station two blocks from where you live and I'll meet you there.”

 

“Uh, ok.” Yeah, her career in journalism must be obvious. After all, she was always just so articulate.

 

He must have sensed her worry and heard the uncertainty in her voice because his goodbye was calm and warm. Though his voice still had a slight edge to it that she didn't like. Looking up at the driver, she told him the new directions and leaned back in her seat to look out the window. What would the police chief want? And why not just ask her to come to the police station? She had a definite bad feeling about this.

 

She closed her eyes and tried to dismiss the feelings of déjà vu.

 

~~~~~

 

She wasn't crazy. She wasn't. Why wouldn't they believe her?

 

Sure, she heard voices. Sure, they were pretty disturbing. But they never told her to do things. In fact, they didn't fit the profile of “voices” in any way. It was more like she had a radio in her head. Or maybe a TV with no picture. Yeah, that was it. The voices always reminded her of the television shows that she would watch with her mother and father. And little brother too, but he was still little, so he didn't watch as much as fidget.

 

Back then they were all pretty happy. But then the voices started, right around the same time she started her cycle - which was a curse in and of itself - and life just kind of fell apart. Her dad ignored her in favor of her brother, her perfect little brother, her mom was always sad, and her brother…well, her brother was still annoying as always. Just a little more distant. Her grandpa was the only one who treated her the same way, but he was half senile and a Shinto priest anyway so maybe that was to be expected.

 

Maybe she really shouldn't have ever said anything about the voices in the first place. Yes, that would have been the smart thing to do. But she never claimed to be very smart anyway.

 

So here she was. In the psychiatric ward of the hospital after a particularly bad `episode' as her mother called it. Granted, she was an out-patient, but the danger of a long-term stay was right on the horizon. She almost wished for it. It had to be better than home.

 

------

 

She was older now, and she knew how to hide the `episodes'. As far as her family and the hospital were concerned, she was cured. Whatever that meant.

 

But there was one person who knew that the voices hadn't really gone away. One person who had helped her through them in a way her own family should have but couldn't. She had met Kaede during one of her many stays at the hospital where the old lady had worked as a nurse. Kaede had told her she was a clairaudient and confirmed what Kagome had always known. She wasn't crazy.

 

For that, Kagome knew she would always be grateful. Though she had retired a year ago, she still went to Kaede when she had a vision - for lack of better term - and they would talk about what she had heard. The small apartment had become a second home to her, the smell of incense a welcome relief after a long day of dealing with her family or school.

 

It was Kaede who convinced Kagome to become an anonymous tip source for the police. She had said, “What use are ye powers if ye don't use them? Do something to make it worth the trouble ye go through with ye family.” And for a while it had made it worth it. Until the police started questioning her a little more. After all, she was right ninety percent of the time. How could that be possible? To them it didn't seem right, but there wasn't much they could do other than be suspicious since she was anonymous.

 

Kaede had assured her that they couldn't know who she was unless they traced her calls, which was why she usually tired to use pay phones, or had a way to connect her personally to a case. And that would likely never happen.

 

------

 

She had been to far too many funerals lately.

 

Sure, it was only two, but that was still two too many.

 

First Kaede, her one lifeline and first friend had passed on. That funeral had been small with only Kaede's granddaughter Kikyo and her boyfriend, Inuyasha, along with a small number of other relatives attending. That had been one of the hardest days of her life as she had come to see Kaede as a surrogate aunt. But she would never forget what Kaede had said to her before she had passed about understanding fate. It wasn't something one could avoid, it had to be met head-on and bravely because it would come for you one way or another. Best meet it than run from it.

 

That's what Kagome was trying to keep in mind as she stood at her father's funeral, thanking the guests as they filed past her father's closed casket. It was all she could do not to look at the casket. And it was even harder not to hear her father's death replay over and over again in her head.

 

She had finally come to terms with her clairaudience. This had undone all of that work. She still couldn't sleep without the radio playing at night.

 

After her father had gone missing, she had been frantic. They may not have been close during her early and mid-teens, but they had repaired their relationship in her late teens when he believed she had been cured of her `temporary insanity'. They had still been distant, and she still felt hurt by his rejection of her, but the need for her father's love and approval had been all she needed to give him every chance she could.

 

And then he was gone. Three weeks he had been missing, then one Sunday morning she had woken to the sounds of her father's screams and another man's voice. First she had run downstairs and through the rest of the house, till she slowly realized she was alone. She dialed the emergency hotline number, hoping that it had been a future and not the present or past, hoping it could still be changed.

 

But when the operator answered, she realized she didn't know what to tell them. Unlike the other times, there had been no sounds, no clues, about where her father was. Just his screams and the man's voice. And try as she might, panic had erased whatever the man had said from her mind. Cursing she had slammed the phone down.

 

Now she just cursed herself.

 

A week after that morning she had heard more voices. This time she knew where they were. This time she was so frantic that she forgot to be careful. This time the police had her.

 

And now they wanted her to work for them. Unofficially, of course.

 

 

~~~~~~

 

“Uh, miss? Wake up. We're here.”

 

 

>line<

 

A/N: So, yeah, sorry if it's short, and sorry if it seems like the flashback is longer than the present part, but I promise you that not all the chapters will be like that. Don't worry, I'm not a flashback whore. lol I only say this because I know some of you are like me and are annoyed at how many stories there are out there that seem to be primarily flashbacks. Honestly, if that's what they're going to mostly write, why don't they just make it a separate story for the flashbacks, you know? I have to say though, the flashback was my favorite part to write.

 

Btw, I do need to know if ya'll would prefer shortish (a few hundred words above 2000 seems to be my norm) but frequent updates, or long (as long as the prologue) but far-spaced updates. If short, then I already have the next chapter almost ready and it can be uploaded within the week (or two). But longer would take a while before the next update.

 

So, till next time, let's all wonder what the chief (and who is the chief anyway? hmm…) wants with Kagome. And why couldn't she just meet him at the station? What's waiting for her in the next chapter? Well, besides our favorite wolf boy. Can't you just imagine him leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, looking all moody? haha