A Touch of Insanity

MOMENTS IN TIME


(Excerpt from Kurosaki Ichigo’s Journal – the beginning)

You would think it would be a fairly slow decent into insanity but I can tell you that it is not so.

Maybe I should not just plunge straight in as I am not quite sure of every detail. Aizen has asked that I keep a journal. He has promised that no one will read this but himself. He tells me that this is to help me get better but I don’t know. How do I really start this?

Well, I am Kurosaki Ichigo, or at least that is what I am told. My memories are shattered and I do not know who I am. The name feels right though.

I have been brought to Los Noches, Aizen’s home. He has been kind to me despite my… illness? I do not know what to call what has happened to me. There are scars and aches that plague me as if I am an old man.
At night, all I dream of, all that I see is blood, all that I hear are screams, and all that I feel is pain.
Sometimes, I see flashes of faces. They come and go but who are they?

. . . . . . . . . .

There was this girl who came to see me today. She said her name was Inoue Orihime. She looked at me with such sad grey eyes. I feel I should know her. Are we related? No, that does not feel quite right. I wonder who she is. She looked at me expectantly, as if she wanted me to know who she was. I felt bad and a part of me wanted to comfort her.

While she was visiting, I had an … episode? A black out? But when I looked at her again, she was in tears and her lower lip was bruised and split.

Did I do that?

Oh god, please say that I did not do that!

******

(Present - Ichigo’s room)

Nightmares disturbed his sleep. He tossed and turned and sweat beaded across his skin. His orange hair matted to his forehead. The white sheets stuck and tangled around Ichigo.

“No….no… please no.”

Light blinded him and he could see figures rushing around him but they were almost indistinct. Their clothing was black and white and a black and white face hovered over him. Who was it? He felt he should know.

He tried to move but found that he was tied down. The straps dug into his wrists and ankles, rubbing them raw. He noticed tubes and wires all originating from somewhere past the bright light leading down toward him. There were pulling sensations across the skin of his arms and legs, some even in different areas of his torso. Confusion reigned in his mind.

Voices talking, only he could not make out their words. It was all coming to him like he was under water. Screaming, pain filled and almost hopeless sounds fill his ears and the indistinguishable words are drowned out.

Then searing pain engulfs his whole being. A sensation of burning in fire and yet being torn apart from the inside out at the same time. What is happening? What are they doing?

They, them, these beings he did not know are tearing him apart. He is breaking, shattering, couldn’t they see? If they did not stop, he would be shattered into pieces too small to put back together.

He realizes the screams are coming from his own throat, raw, from deep within, full of pain, and rage, and fear.
Slowly, the sound doubles, an echo, a reflection. What is happening to him? Why won’t they leave him alone?

“Stop…please…just stop.”

Darkness engulfs him.

Awakening to a broken feeling, a feeling of missing a part of oneself, caused tears to flow from his eyes.

Missing… what was missing? So empty, so alone.

Finally, opening his eyes, he blinks. In front of him lay a reflection of himself in white. So strange to see something like this but at the same time he knew this being.

Reaching out a curious hand, he feels the soft skin of his double’s cheek. The white copy’s eyelids flutter and creep open to reveal black and yellow eyes. They calmly watched one another while lying on a cold stone floor. The dim lighting revealed stone walls and bars all around them. They had been placed in a cage or prison of some sort.

“So aibou, what now?” the other said in his watery voice.

“I don’t know. What is your name? You are familiar but I do not know you.”

“My name?” Cackling laughter fills the air.

Suddenly he is lifted by his throat and then slammed into the wall. His fingers try to pry the white man’s hand away but he is too weak.

“You know me, you know my name.” The white face stops an inch from his own and he can feel the other being’s breath. “I am you.”

He looked on in horror as the albino reflection blurred and changed. It’s face is no longer the perfect inverted copy. The right eye turned to an empty black pit. Scars formed ropey lines of skin that divided his face in half and ran from the corners of his eyes and lips. The face looked like someone had chopped it in pieces and tried to put it back together.

Gasping, trying to suck in what air he could, the tears of horror and pain flowed continuously down his face.
“You are to blame, King. You were too weak to save us. You were too weak to save them all. IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”

“NNNOOOO!!!”

Jolting up in bed, Ichigo could only gasp and sob. The tears would not stop and all that he could see was that broken and tortured reflection of himself. All he could hear were the words stating that it was all his fault.