Blood Red Memories

Shafts of sunlight pour over tiny pale hands which clasp the delicate pink fabric of a kimono. There are pained cries and a loud commotion close by; the silken pink tears away from her grasp. Everything shifts a moment, and then slowly comes into focus again. The whole place seems surreal; indistinguishable from reality or dream... Some details become more vivid than others, like the peaceful looking pond outside with small fish in it. Rocks line the pond's edge and a blooming tree with pale pink flowers shades a portion of it. There’s loud clattering and smashing noises, paper and wood flying everywhere.

All that can be seen in the chaos is glinting silver dripping bright red, and then a door that slams and locks, muffling more noise from the other side. Against it, in a torn pink kimono, a woman is shaking with terror, and begins a quick, panicking cry. A tiny, soft infant hand reaches out for her, but the woman doesn’t acknowledge it, instead hysterically rips up the tatami mats on the floor, breaking her nails and causing the ends of her fingers to shred into a red-smearing mess. Eventually a trap door is revealed, which swings open with a creak of the hinges, and considerable effort from the still-crying woman.

A moment later, she picks up and gently lowers Reina grasping, thrashing down into the dark, cavernous root cellar. Everything begins to blur and distort as eyes burn with tears, but the tiny hands cling desperately to the arms of the woman, even scratching to keep a grip on them. Choking out a stifled cry, she kisses the forehead and rips Reina’s arms away before shutting the door once more, engulfing everything in darkness.

Teeth chatter and body ripples with shivers in the cold dark silence of the hole, ears straining to listen intently to the papery thwack of the mat falling onto the door above. A crash from above and approaching footfalls causes her limbs to tense in the hiding place, they feel disconnected in the darkness, nothing can be seen anywhere. She is disembodied; a ghost that cannot speak, cannot feel, cannot be. Angry, terrifying shouts from above, and the body continues shaking and crying quietly in the darkness.

The woman’s voice desperately pleads with the angry shouts, but her sentence is ended with a cry and a thud over head. The young girl claps her hands over her ears during more shouting and agonized screams from above. There’s loud banging about in the room, and lots of thuds above her head, and covering her ears blocks none of it out. She continues sobbing long after all the noise finally ends.

It seems an eternity has passed when she finally stops crying, listening intently to a quiet pattering drip. A warm, salty liquid hits her face, mingling with drying tears; Reina returns to her body. The overwhelming, warm coppery smell is dizzyingly comforting, though she senses something sickly amiss and unnerving about it. Eventually, when the dripping subsides, she drifts off into an exhausted, fitful sleep, curling into a ball, as if she could shut out the cold that seeps into her being.

Reina jolts awake and shivers, feeling her clothes sticking stiffly, plastered almost, to her body in caking brownish red crust. She can hear talking above, and in time, she hears the creak of the trap door, and squints into bright light, expecting the woman to appear in the shaft of light.

Instead, she cowers in fear as a ghost white animal face appears. She feels like screaming but only manages a quiver of her ruddily caked lips as the figure reaches toward her, bringing her back into the room above. She struggles against the animal faced person, only to see similar animal faced people with the same hollow black eyes, standing around, or squatting above a disturbingly white body surrounded by the same darkening crimson liquid that she had sat in for more than three hours.

Despite kicking and hitting, the animal-person gently places Reina down on the cold floor in a corner of the room. She gazes hollowly past it to see the others studying more red liquid and white lines. The animal face has been replaced by a kind looking red haired man with yellow eyes; he gently wipes her cheek with a handkerchief while chattering to the other animal people.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asks finally in a quiet, soothing voice.
“Reina.”

He talks to the tiny, pale, blue-eyed toddler, but she doesn’t speak anymore, just stares blankly. He picks her up with a sad sigh, removing her from the room so the others could take away the bodies.

She stole only once glance over his shoulder.

Reina only looked once because that’s all it took.

The woman from earlier, lay stomach down on the floor, head unnaturally tilted. Her hand was stretched out desperately towards the cellar, browning red liquid covering her body, splattered on the walls, and amassed in pools around her. Her mouth no longer seemed human, split in two between her jaw bones, with once beautiful inky black hair falling into the blood and mutilated remnants of her mouth. The girl’s icy blue eyes widen with realization with an echoing scream, "MOMMY!"

Suddenly Reina jolts awake, gasping for breath with tears running down her cheeks and cold sweat covering her pallid skin. This was all too familiar though. She had seen the same horrifying images in repetition longer than she could remember. As her screams die, Reina notices that she isn’t alone in her hoarse shouts.

She pattered out of her room, following the trail of sound to an argument in the kitchen. It was so loud in there no one had noticed her morning scream, or that she had waltzed right in and settled herself down to eat breakfast. The problem was there was no food, and the smell of burning eggs abandoned on the stove filled the air. With an exasperated sigh, Reina got up and made her way over to retrieve the eggs. It was when she started climbing the cabinets next to the hot stove, clattering pots and pans as she went, that Kaiyo and Hiram noticed she was in the room.

“Reina!” Kaiyo shrieked running over to turn off the hot stove. Thinking fast, Hiram dashed with almost invisible speed to get her away from the disaster waiting to happen. He cradled her against his gray ANBU-vested chest as if she was still only a baby.

“Why were you climbing next to the stove? Hime, no, you have to be careful!” Hiram began. Reina pointed feebly to the burnt eggs. “Why didn’t you just ask Kaiyo or me to get it?” Again her response was feeble, especially without the advantage of words. She began to sniffle a little as tears welled up in her eyes. Hiram hugged her tightly, kissing her forehead with fatherly affection strange to see in a man covered in piercings along his nose ears and chin with menacing eyes and bright orange hair.

“Ok, ok, just sit down and I’ll get Kaiyo to clean up the burned ones and make some fresh, alright?” he said as he put her down to walk by herself, tousling her hair. So far, she hadn’t encountered the wrath of Hiram. Not to say she couldn’t. Once she sat down, Hiram strode over to Kaiyo, whispering maliciously, “this isn’t over.”

He came back to Reina and sat himself comfortably next to her, reclining on his side, propping his head up on one arm. She always loved his casual easygoing nature, and complete disregard for the rules. It made him seem wild, and untamed by the confines of the world, especially since he would come and go as he pleased, off on one mission or another.

“Kaiyo’s told me you haven’t been behaving, Hime,” he murmured as he ran his fingers through the waves of her hair, caused by the plaits that were usually there but fell out in the night. “Is that true?” he seemed to wonder to himself, but stared Reina down, waiting for a response. She shook her head no.

“See now, Kaiyo, I told you she wasn’t being bad,” he called to the stonily silent nanny who had been seemingly demoted to a servant for the time being. She was visibly seething, and didn’t respond.

“I tried to tell her you’d never intentionally disobey. You’re a good girl, and you’d never intentionally disobey, right?” he smiled warmly at her. She gave a quick, happy nod, springing his trap. “That’s why you’ll not be around that terrible boy anymore, of course.”

Kaiyo put eggs and juice in front of Reina, but she pushed it away, no longer content in the company of her savior. However, she nodded mechanically, as he got up and began to grab up his pack, boots and, most importantly, animal mask. “Great, you’re always such a good, obedient girl. Practice your kunai and listen to Kaiyo. Bye, Princess.” He gave her a quick peck on the forehead and then walked out the door, pulling up a hood on the way out.

Hiram had an interesting parenting style. While he was friendly and accommodating to Reina, he also was very strict in some aspects. In particular, his word was law. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, throw tantrums, or even resist when it came time to abide by his law. However, she resigned herself to the demeanor of a beaten dog, head down, tail between its legs, sullenly slinking on her way.