Skeletons in the Closet

Young Muraki/ Tsuzuki

Open Closets

Part Three


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The young angel pulled on Tsuzuki's sleeve as the dolls around them crunched from under his feet. He had a bad feeling about this. Then again anything involving Muraki had to be bad. The young child opened a door and they were invited into darkness.
Tsuzuki subconsiously gripped the young boy's hand tightly as the room revealed itself in front of his eyes. A curious similarity came to his senses as he noticed the dolls lining the shelf walls and floor. The doll room again. The only difference was that it was not as neat as it had been when he first saw it. This time there were dolls scattered on the floor, out of place from the rest of Muraki's mother's collection.

She was brushing her son's hair. Slowly twisting the brush in a downward motion through the fine silky strands of silver, only to repeat the process again. There was no smile on her face just a serene calmness, an adoring mother tending to her child.

"Kazutaka, your hair is as soft as silk, why do you not take care of it like your mother does? You should never let such beauty go to waste."

"My mother obsessed over my beauty. I personally was tired of it. I didn't want to be pretty anymore. At least not to the extent my mother was trying to make me. I was not one of her dolls. I was a human. A boy. Wasn't I?"

The child-guide paused for a brief moment to consider the question himself.

"I wanted to know why my face was so pale, my eyes gray. Why was I different?"

"Mother, how was I born? I mean, was it in grandfather's hospital?"

The brush stopped in mid-stroke as her hand grabbed tight to his shoulder. Tight enough to see a burse form under her pink fingers. The child gasped as he tried to loosen from the grip.

"Mother, you're...you're hurting me."

Her grip loosened as she turned her son around to face her, eyes wide with tears.

"To look at those eyes. A completely blank expression yet filled with tears. I didn't know what to say. Fear and sadness consumed me. Why was she looking at me like that? Was all I thought. Why did she hurt me?"

"You are special, my son. Haven't I told you that? These tiny marks are nothing."

"You are my perfect little angel." She rubbed her hand through his hair and looked seriously into the boy's eyes.

"Mother?" The boy's voice cracked as her grip on his shoulder tightened.

"Shh. Kazu, listen. Do you hear that?"

She looks around the room. Her eyes skimming over toward Tsuzuki and the child-like guide. Then the eyes settled into the corner of the room.

"There are voices are everywhere. They want to take you away from me. He wants to take you away."

Her hands were shaking against the boy's shoulders.

"You can't have him, you hear! He is mine!" She peered out to the dark corner of the room. Narrowing her eyes as though there was another presence in there with them.

But there was no sound. Even with the ability Tsuzuki had to see through shields beyond human eyes, he could not make out any other disturbances besides him and the child-like guide in the room. At first he thought maybe it was them she was looking at. But her gaze clearly was fixed on the corner of the room that appeared to be darker then the rest.

"Mother, you're scaring me...stop."

She turned back to him and griped even harder, her knuckles becoming white.

"Kazu, don't you see! You are not like ordinary humans. You are beyond them. Just look at you! So beautiful, so perfect. That is why he wants to take you away from me, so he can have you for himself."

She lowered her gaze to look into her son's widened eyes, her voice desperate

"He'll take you from me! Don't go to him, he will hurt you!"

The young child tried to struggle out of her grip, wincing at the discomfort his mother was causing upon his shoulders.

"Mom, I don't understand. What...what are saying?"

She looked at him as her face suddenly shifted to anger. She pushed him away from her.

"Go! Leave me be you demon spawn! Get out! GET OUT!"

Confused, Muraki tried to go to her only for her to recoil from his touch.

"Mom..?"

"No! Don't touch me! You will fall among those who have sinned. Your innocence will be no more! A devil's concubine, you carry the blood of a demon."

Looking down at the child-like guide next to him, Tsuzuki could see his lips moving but it was not the child's voice he was hearing but the voice of the school children. The ones that taunted him and called him names.

Your mother was a whore who slept with the devil, no human could have eye's and skin as pale as your's. You're not even human...human...human...

The words just kept repeating itself over and over again.

"You are no longer my son! Be damned!"

Not even human...

She grabbed a knife and lunged at her son with all her might. It missed as the young boy was grabbed by his faithful servant Sakaki causing the knife to jab into the carpet instead. Her hand let go of the handle as she, too, was pulled back by one of the maids.

Kazutaka could only stare in shock. The young child realized what had happened as he looked at the embedded knife halted into the carpet. Sakaki grabbed him in a tight embrace as the boy started to cry. He didn't know why his mother tried to kill him.

Tsuzuki, crushed at the scene, held his hand to his chest. For a child to have to bear witness of such a thing was heart breaking.

"Why would a mother do such a thing to her son? To say those cruel words to you? You were only a child."

The child guide's voice was indifferent.

"Tsuzuki do you know what schizophrenia is?"

"What?" The shinigami turned to stare at him.

"Schizophrenia. Do you know what it means?"

Tsuzuki nodded. He had heard of it before while on a case a few years back. It was better left up to Watari to figure out the scientific facts of their case's. But what he came up with was that it was a sickness that dealt with the mind and that it could cause them to become quite dangerous to deal with because there mind was not there own.

"Like a possession, right?" The guardian replied.

The boy became amused again and smiled at his angel.

"Perhaps."

The boy walked over to the mirror. Running his small hand over his face up to the temple of his head.

"The act of unrealistic delusions. A mental illness most commonly involving manifesting such cases as auditory hallucinations. A byproduct of one's over imaginative mind. Basically, the person who carries this disease is considered insane."

The boy slid his fingers through his hair, stopping to hold it away from his face to view his face more closely.

"My mother was to be sent to a asylum for treatment but Father refused to allow such an act to happen. He took it upon himself to care of her. I, on the other hand was not to see her alone. Somehow my appearance had caused her to go 'crazy'."

His finger slid underneath his right eye pulling at the taunt skin to open it up more. The diameter around the eye became larger, causing a uncanny resemblances to the false eye the Muraki Tsuzuki known to have.

"It hurt."

For a moment Tsuzuki thought he was talking about that eye. The child let go of his hair and it fell beautifully against his temples.

"To know that your own mother found your very presence unwanted. I wanted nothing more then at that moment to fall in deep depression. My mother could'nt bear to look at me! Her only son. But still I had hope. Deep down in the core of her heart I knew she still loved me and I loved her, she was my mother after all."

His voice sounded as though there was false hope in that statement. Did he really believe that there was a possibility that perhaps she wasn't his mother?

"She took care of you. Even if she was not..."

The child-Muraki glared at him.

"No! There is no other possible way! That woman is my mother. She said it herself.I won't accept anything different!" The child-like guide looked at his angel with such sadness.

"She...she was sick."

Tsuzuki went over to him and leaned down to his level touching the tiny shoulder. The boy turns around moving out of the touch. He couldn't possibly know what the boy was going through. His mother loved him dearly with all her heart and was always there to comfort him when he was hurt. With that thought Tsuzuki suddenly felt his stomach drop at the boy rejecting him. But did not show any signs that the sudden movement bothered him.

"Soon she was taking medication to calm her nerves from my appearance and Saki would come with me when I was to visit her. I could remember it to clearly the night he had slapped my mother."

The vision before Tsuzuki's eyes changed. The room now was in complete disarray. The mirror that Muraki was looking into was now cracked and dolls laid on the floor in piles. One resting in Muraki's mothers hand. She was combing its hair and smiling upon the porcelain face. The door opened. She looked up and smiled at her son, reaching her hand out to him.

" Kazu. Come here my son."

The child walked over hesitant to touch her but feels her hand touch his as her smile widens, adoring her son once more. She runs her fingers down the child's cheek slowly to the nape of his neck . Over fabric till it halted at the base of the right side of his chest.

" Your heart beats fast. Are you afraid of me, Kazu? Your own mother."

She sighed deeply when she doesn't receive an answer.

"I must stop this before it gets too far. Before he consumes your very soul."

She smiled at her son bearing those few moments to be loving and caring towards him. Then she looked over toward Saki and she lashed out at him throwing the boy on the ground.

"Fool!".

She moves to slap the tramatized child again but her hand is held fast.

Saki without thinking pulls her away from Kazutaka and slaps her hard in the face.

"You dare raise a hand to your own child, you are the fool!" His voice contorted with such anger.

She screamed and cried like a child herself as she backed into the corner away from Saki. The fright in her eyes at the look of him. Like a child waking from a nightmare only for the nightmare to be trapping her in the corner. She screamed huddling her knees to her chest hands in her face.

"No! Get away! Get away from me!"

"I wonder what she saw in Saki. As much as she was in her state of delusion and wanting to hurt me she didn't want to hurt him. She seemed to fear him."

The voices started up again.

"Look at him! He's not even human. No human has eyes and hair the color of yours."

"A Demon."

"The Devil's child."

Breaking into echos as the voices kept repeating themselves over and over again. Suddenly a woman's voice came over all them. Loud, slowly and soft.

"You are a gift from God. You are beyond human."

Then came a silence. Everything froze into place.

"Am I?"

Tsuzuki heard the child say. He looked to see Kazutaka staring at him in hopes of getting an answer. His mouth gaped open bemused that the child could see him. He thought he was invisible. That him and the child guide could not be seen. He looks over toward his guide and noticed that he was looking at him as well. Tsuzuki was speechless. What could he possibly say to him?

The child laughed and took his guardian's hand.

"You and me, we are the same."

"And what might that be?"

The child just smiled and turned his attention away from him.

"That night I looked at my brother as my savior. He protected me from that hand that surly would of ended in a another painful memory of my childhood."

"As I hoped the medication would work my mother's condition was only becoming worse. I came to theories that maybe at what she said about me being a demon was true, but then what of the good part? Was that not important? I was only still a child. Still so naive and innocent accepting nothing less. From that, Saki made sure of it as well."

The room goes black leaving only a vision of Kazutaka and his brother. They were sitting on the ground. Kazutaka's face streaked with tears as his brother held him tight.

"Why does she keep saying that someone will take me away? Who will take me away?"

Saki softly rubs the pink mark on his little brother's face, wiping up some tears as he went.

"I would not worry about it, little brother. Your mother's not in her right mind. What she says is of her own imagination nothing more."

Kazutaka lifts his head up to look at him.

"Now stop crying. You have to be strong, Kazu."

"But...but then who will take care of me? Father is at work all the time. My mother can't bear to even be near me. Who will...?"

Saki gentle cups his brother face with both hands.

"I will. Didn't I promise you I wouldn't let anything happen to you?"

"Yes," the boy sniffles in.

"Then trust my word,' Kazu. Even if it is your mother I wont let it happen. I won't let her hurt you again."

"Do not ever let yourself be broken." A female voiced out at the same time Saki said it.

A tear fells from Kazutaka right eye. But it was no ordinary tear. This tear streaked his face with a red color similar to blood. Saki wipes the tear away and Tsuzuki notices the child-like guide looking at his finger. It had a small drop of blood on it. That slowly decended between the crack of his finger.

"I am already broken."


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Next Chapter: Open Closet's Part Four.


Black and White

A beautiful disparity.

A compliment to eachother.

Both sharing strengh and power.

Neither can win over the other.

For both to share is to be..

...equal

...mutual

the color of gray.