two

"I could never be scared."

"Say that to your breathing patterns that have quickened. Accompanied by that jittering mouth of yours. How I would choke you alive." Okada whispered, letting out a growl as his hands clawed at my neck.

His hands were soft, harnessing the inner pressure from his stiff palms. The room changed within the core of the apartment. The living room, the room you were always first welcomed to, had changed. Everything changed.

It was the audacity of this shift in the environment that made my heart stop. Who was the distinctive, blood-lusting person behind me with that utter embodiment of supremacy? With the force of Okada's upper hand, I felt as if he were draining me entirely.

Our eyes met with the oversight of transcendence, making known of the lingering threat. Okada grinned deviously with a sick, narcotic feeling as he proceeded up my neck. His ambiguous, frivolous mortality seemed lost.

'I know it's Okada but is this just me being paranoid?' I thought to myself, humanizing the deadly, eradicating gaze above me. Nothing I said in my head could control my adrenaline. I held onto the paintbrush, and I used a bloodshot copper vermilion for that painting.

I suddenly knew who I was painting—it was him.

The blood splattered in an array of my deepest, darkest thoughts, twirling in a seamless motion amidst my act of wrath. For a second, I saw a person. I wasn't able to see anything about the shadow figure, but I knew it was there. The only word said was the one that fell out of my mouth. I hadn't thought much about what I had done.

"Anything."
I muttered to myself as I listened to my aching body. The unbreathable state I was in. 'Am I having a panic attack?' I thought to myself. Although I myself was completely fine, time had skipped. 

The footsteps behind me retract. Somehow I felt almost a spike of flavor in the air; it was on the edge of my tongue. I looked around clueless of what happened. Okada stumbled, holding his ear, and he screamed in bafflement with the paintbrush lodged inside his ear.

I blinked and to my own surprise there was no canvas. No red paints, not even the huge red conquering splotch of clumpy paint on my right hand. Okada was back at the door to his dark eerier bedroom and I was staring at him.

I looked away before he could say anything. He went to the balcony window. Not behind the couch. The glass doors were a tad foggy at the bottom. Cold his words were yet a whisper without any weight. A slur-pool in my mind 'What did he say' I thought. 

And before I could ever finish my thought...

"Okada."
I said to myself at how quick it happened.

"Okada."
I repeated to myself with a slight whimper at the edge of the tone. 
Not wanting to know or feel how wrong it was.

"Okada..."
My voice dragged as I came to the realization.

Okada's body repulsively exploded.
Blood was on my face.

And my best friend, was on the floor.

I fall off the couch to my knees seeing Okada's body turned over. My throat closed on itself as a sheepish squat came out. My mouth wanted to open and puke everything I had today. Moments passed as my hand covered the overflowing vomit seeping from the cracks of my fingers.

I coughed tasting blood feeling something hard sliding around in my mouth. Instinctively I hacked everything out of my system. My vision was blurry as my eyes started to drag. I wiped my hands on the carpet floor seeing a tooth had been ripped from my jaw.

I felt like passing out at the overwhelming taste of blood.  Somehow nothing hurt at all like something took my nerves away with a slight numbness.  

My eyes stared at the ground.

Bright. White. Lights.

Shinning the room from the outside like a disperse of stars, my arm extended reaching out to the glass doors that kept me away. Okada's body faded the into the light along with everything I knew of.

Grandpa.
He was there reaching out.
His eyes were shut.
His mouth, why there was nothing wrong with it.

From behind the glass I was so close.
So close our fingertips were.

But as I inched closer Grandpa's eyelids sprung open. His hand and what seemed to be a connection slipped. Grandpa's gaze was filled with distain what seemed to be disgust of me. I watched him run away into oblivion.

I noticed I was in a glass box, only me nothing else.

He left a special custom belt my father use to talk of. It would leave the imprints of stars and crescent moons.
The belt turned into a centipede a blue one.
It grew trapping me in a glass box that originally had no way out.

The centipede grew wrapping its slinky consuming weight over the glass box. It seemed like it would crush the glass completely within milliseconds. Although the clear walls stayed strong. I looked up to the centipede's belly reminiscent of the moons and stars with marking of blue and yellow.

The underside of the beast above started to glow.

With only the most prettiest of stars, showing me the times I smiled with my grandfather chasing him on the beach much like my father acted all silly and playing a role for me that helped me grow and feel not so alone.

There was a warmness on my back.
I knew that touch.

That familiar touch.
It was Grandpa's.

The underlying warmth after he died...
That fire that awoke something in me.
That heat that made me awake. 

My eyes roll back as flashes of utter darkness and sheer whole lights alarm my head. I fell forward feeling my brain collide with the floor. It was dark, real dark. 'Am I alive?' I thought to myself whilst my eyes sewn to Okada's door before me. 

The number above plated in platinum gold '111'.  I seemed delirious, self aware of this experience.  

"Might this be a lucid dream?" 
I muttered to myself.

I looked to the right of what's supposed to be a hallway. Then I looked to the left to see a rotting corpse of my dead grandfather. I flinched being so close, I wanted to move. I wanted to scream. But no matter how hard I tried I was planted in place.

Cockroaches.
Maggots.
Flies.

Swarmed around going in and coming forcefully out of his body. Dirt stains across his flappy rotting skin stretched around his deadness. His lower jaw barely held the skin attached. And a huge gaping hole just in the middle of his forehead.
There was little to no life left. Until I heard a voice, a small voice.

Begging for time.
More time.
Any time.

A whine came out of the shrill voice crying wishing to go back.

Something pulled me back as the voice of a small child became more forcefully in his words..
In fact he seemed angry.

Disturbing flies accompanied it as the voice chanted a single word.
Jinn.
Jinn.
Jinn.

My head turned to face an old woman.
But it wasn't my grandma.
It was my Great-Grandma.

Her hands forcefully fastened around my free-bargained wrist. Her delicate fragile hands left red hand prints. A firm squeeze that stroke my worries ushering them all, seeing a comforting smile like hers. Her palms left marks that felt like a trail of her presence. The substance was red like her hair. Like Grandma Red's hair.

"Rob."
She whispered.

"Rob."
She projected her voice.

"Rob."
Her voice echoed repeating itself endlessly until it all stopped.

She was gone and the sound of swarming of flies were too. All sounds perished it was the quietness of being underwater when you don't know if your gonna make it to the top again. It was me and the door.  

Like an unseen scrapped up twenty on the street paying no mind to anyone else but you.

My hand guided me reaching out willingly.
The voice abruptly started again telling me to stop.
Yelling and screaming with all it's might.
I reached for the clean doorknob, but I noticed I wasn't in the rounded reflection.

I heard a voice that was somewhat of my own.
"If you do this... I can't stop you. I can't help you."

The voice trailed off stimulus of a breath of something unhuman.
Something untrusting.
Something was of the last world.

I stood dazed wondering my choices...

'What do I do?'
I thought to myself.

I firmly reached out and turned the doorknob.

...