How
I Was Murdered By a Fox Monster Two: New Foes
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By
M.C.Queen
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Chapter
1
Everything was black
for as far as I could see. I could feel a cool chill against my skin, and I
wondered if this was what heaven felt like. I had always hoped that if I died
then maybe Grandpa would be waiting for me, or maybe even my missing parents
and the mysteries of my childhood would finally be solved, but instead there
was nothing but darkness. I felt pretty cheated. Dying at fifteen was bad
enough, but dying with so many unanswered questions was even worse. I raised my
fist to shake it in rage at God or the devil or whoever had created this dark
and depressing afterlife, but all I could feel was the sensation of my skin
brushing up against fabric.
I continued
moving my arms around frantically, and discovered that I still had feeling in
my arms and legs. With much effort I forced my eyes open to find not the gates
of heaven, but the water damaged ceiling of headquarters.
The cool
chill I had experienced was the wind blowing through the window beside me. I
sighed in relief. It looked like the fox attack had just been a terrible dream
and I was still sleeping in Itsuki's room. In a few hours my alarm would ring and I could happily
skip to school without any crazy fox women pursuing me. I slowly turned to
close the window, only to find that there was no window, but a giant hole where
the wall used to be.
“My god,” I
whispered and sat up to take a closer look. So it wasn't a dream after all.
What I thought was a blanket was actually a large coat, and it slid off as soon
as I stood up to examine the damage. The hole was huge, even Kiyori and his
whole group of friends could easily fit through. I looked out into the garden
in the hope of seeing the fox monster's charred remains, but there was nothing
but broken trees and flower beds.
“What
happened here?” I whispered to myself.
The room was
dark, but I could still see the damage from the battle in the moonlight. There
were holes in the walls and floor from where we had fought the monster, but I
could have sworn that there were more than before. It was like some massive
battle had taken place and I'd been asleep for all of it. It was just my luck
that I had missed the fight of the century. Maybe I'd passed out when Akito
stabbed my back.
“My back!”
My hand quickly flew to my back, but to my surprise there were no marks from
where Akito had tried to kill me. There was just the same scarring pattern as
before. The scene in the office had been too crazy and terrifying for me to
have imagined it all. Maybe I'd passed out from fear just before the
reinforcements arrived and saved me from an early death.
“Mana!” I cried. I couldn’t
believe that I’d almost forgotten about her. I was lying in the same room as
where the fox monster had attacked us, but all the doors had been dismantled
and taken away. I searched the room for any sign of my friend, but there was
nothing but a dark patch on the carpet from where Mana had fallen. Maybe she
was alright, maybe they had taken her to get help in time.
The only
light in the room was the crack in the door between the living room and the
kitchen. I slowly crept towards it. I could hear unfamiliar voices talking.
“We really don't know what we're
dealing with, if what you say is true, then we could have a potentially more
dangerous monster on our hands,” said the voice of an elderly man who I didn't
recognize. “There's no way of knowing what he'll be like when he wakes up. It
may be better to eliminate the threat now while we still have a chance.”
“I returned everything to the way it
was,” said Akito. “And I have faith that the seals will hold. There hasn't been
a single incident in the past ten years.”
“Until now,” said the old man.
“Only because I released them,”
protested Akito.
“Why are we even talking about this,
aren’t you supposed to be exorcists. You should get rid of it now while its
guard is down,” said Itsuki.
“Why, that's a great idea young man,”
said the old man. “Spoken like a true exorcist.”
“I think you're being rash,” said
Akito.
“He's right,” said another
unrecognizable voice. “Akito's the expert here so maybe we should do as he
says. What do you think Hugo?”
“It doesn't matter,” said someone who
sounded depressed. “I'll just do whatever the rest of you want me too, that's
how things always end up anyway.”
The door was slightly ajar and I
peered through the crack to see the reinforcements who may have saved my life.
There was an elderly looking man with white hair and a beard who was sitting
across the table from Akito. There was another man in his twenties with short
brown hair and dressed completely in black, who I assumed must have been Hugo,
and there was also another guy with glasses who reminded me of Akito, except
his hair was longer and more dishevelled like he spent more time in the field
instead of doing paperwork. He was bandaging Nina's head as she sat on the
kitchen counter looking annoyed. Her hair was dishevelled and she was covered
in bruises, but to my relief she looked mostly fine.
“I'm not a kid, I can do this
myself,” she pouted.
“If you're not a kid then you should
have put up more of a fight,” said the guy with glasses while tightening her
bandage. “What would our parents say if they found out you spent most of the
battle hiding.
“But Akito made me!”
Itsuki was also leaning against the
fridge while holding a bag of frozen peas to his head like an ice pack. He was
tapping his foot anxiously on the floor. “If we keep waiting it could be too
late,” he muttered. “We're wasting time in here.”
I wondered if they were talking about the fox
monster. I assumed they'd beaten it, but maybe it had just run away and planned
to come back later. The anxiety was killing me, I had to know what had
happened.
I took a deep breath and pushed the
door open.
“Hey everybody!”
I expected everyone to be angry and
annoyed (like all the other times I burst into meetings whenever I felt like
it) but instead everyone jumped back in fear like I'd caught some sort of
contagious disease.
“It's come to eat us!” Hugo shrieked.
“By god, what is he doing here
Akito?!” Exclaimed the older man. “I thought you told the fat one to watch
him.”
“It's nice to meet you too,” I said
while feeling annoyed. These new exorcists obviously didn't have any social
skills. Maybe they'd spent too much time in the field and had forgotten how to
talk to teenagers. I grabbed a biscuit off the counter and began to munch on
it. I knew it probably wasn’t the appropriate time for eating, but I was
famished. “Where's the fox monster?” I asked while looking around the room.
“Did you guys kill it? It must have been some epic battle right? With super
powerful exorcist charms and weapons. I saw the giant hole in the wall, it was
completely insane.”
“Don't you remember?” Asked Nina. Her
voice was shaking.
“Remember what?” I asked.
Everyone was staring at
me like I was a madman, but Akito was the only one in the room who still
appeared normal. “Daisuke,” was all he was able to say before Itsuki narrowed
his face in rage, grabbed a knife off the counter, and came running towards me.
I didn't
have enough time for my mind to process what was happening. I quickly raised my
arm and stepped back to block his attack, but Hugo managed to grab his waist
and Akito grabbed his arm. It was enough to stop his assault but Itsuki wriggled
and squirmed with all his might. Itsuki looked like he was ready to hurl the knife
towards me before Akito quickly pried his fingers away from the blade and it
fell to the kitchen floor with a clang.
“Don't
you see? He's one of them,” Itsuki protested. “You saw it, what he
became back there.” His eyes narrowed in hatred and fear.
“Itsuki?” I asked in bewilderment.
“Shut up you filthy monster,” he
hissed.
“Akito, are you
protecting this monster?” Asked the old man.
I was shocked. I stood there in
silence, searching for something to say. “H..h..Hey, what's with you today, you
can't be serious, this is all some joke right?” I laughed.
I thought everyone else would start
laughing too, but their faces were dead serious. Even Nina was looking at me in
fear. When I attempted to make eye contact, her gaze fell to the floor, and she
quickly shuffled behind Akito like he was a human shield.
First Akito and
now Itsuki as well, what was up with today?
“Hey guys? What's up
with you all today, you're all acting weird?”
The old guy with the
beard coughed, and nodded at Akito. Akito sighed and pulled out a piece of
paper from his pocket. “Let me explain Daisuke.” He closed his eyes in
concentration, began to chant a mantra, and the paper began to glow a brilliant
blue. “Daisuke you know what this is right?”
“It's a
location charm,” I said while remembering the day that Akito had used it to
find monsters on the mountain top.
“Then you
should remember that although the charm glows when in the presence of
exorcists, it begins to glow brighter once you get closer to an Obake, correct?”
“Yeah,” I
said. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“Look at
this charm Daisuke,” he said. “Now watch what it does when I come closer to
you,” he said as he slowly walked towards me. The charm was already bright, but
it began to glow more intensely with every step, until Akito deposited it into
my hand. My hands began to shake as I stared at the paper which was glowing
brighter than I'd ever seen before.
This had to
be some sort of sick joke, there was no way that it could be true.
“Do you
understand now Matsumoto?” Said Itsuki with a twisted grin as the other
exorcists held him back. “You're not human like the rest of us, you're an Obake.”
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