The Girl With Metal Claws

Deja Vu

ELLIOTT

She was bleeding right in front of his eyes. The blood from her nose trickled down to her lips when Elliott saw the smile. She was smiling and trembling.

For a moment, Elliott felt like holding her till she stopped shaking. She looked frail like her body would collapse anytime she let go. But then his conscience kicked some sense back to him. Only a fool would fall for her tricks, he said to himself, as he kept a watchful eye on Asami.

The expectant look on her face faded away when she saw Elliott not reciprocating. She turned back to face forward and shook her head. She held her arm closer to her nose and wiped the blood off herself.

"You want to know about my childhood?" She asked.

"Yes," he was persistent.

"Why don't you ask that woman?" Asami said. Elliott thought about that statement for a while and realised that he didn't have to go through it. If he just let Gabrielle hold the music box and work her way, she'd find most of it about Asami's origin anyway. But then something struck his mind.

"I want to hear it from you," Elliott said, decisively. He didn't want his efforts to go unused. All these secret meetings with Asami needed to be beneficial to him.

Suddenly, Asami looked at him and leaned towards him. Her face came closer to Elliott. They stared at each other for a few brief seconds. To seize the opportunity to not let her assert dominance over him, he didn't falter or abruptly push back. He put up a bold face, his fingertips digging into the stone railing.

"Would you join me if I tell you?" Asami said with a low voice, letting her eyes fall on his lips. He flinched, knowing he had given in.

"We... we'll see," he said. He backed away from her, not meeting her eyes. But the answer was no. He had never even thought about considering her offer once. Just then, Asami moved over and stood up on the edge of the railing. She had no fears, Elliott decided.

"If you're willing to let your guard down, I'll show you what you want to hear," Asami said, squinting her eyes at the faint sun.

"You'd show me?"

"You'll have to lose something in return," she said. Elliott frowned, knowing deep down that it'd go like that.

"I've already lost my sanity having to deal with you, what do you want now?"

"This box," Asami said immediately, pointing at the music box placed between them. He picked it up and looked back at her, "if you hand it over, you'll get what you want."

Elliott was not thinking of Gabrielle and George who had worked together to retrieve the box, he wasn't thinking of his team and their sacrifices for the mission, neither was he thinking of how suspicious he would look if the box went missing out of the blue.

He was looking ahead, the consequences never mattered.

"Done," he said.

She held out her hand towards him. He just kept staring at her frailness, appalled. He didn't realise he would witness such a day.

"What do you want me to do?" Elliott asked, avoiding her kindness.

"Hold my hand, Elliott," she spoke in a tone that made him forget the context of it all. He shrugged as he turned and placed his hand on hers. The grip of her fingers on the back of his hand tightened and she started pulling him up. Her hands felt gravelly and dry like sandpaper. But her touch was cold.

"On this?" Elliott asked, pointing to the railing and she nodded. Startled, Elliott struggled to let go of her hand and get away from her but her hold was too strong. "Let me go, you freak. I'm not dying alongside you."

"We'll jump off this terrace," she said, with a devilish grin.

"NO!"

"Get up," she said.

"No."

Asami glared at him and the colours faded from his face. A few broken bones were better than dying the way her victims did. But before he could follow her command, her hands left his hands and gripped Elliott's collar. Then, with immense force, she pulled him up as he stumbled upon the railing, upon his feet.

He gasped at the sight of how high up they were. It felt like a terrible decision because it wasn't the case for just broken bones anymore.

"In every story, there's an excluded one," Asami said as she dangled Elliott in the air, gripping his collar in front of her. He looked drained, scared, and humiliated but nothing made him revert. She smiled and then laughed at his helplessness. "This... is the excluded one's story."

With that, she let him go.

He started falling off her roof, his back facing the ground and his eyes dead set on the girl who had toyed with him. Everything seemed to slow down and he kept waiting to hit the ground. His eyes felt heavy, closing in on Asami's face. He struggled but failed to keep his eyes wide awake as he fell. The last thing he saw was the pitying look on her face and the darkening sky.

The darkness seemed to burst in and Elliott was misplaced. Suddenly, he felt like he wasn't falling anymore, he was travelling. He would see her world, but at what price? The trust of everyone he knew.

He found himself crouched down, hugging his knees. His head was buried in his arms as he opened his eyes in pitch-black darkness. But through a small keyhole opening, he could see light. He reached out, running his hand through what felt like a closet and got hold of the edge of the plank. He pulled on it till it slid to the side, opening.

The light that entered the closet he was locked inside wasn't enough to clear out the haze from his eyes. But once his eyes adjusted, he could see the room. The pungent odour made it hard to breathe. He slowly stepped out of the closet and stood up on his bare feet. He stared in front at the bed right before him.

On the bed, lay a disfigured body crumpled up in the sheets. The gory sight ran chills down Elliott's spine. He couldn't see the face but he could see her head with rough brown strands of hair protruding from behind her arms. But.. the girl wasn't dead yet as the hospital machines decided. She was alive. But Elliott couldn't decide if it was a good thing or worse.

Beside the bed, on a rocking chair, an elderly woman sat. Her eyes were closed but she was breathing heavily as her chest rose and fell. She was supposedly dozing off. Her appearance looked pale and bony, but her face was stern and hostile. Elliott frowned, not being able to read what he was seeing.

The room was a small individual hospital ward with faint beeps from the heart rate machine and the IV pole beside the patient's bed. The walls were grey and through the window, he could see the darker-than-ever sky. It felt like it always rained.

Elliott was taking steps back, towards the wooden door that said exit. As he pressed up against the door, his eyes planted on the dismembered girl, he heard the familiar scraping noise once again.

Since childhood, Elliott had been well aware of the fear of the nonexistent. The monsters in his closet, in his house's long corridors, in his inhibitions. His mother always used to warn him and hold him close.

His gaze shifted far down from the girl and the sleeping woman to fall under the bed. He saw a girl with white hair and blue clothes sprawled on the floor, her nails cutting into the floor. She looked smaller than she was but Elliott took no time to recognise her.

Elliott thought about the monsters under his bed and realised how lucky he was. At least those were just monsters, at least they were not her.

~

Elliott walked out of the exit door and found himself standing in the middle of the street. The dream wasn't over yet, Elliott understood. He stood, looking around as far as his eyes went as other eyes looked back at him. He didn't think anything of people staring back at him.

But as he started walking, he felt more and more eyes on him. In a minute, all the unknown faces stared at him with a peculiar expression but Elliott had no idea why. What were they seeing in him?

Suddenly, he could hear a soft chuckle from behind him. Then gradually, the laugh started sounding more brief and pointy. The laugh was directed at him. For him. The chuckle multiplied into snickers, hollers and mocking eyes till the whole crowd was engulfed in it.

Everyone was laughing. He was making everyone laugh out loud. They pointed fingers at him as he walked through them, scared.

"Make them laugh."

"Make them laugh."

"Make them laugh."

Her words kept spinning in her mind, churning his skull and cutting deep. He felt like he was shattering under the judgemental faces of those people who meant nothing to him. But Elliott wanted to know what he looked like.

He looked down at his hands. They were ash, skinny and stained black. He looked at his bare feet. He looked at his faint blue clothes. That's when he realised the hollow feeling in his heart. Elliott looked back up and started staring at his reflection on the glass frame of a shop.

Elliott froze. His chest heaved painfully. Because the reflection he was looking at wasn't of his at all. He had lost himself and taken shelter under the appearance of Asami. He looked like her. He was her.

In the dream she was showing him, he was her.

Suddenly, something hit his head with a thud. He felt the opening in his head and the blood rolling to his eyes, blurring his vision. He fell to the ground, his eyes still open. He could see the crowd crouching over him, watching him wounded, with wide smiles on their faces. They wanted him dead. They wanted her dead.

Elliott closed his eyes, ending the terrifying dream.