Yume Nikki Chapter 6

A... Are you all right?

The traffic light fell from quite high, and hit you directly on the head. Normally, you'd be dead. But you're dreaming. Since it's a dream, it's all right. There's no problem. As if to ascertain that, you're completely calm. What fell on you was a crosswalk traffic light. The red and green lights, meaning "Stop" and "Continue", vertically arranged... quite a common sight.

The moment the traffic light crashed on you, it mysteriously grew and swelled... and now hides most of your body. As a full body costume would. Your feet sticked out of the bottom. Your shape is that of a mysterious creature, a living traffic light that runs around unsteadily. You seem amused by the possibility of, by some unknown means, being able to change the lights from green to red and back, and are having fun in doing so. Just like a little child playing with a new toy.

There's no way you can see anything with that, but without any kind of hesitation, while still switching the "advance" and "stop" lights on and off, you start to walk away from the dead body. Without any other expression other than "Yes" or "No". Just like a baby. The image of pure innocence. And with that traffic light covering your whole body, you keep walking ahead with those short steps. You really are unable to see anything ahead of you. You just walked over the side street you were walking alongside up until now. You walk in a sort of confident way... that of someone that can't see ahead, and therefore, can't see anything to fear. But that's dangerous.

Just in front of you, at your feet, opens a manhole. A wide open pit. It's no good. If you keep going that way, you'll fall. But since you can't see anything, you don't have any sense of danger, and there's no one close to warn you. But even more, just under your tottering steps, a red, snake like thing is coiled around. It comes out from the manhole, like a plant or some kind of thread. With an unnatural movement, that thing entangles your feet, makes you lose your balance, and you fall.

And just like that... you're going down into the manhole. Further below. Deeper. To even a more farther place. But suddenly reach the bottom.

Luckily, it seems it wasn't such a deep hole. Certainly, not more than falling from a jungle gym. But that was enough to make a crack in the traffic light, and that crack rapidly spreads. From its depths, your face shows a shocked expression.

It seems like the traffic light absorbed most of the impact, and you are completely unharmed. Without even a feeling of pain, you stand up almost immediately. Looking at the fragments of the street light, you shake the dirt of your skirt with your hands. With your recovered sight, you can see the fragments of the street light disappear, just like the fragments of a fleeting dream (what an allegory).

Then you raise your head... and what a sight.

A gigantic face is looking down upon you. In some way, it resembled an octopus, with an obscene shape evoking the image of something fishy. What entangled your feet before was a thread sharing the color of blood and the bright red color of the face. A giant smeared in blood. And with those eerie red threads still hanging in the air, it followed you with its vulgar sight.

Your unarranged skirt exposing your thighs, your swelling b.r.e.a.s.t.s... As if you finally noticed its eyesight on those, you start covering your body with your hands. But those red threads around you keep wriggling, as if they desired you. A huge, red hand begins to approach you. Slowly, as if it wanted take away your very soul. In complete denial, you shake your head and run away. But, as if it wanted to ascertain your scape was certain, the red thread begins to crawl in front of your very eyes. While you hesitate a little, you grab one of the ends of the thread. And, twisting in an unpleasant way, it begins to ascend. Unable to control it, doing unseemly things. Or so it seems, but while trying to bear with this incredibly unpleasant feeling, you cling to it.

You climb the red thread. Your chest, your thighs, your nape,... the red thread coils around you in a lascivious way. At the top you can see a hole, and the thread seems to be tied to something at the other side. It's really small, almost like hope itself, a way out of this h.e.l.lish scenery. Thinking about that to aid you, and with no other option but to resign, you keep your way up the blood thread. Like the sinner clinging to the spider thread over h.e.l.l. But what... just what could be that sin you've committed?

Your figure, trying to reach the light, reminds of courage itself, of someone that wants to live, someone that wants to be happy. The proof to the G.o.ds that you haven't given up yet. Completely out of breath, and with only the strength of your thin, girly arms to support you during this climb, you finally reach the summit. Your head comes out of the hole, and then, supporting you with both hands, you get your body out of there.

You put your hand over your chest for a while, like someone that just ate something unpleasant and was about to throw out. And then you see the landscape around you has changed once again.

When thinking of the sea of trees or the highway, they looked like places you could have found in the real world. But this place was different. As if you'd entered a different dimension, as if you had reached bizarre s.p.a.ce. As if a small kid had scribbled with a pencil over a pure white paper, letting his hand be driven by pure instinct. That's the kind of s.p.a.ce this was. A mostly white, vast extension, and every here and there, a few, slim lines would draw strange and unfamiliar shapes.

One of those looked like the head of a male adult.

The place where the red thread was curling up until now has become a completely flat surface... That head is actually looking at you with urge. With bloodshot eyes. Now it's raining, so as if that was the reason, you open your umbrella and cover yourself with it. You cover your whole self. Trying to at least protect yourself from those glaring eyes.

Just like that, avoiding the gaze of the head, you surround it... and find an entrance, that you enter quite cautiously. As if you didn't want to stay in this place any longer. Going around the head gave you an unpleasant feeling, but there was no other entrance or exit. There was no other choice.

You strengthen your grip around the umbrella's handle and go to even further depths.