Read I am Life, I am Death :: 4 Weeks and 5 Days

Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, the cycle repeated. The windows went back to normal, Amy’s glasses back in the spot Kami found them. Everything the same. Except the feather, the paper, the shoe ink, and the owl. Every day, they continued to starve. They were sick of potato chips. That was the only thing they had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Half a bag of chips. Paprika flavoured. It was Amy’s least favourite flavour.

Pasting back and forth periodically through the day, Kami, figuring how to escape this time lapse. After pasting, he repeatedly jumped up and down about 15 feet in the air. He done this in a sitting position with one leg across the other jumping on just one foot. “Ok, so the only things we have now are: Half a bag of chips, the owl, and my jumping. Oh! The paper! I forgot. Amy let me see that one paper.” He kept jumping, stopped grabbed the paper and jumped again. “It says ‘how well do you trust those, who keep a secret just like you.’ It’s plural which means first off, it is a group of people if this is even a clue. Now that man that is our only known food source.”

“How do you even have enough energy to still jump? You gave me those disgusting chips the last 3 days.”

“I’d rather stay quiet on that part. Anyways, so have you noticed any difference on our food deliverer?”

“Actually I have.” Kami immediately stopped jumping. “Tell me!” “Not unless you can tell me why you are not starving.”

“Tell me dammit!”

“No!” Amy turned around and started to run.

For a while Kami didn’t go after her. Rather he watched from afar. In short. I took Amy’s only power left and gave it to Kami. He didn’t like the idea, but it was useless.

After she was far out of normal human sight. Kami sprint jumped across all the buildings and finally stopped. Looking down on her, she was in a corner crying. He could hear a faint voice coming from her, “This can’t be. I ran off because he was too~~Am I scared of him. I think~~him. Yes~~scary.”

Kami created a hypothesis thinking that what she said was ‘This can’t be. I ran off because he was too scary. Am I scared of him? I think I am scared of him. Yes he is very scary.’

Kami stepped off the ledge of the 40 ft. building behind Amy. The landing made a loud echoing sound. She got scared and passed out on the spot. He picked Amy up jumping back to their corner. On the way Kami heard the same words with a discrepancy from his hypothesis first hand, “This can’t be. I ran off because, he was, too, close. Am I. Scared of him? I think, I love him. No, that thought is too scary. I couldn’t, tell, him. that chips, one girl, two guys, dead. Remind me of-” She stopped and Kami arrived, setting her down.

Later the food came and this time it was a girl. Amy wasn’t wrong. Dead. That is all you could describe her as. Didn’t have a face but hair.

This time instead of throwing the chips and running. She looked at him in the eyes, placed the bag of chips. And ran off.

Kami felt a water droplet on his cheek. He tasted it. Tears?

Amy finally woke up, it was the middle of the night. Kami was asleep. “How did I get here? Does the Time lapse reset me too? Or did Kami carry me?” Her face turned as bright as a peach as the street light flickered. She looked at it and there on top of it sat the owl with a emblemed letter in its mouth. She went over to Kami to wake him up. But stopped. This could be her only time to kiss Kami. NO! She couldn’t do it. But she was in love. She had to. She sat on her knees next to him and pulled in closer. “He should be in rem mode by now, and it is just the forehead.” She closed her eyes and went for it. 3 inches, 2 inches, 1 inch! “Here it comes!” . . . Nothing?

“What do you think you are doing?”

His eyes, no longer a soft gold, but a flaming red. Burning with fury. “Do you really think, that I would lower my guard around you?”

Amy’s jaw lowered shaking side to side. No words came out of her mouth. “I-I w-w ow-ow tt ll.”

“I-I w-w ow-ow tt ll? Why don’t you speak one of the four languages I actually understand?”

“O-ow-owl…” She said slowly turning towards th direction of the lamp post.

“Owl?” Kami went behind a building for a minute and came back out with his normal golden eyes. “Y-your eyes-s?”

Kami ignored the question completely and went towards the owl and pulled the letter out of its mouth. It had the Origami seal on it.

Properly opening the fine paper it read.

Dear Origami,

I am greatly sorry to tell you by owl mail? that the Origami family doesn’t exist more.

A newly hired servant was an assassin murdered all of your bloodline.

They stole most of the money as well. Your father, he left you this.

It is a photo, and a stamp.

There was no reaction from Kami when he heard the news. Rather to find no stamp. He went back to the owl. It coughed, it choked up the stamp with some rat hair and bones.

“At Least you got the stamp.” Amy said trying her hardest to throughout a smile. In return she got a cold hard stare with no reply.

He rinsed the stamp with water from a nearby busted pipe. It was his father's stamp alright. He kept it close not letting Amy observe it.

He managed to steal a pair of jeans for himself just for the use of pockets and put the stamp inside.

Kami collected various stuff that wasn’t affected by the time lapse. Amy went to sleep and Kami, now 10 feet away from her, was looking at all the stuff he had. A sundial, a stamp, jeans, the paper, the note, the owl still perched on the lamppost, some tall buildings, and the people, now delivering half a bag of chips.

The sun rose, he sits upon a taller building where he tended to keep most of his stuff.

8 in the morning. The bag of chips guys should have come by now.

A plastic bag flown across the building as Kami caught it on the edge. Yet another note, but not 1, 2 notes were in the bag. Kami pulled them out and the owl then flew away. “That owl, there is something with it that gives me an uneasy feeling,” he said out loud now mumbling the words on the first paper. ‘Don’t become to reliant with nothing in return.’ “Donl’t become too reliant with nothing in return?” He pulled out the other note, but it was moving it was like a live receipt. Written on it, it says 4 weeks, 5 days. The same amount as the time they were there. “Ok, then.” The next paper was a receipt.

$25

Paprika Chips -.79

Total 23.70

“What?” His voice scaring himself as it were a different tone, he quickly got over simple scares like an occasional hoot or someone dropping something. While Amy got worse. She spent most of the day crying over nothing Kami writing down ways to escape, earn money, and build a living again and using the small remainder yo restart the Origami family.

When he was bored. He looked for long curved sticks to turn into a katana for emergency uses. Other times he would bounce up and down passing the time.

“I could easily escape, but I need to think of something that would come without consequences. I could take the bag of chips and run, that might work. Or, hmm… yes that could actually work. I think these might be out last bags. Let's do it.”

He waited, and waited, and waited on the roof of a nearby building. The person finally gave the chips in the usual location and ran. Kami chased after it over the buildings watching them from afar like before. They stopped at a building. They put in the pin code opening them into a door with a sign above Holly Hoots. XXXX Kami put into the pin a few minutes after them. It seemed like an abandoned shoe store. Glass on the floor, register ripped out. Open shoe boxes everywhere.

He walked to the back where there was a halfway broken sign ‘Employees Only’.

Going through as quiet as possible, he felt an ominous change in air temperature following right after he saw a light not so large in the distance. It led to a mortuary instead of the back. “Moors, why do I recognize this area?” Moors was the name written of the inside store. It looked normal and again he went out back. An obnoxious odor flooded his nose falling to a sudden collapse which he regain consciousness very soon after. A cool air surrounded by a dark unwelcoming room was were he awoke on a cold hard bed. He jumped off the bed with his feed touching the freezing floor. He was changed in a pillowcase with holes for arms and head. A steel door with a recognizable rip through it was ahead. “Why does this seem so familiar?”

There was a long hallway with a man at its end. First few weeks on the job. Dicer, Dicer was his name. “Why is this so familiar?”

He continued to walk then he paused. “Dicer…?” Kami reached his hand out towards him as he jolted back.

“T-t-this can't be! Y-your back? Again!?”

“Again?...” Kami fell again the shock of this return was too much for his mind to handle.

He woke up yet again. “How long was I out?” He said running his head expecting someone to reply.

“So you managed to escape.” Looking around all he saw was the owl. He stared at it. It hooted. But sat down on nothing, but in the same position as on the lamppost. “I have been waiting, here, and here only. You were out for 4 weeks and 5 days.”