…the moon was gone and so was the moonlight dyed man!

Quickly she jumped to her feet and stumbled back.

She’d only closed her eyes for a second, not two, not three, it had only been a single solitary second! So why, why is it daylight?

Where had the night gone? Why was it suddenly so bright?!

She felt close to drowning in hysteria at the sudden shift that she was by no means prepared for let alone in the state of mind to handle.

She couldn’t stop herself from turning in circles like an inebriated fool, a drunk that just happened to stand up from a head ringing concussion.

Only heaven knew how disorienting she felt.

The nausea rushed to her throat but came out in dry heaves. The illusion of the ground being made of pliable water, cursed her knees to buckle down repeatedly, and her hands to helplessly reach to catch her fall.

Why…why did she not feel the passage of time? Why did the laws of nature, pure common sense just up and vanish without reason?!

The angry sun hung glaringly overhead, roasting her black hair, steaming morning’s dew into a thick mist that hung at ground level. The sight reminded her of the fog unwilling to subside in her mind, feeling as if it had escaped and entered reality.

Memories lay beyond that fog. 

Nothing of note indicated that this conjecture was true, other than the yearning tugging away at her heart, beckoning her forward, begging her to step into the unknown like a siren urging the unsuspecting sailor to drown, whispering to her that this was fact, an undeniable truth.

Instinct…was this instinct leading her to remember?

But she can’t. The fog, like the mist hanging around her now, was much too daunting to overcome.

She’s afraid…too afraid of what might be inside her head. For some reason she knew nothing good was in there.

Blearily she looked at her surroundings, at anything to keep her away from the rising panic, focusing as best she could on the figure collapsed to his knees. 

Is he dead? He’s not moving. Did the moonlight haired man just leave him there after kil…killing him?

Even if he were no longer alive. Even if she were walking right up to a corpse, she felt that it would not bother her, perhaps she’d be startled at best, but nothing like the fear her unknown memories would grant her.

Why was that? Why did a corpse not scare yet her own mind did?

It made no sense.

“H-hey, haha, are you okay down there?” She stuttered out the heartfelt hope, half way joking to lighten her plummeting mood.

No response.

Is he really, really dead?

While falling to sit on her calves she noticed the tips of his hair moving back and forth. That indicated breath, right? If so she was relieved, but also confused.

Was that not a murder but an assault? If so, what happened after her eyes closed?

Her shoulders dropped, her head fell to the side, looking under that hair to see his face. 

When she got low enough a crisp pop shuttered through her, that relief that had just calmed her heart shattered into pieces.

A heart wrenching face drenched in tears and mucus sucker punched her in the gut, lifting her butt off her calves, and staggering her over herself to fall back.

The man’s head slowly lifted, his eyes as orange as the beautiful dawn looked right through her while he softly uttered.

『Master… you’re a liar.』

「Ugh…………!」

The volume had been raised once more, his voice that should have been calm roared inside her head like an explosion, draining her face of all its color, and forcing her to protectively cover her ears.

『Master… you’re a liar.』

He repeated, dead set on bursting her eardrums and mentally incapacitating her.

『Master… you’re a liar.』

Again!? Please…please just shut up!

A harsh crisp sound soon jolted her shoulders.

Suddenly her eyes burst open. 

Through the fog a scene sped by like a frate train at night covered in so many irritating lights.

A tight slap followed by the scream of a woman. 

A cruel man’s heinous laughter preluded the brutal torture her heart subconsciously knew would be soon to follow. 

She cowered, curling into a ball, feeling one too many burning sensation across her body. A gut wrenching stench of alcohol was poured on her back, the click of a lighter, and a crack of a whip.

Stop! Please make it stop!

The scene frayed, splotches of black covered in several places, faces torn to pieces, full pictures out right gone, with the exception of the hands, scar covered hands with square nails perfectly maintained, one flicking a light, the other holding a tiny spark glowing red.

As the light vanished it stopped, the pain had subsided, but only for herself.

For that wasn’t enough for the man as after the hours of pain ended, a hand forced her head up, forced her eyes open, to watch as the skin was torn on the woman who had screamed, to witness the same methods enacted on someone else.

But her heart could not bear to watch. 

This unknown woman held some type of importance to herself that she couldn’t quite place, but it was enough that watching this made her feel worse than when she herself was tortured moments ago.

A mysterious yearning begged for herself to be the only one hurt.

But the wish would remain unheard and her cowardice would chase her sight to the wall next to the bathroom door.

Right there in plain view, across the room that she could barely make out due the memory being so badly distorted, was a mirror…

…and in that mirror, a face drenched in tears, bruised, bleeding, drowning in heart wrenching emotions stared back at her.

A face quite like the one she’d seen not too long ago, except it was hers.

After the monster grew tired of his games, his dreadfully cold boots crunch closer, walking over shards of broken glass to get to her.

Soothing…for some reason she felt soothed by this, and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why.

A tremble worked its way through her, his soul crushing voice towered above, eating away the hope she clung to every day, the hope that today just may be a better day…when it never would be.

[Dasha, it's time to grow up.] He coldly instructed. With his cold steel toed boot he lifted her chin.

[Your soft personality has no place in this family. If you remain as such, as your father, I’m duty bound to discipline you.] His smirk taunted her through the thick cloud of smoke billowing off his cancer stick. 

His toe further bit into her neck as he asked. [Isn't that right, sweetie?]

'Right my ass!'

The amount of rage she felt towards this monster prevented her from coughing, from showing weakness, from giving anything to this man who’d given her nothing but pain and suffering.

The blood pooled behind her teeth, her tongue bitten right through in seething tolerance.

[Oh? That glare of yours is nice and murderous. Keep at it, and one day you’ll make me proud.]

She forced herself to calm down. It was alright, she mysteriously felt, she could take it. Yes, she could handle all of this.

She closed her stinging eyes tight at the phantom suffocation. 

The cancerous smoke still felt as if it were lingering in her lungs, reminding her all of that had clearly happened once upon a time, no matter how much she wished it hadn’t.

So her father is a monster, huh? No wonder she’s so afraid with a man like that in her life, a beast lurking in the darkness, or in her case, the fog in her mind.

「…………」

A tickle caressed her ear.

That siren was back, egging her on, urging her to explore her memories while the opportunity was ripe. 

It whispered, ‘that wasn’t it. This wasn’t what you should be remembering,’ There’s something else, something more important…but she was too scared, too frightened by what just happened to remember.

Why must she remember? What good would remembering do? 

She just felt that it was best if the siren would grow lungs and drown. That way it would shut its trap and leave her alone for good.

She jolted awake at how vicious she sounded, how merciless her train of thought was. 

Just one single memory had changed her so much, convincing her that she truly was better off not remembering a single damn thing.

You hateful siren! This is all your fault!

A sudden ache had her grabbing her hair and feeling as if the sky and ground had swapped places. 

It truly had, both the ground and sky were spinning, and for some reason, both were very far away from her, as if she were floating and not still sitting in the fetal position.

Like that her consciousness faded in and out, again and again. 

At times she was on the ground, at other’s she was in the air, she even caught herself feeling stuck in the ground despite not seeing a thing to indicate otherwise.

Days passed like this and neither herself nor the pomegranate haired man moved from this area.

Honestly these days felt terribly disorienting and she was surprised she even managed to stay sane, for the days felt as if someone had pressed the fast forward button on a movie, the sun and moon, the clouds up above, raced across the sky at record speed.

Almost like a video game when the player altered the time for days later.

And she may have been too woozy by it all, but oddly enough, through her nauseated mind, she noticed something quite strange.

So strange that a shiver crawled up her spine.