soul_campaign | [Video] - Stuck in a Jam-Jar [May 19?]

((OOC At the top just to preempt anyone possibly not having read the cut -- This post its full of spoilers and violent things that happened in the canon. I really can't warn enough ;-;))

[This video starts out in a dark, dark room and only the light of the night time does any decent for any sort of outline sitting at the window. It's clearly a man in a white shirt, the pants are too dark to make out any definitive colour past a shade of blue. He's made a small modification to be able to sit at the window and it's not clear what it is he's seated on, but his blankets are there and his pillows. He's drug his mattress and his table to the window.]

I had a nightmare for the fourth time since being here. Are they common? Wasn't it something I heard at one time that said talking about your nightmares would make them go away? Unfortunately there'll be graphic content, you should stray away if you have stomachs not suited to violence.

It made me sick, too.
[He means this in the double standard for those who know, for those who don't can assume what they will while they don't know he is sick in other ways. His finger comes to his lip and he nibbles at the skin on the side of it. It's a wonder he hasn't chewed clear through it for all the times he's done it.]

I tried so hard to wake up from it, a nightmare so real it could be life if not for the characteristic surreal settings that dreams tend to bring us. There was a tall cinder building in England, a gated fence surrounded it and its tower. All of us were children, nameless, faceless children in the crowds, given nothing more than what would be afforded an orphanage. Maybe that was what it was, in fact, an orphanage. What a strange dream to have.

That orphanage went on forever, large halls of oak and laminate as so the children's shoes dare not make a mark in the halls. Not make a mark at all in the life of the building. A young man I could only imagine the dream's reel to set as my friend sat down next to me in a large library lined with books -- so many books

[He's reaching down to the blankets, pulling them further around him and a pillow against the window to lean his head on.]

We were studying for something that felt more ominous than one single child should ever have to go through. The gaunt features on the face of the young man -- the only one with another face -- were a disturbing sight. Something I don't think I'll forget even if the nightmare goes away. He was so sad looking, worried looking and I could only watch as he withered away in front of me day by day in a montage. The building was eating its children, devouring their youth and forcing them to go day to day into their young graves.

I watched it happen to the one with a face. I watched the realization that he'd never be enough for the place tormenting children and I watched him step onto our study table. His feet were on the books, barely able to stand for all the time he'd spent in study, in preparation for something we were supposed to become, to uphold some how.

[A sigh and he draws his knees up, tucking blankets around them as he continues to speak. As he does, his eyes turn from the window and onto the wall in front of him, never to the mirror he knows he's speaking in to.]

A man I couldn't see stood in the background, a dark, dark scene change behind the boy standing on our books. He watched as I did, only my eyes were glued to the husk of a child barely touching his teens and the rope he put around his neck. He looked down at me and told me goodbye. Tears. They fell down his face and for what I couldn't tell, because he was scared? Because he was scared of failing? Because he was afraid of both and neither seemed more overwhelming than the other. He bid me goodbye and that he was sorry - how could a boy of that age be sorry? For what viable reason would a child feel sorrow of that divide while in a minds eye falling prey to his own decision -- or maybe one made for him.

I sat in my chair, glued to it, the figure looming in the background in a white light flooding the room and masking him. He saw it all and did nothing. Nor did the other figure who's shadow fell upon the feet I endured not to watch with no avail.

[After he's done talking, he looks legitimately distant, he is distant. The memory isn't as disturbing as it is strong, not like he'd tried to portray.]

I wonder now and hope that it isn't a memory. What sort of monster would demand that children give their youth? Surely none that justice wouldn't find a way to pull free from his grasp the little ones whom might have survived it. Or left. I distinctly remember taking a small object as I was deciding to leave the house who was sucking dry the life of children around me.

An odd dream.

[He looks over, taking up the mirror and the vacant look in his face is one he's always wearing by this point.]

But if you've listened this far, perhaps you'll know how to answer my question about nightmares with my thanks that you've helped me perhaps banish them into the cruel depths of human negativity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I said I wanted to make up for not helping when you first arrived.

And some memories aren't worth recovering. Better to make a new self and lose the old, if you can, and build new memories that are worth keeping.

Losing your past loses yourself. You may as well take off your own limbs that offended you for things you've long forgiven yourself for. Would you pluck out your eyes for seeing offensive things or would you look them over, acknowledge them as offensive and move forward from it?

[[a bit of a pause]]

I've made myself forget things I didn't want to remember and refused to see things that I didn't want to. It was easier than dealing with something I couldn't.

[[another small pause]]

Sometimes I wish I would have been able to have forgotten other things so that I could move forward. It's the things I can't get past that keep ruining the present.

Then you've no one to blame but yourself.

Try writing down what you dislike and burn it. Fire will cleanse you.

I know.

[[a slight pause]]

I don't know if it would, with this. Have you tried it before?

[Very nice try, Bakura. Very nice indeed. But Beyond's not falling for it just yet.]

How would I know for certain? Does fire not take to ash whatever it sets alight?

So you wouldn't remember if you had done it, would you? Sorry.

I wonder if that might be what happened... Especially if you come from a world with magic in it, something like that going out of control could do that sort of damage.

How could I?

I don't know. I wish I could tell you and then maybe I'd know the boy. The place. Those men.

Could you tell how young he was?

Approximately thirteen.

Maybe it was for entrance exams? Or something like it. I don't know what the English school system is like for things like that. But back home I think everyone knows of someone who cracked because of those exams...

I don't know.
It's a fair guess.

It'd make sense if it was. Everything seems so much worse when you're under that sort of pressure. And if you can't remember who you were, a nightmare related to a situation like that makes a lot of sense, really, since the pressure to know everything can make you feel like you don't know anything. So it could just be that.

You're trying to say then, that it's related to my current ordeal? That's a relief. I'd be horrified to learn it was reality.

Yeah. Even if it was something real, it might not be like you remembered it. A lot of things like that, it's something small that's real, and the rest is your worries. Or at least that's how it is with me. Though my dreams are never that coherent!

And if I believe it's a memory, or a mix of memories, should I then assume I'm dangerous?

Why would that make you think that you're dangerous...?

If the memory is correct in assumption to the dream, I let the young teen die. Unless I, too, was helpless.

It could have been symbolic. Like you felt as if you had let him die, because you didn't know to stop him? Or even how to...

Dead people come here, do they not?

They do. Even spirits of people long dead in their own world. Someone I've talked with a few times was a ghost for...aaaa how long was it... Long enough that she'd been watching over her world like a guardian for ages!

Then I'll wait to see if this Dead Boy shows up accusing me of killing him.

A ghost guardian. Why didn't she cross over?

I didn't ask her, but I think there was something she wanted to watch over. Unfinished business.

I think that's the way with most spirits like that.

Is there a reason we've moved on to spirits?

You asked about the dead...

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