Associated by Force

We're here in this room. Me and you. Like we've always been, forced, tangled, completely ensnared. I never wanted to be here, didn't want to feel your grasping hands around my neck each time I took a breath to have it cut off. I can sense you everywhere, your eyes as they follow me, dancing around the room in order to track me. You know where I am, you always have known and will know. There's no sense of security there just this suffocating feeling that I can't shake off, no matter how much I tremble under your presence.

I know you like my fear, that you feed off it like the devil you are, chilling laughter that rings through my ears hard enough to make them bleed. Like you make the rest of me bleed. It won't ever be enough. The red red red liquid of blood that splatters across the wall and on the floor, it doesn't matter to you who it is or where it is. All you care about is for that twisted view that you tend to hold. One last breath, one last look of panic before the distorted words and breaths die out and you're all alone again. Alone with your insanity in which you drag me with you.

It scares me, it unsettles me.

Yet you live on it.

All of rattling breaths and whimpers as words where my body just gives way to your powerful voice and ominous presence. I never wanted to die. I never disobeyed you out of fear you might kill me. Jam that knife into my chest and rip it apart like you have done with all the others, with my body. The morning after is the worst when that horrible smell infiltrates my nostrils and I take an hour to shower to watch the red go down the drain.

It hurts. Yet I live.

Because I'm afraid you'd kill me.

Shivering, quivering, trembling, there are only so few words to describe how my body responds when I feel you oh so clearly. I know your thoughts and yet I don't. You keep the ones hidden that you don't want me to know about and yet share with me the gruesome details of your last kill. You need me to know what you did in order for me to break, crack under the pressure and give into you. Lull myself to sleep under your complete and utter control, submissive as I can't go on anymore. You're the only person who holds the key to my sanity.

You're the insane one. Yet why I do feel myself driven more and more to the edge?

Click, shoot, burn.

Yet I don't want to die.

Erase. Delete. I wish I could do that to your existence. I wish I could think as dark as you could only so I could at least counter most of the things you throw at me. But it doesn't work that way anymore, you're there in me. I can't get rid of you, the possibility of getting rid of you is so rare that I'd rather not break my 'pretty little head over it' like you said. My voice is not my voice, my feet that drag me forward are not my feet and the hand that grabs a knife and throttles the living, is not my hand anymore.

My eyes are the only parts that still shine so obviously in my features. It's a cry for help that's written in them yet no one seems to understand the words.

Not Yuugi.

Not Marik.

Not anyone.

It's me and you.

We're associated through force. Neither of us wanted this. Or at least I'd like to believe that that is it. I try to ignore the gleam in your eyes as you grin at me, using my body for what it's worth. It's scary that you might care for all the wrong reasons because I know that you would never care for anything else. You lure them in, you lured them all in including me. Free will and free choice is nothing to me anymore. I can't remember parts of my life, I remember the insanity and the darkness that continues to swallow me whole.

It licks at my ankles and travels up until it grips at my beating heart. A beating heart that thrashes wildly against the cage of my ribs, trying desperately to escape whatever is holding it captive. Soon I am engulfed and I can hear is your chilling laughter again.  

Alluring.

There is a sense of foreboding in danger.

But I never wanted this! I never asked for you!

Pain. So much pain.

I keel over, I cough, I beg. The silence is even worse than your laughter because I know that it equals concentration. You prey on people around you – but I know that I'm your prey too. This is why I'm so afraid. I'm selfish and desperate but I don't want to die Bakura. If you show interest in me that means I'm important enough to get killed. I never know what might be the wrong answer. Never know when I can cave in or be defiant because never, never will it be sure if it saves or ends my life.

You start to get bored Bakura. Why? Why would you do that? You've had everything, you had your fun. Let me out, let me live my life. If you don't want it anymore I will. You tear me apart, the darkness that you threw me in starts to make me feel numb. At every sound I jump, at every touch I scream. I don't know what reality is anymore. Please just let me out. Don't look at me like that. I fear the blank more than I fear the known. I know I amuse you, but when your face looks so void, I have no security. I don't know what that face means.

Tell me.

Please just tell me.

"Time to go Ryou."

No! I can hear myself scream it so loudly but yet no words pass my lips. What are you doing, where are you taking me?! I panic as I see my old room, realizing that I am in control now. How much has it been? Hours, days, months? I can't remember and I don't want to remember. My empty room stares at me, surprisingly clean for the things that happened here. I remember those all too well, the nausea that builds up in my stomach reminds me of it. I hurl before I know it, bending next to my small trashcan in the middle of the room.

Why it is there?

Doesn't matter, it won't matter.

Get out while you can.

The stench of my own vomit brings me to my senses and I shake oh so gingerly. I should be screaming, crying, tearing at my hair and shake so violently the floor would vibrate and yet I can't. There is no calm, only turmoil. As my eyes dart around the room I don't notice your presence. I can't trust this. The unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach grows into a blind panic. I've never been in control with you there so strongly. This is a game you play, just another one of your sick twisted games. Make me believe that I once more hold power.

An anguished sob wretches itself from my mouth, lost forever in the quiet of my own house.

It's another game, another trick. Like the ones you've played on me all those months I lived in the darkness. The light now is surreal and I can't make myself believe that I'm actually here, that this is my actual room and – God I need to get out of here.

I shakily stand up, find my eyes darting from right to left and back before I dare to go downstairs to the kitchen. For once I don't argue with the mess that's been left on the kitchen table. For once I don't care as I run to the fridge and grab a carton of milk to drink of it.

Somehow, I know I'm not going to last.

But I don't want to die.

I let the carton drop as soon as I'm finished as the real hysteria starts to kick in now. My body spasms and kicks with everything it has and as I lay down on the floor, trembling, fearing, my energy drains so bad. Is he doing this to me? Am I doing this to me? The latter scares me so much more than the first does, if it's me then has he broken me completely? I thought I had control over me, have I lost that small part of myself too? I feel like vomiting again but there's nothing in my stomach that can produce it. The milk hasn't even reached my poor assaulted stomach yet.

I'm stripped naked, flayed until my pink flesh has replaced the white. Stripped of everything.

There is nothing left. Nothing left but death.

Another strangled cry manages to make itself known, more audible this time. I cry harder as I realize I am wearing clothes and that everything was just but a dream, another hallucination. Was it my mental state I imagined? Am I losing my mind? Please, I need my mind, I need to have it in order to move on. Bakura is the insane one.

Not me.

Never me.

Deep breaths.  Deep breaths.

But what if I don't have my mind. That would mean there is no Bakura. Is this the reason why I can't sense him? The reason why he is gone? Maybe because my mind has finally cracked there is no Bakura to reside in it.

Joy overcomes me. I leap up from the floor and bang my head against the fridge, laughing as hard as I can, tears streaming down my face. He's gone, he's gone now! He wanted me to crack but he disappeared with it. I forget words that he said, forget expressions that he made at me. Everything that set off that alarming feeling in the back of my head are forgotten for this temporary bliss that I cannot deny myself. Not after all of this.

Chairs are thrown, tables are messed up, I just run and run around the house like I'm five years old again and Amane is running around. My mom smiling at me.

My dad still being there.

Yet I'm alone. Alone as I have always been, alone with just one presence.

"Gotcha."

There's a blinding pain at my back as if something just ripped it open. I can't cope, I can't deal. I scream my throat raw as I fall down on hands and knees in the middle of my leap, crying tears that were neither happiness nor hysteria. It was blinding pain that consumed me. Desperately I tried to crawl away only to realize that this pain came from within as well. I had been a fool to think he was gone.

"Please.." my rattling voice finally manages to speak.

There is no room for please. Blood covers the ground in mild specks as I cough when I feel something squeeze my chest. I blacked out from the pain and as I came to I threw up all over the puddle of blood that was still there. The white of the previous milk mingles with the red crimson, giving it the strange odd pink colour that I had thought my flayed skin to be like.

I can't breathe. Nails tear at my heart, picking pieces and all I can do is scream so loud until I hear worried voices from outside and knocks on my wooden door. It doesn't help. More blood covers the ground as I uselessly try to stay alive by crawling away. And I hear the laughter again as an iron fist squeezes at my beating heart. Literally squeezing the life out of me. It comes up, beats less wildly, feels like I'm about to cough it up.

I hack up blood again.

Will my heart join it next time?

"Please…" my voice gets gradually weaker as I scramble forward, my hands getting stained with my own blood. Blood that had been innocent once.

Blood that had not been corrupted.

It's my mind that has betrayed me.

"You're going to die Ryou."

I cry at that moment. I never wanted to die. My worst fear has become reality and for what? Why would he kill me? I had done everything he asked for, I obeyed his every order, let him do what he wanted … Why did he do this. Big fat tears land on the floor but I barely notice them, just but taste the salt that accompanies the one I taste on my chapped lips.

The pain isn't going away. It just gets worse every second it lasts.

"Pray for death little Ryou."

Never does he give me a reason. He only laughs and laughs as his voice grates my nerves and scares me. I have no voice left, all that's coming out are rattling breathes and coughs. I am at my end. I pray for the merciful lord to please take my mangled soul. I pray for salvation that my sister and mother got, that I prayed to in Heaven.

Please forgive me.

I never wanted to be like him.

We were forced together.

Associated by force.

Only one sentence reaches my ears before I the door bursts open and everything turns to the black void I've been living in ever since I met him.

"Blood makes a pretty colour doesn't it?"