BEyond Boring

The birds on a tree branch sing in their nest, one feeding the small baby chicks a worm while the other fixes a twig in the structure of the nest before flying away past a window. The window, just like the apartment complex it belonged to, was dirty and dingy.

Cracks lined the corners and cervices of said complex and down below two strangers argued over something completely meaningless but to them, it was the world, their pride. Pride no longer existed for one man as all that exists to him...is monotony.

the bed creaks as the mass under the blankets shift only to stiffen once the loud blaring of the alarm clock screeches out

Yumo with a groan - ‘’this sucks...’’

he slaps down onto the alarm clock then his hand sloppily slips off the plastic casing, dangling off the bed, causing the ear-piercing sound to finally stop.

Yumo sits up from the bed quietly, his black messy hair with tinges of his purple ghost roots peeking through in the light that squeezes its tiny form through the cracked pane of the glass.

He stretches his slim arms above his head, his joints cracking with the strain of the movement, his body dreading the thought of moving more.

Finally, his blank mind urged him to stand and get on with his day. His feet gently pad on the rough carpet that has some questionable stains in the corners and in certain patches, their origin unknown and better left that way.

He reaches the bathroom which is the same room as his kitchen and bedroom, the size of the room disallowing the privilege of a living room.

The brush scratches against his teeth his down turned, eye bag ridden purple eyes staring into his reflection bleakly, his surroundings merging into each other and leaving his own haunting reflection clear to him.

the tap continues running and the sound fills his whole being as he stares down at the running water. His slow breathing fills his ears; the pouring water turns into static. He then cups his hands in the water and splashes his face, breaking the moment of hyperfocus on his thoughts as he strips down and turns on the shower, the water hissing...or more dribbling out of the outdated shower head.

After showering, eating breakfast that consisted of plain cereal and the last drop of milk and getting dressed into his work clothes: a light blue polo shirt with black jeans and brown working boots. He finally opens the curtains that do a terrible job at keeping the light out and squints slightly as his eyes are met with the harsh sun light.

His purple pupils dilate and adjust to the light only to be met with another line of dirty walls and windows of the apartment complex. Yumo stares again before turning around and heading towards the front door of his apartment with light steps, his posture naturally slouched and his hands resting in his pockets.

Yumo stops by the front door, his one hand having left his pocket to grab onto the door handle. He turns his head to look at a large guitar case leaning next to his bed, a black baseball cap with a baseball team logo on the front of it sat on the top of the case.

He takes his hand off the door handle and walks over to the case, grabbing the baseball cap and putting it on his head slowly.

Yumo barely above a murmur - ‘’See you later’’

He says to the guitar case before turning around and finally exiting his apartment.

As he walks, the familiar yelling of his neighbours ring out through their rooms. He looks down from the balcony and sees a group of junkies injecting something into their arms.

He stares for a moment before turning around and continuing his journey through the barely renovated walls.

Yumo, after 20 minutes of walking reaches his destination...his prison. Yumo works at a local warehouse that is responsible for most of the goods and orders that flow through this area.

Yumo yawns and looks up at the same time, his one eye closed as if half of him wants to completely reject this place. More accurately his whole being wants to leave this place, but he needs to live somehow...right?

Yumo steps through the automatic doors that slide open as he steps onto the pressure sensor hidden by black carpet. He is met with the receptionist, a blonde-haired girl named Sakura with a bright smile on her glasses framed face.

Sakura looking up and smiling at Yumo - ‘’Hey Yumo, how are you!’’

She says in her obnoxiously cheery tone despite the dreary atmosphere of these white walls of the reception area, the only sound being the buzzing of the fan in the corner of the room.

Yumo muttering - ‘’Good, I guess’’

He then walks up to the desk and grabs a pen from her desk, writing down his name on a clip board that holds employee check in times and check out times.

Then as he puts the pen down and sighs, an arm wraps around his shoulder and a voice cheers out...not this guy

? Obnoxiously cheery- ‘’YUMO my man!’’

Yumo’s eye twitches but he calms himself, urging away his words that would get him in trouble

Yumo in a quiet tone, hiding his annoyance - ‘’Kuzuma...’’

Yumo grumbles out before Kuzuma drags him into the main warehouse, large metal shelves standing tall with lines and lines of cardboard boxes stacked on them. Forklifts drive past slowly as Kuzuma continues, his arm remaining wrapped around Yumo’s shoulder

Kuzuma with a slight chuckle, still cheery - ‘’man, have we got a lot of stuff to do today, I mean...WOW I was seriously debating putting in my two weeks' notice right then and there’’

Yumo doesn’t laugh but instead thinks to himself

Yumo in his thoughts - ‘’it’d be better if you did...’’

A few hours later while Kuzuma, Yumo and two other workers are in a break room. Yumo has a warm cup of coffee in his hands and stares down at the brown steaming liquid, his eyes as bleak as ever.

Worker 2 in a calm but slightly hushed tone - ‘’you guys listen to the radio recently? Apparently, there's some crazy guy running around screaming through town’’

Worker 1 chimes in

Worker 1 with a suspicious and playful - ‘’ugh here you go again with those crappy rumours. It's probably some crack head who’s sniffed a bit too much’’

Kuzuma jabs worker 1 in the arm and looks offended

Kuzuma baring a frown on his usual smiley face - ‘’hey don’t be so cruel, even if it was someone like that there still someone who needs help. Right, Yumo?’’

Kazuma says with a smile as he looks down at Yumo who is the only one sat down on a chair .

He hadn’t listened to what he thinks is mindless drivel, his eyes half open as he stares down at the coffee, The steam spiralling from the bitter drink.

Yumo in his thoughts- ‘’If they need help or don’t need help, it doesn’t matter’’

Yumo stands up abruptly and pushes the door to the break room open, the door creaking as it closes behind him, kuzuma’s hand lifting slightly as if he wanted to stop him from leaving like that. He trudges through the long hallway that seems endless to him as he’s stuck in his coercive thoughts, his mind drowning in the memory of his parents' murder.

Yumo in his thoughts - ‘’their still in the wrong regardless...’’

After a few hours of being stuck in his imprisonment, Yumo slowly walks home while dragging his feet. He's tired...more than usual today. The sky looks grey though he doesn’t look up. His eyes stitched to the dull concrete of the pavement, his body feels hollow as if everything that made him human left long ago. his buzzes mind with static...he can’t even remember what he’d done in the past few hours, as if time had skipped to this moment.

His legs that feel like they belong to someone else stop dragging him along in front of an alley way. He squats down and stares at his hands as they shake slightly, as if his body senses something he can’t

Yumo in his thoughts- ‘’what's...going on?’’

and then...a sound from the alleyway

Tap...Tap...Tap

Then another

Scrape...Scrape...Scrape

Yumo stares into the darkness of alley way and stands up slowly, the shaking in his hands never pausing. The sounds there just...wrong. It's not as if there's a cat digging through the garbage, but there wet...and the scrapping sounds like sandpaper against flesh.

Yumo continues to stare, the ominous aura emitting from the alleyway thick, like spit at the back of your throat that refuses to go down with one swallow. Yet...there's something about it that lulls him closer like a siren singing through the ocean to lost sailors

The temptation gets the better of him and he steps into the dim lighting of the alleyway. His steps are slow but instead of emptiness filling his steps...it's a deep caution.

He turns a corner slowly and sees it...a silhouette...one that grows clearer as Yumo’s eyes adjust.

Its feet are planted solidly on the ground but every now and again drag an inch in a different direction. Its body is tilted at a 60-degree angle, its arms dangling as if all the bones and muscle inside have melted away. Then...its head as it uses it to lean against the wall.

It’s a person but...there not right. The way their moving and standing is like a man possessed

it slowly tilts its head back, looking as if it's about to fall over but somehow manages to stay up right. Then it looks at Yumo, its face finally in view. Its forehead is bleeding and torn, clearly the sounds from earlier was this man banging and scrapping his head against the hard and jagged brick wall.

Yumo with a rare hint of concern and fear - ‘’H-hey, are you...alright?’’

The man stares at him for a few seconds, the buzzing of flies in the garbage filling the tense moment. The air is tinged with a metallic scent then with full force...

CRACK!

the man rams his head full force into the wall again, a spurt of blood spraying onto the floor and by Yumo’s feet.

Yumo’s jaw begins to tremble, and his eyes remain wide. His face feels tight and his legs loose

Yumo with desperate thoughts- ‘’Move...this guy he’s...He’s...’’

Yumo’s breath catches as the man turns to him, a piece of flesh hanging off from his forehead and the bone exposed. The man’s arms hold him from the wall, his nails scrape against the brick wall leaving a trail of blood

Yumo thoughts full of fear and realisation - ‘’A Crazed!’’

An anchor user whose anchor has broken, forming them to become a mess of current and insanity

The man roars and starts sprinting at Yumo, his arms flailing around frantically like a leaf caught in the wind.

Yumo turns and begins running, his breathing coming out as sharp and frantic. As he tries to turn the corner, he slips and falls into some garbage bags.

The man lunges for him like a wild beast, his hand crackling with yellow current. Yumo quickly rolls out of the way and as the crazed hand connects with the wall, it erupts into yellow energy that bursts like a violent gas explosion.

The explosion forces Yumo to roll further just from the hot air wave that is released, garbage bags torn apart and the brick walls rumbling from the force.

Yumo stands up quickly and begins running again, adrenaline throbs through his veins and desperation fills his entire being

The crazed growls again with pure blood lust in its movements as it charges from the smoke on all fours before tumbling over and rebounding to get back on its feet quickly to hunt its prey.

Yumo’s feet hammer against the floor as he runs for his life, his breath visible in the cold air that surrounds him

The crazed roars fill the air in tandem with Yumo’s quick pants, a symphony of rage and a new fear that Yumo believed he could never feel...

Yumo finds the familiar, better-of-destroyed complex building and dashes towards it. He's never thought that he’d be so happy to see this place

The crazed raises its hand while roaring and its hand glows a bright yellow

Yumo looks back and see’s just as the crazed swipes and a flurry of yellow explosions burst towards him.

Yumo tries to block his body but ends up getting flung back onto the metal staircase with a loud thud. Yumo grunts but forces his body to work through the shooting pain in his lower back.

Yumo practically leaps up each flight of stairs, reaching the third floor but...he feels it looming behind him

a cold grip painfully grabs his ankle and Yumo falls to the ground. Yumo turns to see the crazed having crawled up the metal stairs to grab his ankle.

Its blood shot eyes carve its intentions into Yumo’s being, causing Yumo’s body to move without him thinking

He stamps on the crazed’s face, causing its head to rock back and blood to splatter on the staircase but it doesn’t let go. Its blood covered head moves out the way of one stomp and bites down on Yumo’s ankle

Yumo screams and looks around for any answer to get this thing away from him.

His gaze falls on a broken glass bottle on the floor, his hand moving to wrap around it so tight that someone could believe that it's his lifeline.

Yumo brings it down onto the crazed face, making it release his ankle with a blood curdling roar. Yumo with this second chance at escape takes it with full stride as he runs off down the hallway of the apartment complex.

He barges open the door to his room and presses his entire body weight into the door. His eyes shut tight as if trying to wish away the Crazed.

Yumo with blood dribbling from his mouth, tone full of panic - ‘’I have to run...I have to keep running’’

He turns from the door but the bite on his ankle catches up to him, causing him to fall onto the floor with a grunt. The delay of the pain feeling more like an intentional prank played by his own body.

He crawls on the dirty floor, the sounds of the growling crazed getting closer to his door

Yumo thinks to himself - ‘’this is finally it...’’

Yumo grabs the guitar case that rested next to his bed, the case toppling over and opening from the force to reveal a lumberjack axe that was all that was left of his father. The axe blade dull but filling Yumo with new hope.

Yumo with forced determination in his voice - ‘’they would want me to live...’’

images of his parent's face before the murder fill his mind, their smiles and reassuring words that meant so much to him...how could he have forgotten that?

Yumo uses the axe to stand up, leaning on the base of its handle. He stares at the door and with a loud WHAM it comes flying off the hinges from a punch from the crazed.

the crazed silhouette slouched as growls loudly, its hands tense and its blood dripping from its fingers onto the dirty carpet.

Yumo’s heart hammers from a mixture of the intense fleeing and now...with anticipation. His resolve hardens, his life flashing-no-playing like a movie reel through his mind

Yumo lifts the axe and almost falls but remains on his feet, the crazeds neck cracking as its head tilts to the side quickly.

Yumo motions the crazed to come at him - ‘’come on...’’

The crazed seems to respond by crouching down slightly and getting prepared to release its pent-up aggression onto Yumo. However...something in Yumo shifts, a mysterious energy that not even he understands yet.

His hands let out a soft purple glow, the glow surrounding the lumberjack axe’s surface and pulses in rhythm with Yumo’s erratic heartbeat.

In a flash, the crazed roars and Yumo lets out a loud battle cry while lifting the axe up above his head and getting ready to smite this beast and send it crawling back to wherever it came from

Just as the hand of the crazed extends to punch at Yumo but then a loud boom fills the air around Yumo and the crazed topples on top of him.

Yumo closes his eyes, thinking the crazed got him until his eyes carefully open to see the lifeless body of the crazed with no head. Its body still twitching

? - ‘’and that's settled...’’

a calm voice speaks out from the splintered door of Yumo’s apartment. Yumo looks and sees a tall man with black slicked back hair, a cigarette in his mouth and two heterochromatic eyes, the left one a deep green and the right a black colour.

the man steps in, Yumo now able to study his frame better and sees the smoking chamber of a sniper rifle on his back. Clearly the cause of the crazed's head being splattered onto the wall behind Yumo’s toppled form.

The man squats down to Yumo’s level and takes a drag of his cigarette, taking it out of his mouth and holding it in between his pointer finger and middle finger

a smell of gun powder and smoke emits from the man before he speaks with an unnaturally calm and cool tone, the stare of the green eye so intense that yumo believes this man knows everything about him just from a look. A beat goes by before he speaks

? - ‘’you’re an anchor holder huh?’’