Refractions on a knife-blade

After that shadow trailing ribbons of darkness across our vision passed between us, my eyes followed that silvery glint, while Sorrow looked at me with a questionable expression.
Of course, he was only holding that blade in one hand, so Sorrow was unable to see the same piece of information I had.
I don't think anybody is skilled enough to infer something like that from a simple expression, either, but Sorrow at least caught almost immediately that something was off.
"Hey, what's with that smell? Didn't I spray you with perfume earlier?"
It was true.
To get back at me for either dragging her away or embarrassing her or both, she had pulled open the clear plastic from some branded perfume and sprayed me directly in the face with it.
That soggy film of vividly punctuating strawberry still felt like it was sticking against my neck.
"What exactly do you smell?"
"Something pretty disgusting. Now that I think about it, there's no way it's coming from you. You were so intent on stopping me from taking a chunk out of that woman earlier, I doubt you would do the same afterwards. Just because you're hopeless it doesn't mean you're a hypocrite".
With such an ominous comment, she sat herself upright and began to fiddle with her dress that covered her in a thick skin of creamy white, then glanced at me under the eaves of her long lashes.
What was important was not to panic.
That is, if I cause a scene here, no, if I even let on that I'm aware of some kind of aberration in my senses, then things are going to get much more difficult and probably violent.
But what could possibly have been on his knife blade to cause this girl's nose to shudder at some kind of monstrous smell of flesh.
No, what I should be thinking is, where had that blood come from?
Had he already caused some kind of tragedy before waltzing past us?
There didn't seem to be any noise or distress from the passengers up ahead, only the occasional laugh of a high-schooler and never-ending chatter of the middle-aged women in a flock of five up the front, behind Char's looming curls of almond.
So, did that mean that it was done so silently and skilfully that nobody had noticed yet?
That probably wasn't possible.
Not because I doubted anything or anyone could be skilled enough, but because besides the bizarre existence of this empty row that Sorrow had sat himself in, every other seat was packed with passengers.
For somebody not to notice a slumped head, a patch of scarlet, a blade's glint, there would have to be some real lack of awareness of surroundings on the passenger's part.
Then again, if it was a something rather than someone, I couldn't rule out that they were somehow able to carry out something so violent in complete secrecy.
For a moment, Char's large almond curls wiggled, then she dipped her head down like she was a whale getting ready to submerge to crushing depths, and reappeared seconds later.
However, this time, she had some paper in her hand with a series of black lines scrawled across it.
Just how good did she think my eyesight was?
It was a considerable distance, almost one side of the carriage to another.
That is, I would have complained along those lines if I didn't have the blessing of a cursed vampire's vision.
The reason the human brain filters so much sensory information out, then expels whatever is left fairly quickly unless we pay attention to it, is because that much information would cause our brains to wobble and explode under the pressure.
Being able to make details out from such distances made me feel a little of what people were talking about when they considered the possibility of taking in every bit of sensory information.
Everything seemed incredibly detailed, and not just close-up, but far off bits of material had the same grooves and texture that they had when my nose was up to them.
I'm glad that it's more of a concentration, on-off kind of mental switch, rather than a constant.
After a few seconds, Char dipped down again, and her almond curls regained their position facing towards me, same as before.
I turned back towards the dark figure.
Whatever kind of clothes it was wearing seemed to meld into the shadows flowing off its torso, but it could just as easily have been skin or tentacles. 
Nothing was really out of the question when dealing with monsters.
Just then, something caught my eye.
Aside from the glare of the knife, something else had sparked my senses into attention.
Why was nobody else paying attention to this thing?
As it shuffled in a slow, steady pace down the walkway, its shadowy tendrils licked at the armrests and sometimes even flicked up at the arms or shoulders of those it passed, but none of them acted as if they had even been tickled by a fly.
Despite it's strange appearance, it could easily have been written off as some large kind of coat, and to be honest, a lot of the fashionable kinds of stores in the city seemed to be stocking the kinds of coats with pockets all over and layer on layer of fabric that twisted off and into itself.
But to the point of not even noticing somebody walking past their seat, without even a sideways glance or tilt of the head, I was certain that something else was going on.
Maybe my words rang truer than I thought, and it really was something with the ability to murder without drawing any kind of attention. 
Then, another bit of information streamed into my consciousness.
A tiny imprint on the high collar of that flowing coat, lined with stitches and resting below a backwards-worn necklace of faded metal, a tiny crimson jewel at its centre, with a series of clock hands surrounding it.
I turned away from that thing, and focused forwards on that smooth cream leather seat ahead of.
No, this was definitely something I didn't want to get involved in.
It was way out of our league.
More than that, it had absolutely nothing to do with us.
We would only be butting in.
Just then, Sorrow whispered something from across the walkway.
"We have to do something."
"Like hell we do."
But even as I said that, I knew I was spitting out refusals only because I was trying to motivate myself.
That is, it's the kind of thing you moan about while doing the chore anyway.
I won't leave it as some mystery to solve down the line, an ambiguous detail that's never really explained because the author is too lazy to come up with something on the spot - either that, or they're struggling to hook readers - but either way, it's only reasonable to go over the information right now, with this girl, to at least inch up our chances of survival a little.
"That smell you picked up on is from that... thing. We've started calling them Jabberwockies. Mostly, it's because it sounds all fancy and secretive, but the truth is their incomprehensible mysteriousness has prevented any kind of firm grasp on what exactly they are, so we've resorted to those kinds of mythical names."
That girl was nodding along like a junior who was ecstatically going with the plans of a senior, but I couldn't tell if any of it was really getting through to her.
"I guess, the reason I'm saying this at all, is because we need to be extremely careful around this thing. Not because it's especially dangerous, even though it is, but because it's fluidity means that it, as a being, is difficult to grasp on to. Honestly, it's a real pain having to do anything like executing these things, but Sorrow has some experience, so it's not all bad."
More like, aren't they kind of a cheap monster at this point?
A Yokai is too mainstream, a ghost is too western, and undead are, as hypocritical as this might sound, kind of boring.
So, we've come up with the new age monster.
The exact same thing as always, just with a sheen propelled forward by its new name.
Of course, there are certain key differences, and based on most people's criteria, there's probably quite a bit of space between a Jabberwocky and traditional Yokai, but for us who understand the machinations behind and guiding the both of them, there's a whole lot of glaring similarities.
"Which is all a long winded way of saying, we're basically going to have to deal with a monster, so look out for yourself and the people around you, please."