The Sleeping Dragon

OCTOBER 25TH, 2006

IBSEN HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO 

          Five days had passed since Heland and Zhou’s ritual.

When Zhou awoke, he followed a faint sizzling sound and the smell of bacon from downstairs and saw that Heland had already gotten up and was making breakfast. It was around 5AM - they had been knocked out for the duration of the night.

Disappointingly, they had both seen nothing at all during the ritual, and it was exactly as if they’d gone to sleep as usual.

Zhou returned a few minutes later with a mouthful of scrambled eggs, (double yolk, which Heland said was “lucky”, and “not the product of an evil hen, what’s wrong with you, Zhou Chen?”) assuming that Kiya would awake soon as well.

          To their horror, Kiya did not wake up for the rest of the day, and then the next, and so on.

They took turns watching over him in silence. The two were thinking the same thing, but neither one of them wanted to be the one to say it.

          This is our fault, isn’t it? is what they were thinking.

Zhou felt especially terrible. A pit had formed in his stomach and it would not go away. 

          On the first day, the two could not bring themselves to eat anything after breakfast, and in a panic they collected as much research as they could online. In a desperate attempt for any tidbit or anonymous clue that might save Kiya, Zhou made several posts to Mystforums on the topic, and discussed it a little with one of the users he’d been chatting with recently, a certain xX_Sleep2Dream_Xx. The research proved useless, however, and at the end of the day they were back exactly where they started.

          Zhou slept on the floor of Heland’s room where Kiya still lay - they were scared to move him, in case it was important that his body stay where it was for the soul to come back - and he did not return to their apartment. Neither of them attended classes, either.

          On the second day, Heland finally broke the silence.

“What happens if he doesn’t wake up?”
Zhou’s fingernails dug into his palms. “He will. I believe in him.” He was lying then, terrified out of his mind, but facing the possibility of Kiya never coming back was scarier. Kiya had to come back, he thought. He always came back.

          On the third day, he returned to them... different.

Zhou, sleeping on the floor next to Kiya’s body, had been awoken by the sound of a familiar groan, and he bolted upright to turn on the lights. Heland had just left for Zhou and Kiya’s apartment, to make sure that the door was indeed locked… forgetful as Zhou was.

Kiya rubbed his eyes, blinking hard to clear them. “What the hell, man! You flashbanged me!” 

Zhou could only stare in shock at what had become of his best friend.

          Overnight, Kiya’s long brown hair… had turned completely white.

Drained of all color, the once lively curls now framed his face like the veil of a vengeful ghost.

          “Kiya. Your hair… it’s… it’s….” His voice caught in his throat helplessly.

Kiya reached back for a curl from his ponytail, and gazed at the stark white strands in disbelief. “It’s… all white?” He reached for another piece of hair to prove it. “How… What happened to me?”

Attempting to stand up to check it out in the bathroom mirror, Kiya nearly collapsed back onto the floor, and supported himself with one hand on the bed.

         Now that he was awake, it was clear to Zhou that Kiya looked horribly sickly… undead, even.

His skin, usually a warm tan, was now verging on gray and paler than it had ever been.

Then, Zhou noticed something strange.

          He pulled Kiya in close and held his face up for inspection with a hand on his chin.

A sudden blush temporarily restored warmth to Kiya’s complexion. “Dude, what are you doing…?”

Zhou stared into Kiya’s eyes, unable again to believe what he was seeing.

         “Why… why do your eyes have two pupils?”

Zhou helped Kiya to the bathroom to see for himself, letting him lean on him.

Kiya stared at the deathly looking person reflected in the mirror and did not recognize him. He leaned in close and with his fingers, propped his eyelids open wide to take a good look.

          To his horror, Zhou wasn’t imagining things - Kiya indeed had two pupils in each eye. They swirled around each other like an egg with double yolks… the sight was, frankly, mesmerizing.

          “Good thing Halloween’s coming up,” remarked Zhou, now that he had recovered from the shock, “cause you can’t go around looking like that.”

“Why not? I look awesome! I look like a F*nal Fantasy character.”

          When Heland returned (and confirmed Zhou’s worst fears that he did indeed leave the door unlocked, but thankfully nothing seemed to have been stolen) and Zhou and Kiya showed her what had happened, the three of them then sat on the floor of Heland’s room and tried to come up with a way to fix … everything. 

          As the hours passed, Kiya began to regain his strength and could now stand on his own. His hair, eyes, and deathly pallor, however, showed no signs of returning to normal.

Zhou and Heland explained to Kiya the past few days, and how they’d seen nothing at all from the ritual.

          Then, Kiya realized he’d completely forgotten to tell them what he’d been busy doing while knocked out, and they listened to his story carefully, though he had a habit of taking detours and telling things out of order.

          “That’s it, huh…” Zhou thought carefully. “Who was the person you woke up, on the cliff?”
“I don’t know.” confessed Kiya. “But you know what’s strange? I got the feeling that he knew me.”

Zhou did not have an explanation for that, and chalked it up to ritual-sickness.

          He looked to Heland, who had been unusually quiet. “Butler Bai, what do you make of this?”

Butler Bai had a downcast expression, and when she spoke, her voice lacked its normal cheerful ring. “I… We did this to try and cure Kiya of the ‘Lotus Complex’, right?”

Zhou nodded.

“What if we ended up making it worse?”
          Kiya spoke up. “It’s true that I feel incredibly heavy now… as if I was carrying the weight of two people...” 

          Think, Zhou, think… Going over every detail of Kiya’s story, he racked through all the possibillities in his mind, trying to remember all the myths and phenomenona he’d ever read.

          “Not a lot happened, but you were gone for three days. So, whatever happened in that short time, must be triply important… And the biggest event seems to be you listening to the voice and waking up the boy on the cliff, right?”

          Kiya nodded. “Right.”

Now Heland spoke. “What did it mean, then? When you woke him up.”

“Coupled with the fact that I feel like I’ve been dragging around an extra hundred invisible pounds, maybe I took something from him?”

          Then it hit Zhou.

“The Lotus Complex!” he exclaimed. “Kiya, you must have taken on his ‘Lotus Complex’!”
          “Wait”, interrupted Heland, “how do you know the other guy also had-”

Zhou’s glasses shined. “Because Kiya and him were in the same place - on the cliff! And everything happens for a reason, even if we don’t understand it… but I think it’s because they had something in common. Think about it. They’ve never met, they’re strangers, but they both appeared in the World of the Dead - but he wasn’t ‘dead’, was he, Kiya?”

“No,” replied Kiya, and the realization that Zhou might actually be right dawned on him.”He felt like I felt, I guess.” He thought back to when he’d been squished between all the newly-dead on the boat on his last unwilling visit to the World of the Dead. “He felt alive.”

“And,” said Zhou with a tinge of triumph, “how can the living end up in the World of the Dead?”

          “If they have the ‘Lotus Complex’,” whispered Heland. “that’s the only way we know of.”

“If we don’t know it, it doesn’t exist! There would be no other way!”

          “Strange thing for a self-professed occult-freak to proclaim, but yes.” laughed Heland. “Excellent job, General!” She high-fived Zhou, and then turned to high-five Kiya.

However, her hand passed straight through Kiya’s as if it were made of mist.

Disbelieving, she tried again, and this time her hand collided with Kiya’s very solid and real hand in a resounding smack. 

          “What was that? Did you see that…? What the hell?” Heland felt her own hand desperately, and then Kiya’s, but she felt nothing but solid and real flesh and bone. 

Kiya said nothing - he could offer no explanation for what was happening to him. The jovial mood quickly fell apart, and Zhou felt that pit in his stomach once more.

          The next few days saw the three stay together in Heland’s room. Though Kiya had now regained most of his former strength, Heland did not want to be left alone (Connie was gone visiting family), and Zhou and Kiya felt her presence, which now regained its former cheer, helped take their mind off… the horrors.

Which were numerous.

Kiya’s ‘Double Lotus’, as they had taken to calling it, affected not just himself, but Zhou and Heland - the ones who were constantly with him - as well.

Zhou and Heland were beginning to acquire a similar undead complexion, and Zhou scared himself one night into thinking he found a white hair. Heland laughed at him (for too long), but the next morning they’d awoken to find the beginning of a snowy streak that was now tucked behind his ear and glasses arm. 

Despite it being clear that they should have stayed far away from Kiya lest they also develop ‘Lotus Complex’. which is what Zhou thought this was the beginning of, the two refused to leave his side even when he insisted… and insisted… and attempted threatening them to leave him alone only to get laughed at by Heland…

          It was decided after that that the three of them should venture to the pier for some fresh air.

They stopped at a bench and sat there, looking out at the Pacific. The weather was pleasantly mild, and the air smelled sweet - in comparison to the air in the World of the Dead, thought Kiya.

“Maybe being cooped up and inhaling Kiya’s poison gas wasn’t helping us.”

          “It’s… okay, yeah. Basically! I’m killing you guys.”

“I hereby absolve you of all legal responsibiliy for our deaths.”

          “Don’t say ‘our…’” replied Zhou. “Forehead.”

“Yes, General.”

          Heland opened her bangs, bracing in preparation for the usual finger flick.

Kiya smiled. Hearing his friends banter again, he could pretend as if things were normal. Though, he thought, recalling his frequent deaths and revivals, as well as the fact that the friends in question were the kind to try performing a demonic ritual on him... things were never normal, were they? 

The thought comforted him. 

OCTOBER 25TH, 2006

THE WORLD OF THE DEAD

          The image of the three friends sitting at the waterfront wavered and flickered in Cal’s mirror.

It was a special mirror, one that could show him the World of the Living.

          He looked out the window of his tower - all was according to business in the World of the Dead. Since those two interlopers, and Phoebe, who he’d actually grown fond of, had left his domain, it had become rather peaceful.

The white hair of the interloper named “Kiya” caught his eye.

          “So that’s the trick he pulled on the cliff, is it?” murmured Cal.

He raised his hand, and the image on the mirror changed to a young man with mulberry hair, stepping out of a taxi with a black guitar case that he carried like a coffin.

A ghostly looking crow with glinting silvery eyes flew in from the tower window, and landed on his shoulder.

          He stroked its feathers affectionately. He had always had a soft spot for these creatures.

“What do you think I should do, hmm? Shall I interfere in mortal matters once more? At this rate, it’ll become my problem, won’t it? And it was such a bother to get this job in the first place.”

The old Death didn’t go down easy, after all, thought Cal.

The crow cooed in response.

          “Correct indeed. It’s like herding sheep. I didn’t think it’d be this complex, honestly!”

Cal thought suddenly back to his encounter with Ellis. As if it was reading his mind, the crow cawed; three, short cries.

          He smiled, his expression verging on terrifying without meaning to be. “Spending Halloween in the World of the Living? What a curious solution, my friend."