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It was a cold stormy night when he first heard the song coming from the woods. Ray was sitting in his bed, almost turning purple from the cold but not finding the energy within himself to get up and close the half open window.
He has always been a sick kid, but saying that now would be an understatement. A few years ago he has been diagnosed with a deadly disease called “hanahaki”. This sickness rotting up inside of him was such a beautiful yet painful thing. Hanahaki creates flowers in the lungs of the bearer, slowly and agonisingly suffocating the individual until they spit out one single flower.
This disease has a lot of reasons for taking control over the lungs of the innocent, the main reason being one sided love. It doesn’t matter if their love is romantic or platonic the sickness would still take home in your lungs.
Hanahaki makes itself comfortable and it stays. Some say that a lot of people eventually stop trying to find a cure for this disease.
Hanahaki stays and becomes a constant to people who feel alone. Maybe that’s why Ray is just waiting it out. He has no hope of getting cured before it’s too late. Perhaps, that’s another reason for him acting this foolish.
He was sitting in his bed, eyes half closing from the pain of another coughing attack, fingers turning purple from the strong wind outside when he heard it.
Through the pitter patter of the rain a melodic sound tore through his open window.
His eyes opened. He slowly moved out of bed, like the magical song itself put him into a trance. His legs were shaking as he slowly sat onto the windowsill.
He tried making sense of the melody, but the words sounded… Wrong. Inhuman.
” Ah, that’s monster, isn’t it?” Ray thought.
He knew monsters were a thing as much as he knew his magical disease was real. He has never been this close to one before.
Usually, if monsters reside into ones town, it would take days before they could get noticed. Maybe after child disappearance or two, the hunters would be called and the monsters would either be killed or they will flee into the next town, forest, wherever Ray supposes monsters hide.
Shocking thing really, Ray did not call the hunters. In fact, he didn’t wake his guardian up, or even made a move to close his window.
He put his back against the wall next to his window, and slid down onto the floor, closing his eyes and taking in the calming music of the creature.
He felt the walls stop closing in on him. Ray took in the first clean breath of air in a long time.
That was the first night he heard the music and it certainly wasn’t the last.
Actually, after the course of a week, standing still against the wall with his window half open and listening to the sounds of the creature, singing or walking, became his favorite activity.
He would finish the schoolwork his guardian gave him, eat at least three bites of dinner, before tucking himself in bed and pretending to enjoy slumber.
Ray counted each of his heavy and flower thick breaths, waiting, to be sure his guardian was sleeping before going to the window.
Earlier in the day he heard him speak with someone downstairs about some teen disappearing in town.
So… They were getting suspicious of the woods.
Ace, his guardian advised him to stay away from his window, going as far as saying he will forcefully move him into the spare bedroom, as long as he wouldn’t be close to the forest.
Like Ray was going to listen to him.
He got out of bed.
A cough almost threw him over on the floor.
And, as he struggled to sit straight and not fall over, he heard it.
Three gentle knocks against his window.
Ray froze. His bedroom was on the 2nd floor, it was impossible for anyone to knock on his window this late without Ray hearing them climb first.
Time slowed as the child looked at the window.
The first thing he noticed were its eyes.
Its eyes were weirdly…human. In shape only, as the colour of them was a bright shade of yellow contrasting against the harsh fall moon.
Then, it blinked. Dozens of small eyes across its cheeks followed the main pair.
Ray shuddered. It grinned at him, mouth full of sharp rotting teeth.
A mass of brown wires sat upon its head, obviously trying to imitate human hair.
In rest, it looked human. Almost, really.
It seemed to change shape based on how to light hit it. One second it was looking familiar, like the face of someone he has once considered a brother and the next he looked like the inhuman creature Ray knew it was.
There, not even two feet away from him, sat a monster in full view.
It raised a black tinted finger and knocked, grin as big as ever.
Ray took a deep breath. “Inhale, exhale” he remembered.
The monster wearing a brown trench coat pointed at the window lock. Its eyes screaming “Let me in.”
And so, Ray did.
Now, you might think he was acting foolishly, stupidly, idiotically even. You might think he was under a trance or spell or any sort of magic. But he wasn’t.
All he was was done.
Death by a monster sounds way cooler than death by suffocation anyway.
His fingers were oddly still as they pressed onto the lock. His mind got quiet, his breath evened out.
The lock slipped open and… its in the house.
Ray took a few steps back from the window as the creature slowly crawled its tall body in his small bedroom.
The only sound in the house was its footsteps across the carpeted ground and the odd mechanical sound of its moving.
In that moment, it felt like the moon was swallowed whole. The only light being the creatures eyes.
And then, Ray coughed.
His whole body shook, and with each cough more and more blood infused petals left his lungs.
Ray’s knees buckled, hands to his mouth trying to stop the petals from leaving and hitting the floor.
In his coughing attack, his mind completely erased the fact that there was a two meter humanoid monster in his room.
And then, it stopped. His breath regulated again, throat sore and aching.
“How did you do that?” An achingly familiar voice spoke.
Ray looked up and immediately came across the eyes of the beast.
While Ray was coughing his soul out, the monster crouched in front of him. Yellow eyes watching his every move.
Ray didn’t flinch or shy away from it. He looked the thing right on and said:
“Do what?”
“The flowers.” It whispered, yellow eyes big with wonder. Ray thought it looked like an owl. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Is it a normal human thing?”
“Normal? I… no, no that’s not normal” Ray stuttered. His hands were holding tightly onto his neck. “I’m…sick. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t matter in the end, does it?”
The monsters tongue moved against its teeth.
“Do you want to take a walk with me?” It spoke, slowly, with musical intonation.
Ray crossed his legs on the floor, eyes staying glued to the things body. He turned his head to one side, thinking. Hesitating.
“You know, I am going to die soon.” Ray’s words split open the silence in the room.
It looked startled.
“How…”it stopped.” How are you going to die? Tell me more.”
He looked closely at the thing in front of him. The monster had its head shifted to the side, eyes moving in every direction, taking in every detail of what Ray was. His whole being. His soul.
He could feel its breath on his face, humid and warm.
“My lungs produce flowers. They will soon grow big enough to suffocate me.” Ray spoke clearly, no sign of emotion on his face.
“I want to see.” It said.
“What?”
“I want to see your lungs.” It came closer, weirdly shaped nose almost touching his own. “Take a walk with me. There’s a beautiful pond in the forest. You’d like it.”
“No.” Ray denied. His head turned away from its face. Somehow he knew it will not kill him unless he goes with it”
The room got swallowed in silence.
“Why aren’t you getting affected by my magic?” It asked.
Ray didn’t answer. Instead, he thought. He knew he was going to regret this later. But…
“Let’s make a deal monster.” Ray said, eyes falling onto the creature again. It looked furious but curious too.
“If you stay by my side and do anything with me until I die, you can take my body and do whatever you want with it. If you want to see my flower rotting lungs, so be it. If you want to eat me, so be it. You can take me anywhere. Only be with me until I take my final breath. Afterwards, I am yours. We’ll be bound by your curiosity and my loneliness. You want to learn and see the process of this disease and I don’t want to die alone. So, shapeshifter, what do you say?”
The only thing that followed was the sound of rain and the song of the forest.
It was the ninth time he heard the sound coming from the woods.