Strangely enough, at the beginning of the dream, I wasn't a character in the story. And it was just that: a story. Even in the beginning, it wasn't sketched out the way it was...supposed to be. Wait that didn't make sense.

OK imagine one of the people you know in real life, sketched out by a famous cartoon artist. That's how it was.

The characters were fucking animated Tim Burton style, for god's sake. It was like some sort of sick, twisted movie.

But the movie went on, and he jumped out of the window.

It was a tower. A medieval tower, grey bricks. Seriously. I didn't know what was outside the tower until he jumped out of one of those tiny windows that towers have.

He screamed.

He screamed as he fell down and the camera angle switched to that of what was outside the tower.

Stacks of cages...rows and rows of them. Black, rusted, ferocious, iron cages...Inside each, a blurred image that became sharper as he fell and screamed.

The air was painted a cloudy pink-purple, with smog.

he screamed like there was no tomorrow, and I realized, there would be no tomorrow for him, nor a yesterday...Only today.

I realized, he was dead, and there is no past nor future in death, there is only today and only those black, rusted, ferocious iron cages.

And you know how, when you have dreams, a while after you wake up you go, 'was it just my imagination? Did I...dream that dream?' And I know that question sounds absurd, but...later you wonder, did you really have that dream? Or did you just...suddenly imagine that you had it?

(Maybe it's just me. I hope it's just me. Because I wouldn't wish this stupid confuddlement on any else of you.)


But the thing is, those black, rusted, ferocious iron cages were what made me certainthat the dream actually occurred.

No, wait, that's wrong. What was in the black, rusted, ferocious iron cages were what confirmed the dream's actual occurrence to me. I couldn't have imagined that.





So yes. He screamed.

And then he drew in a heaving, somehow elegant breath. And midway in the air, his hair flustered and his clothes tattered and his beaten, bruised soul still beautiful, he stopped.

He stopped falling. No, seriously, he just...stopped in midair. I don't know whether it was a change in his mental state of mind that caused this, or a conscious demand to his limbs to stop freefalling right this instant!. He looked around with wide, desperate eyes and maybe he was as surprised as I am that he didn't snag on any of the cages, and just managed to dodge all of them.

And...and he looked around with eyes that had seen ten thousand men die from his own hands, eyes that looked so brown and doe-like and innocent.

But only because he believed he was innocent.


He looked around and saw beasts.

Beasts in cages.

Hairy, shaggy, ugly demons kept under lock and key, baying in silent anguish. I know they were from some fandom, I know it, but I can't seem to put my finger on which, exactly.

Purple, green, all hues. Ugly beasts.


I don't know what those beasts represented. The 'monster' of evil that resided within the hearts that he'd slaughtered? The monster(s) within him?


Another demon floated down to where the brunette teen was hovering in midair. This demon was sentient, however.

but then the boy realized he was turning into a beast! Hands were taking on the form of mangled paws. Claws and teeth and bloodlust were invading his human system.

Searing brown eyes shone with the life of the dead and shot Ryuk a question and Ryuk answered with, 'the more you breathe in their scent, the more you turn into one of them.'

The shinigami left.

and the shattered soul wailed quietly.

The transformation only reached his external features, though, and in his eyes it was still there: thought, consciousness, awareness. And...beauty?

No...Try as I might, the beauty I thought that could never be taken from Raito Yagami was not present in those brown eyes.

And so perished the beauty of the beast.

Mu, actually, was not nothingness.

Mu, was a clever plan, orchestrated by perhaps a very sadistic God, a plan to take away soul. To take away the one thing that remains after Death. After Life.

Mu was a forced suicide.

Mu was an ingenious proposal for the sentenced one to take away his or her own life...using nothing else but his consciousness to do so.

Raito had floated back up...The whole time looking like he was thinking of something very, very hard. Brows knitted in a way that I would've once thought was adorable, but now seemed pathetically pitiful.

His beast-like features had dissolved.

Obviously, the effects were short-term.

Mu would dump you on a battlefield...with...yourself.

And as anyone knows, the battlefield of the mind is the one with the most mines.

Mu leaves you to sort out your life's thoughts on your own. It gives you your pride and shame, your anguish and your regret and your accomplishments and your wishes, your past, to sort them out.

Mu leaves you all your pain and all your joy, to categorize, knowing full well that humans cannot sort these things out, but they will try and fail and they will drive themselves into madness: the most inhumane form of torture, because you're convinced that it's not pain.

Mu: where there is nothing but yourself and your self-inflicted pain. And in this way you perish. You become nothing, eventually, no more pain and shame, no more anguish and regret nor accomplishments nor wishes, no more pride and joy, just ethereal, hellish, almost-but-not-quite pain.

It was a dead aurora, though, a almost mocking incarnate of what once was...
... Once was ... never to be once again. Light, was he struck by the 'did I dream that dream' feeling? Maybe...That faerietayle. In hindsight, did it even exist to Light in that AU of Hell? I mean, did he ...

In Mu, there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to reach out for, and for a dead soul there is nothing worse.

We started chatting, like we knew each other. We smiled and we joked, sincerely at that, but I could see the bruises and bitemarks on him, I could almost see cracks on his soul. He was broken.

He started to turn, to retreat back into the room behind him, but then I called out and inquired about L.

I wasn't fazed, I followed him into that room, it was large and...well, more bricks, medieval-style.

Mello and Near sat at a large wood table, scissors and colored paper strewn about them, they were doing arts and crafts like there was no antagonism between them. Civil and enjoying themselves.

I kept asking about L, with as long as five minute breaks in between, politely, different questions every time, but he just...didn't hear me.