How The Hunter Becomes The Haunted

📅 August 2015

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴘsʏᴄʜᴏsɪs ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀᴀᴘʜɪᴄ ᴅᴇsᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ɪᴍᴀɢɪɴᴇᴅ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ】

When Anarchy and Kato left The Aspen to head home, the sky was only just starting to darken with evening: Night fell summer-late over the city, and hadn’t yet had the chance to claw August’s heat from the humid air. It seemed to half-fog around the streetlamps as they flickered on to ward off the coming dark, adding their electrical hum to the backdrop of city noise.
“So. How was your shift? Couple months in, you still digging employment?” Kato asked, playfully bumping Anarchy’s shoulder as they walked, “Or has the shine come off the capitalism apple by now?”
Anarchy rolled his eyes and shoved Kato in return. 
“Anything beats you calling me a fuckin’ freeloader for six months, ya bitch. Shift was fine. Had a pair of chucklefucks try and start something on a bet, but they were both wasted. No big. Raze said it happens to him, too: Idiots get drunk and bet their equally shitfaced friends that they can’t take the guy with the obvious scar. Spoiler: They fuckin’ can’t.”
“Pff, wow,” Kato snorted, “Moronic. I mean, I’m a fighty drunk but at least I’m not a stupid drunk.” He paused for a sliver of a second and changed gears slightly, raising an eyebrow at Anarchy: “How’s shit with Anjali, by the way? Haven’t heard about her in a bit. She not wanting to walk you home after work? That’s my job?”
“One: You’re not a fighty drunk, you’re a slutty asshole drunk. You want to be a fighty drunk,” Anarchy said, his tone casual but his shoulders slightly tense, “and two: Stuff’s fine, we’re good. Saw her yesterday. I think she’s just with friends tonight or something. We’re cool.”
“Alright, good. Just checking,” Kato said, and watched Anarchy’s posture relax as the subject was dropped. Privately, Kato noted that the way Anarchy talked about his girlfriend always rang through as platonic, the same issue that had allegedly split him and his ex-girlfriend up...but now didn’t seem like the right time to pry open that whole can of worms. Conversation lulled briefly after that, but it was a comfortable silence that fell between them as they walked side-by-side through the darkening Brooklyn streets. 

They rounded a corner and were suddenly forced to step apart to avoid colliding with a hurried-looking mother who passed between them; a phone to her ear, arms full of groceries, and her two children in tow.
“—already advertising Back To School shopping at the store, I swear, you blink and...” was the only part of her phone conversation that Kato overheard, but however innocuous, it combined with the children’s laughter to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He froze where he stood, suddenly disoriented, and felt a chill cross his palms. His head felt both too heavy to hold up and too light to keep on, and a voice rose out of the back of his mind like a snake: I’m going to have to kill him. 
“Don't think that,” he thought back to himself, trying to be firm but feeling far too desperate. 
His vision swam; his hands felt heavy and cold. 
Kill him. 
   Kill him. 
      I’m going to have to kill him. 

Anarchy had continued walking, unaware that Kato was no longer in step with him—but even as Kato strained to keep his eyes focused on his friend’s back and ‘snap out of it,’ the lines between his subconscious and his consciousness seemed to be blurring. 
Was Anarchy walking away down a city street? 
Or a school hallway? 
Was he even there at all? 
Kato looked down and the ground distorted, rippling as if being looked at through moving water.
Linoleum floor. 
   No, concrete. 
     Wait, was it? 
“It’s not real,” he choked out, but immediately started to shake when he looked back up: Sethfire had stepped into view in his mind's eye—or maybe he was there, on the sidewalk, in the hallway. Every alarm bell in Kato’s body was going off and his nerves were on fire, everything in him screaming THREAT. But what was the threat?—Seth, who was simultaneously here and not here? Kato himself? The vision, the voice in his head?

His head spun sickeningly and through his dizziness he felt the weight of the gun in his hands. 
Not real not real NOT REAL, he desperately thought, even as “He needs to die, that's how this is, sorry Athena” tore through his mind beside it. 
The city street had dissolved, and Sethfire started to walk towards him.
“You wouldn’t,” Seth said, his voice dream-like and distorted, “You’re not a murderer.”
“Now I am.” 
Kato’s own voice echoed in his ears and he squeezed his eyes shut, but his eyelids couldn’t block out a scene taking place within his mind. He dug his fingernails into his palms but could still feel the gun in them; the smooth metal of the Glock he’d bought at sixteen still cold in his grip now, at age twenty. He pulled the trigger in his head but felt the recoil in his empty hands. Through closed eyes, he watched shock pass across Sethfire’s face; and in slow motion, watched the bullet tear into Seth’s neck just above his collarbone, ripping open flesh and arteries. 
The humid summer air tasted like copper and was too thick to breathe, and somewhere, children were still laughing.
Kato’s knees hit concrete (Not linoleum?) at the same time that Sethfire’s body hit the floor, blood spreading out from the wound in his neck and bubbling up from his mouth as his green eyes glazed over. 
“Fuck, no, Seth…” Kato gasped aloud, his shoulders shaking violently as he fought the urge to retch, “No no no no, please—” He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder and his eyes shot open. Sethfire was still there, but less so: His form was flickering and ill-defined. The school hallway was breaking up, too, as the reality of the city street fought the edges of his hallucination.

“Kato, dude, are you alright?” a familiar voice asked.

Anarchy. 
Anarchy’s voice, Anarchy’s hand, Anarchy gently shaking his shoulder. 
Kato fought back panic, panting, as he tried and failed to make sense of what he was seeing, hearing, feeling.
“Don’t look—I’m sorry, I couldn’t—I couldn’t stop—” Kato choked out, tripping on his words with his eyes still fixed on Seth; on the blood overflowing from his mouth and pouring from his neck, staining the concrete red. 
Why was it concrete? 
Where the fuck am I? 

┄

Anarchy stared blankly at Kato, confused and troubled by his friend’s panicked tone and pale face.
“Don’t look at what? What are you staring at, man? There’s nothing there,” Anarchy said, concern weighing heavy in his voice. 
Kato didn’t respond immediately; just stared at a patch of concrete fifteen feet away or so as if it were occupied by some scene of horror, his breaths coming quick and shallow. He seemed to truly be losing it, and didn’t turn to look or even react at all when Anarchy crouched down in front of him. Not knowing what else to do, Anarchy shook Kato’s shoulder again, a bit harder this time.
“Kato. Hey. K-O.”
Kato tore himself from the section of sidewalk he’d been staring at and turned to look, then, his eyes wide and terrified. 
“‘Key—” he gasped through his heaving chest and hyperventilation, which ramped up with obvious panic, “You can’t—don’t—you can’t be here, I—”
“Whoa, whoa. Hey. You’re good, man, c’mon. Snap out of it. What’s happening?” Anarchy said, perplexed but trying his best to be soothing, “Like, just breathe for a second. Tell me what’s up.”

Kato dropped his gaze to the ground and stared at it as he obediently tried to catch his breath, but his wild eyes just grew dark with confusion. He shook his head as though to clear it, yanked himself upright to stare at the sidewalk again, then suddenly seized Anarchy’s wrist as though his life depended on it and looked him in the eyes.
“Is he dead? Is he there?” Kato demanded breathlessly, jerking his chin in the direction he’d been staring.
“Who?” Anarchy asked, feeling increasingly alarmed, “There’s nothing there.”
Kato hung his head as if overcome by relief, his chest still heaving as he released the vice-grip he’d had on Anarchy’s wrist.
“I thought...I...Seth, I could feel the gun, I didn’t want to but I couldn’t stop…” Kato half-whispered. 

Anarchy just stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, and watched as Kato’s breathing started, minutely, to even out. Things still weren’t making any sense.
“Sethfire isn’t here, dude,” Anarchy said slowly, starting to stand up again and offering Kato a hand, “Listen, we’re, like...we’re a block and a half from the apartment. Let’s get home, okay? Then you can tell me what’s going on.” He was disconcerted and felt distinctly too exposed crouching on the street; the NYC nightlife would soon wake up and join them outside. Kato stared at the empty patch of sidewalk for another heartbeat, then looked down at his palms for a silent moment that seemed to drag. Finally, though, he shook himself off and took Anarchy’s proffered hand.
“Okay, yeah…” he said, the ghost of a tremor still in his voice as he got to his feet. 
Anarchy kept a protective, guiding palm between Kato’s shoulder blades the rest of the walk back home, and Kato failed to tell him to fuck off.

When they got back to the apartment, they found it blatantly empty: The lights were out and all was quiet. Athena had left a note on the counter, scribbled onto the back of a receipt:
I’ll be back by 1 am. 
DON’T EAT THE LEFTOVERS IN THE FRIDGE;
THEY’RE MINE. PAWS OFF.
Love you. — Athena ♡

The familiar slant of her handwriting and the way her playful tone came through, even as ink, soothed Anarchy in a way he hadn’t realized he’d needed. Kato’s breathing had more or less evened out over the course of the walk back home, but Anarchy was still feeling deeply unsettled by the evening’s events, and he was grateful to have a glimpse of normalcy through Athena’s note. He tapped it back to the countertop and turned to look at Kato, who was staring rather blankly out towards the balcony.
“Hey. K-O,” Anarchy said, and Kato seemed to shake himself awake, looking rather startled when he turned to face Anarchy, who tapped the paper again and continued, “...Athena’s out. Left us a note. ...What happened to you back there, man?”
There was a way that Kato seemed to crumple at the question: His shoulders hunched just slightly inward; his chin dropped. Some loose strands of hair that had escaped his ponytail fell into his face. He stayed silent, his lips pressed thin and white. 
Anarchy shook his head and walked over.
“You can’t just not answer, dude. Okay? I can tell you want me to drop it. But you were fuckin’ shaking on the ground. Mumbling about like...a gun, and someone being dead,” Anarchy said. 
Kato’s eyes stayed phobic and averted, but his breathing was picking up again; fear radiated off of him like fever-heat. Anarchy reached out to touch his shoulder, and Kato looked up to make panicked eye contact.
“Kato,” Anarchy said seriously, “You’re fuckin’ losing it, man. Just tell me what the hell’s happening to you so that I can help.”
Kato took a deep breath that shook the whole way through, and his eye contact faltered as well: He glanced away and then refocused, something unmistakably searching about the way he looked back at Anarchy.
“...You can’t tell Athena,” he finally said, breathless to a whisper.
“I mean, alright…” Anarchy said slowly, raising an apprehensive eyebrow that made Kato’s face pale.
“You don’t fucking understand!” Kato said fiercely, rendering his voice raw. He clenched his fingers like desperate claws in front of his chest as he spoke. “You can’t tell her, she can’t know, you have to fucking promise me—” 
“Okay!” Anarchy interrupted, unable to stand his friend’s obvious anguish and releasing Kato’s shoulder on instinct, to take hold of his shaking hand. He squeezed it in reassuring promise before letting go. “Okay,” he repeated emphatically, “I won’t tell her. Just...Chill out.” 

Kato blinked a couple times, but nodded, and some of the tension slowly left his shoulders. His breaths were still uneven, but his outright terror seemed to be draining shallow as he pulled himself together.
“2011,” he eventually said, rather hoarsely, “September. It was…what, the second day of knowing me that I spilled that on you? The fact that I tried to pull a one-man Columbine?”
Anarchy nodded and Kato looked somewhat tired. “Yeah...I’m always talking about it, huh? Always retelling it. Over and over. And I always say that Seth talked me down: ‘Athena told Seth, and Seth talked me down.’ Like that, right? And he did. And he didn’t.” Kato went quiet for a couple moments and something despairing crept into his expression, but he broke the silence himself before Anarchy had a chance to. 
“He confronted me at the front doors. Like, just inside them. But I wasn’t...I had my mind made up. I bolted for it, for my classroom, like...I figured I could get out ahead of him and take a couple bodies to the floor and he’d call the cops at that point. But he’s got longer legs than me.” Kato’s voice was thick with self-disgust and he started to talk faster, like the words were too bitter to hold in his mouth: 
“He caught up with me in the hall. Pfft, ‘caught up.’ Sure. He tackled me; I fought him. There was a struggle over the backpack and during it, like…I...I had my hand on my pistol and there was...this moment where I thought about…” Kato choked. “He wasn’t supposed to be there, you know, in the way! He could’ve taken a bullet to the chest! He...he pinned me, though, and that’s where he did talk me down: Promised to get me out of—of school, and my dad’s house, and everything, right? I was so fucking tired. I gave in, you know the rest, but before that, ‘Key, I could have...I mean, I had my hand on my gun, I could have killed him!”

“But— you didn’t,” Anarchy said stiltedly, “He’s alive. You didn’t.” Guiltily, he wished he felt a little more shocked by Kato’s revelation. There was an uneasy knot in his stomach, sure, and apprehensive tension in his shoulders—but if there was a grey area between disbelief and expectation, that was exactly where he’d found himself. 
“No, I didn’t kill him,” Kato said, his voice tight, “But I guess I got stuck there, in the...the could-have, fucking karma or something—because now shit like tonight happens: I get these visions, I dunno how else to put it, but I get all fucked up and I see it happen! I watch myself kill him, like it’s real, like it’s now, and there’s so much blood and I can feel the gun in my fucking hands—”
He thrust his hands out in front of him and stared at them, shaking.

Anarchy resisted the urge to take them in his own, and fought to find some words of comfort or understanding...or any words at all.
“...And you can’t tell that it’s not real?” he eventually asked, quietly. 
Kato let out a broken sort of sigh as he lowered his hands.
“Sometimes I can,” he replied, “Sometimes—usually—I don’t...fall in, like tonight. Usually it’s just happening and I know it’s all fake, but...it’s still there. I still see it and feel it, the recoil, and the air always smells like blood, like so much blood I’m drowning in it. Even when I can tell, though, even when I don’t get sucked all the way back into it, it’s happening. It keeps replaying for me. Why? Why do I need that many goddamn reminders that I’m fucking evil?!”
“You’re not!” Anarchy objected, “I don’t—I dunno why it’s stuck in your head so bad or how to fix that, like, maybe you could see a shrink—but I do know that you’re not evil.”
Kato narrowed his eyes and grimaced his skepticism. 
“How can you even say that? I just told you that I thought about killing—”
“And it freaks you the fuck out!” Anarchy responded, “I saw you, man, I saw you on the ground, lookin’ like you were about to puke. If you were evil, you wouldn’t give a shit! You’d be like ‘oh whatever, another killing-Sethfire hallucination.’ But you care! You never really wanted to hurt him and that’s why it fucks you up so bad. You’re...you’re not a bad guy, K. You just have...issues. You’re not evil.”

The total disbelief etched across Kato’s face was painful, but he didn’t argue. Just shook his head exhaustedly and looked away, folding into some cowed half-hunch of surrender.
“...Sure. I hope you’re right,” he said hollowly. The distance in his eyes tugged at Anarchy’s heart and he felt desperate to close the gap, but had no idea how. It was something deeper and wider than the arm-reach to Kato’s shoulder, but that was the only bridge Anarchy could manage. He tried to convey his certainty in the gesture; in a reassuring squeeze; in clumsy-but-total loyalty.
“I know that you’re not evil, K-O. My first night off the streets, what did you do?” 
Kato exhaled some humorless half-sigh.
“Spilled half my sob story at you, probably.”
Anarchy let a heartbeat pass before correcting him:
“...You loaned me a shirt.”