Sorry, but this IS a horror parody...
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Azuringu Dai-O!
Azumanga Daioh! is owned by Azuma Kiyohiko, Media Works
Ringu is owned by Koji Suzuki.
Ringu/The Ring, Asmik Ace, Dreamworks SKG.
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Saturday, May 31
Day 4
The station was old; it looked older than this century, at least. The
stones of its walls and arches were cracked from years of pressure,
though little mold had grown into their crevices. Yellowed and
darkened, once-white tiles clicked under the soles of her shoes.
A blinding, dirty light flooded the entire place with a sickly tone of
yellow. But aside from her steps, the train station was immersed in
unnatural silence, despite the great amounts of people milling to and
fro... or even those who, as if under a spell, stood silent and with their
heads bowed, frozen statues in the business of the station.
It was a group of four such people that caught her eye, as she thought
she had spotted familiar faces among them. Relieved at her discovery,
she picked up her pace and headed towards them, long black hair
trailing behind her as she ran. Their backs were turned to her, and
remained so in spite of the loud echoing of her stride.
She approached the group. "Tomoko-san?" she called, placing a hand
on the short-haired girl's shoulder. But her addressee did not even move
under the contact. All four companions simply stood still, shoulders
slumped and faces downcast.
Worry etched on her face, Sakaki stepped around the group, trying to
face them. But as she did, she gasped. Regardless of length and style,
their hair had moved and shifted to completely cover their faces. It sent
shivers down Sakaki's spine.
More confused than afraid, she backed away. The sound of her steps
had grown unbearably loud, bouncing off the arched walls of the
station like surf within a cave. But Sakaki had not yet walked more
than a few yards away when, from amid the group, a fifth figure
emerged, just as if born out of thin air. However, unlike the eeriness of
her former classmates' look, the appearance of this creature sliced into
Sakaki like an icy blade.
Its face, like all the others, was hidden behind a wall of hair. But while
the four girls' hair had simply fallen forward or grown differently, the
mane of this entity had clearly been made that way. It was thick with
mud and slime, yet darkest than the blackest pitch. It easily covered
down to the apparition's waist from the front, and Sakaki guessed that it
reached just as far down its back.
Shining almost in contrast to the soiled mop that cascaded from its
head, an immaculate white dress covered the being's body. It was
brutally plain and austere; just a thick camisole that reached down
almost to the ankles and whose sleeves covered only to mid-forearm. It
took a second glance to notice the dirt and caked mud that clung to the
edges of the cloth, which matched the grime on the entity's bare feet.
Sakaki backed away further. There were very few things she could be
genuinely afraid of, but just the mere sight of this phantom had caused
her heart to race like it never had before. It irradiated a level of menace
and hatred and such absolute _fear_ that her mind simply could not
understand it.
It took a step towards her.
Not taking her eyes off the creature, Sakaki backed towards a wall and
followed it, her hand guiding her so she wouldn't run herself into a
corner. It was only with a broken, unnerving gait that the ghost
followed, as if it were confident in her inability to run away at all. More
unnerving was the fact that, although the station was filled with people,
none of them seemed to even notice this horrifying apparition as it
stumbled among them.
After shuffling back several yards, Sakaki came across an intersection
in the structure. Behind her, an ancient locomotive whistled,
announcing its future departure. The side passages were deserted, their
destinations hidden by the yellow light of the environment. Ahead, the
creature continued its relentless, terrifying advance. Sakaki began to
tense her legs to dash for one of the remaining corridors when she
heard a voice. A voice whose tone and timbre chilled her to the bone
from hearing them in this terrible place.
"Sakaki-san!"
Sakaki whirled to the side. "Ch-Chiyo!" The pigtailed girl smiled at her
from one of the sides of the crossing corridor. Stopping in its path, the
creature shifted, as if turning to face a new target.
Narrowing her eyes, Sakaki dashed towards Chiyo and stepped
between her and the monster, limbs akimbo in a shielding stance. It did
nothing to deter the approaching terror.
Then, without warning or the slightest fanfare, a round, cat-like being
just popped into existence next to Sakaki. It turned to her, lifted one of
its spindly arms and said, in plain English, "Hello everybody how are
you?"
"Oh, it's daddy!" Chiyo exclaimed, ever so innocent.
The creature at the end of the hall flinched slightly. Sakaki noticed,
and quickly turned to Chiyo. "Go with him!" She pointed down the
corridor they were in. "I'll distract that thing!"
Chiyo nodded happily and took the... hand of the orange cat. They both
took to the air, one by turning into a shifting rainbow of glowing colors
and the other by flapping her pigtails energetically. "Do you like
tomatoes?" the cat asked, producing said vegetable with its free appendage.
"Go!" Sakaki shouted. The pair shot down the corridor at what Sakaki
thought was Mach 100. She then turned back to face the long-haired
phantom. "Stay with your father, Chiyo-chan," she thought, repeating
the phrase like a mantra in her head. The creature, which had been
standing more than a dozen feet away, was suddenly upon her as
though it had always been there. Sakaki felt a cold numbness begin to
cloud her thoughts.
"Aa!"
Again, a familiar voice! Sakaki looked around wildly, trying to find its
source, when she found herself lifted bodily off her feet and pulled far,
far away from the monstrosity. She saw the station's arches fly by one
by one, then a final passage marked the end of the structure and she
plunged into darkness.
- O? -
It was some time before she could come to her senses. When she
opened her eyes, she found she was sitting at her desk, back in her
high-school homeroom. The day was bright and clear, the cherry trees
in full bloom down in the courtyard. Yet there was nobody there, nor in
the classroom or the hall. Only Sakaki sat before the blackboard, a
breeze whistling softly through the open windows.
With a sigh, Sakaki let out the tension built up inside of her. She then
leaned back on her chair, but as she did she caught a glimpse of a
disturbing figure in the doorway --long and dark hair accompanied by a
pristine white dress. She gasped and stood up.
But, when she looked again, the person that stood at the door was no
other than Osaka, her eyes wide and innocent and her smile both
vacuous and knowing, just as it had always been. Just like Sakaki, she
was also wearing her high-school uniform.
"Ka... Kasuga-san," Sakaki said. Somehow, she had never really taken
to call her by her nickname.
"Sakaki-chan, Maya-chan, hi!" Osaka said happily. Sakaki blinked,
puzzled, then realized that Maya was sleeping soundly on her desk, and
she had been stroking the mountain cat's fur without knowing it.
"What is... this place?" Sakaki asked. "Who was that... thing?"
At that, Osaka's smiled faltered and she bowed. "Aaa... I'm sorry,
Sakaki-chan, but Sadako-san got to them before me..." She looked
down at a black VHS that had suddenly appeared in her hands. "It
needs a lot more work before it's ready..."
"Wh-what? Why do you have that?" Sakaki stared at the VHS,
frowning.
"A! But I'm almost done with everyone!" Osaka smiled happily.
"Thank you for adding Chiyo-chan, Sakaki-chan!"
Sakaki had literally no idea what Osaka was talking about, other than
she was holding the tape and was utterly unafraid of it. Thus, she only
nodded once, "Uh, yes."
And now Osaka was standing right beside her, although she had never
seen her move. Osaka's expression took a turn for the odd, like a
malicious smile joined by swirling eyes. "Now it's time for you to..."
All of a sudden, the floor started to shake. Sakaki exclaimed, "Quake?"
"Up!" Osaka sprouted a rocket-pack and shot upwards.
And Sakaki woke up.
- A? -
"So yeah, it took a whole day, but we finally located Yukari-sensei,"
Yomi spoke into the phone. Kagura's, "That's great! Where is she?"
came through from the other end of the line.
"She's still in Osaka," Yomi replied, walking into the kitchen to pour
herself a glass of water. "And guess what? We're hitting two birds with
one stone with this one."
"Huh?"
"Yukari-sensei lost her hotel reservations, so she didn't have a place to
stay when she got there, and had to stay with a 'friend'..." Yomi
explained. "And guess who happened to be visiting her grandmother
two weeks ago?"
There was a brief moment of silence on the other end, during which
Yomi rolled her eyes and drank from her glass of water. "Ah!" Kagura
finally said. "She crashed with Osaka!"
"That's right. The house of the Kasuga family, where Osaka lived
before moving here."
"Whoa, that's really great," Kagura said, astounded. "So we'll finally
get in touch with her when you find Yukari-sensei."
"It's more than that, actually," Yomi frowned. Thinking to herself, she
added, "I could almost swear Yukari was with Osaka when the video
was made. And I'm sure that's both of them in that image with the
mirrors." Out loud, she continued, "In any case, we're heading for
Osaka tomorrow by train. I'm sure we'll--"
And her glass of water burst into flame.
"Gyaah!" Yomi tossed it away, also dropping the wireless handset.
Miraculously, the glass fell upright on the table, not a drop spilled. It
continued to flame away merrily, casting uneven shadows on the
kitchen surfaces as the fire danced the night away.
"What... the..." Yomi stared at the impossible event. Her eyes glued to
the glass, she knelt and felt around for the telephone, but jumped when
she felt something wet and slimy in her fingers. "Ah!" she exclaimed.
An annoyed sea slug quickly crawled away from her. Before she knew
it, it was several feet away, and it was gaining speed. "What the hell?!"
Yomi stared at it in a mix of annoyance and surprise. "Wait, come
here!"
She chased the sea slug down the corridor and up the stairs, all the way
up to Chiyo's room. Its door was ajar, and creaking slightly. It was also
late into the night, so all lights were off in the house, but Yomi noticed
that a strong glare, almost like sunlight, came through the opening in
the door. She inched cautiously towards it.
"Chiyo-chan?" she called, creaking open the door just further enough to
cross. Her eyes widened upon entering, as what she saw inside caused
her breath to come still and her heart to skip a beat.
It was --or at least, that's who Yomi thought it was-- a teeny version of
Osaka, maybe five or six years old, bouncing back and forth on a
school chair as if it were a rocking horse. She was surrounded from all
sides by colorful plastic spheres, exactly the kind found in playgrounds
all over the world. Chiyo was nowhere in sight.
"O-Osaka...?" Yomi approached. Distracted, the little girl turned to face
her but lost her balance on the chair. "Ah!" she cried as she started to
fall. Startled, Yomi dove to the floor to catch her, but as soon as she
touched the child's shoulders her vision was filled by blinding light. In
an instant, a flurry of images coursed through Yomi's mind --an old and
decrepit cabin in the middle of the woods, with a flaming red maple
tree looming over it from a nearby hill -- a girl no older than six inside
the cabin, watching a bright ring of light on a TV screen -- the same
girl standing right outside the infamous Cabin 12, clutching a familiar
videotape before disappearing in a hiss of static.
Yomi woke up screaming, clutching her chest and panting. A few
moments of taking in her environment reassured her that she was still
in bed, the previous having been just another strange dream. A clock on
the nightstand read eleven thirty, almost midnight.
She was just calmed down enough from the nightmare when she heard
a fearfully familiar children's song. But it wasn't coming from her head.
Puzzled, she rose from bed and followed the sound, noticing it was
coming from downstairs.
Then she noticed the glow coming from the game room.
Her breath died in her throat once more, and she rushed towards the
room. Flinging open the door, she froze in place when she saw Chiyo,
sitting before the giant wall-screen, just as the cursed video displayed
an image of a classroom with a ball pit. And just before it cut to static,
a small ladder rose out from among the balls, followed by a feminine
hand grasping one of the bars.
"No!" Yomi screamed and raced for the VCR, ejecting the tape and
violently flinging it out the open door. She then grasped Chiyo by the
shoulders, seeing the girl's eyes wide and unmoving. "Chiyo-chan!" she
yelled, "Chiyo-chan, why did you watch that?!"
Chiyo blinked once, her voice monotonous, "Sa... Sakaki-san told me
to stay with him..." She pointed to the side. Yomi followed the motion
to where a stuffed doll, the orange cat-like creature, lay on the floor. A
zipper on its back was open. Through her shock and confusion, Yomi
cursed herself for using such an obvious hiding spot.
Again, Chiyo blinked, then her eyes gained focus and she stared at
Yomi. "Yomi-san?" She looked down at the cat, then at Yomi's face
and at the silent static that ran through the wall-screen. Tears welled up
in her eyes.
"Yomi-saaan!" Chiyo cried, hugging the older girl with all her strength.
Yomi held her back, clenching her teeth in anger at the videotape that
stared back at her from the darkness.
A phone in the room began to ring. Yomi gasped and swallowed,
remorsefully letting go of Chiyo before rising to answer. She nervously
approached the "Disconnect" button, her finger trembling, until she
noticed the ID on the display. She quickly picked up. "Tomo? Is that
you?"
"Yo, Yomi!" Tomo said cheerfully through the phone. "You wouldn't
believe what I just found out!"
"That's not important right now," Yomi grimaced. "Tomo... she saw the
video."
"Huh? Who did?"
"Chiyo... Chiyo-chan watched it."
There was a pause from the other end.
"Uoooooh! Did you tape it?"
Yomi flung the phone out the door.
*********************
Azuringu Dai-O!
End of Day 4
Three days left
*********************
Jorge A. Pratt
00709382@academ01.ccm.itesm.mx
terbril@rocketmail.com
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