A Serenade for the Innocent 84 Quiet!

I'm back again in the mall, back again in Plural Heights. Same scenery. Different style. I feel like I've seen this place before, but the surrounding feels so unfamiliar somehow like it had been the first time I had set foot in it.

I was inside of the Clockwork store once again, and it felt like nothing was amiss until I've realized that, oh yeah, this angry woman is right in front of me. The deep wrinkles creasing between her thick eyebrows made her broad forehead even larger somehow. Her mouth is separated very unnaturally so like she was about to bite two Big Macs at the same time; it's really weird, not gonna lie. The way her mouth is open so exaggeratedly made her cheeks stretch so damn hard that I could almost see it break off like a sheet of paper. Her eyes are burning with so much passion, and I'm sure that it's not at all sexual unless she's actually into hate fucks. Can't blame her, though.

The way her body poses made it evident that he's running towards with as she gripped a really huge knife--like the ones that butchers use--with both her hands, readying herself to lunge towards me with one thing in mind: pierce only once but make it lethal enough to kill me nonetheless. If it wasn't shaped like the knife I used at home, I would have mistaken her weapon as a cleaver.

I also realized that I'm falling. Well, I'm currently not moving for some reason, but based on the position of my body, I can see that I'm about to fall into the floor ass first.

Ah, I see. Time has stopped right at the very moment before this lady could run towards me and inevitably murder me. Somehow, it feels like I have seen same exact scenario before somewhere in the past. I must have been confusing a movie scene and made it subconsciously merge with my experience back in Plural Heights. Nevertheless, this woman is really, really angry, like, I'm sure I've already emphasized her anger enough when I explained the way her expression looks like, but somehow, I could see and feel a thick aura seeping out of her body, making me convinced even more that she's definitely gonna murder me without second thoughts, 0 hesitations. Maybe it's not her first time.

All I know for sure is that the only thing I can move is my eyes. My lips are open a bit, my arms are spread out, and my right foot is hanging in the air. No other indication shows that I'm doing anything other than falling onto the floor, and since I don't have my guard up, the lady could definitely thrust my body with the greatest of ease.

While our bodies are stopped in motion like two figurines facing each other, I could faintly hear the muffled sound of the final 2 minutes of 'Hey, Jude' playing somewhere in the background. 

Snap!

Then time moved once again.

I managed to prevent myself from tripping and stand up, leading to reclaim my balance. However, the woman must have seen through what had happened because she swiftly knelt down and meticulously moved her body upward, stabbing me with her knife and making sure that the entire length of the blade went through my guts.

I felt nothing, but I could somehow feel my body heating up as I felt the blood flow out of my stomach. Perhaps it was because I have never been stabbed, so I could not really simulate what it would otherwise feel.

The woman then pulled the knife out of my stomach, making me fall into the ground. I tried to get up as I looked at her, wanting to plead something, but no words came out of my mouth. As I looked at her raising her arm to inflict her second and final strike, I finally couldn't take it anymore and just allowed myself to fall on the floor. The first thing that greeted me when I laid my head on the side was the decaying corpse of a young stag while its antlers fall slowly into the ground. I heaved a deep sigh as I gazed at the flies scurrying around the animal's carcass.

The woman cried almost desperately as if I was the one stabbing her. I could sense that she was about to let her blade sink into my skull somehow, making me close my eyes to accept the inevitability of my doom. However, I heard someone grabbing the woman's clothes, making her stop screaming. I then opened my eyes and moved my head towards the direction of the female employee who had just attacked me weakly.

Behind her was a man, gripping her arms tightly while the lady began to shake like a little kid who was caught by her teacher doing something naughty red-handed. The man was wearing a striped maroon coat, a white jacket underneath, and a pair of brown shoes. I looked up to see who it was, but instead of a human's face, what greeted my slowly fading vision instead was the head of a stag.

The man who has a stag's head whispered to the trembling lady with an apparent annoyance seeping through his voice, "What have you done to my client!?" I noticed then that the stag-headed man's voice was so deep that it almost sounded like it was edited through some kind of editing software. 

The woman then frantically tried to explain herself, but before she could do so, the voice of a woman behind me had stopped her from opening her mouth. The sight of this person who's approaching her made her shake even more.

"What happened here?" A familiar voice of the lady uttered in a commanding tone.

"Mother," The stag-headed man replied timidly while still grabbing the lady employee's hands tight. "she attacked the person I wanted you to meet today."

The lady employee then started falling into the ground, but since the stag-headed man had her arms in his hands, she didn't drop onto the floor altogether.

"Where is her direct supervisor?" The familiar-sounding woman said as I heard her walk towards me. Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.

"I already contacted her when I got into the store, Mother. She told me that she was taking a break in front of the groto, so she wasn't able to explain the situation." The stag-headed man said with a sigh. "I'm sorry, Mother. This lady had already stabbed the client before when I got here."

The woman behind me sighed as her footsteps stopped right above my head. "Didn't you already informed them that we will be having guests today?"

"I did, Mother, but our friend came here earlier than we had anticipated, so they probably didn't know how to handle it properly." The stag-headed man replied with his unusually deep voice.

"Tell her supervisor to give that lady a thousand hard lashing." I then noticed that the lady behind me raised my shirt, probably to look at my wound. "Shit. It's really deep. He will definitely not survive this. Jimmy, go be a doll and contact the Gatekeeper and tell him to transport Lucas here ASAP. I need one of his products to fix this wound."

"Wouldn't that be inappropriate for the Ringmaster, Mother?"

"Just make the damn call. I'll deal with the troublesome stuff later." The woman then stopped checking my wound as she breathed a long sigh. "We might have to compensate this man too somehow and probably do something about his memories. That's the least we can do to repay him for what happened here. Fuck, this is a mess. I'll handle all of the needed procedures, so prepare the inner room, Jimmy."

"Yes, Mother."

The lady then moved beside me and looked at me with a gentle smile as she caressed my face. "Hey, hey. How are you feeling?"

I wanted to reply that I wasn't really feeling anything, but I only managed to utter a bunch of random and awkward grunts.

"That's okay." The familiar-looking woman said with a chuckle as I saw her wrinkled face, short hair, and dreary eyes. "Why don't you wake up, hmm? Wake up. Wake up, I said, wake up. You're gonna be late! Wake up! Wake up!"

"WAKE UP, YOU SHIT HEAD! DON'T YOU HAVE WORK TODAY?"

I gasped and opened my mouth at the same time when I heard that cry ring throughout my surroundings. Fuck, so it's a dream, huh? I'm not surprised, but somehow, I'm still disappointed.

I then looked at the woman who was shouting at me to wake up. What came into my sight is the woman that I saw at the end of my dream. "What are you doing here, mom?"

"Am I not allowed to check on my son anymore?" My mom said as she plugged the vacuum into an extension. "Well, get up now! Why are you still lying down? It's 10am already!"

Chapter end