A Little More Like Yamaku

[SpunkySix]

Hey, just figured I'd post this one shot here while I worked on some other things. Hopefully this does a decent job filling in a gap for this fandom's fanfic repertoire, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Any constructive responses are welcome.


Brandon was in his senior year when he finished reading Katawa Shoujo, a freeware visual novel dating sim about a high school for handicapped kids called Yamaku, and he had loved every second of it. It wasn't real obviously, but the wonderful feelings it gave him were, and the characters in it were so vividly described that they felt real to him as well. There was an adorably odd artist, a sweet blind girl, a shy girl with burn marks on one side of her body and an intelligent deaf class council leader. Brandon especially longed to meet the girl of his chosen route, a short track runner who had lost her legs in a car accident when she was a child, but had more than enough heart to make up for it. He even caught himself wishing that his school was a little more like Yamaku. It was silly, but it was an innocent fantasy and it couldn't be helped. Little did he know that he would come to regret having it.

Since he had stayed up late on Sunday finishing the novel, he woke up feeling groggy. It didn't help that it was his turn to wake up early and walk the dog that morning. By the time the bus came, all he wanted to do was fall back asleep. No such luck.

Monday was there and he couldn't do anything about it. Immediately after home room, Brandon went to the art room for painting class. Upon entering the room, he sat down and took a moment to admire the most talented artist in the class, a girl named Madison. She had apparently gotten her hair cut and dyed red over the weekend, and it looked great. Brandon then noticed that his friend Lisa had walked in, and turned to greet her.

"Whoa, you got your hair dyed too!" he said, taking note of her new blue hair, much louder than he had meant to out of surprise. He looked around, but relaxed a bit when it became clear that nobody had taken special notice of his slip-up.

"WHAT?!" Lisa shouted, adjusting her glasses as she did and causing Brandon to jump back in surprise. "THE CLASS COUNCIL HAD TO HELP OUT AT THE BAND CONCERT OVER THE WEEKEND, AND SOMEBODY BLEW THEIR HORN IN MY EARS BY ACCIDENT, SO I'M HAVING A HARD TIME HEARING. I THINK I NEED TO GET MY EARS CHECKED. PLEASE SPEAK UP!!"

Brandon was concerned for his friend, but would still have to tell the people he had met on the Katawa Shoujo forums about this later on. There was a topic on the forum concerning things that reminded them of the novel in real life, and this fit the bill perfectly. Other than that, however, nothing of interest happened that day. Brandon was a touch slower than usual during the workout at track practice after school, but he chalked it up to being sleepy and headed home for a well-deserved rest, unaware of what was to come.

Tuesday was different. Everything was going fine until the passing period between calculus and history. Brandon was walking down the hallway to get to class, when he noticed some workers up ahead fixing things outside of the band room. He remembered that Lisa mentioned falling backwards and breaking some stuff after being blasted with the horn at the concert, and he couldn't help but wonder if that was what they were working on. It was while he was wondering about this that one of the workers gestured to his partner with this hands and his finger slipped on the trigger of a nail gun that he had been holding. Clumsily, the worker grabbed at the gun, causing it to go off again. Brandon looked up just in time to see a kind blonde girl from his home room class by the name of Kelly get shot with two nails, one in each eye. Her scream was the most shrill thing that Brandon had ever heard, and he had never seen something so painful happen to somebody he knew. A girl by the name of Emily who was on the track team ran to get the school nurse. One of the workers dialed 911 while the worker responsible for the mess leapt to Kelly's side and began apologizing up and down and looking around in a panicked frenzy for something to help her with.

Even though the run after school that day was only an easy hour, Brandon found himself moving slower than usual again. He couldn't get the mental image of Kelly's eyes out of his head, and it was messing with his pacing.

Wednesday was mostly normal. During the morning announcements, the principal told the students that although Kelly had lost vision in both eyes, she would be okay, and she would be returning to school as soon as she had learned to navigate without sight. This calmed Brandon down some and he felt much better than he had the day before, but he was even slower during track practice than he had been then. Was his inhaler running low or something?

Thursday morning, another announcement came over the loudspeaker, this one more grim. The night before, one of the girls from school had been hurt in a house fire that had taken both of her parents from her. She was severely burnt and was now in the hospital being treated. The principal asked that the students keep her in their thoughts and help her out in any way they knew how. It was at this point that Brandon knew something was very wrong. He had wondered before, but now he was almost sure of it. Somehow, the kids in his school were actually becoming more like the ones in Katawa Shoujo, and it was freaking him out. He knew it wasn't his fault, but he still felt responsible for it. After all, he was the one who wanted something like this to happen, just... not like this. Could it really be because of that though?

Later on that day in technology, the class headed over to the wood shop to cut up some blocks of wood for their catapult project. Brandon became worried- there were far too many sharp objects for somebody to get hurt on in the shop, and the way the week had been going, he wasn't feeling confident that everybody would make it out in one piece. He tried to convince the tech teacher to cancel the project, but with no good reason for it, he was ignored. The teacher never would have believed that some story on the Internet was connected to the recent events- Brandon wasn't even sure that he did. Still though, he was feeling tense and alert. His back and neck tightened up, and he spent the period watching for potential hazards. As the class neared its end though, he relaxed, confident that he had overreacted.

That's when it happened. Madison stepped on the back of her own flip-flop and tripped. She stretched out her arms in an attempt to break her fall, and succeeded. Her hands gripped the edge of a cutting table just as her arms were violently sliced off by the spinning saw blade in the middle of it, sending spurts of blood flying every which way. The class erupted into chaos that the teacher could not contain, and Madison went into complete shock. She kept muttering something about wanting to hold somebody under her breath as Brandon looked on at her, feeling dizzy at all the blood squirting out of her fresh wounds.

The entire student body was sent home early and all after school activities were cancelled for the day. Still, Brandon saw it fit to go for a run and try to clear his head. He only made it five minutes in though when he began to breathe heavily and cramp up. He stopped to catch his breath, and noticed that his heart was pounding away in his chest like a jackhammer. He doubled over in pain and groaned. Something was horribly wrong.

Friday was a blur. If something was said about Madison's injuries over the loudspeaker, then he wasn't focusing enough to hear it. He didn't even attend classes that day, instead opting to wander the halls and think about what was going on. As he did, he noticed an abnormally high number of kids walking around with casts, eye patches, walkers, crutches and more. Some were confined to wheel chairs, and others were even missing hands or other extremities. Strangely, most of them were female.

After school there was a track meet. There was also going to be a festival celebrating the end of the first quarter. Brandon decided that he wouldn't be going to either. Instead, as soon as the final bell rang, he jumped up from his seat, bolted up the stairs to the second floor of the school, waited for classes to empty out, found a still-unlocked room and climbed out the emergency window and onto the roof. Every part of him wanted to turn around and go for a run, but he was determined to man up and fix what he felt he had brought upon his school.

Brandon walked over to the edge of the roof and looked around as a chilling breeze blew through his hair. He observed the athletes already preparing for the meet, an excitement that he would miss dearly. He then allowed his gaze to wander over to the festival. Lots of kids were injured there, but they still appeared to be having fun. Good, Brandon thought. It had been a rough week for everybody, and they needed something to lighten up the mood. He usually wasn't the type of person who went to events like that, instead opting to go home and hide away in his room, but he couldn't help but wish he could go this time. The festivities looked inviting.

Finally, Brandon looked down at the parking lot below, just as two cars slammed into each other head-on. He recognized one of them as Emily's, and tears began to well up in his eyes. The universe had done him one final favor. In the most twisted, cruel way possible, he had gotten to see the girl of his dreams in real life, and now, he had seen enough. He was going to make this better, and he was going to do it for her. Brandon turned around, closed his eyes as hot, stinging tears streamed down his cheeks, counted to ten, took a deep breath, and fell backwards off the rooftop. As he fell, Brandon opened his eyes and looked up, his thoughts of redemption floating along like the clouds above that rapidly became smaller and smaller as time seemed to stand still. His heart spasmed out of control and pounded away as if trying to escape from his plummeting body and his vision went completely red. With a thud and a sickening crunch, everything went dark for the last time.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


There was pandemonium in the school district as parents tried to figure out what was going on. They accused the faculty of keeping an unsafe environment, and the faculty responded harshly. Once things settled down and the injuries stopped, however, things returned mostly to normal. The students, despite their new disabilities, largely adjusted and moved on with their lives. Even the girl who had been burnt recovered, minus some scarring. The school managed to make itself more handicap accessible, and life was good.

It was only Brandon that had died that week. Some empty bottles of beer had been found on the roof a few days later. It was largely accepted that they had rolled away from where he had fallen, and that he had only done so because he had stumbled over the edge in a drunken stupor. Nobody would ever know the truth. Brandon was gone, but in the end, his wish had been granted and then some; his school really had become a lot more like Yamaku after that week.

[brythain]

Egad, you evil so and so.

[Frankyo]

I'm sure that there is a moral to be found in this story....

On another note, I wouldn't wish my life to ever become like K.S.

[Mirage_GSM]

the principle told the students

You probably meant "principal"... and I'm pretty sure taking nails from a nailgun through the eyes would be fatal.

Anyway, not many redeeming qualities about this fic. Pacing is non-existant, it's more like an extended summary or plot description than an actual story.
The idea itself might have been good for something interesting if a bit more effort had been spent on the execution.

[TyronePotato]

This is honestly pretty good.

I enjoy this.

Spunky at his Spunkiest.

[SpunkySix]

the principle told the students

You probably meant "principal"... and I'm pretty sure taking nails from a nailgun through the eyes would be fatal.

Anyway, not many redeeming qualities about this fic. Pacing is non-existant, it's more like an extended summary or plot description than an actual story.
The idea itself might have been good for something interesting if a bit more effort had been spent on the execution.

How would you suggest giving it more substance? Admittedly, I spent a couple of hours on this one last night and that's about it, mostly because I was anxious to get it out, and I'd be open to expanding it more as a concept.

[AntonSlavik020]

I thought the same thing about the nailgun to the eyes. They almost certainly would have penetrated her brain and killed her. I also have a hard time believing that one saw could cut both arms off. With that said, I thought it was O.K. It was a unique premise, but nothing I'd read a second time.

[forgetmenot]

This reads like cheap Saw-esque torture porn without any of the gratuitous description of guts and gore. It's pulp fiction without any pulp. Neither of these things are necessarily bad, but you've got to commit to the genre. No half-assing it. The joke is apparent from the get-go, so that's not really enough to carry us until the end. It just needs... more.

My advice at the inception would have been to have Brandon experience a mental break and be the cause of all the girls' accidents, but reveal it slowly a la Fight Club. Hell, you could even have had his alt-personality be Kenji-like.

I think the addition of those few things would have sold this a lot more. As it stands right now? It's not bad, but it's very apparent you didn't spend much time on it.

[Mirage_GSM]

the principle told the students

You probably meant "principal"... and I'm pretty sure taking nails from a nailgun through the eyes would be fatal.

Anyway, not many redeeming qualities about this fic. Pacing is non-existant, it's more like an extended summary or plot description than an actual story.
The idea itself might have been good for something interesting if a bit more effort had been spent on the execution.

How would you suggest giving it more substance? Admittedly, I spent a couple of hours on this one last night and that's about it, mostly because I was anxious to get it out, and I'd be open to expanding it more as a concept.

Well for one thing the story reads like a checklist. You jump from one scene maiming a girl to the next one. "Okay, one girl's hearing destroyed, on to the next one". The story consists only of those scenes and nothing in between, no real interaction between the characters, no coming to terms with their new disabilities - that could have been interesting: How will those girls cope with their new disabilities as opposed to the KS cast who are long since used to them. But in your story, once the girl is maimed she is checked off the list and you continue to the next one, and neither one has a characterization beyond a short physical description.

Also, the reader knows from scene one how the story is going to go and how it is going to end... okay there were two possible endings: the one you did and an "Alt-Emi" ending.

The suicide bit was the only thing that surprised me, and that was because it was unnecessary. Two reasons:
1. At that point his "sacrifice" was completely useless. All the girls he was trying to "save" had already been maimend, so he didn't accomplish squat.
2. If you absolutely wanted to kill him off at the end, a heart attack would have been the obvious and preferable option.

I could nitpick a few other things, but those are the major issues.

[GodlyVirus]

This was actually pretty cool... as a conpect... I'm not sure if you ever seen someone get even get their hand cut off... but holy shit is there a lot of blood. getting two arms would be indefinitly fatal, there would too much blood loss in the first second... like even if were you hooked to a blood source. Nails? Firstly I don't know much about that chick but she would have to pretty calm for that conrusticon worker to be able to even close to her she'd be in a pure frenzy. Also I'm not a nail gun expert here but... shouldn't it be set to one shot? Also the hell you need nails for when you're building a building? You use screws right? If even that... But this was an oringal conpect despite the fact you spent more time interdoucing the characters from Katawa Shoujo than your characters and just in general were telling a story like you were telling to a random guy on the street who's never played the game in his life.

[SpunkySix]

Okay, so the concept is liked, but clearly this needs some more time put into it to shape it up. After typing it up in a frenzy last night and reading these comments, I can understand why. I think I'm going to take some time to develop it and post a majorly updated version down the road. Ideally, I'd like to end up with a product satisfying enough to make a page for it on the Creepypasta Wiki, at which point I'd like to credit the forum for helping to write it.

[emmjay]

I have to point out that a lot of nail guns are designed so that they will not discharge a nail unless the nose is pressed up against something, to prevent precisely the kind of accident that happens in the story. (Although, frankly, contractors with unsafe tools is far from the least likely occurrence here.)

[Oddball]

While this has potential, it's a tad too obvious and uses a far too detached tone. It feels like you're going for some dark Twilight Zone type thing here, an ironic light-horror, yet there's no emotional attachment to anything.

I think the easiest way to make this work would be to tell it from the main characters point of view. That way we get a better feel for how the character reacts to being the cause of so many maiming.