GrUeberfest 2005: The Thousand Year Cut (484 hits)
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Submitted by The Caes (View user info) at 2005-10-26 19:21:16 EDT
Japan
Circa 980 AD
Heian Period
Kuroda examined himself in the reflection of the puddle. He had been walking for days now, sometimes sleeping under roofs, sometimes under stars. Lately it had been more often the latter. His beard was beginning to take over his jawline. It itched him and looked unbecoming. His wife would be sure to tease him when he returned. His son had never seen him with a hairy face before. He wondered with some curiosity how the four year old would react.
He had not seen either of them in almost a year. His service to his lord as a bodyguard had kept him away from his family for too long. It hollowed out Kuroda's heart, but it was not his place or his nature to complain. It was his giri to serve his lord. Without his duty, his word, a man was naught but a ghost in the breeze. Thankfully, his lord had dismissed him for a time, and so Kuroda was free to return to his village and behold what had become of his family.
Another two days, and he would be home. This road led straight to his door. This same road. Kuroda could almost feel the physical connection between his home and the winding path he stood on; it traveled from his village, snaking through the grassy hills, over the bridge, and under his tired feet. Soon, this blessed road would deposit him to that place which he belonged, like the river gently deposits the willing pebble.
But not this day. Before long it would be dark. One more village lay along the path of Kuroda's journey. He saw plumes of smoke rise from thatched roofs in the distance; preparations for supper. Sachiko was a small community, but there was an inn there that had good beds. Kuroda would rest there tonight, and begin his journey early in the morn.
Once he reached the village boundaries, Kuroda was surprised by how much Sachiko had changed. Where once it was a sleepy, content place, now a pallid mood hung over it like mourning shroud. The people once were rugged and cheerful, but now hunched their shoulders and stared at the dirt as they walked. Kuroda's hand dropped casually to his side as he walked, closer to the tsuka of his katana. This was not the Sachiko he remembered.
"Samurai! Samurai!"
Kuroda's fingers rested lightly on the handle of his blade as he turned to the sound of the voice. It was a child. A boy, no more than ten.
"Samurai! Please!" He cried as he ran up to him with an imploring outstretched hand. "You must help me!"
Kuroda's eyes tightened and scanned the horizon for danger. He sensed nothing.
"Are you in trouble, little one?"
"Yes! No! It is not me, samurai, but my sister! They have taken her!" He tugged on his pants with his grubby hands. Kuroda cocked a bushy eyebrow. Remembering himself, the child hastily released his hakama and bowed in apology.
"Who has taken her?"
"The villagers, noble samurai," he said. "She is to be sacrificed tonight. They have taken her to the altar and tied her to it, samurai. She will be killed and eaten. Please, please, you must save her."
"Sacrificed? To what?"
The boy lowered his voice and spoke from behind his hand. "A demon lives in the woods in the hills. The demon demands tribute or he will destroy our village."
Kuroda followed his eyes to the hill he spoke of.
"The village elders - they approve of this?"
The boy nodded, as if he couldn't believe it either.
Kuroda frowned. He had never heard of such a custom in Sachiko. "I cannot interfere, little one. It is not my business."
Like a dropped vase, the hope in the boy's face splintered into a thousand thousand pieces. "But, but, you can do what you want!" Tears pooled in his eyes, brimmed, and broke down his cheeks. "Aren't you samurai?"
"I am yojimbo to Lord Yamada of the Gunma region," he replied stiffly.
"Is it money you need? I have money." The boy began to fish around his stained clothes. "Here." He pulled out a single copper coin.
Kuroda's glare softened. He took the coin between his thumb and finger and looked at his would-be-employer.
"Is it enough? I can get more - "
"No, child." Kuroda smiled, and gave a little sigh. "It happens that this is exactly what a bodyguard charges for slaying demons."
The broken vase somehow jumped backwards onto its place, and the boy's face was filled with hope once more. Forgetting his place, the boy hugged Kuroda's leg.
"Thank you, noble samurai!!"
Kuroda pried the child off himself in the most dignified manner possible, and then asked where the sister had been taken.
********************
It did not take long for Kuroda to regret his compassion. The hill was steep in places, and the forest growth was at some times so thick he had to seek alternate routes. The sun had almost set, and it was certain he would not be able to rest at the inn until late into the night - assuming the villagers would even welcome him after what he planned to do.
Kuroda had seen many superstitions in his travels. He never considered it his place to tamper with local customs, but clearly something unpleasant had been transpiring in Sachiko. Perhaps cultists had taken up residence here, and fooled the villagers into paying them tribute. Or perhaps the sacrifices were being taken and sold as slaves. In any occurrence, the truth behind Sachiko's lament was of no consequence. He had given his word to the child, and was now honor-bound to complete it.
The sun fell behind the earth, and was replaced by the still night and the spectral light of the moon. It was full tonight, for which Kuroda was grateful. It made his navigation through the forest possible. As the darkness began to settle into the earth, Kuroda began to lose hope. He had not yet found the altar that supposedly contained the girl, nor any evidence of a path. He was just considering returning to the village to locate some lanterns or more reliable directions when he heard a noise.
It was a strange rattle. Dry, like a wind-chime of bones. It came from his left. Kuroda moved to investigate. He walked in a low crouch and stopped at the edge of a small clearing. Two small, thin figures were squatting together at the face of a tree, their backs to him. It was difficult to tell in the moonlight, but their skin looked spotted with brown and gray. Thin tufts of hair floated from their bodies in random patches. Kuroda's thumb found his tsuba, and pushed his katana an inch out of its scabbard.
One of the figures turned its head and chattered to its colleague with the strange dry rattling sound Kuroda had heard earlier. It sniffed the air and stood up.
Kuroda got a good look at the figure and froze. His eyes widened, and he suddenly found himself struggling to control his breathing. The thing looked like a small man, but emaciated and past the brink of death. Though ribs jutted out against the skin of its back and the kneecaps bulged from brittle legs, it had a belly bigger than a pregnant woman's. Its oversized head drifted uncertainly on a twig of a neck. The creature's mouth was miniscule; barely large enough to consume a pea, and puckered and unpuckered like a goldfish. Kuroda's eyes dropped to the thing they had been hunched over. It was a rabbit, torn apart at the belly. The one still kneeling was slurping bits of flesh laboriously through its tiny mouth. A lengthy piece of intestine swung from its lips as the creature slowly chewed it in.
"Gaki," Kuroda whispered to himself in a moment of undisciplined shock.
The two creatures swung their giant heads in his direction. The rattling sound filled the air. Kuroda cursed his stupidity when he realized how loudly he had spoken. With a fierce cry, Kuroda burst into the clearing, wicking his katana from its sheath in a fluid draw.
The starving creatures leapt in surprise at the charging samurai. With a clattering cry, they staggered for the woods. Before they had made three steps, they vanished.
Kuroda froze in the clearing, his sword in a defensive chudan no kamae posture. He saw leaves rustle at the edge of the clearing, and then further ahead, describing a straight-line path that led away from him. The rattling bones chopped through the air and gradually faded in the distance. Soon Kuroda was alone in the woods, listening to the murmur of the nighttime forest.
Kuroda had killed men. He had faced terrifying battles and witnessed horrific carnage. But never had his heart beat so fast as this moment.
The creatures were gaki. "Hungry ghosts." Said to be pitiful spirits of greedy people who have been punished to walk the afterlife in a constant state of starvation, never being satiated. They do not exist. They are cautionary tales spun to warn children of consequences to greed and jealousy.
They can not exist.
To his right there was the 'whump' of displaced air. A greenish fire unfurled in mid air. Another whump. Another ball of fire. Whump whump whump whump whump. In seconds the forest was bathed in flickering green lights. Bulbs of verdant flames hung in the air like street lanterns, forming a path that wound through the trees. Kuroda's eyes darted from light to light, but they did not move. He waved his sword through the flames, and then put his palm close to the metal. There was no heat.
The air was still and silent, but for the rustling of the flames. With slow precision, Kuroda sheathed his katana. The samurai thought of his duty.
With a grim frown and a hand on his hilt, Kuroda walked down the path of fire.
He noticed shapes flutter gleefully around the spectral lights. They danced with the green fire, but paid the samurai no attention. They looked human, but their robes were translucent and trailed richly colored vapors in their wake. They giggled and twittered at each other with the voices of virgins. Kuroda assumed they were smiling, but caught sight of one and realized they had no faces, only a blank canvas of skin. Sweat trickled down the nape of his neck. With careful eyes, he walked on.
Soon, the trail of lights led him to a larger clearing. Through the foliage Kuroda could see a man, bald, dressed in black robes with silver trim that captured the moon's light. He stood in front of a stone altar, upon which a squirming body lay pinned. In the man's left hand was a wickedly curved knife. It was dripping.
The samurai did not hesitate. With a burst of speed he erupted into the sacrificial space. The man turned to see Kuroda holding his katana above his head. With a downward diagonal slash, the honed steel cut the man from shoulder to hip, then came up and swept across horizontally, severing the man's head.
The man's guts should have slopped onto Kuroda's feet. The man's head should have tumbled to the ground with a gurgle. Instead of blood, black smoke dripped from the samurai's sword, curling thickly in the moonlight.
The same black smoke puffed from the stump of the man's neck. His head floated in the air on a dark cloud. Instead of eyes he had two small sets of yellowed teeth. They snapped at the air and grinned. The man's proper mouth sneered at him.
Kuroda's jaw dropped. An icy hand clawed at his guts, and he felt his balls clench into his body.
"Foolish man." The head spat. The voice was old, too old. Older than mountains. The man's hovering visage drifted closer, putting their noses inches apart. Kuroda's eyes bulged in disbelief. The man's eyeteeth snickered anxiously. "Sah-moo-rai." He spoke the words like a curse "You have lovely eyes, samoo-rai."
Yellow smoke belched out of the man's mouth, swirling around Kuroda's face. Coughing, he fell to his knees. His eyes and nose burned, the taste of the smoke rotted on his tongue. The decapitated man chuckled snidely as Kuroda fought for air. His smaller mouths echoed the laughter.
Through watery eyes the samurai watched as the man began to change. Black smoke erupted from his mouth, his ears, his eyes. The smoke bled through the air like ink on clear oil, it funneled about him in a smothering embrace, floating his feet off the earth. Then in a heartbeat, the smog vanished, and what lowered itself to the earth did not look like a man at all.
A creature made of blackness stood on animal haunches, breathing like a blacksmith's bellows. His fingers had changed to claws, his teeth to fangs. His eyes were still made of teeth, but now horns sprouted from his skull and his mouths were filled with fire.
"I AM THE DEMON TERA-NO-JIKINICHI," it growled, farting smoke and fire from the back of its throat. "You have offended me, little samoo-rai! After I have completed the ceremony, I will suck the meat from your fingers, so that you may never draw your swords again."
Kuroda could not tear his gaze away. His fingers scraped the soil in search of his sword.
"Oh please," the monster scoffed, closing his massive paw around the samurai's head. With the effort it would take to throw a child's toy, he tossed Kuroda to the side. The samurai hit a stout tree and fell heavily to the ground. Frantically, he got to his feet.
"Stay there, little speck."
Kuroda found he could not move his feet. He strained until his hips and legs were fit to burst, but his stance did not change an inch.
"Demon, release me!" But Tera-no-Jikinichi did not respond. His attention had turned to the girl on his altar.
Unable to flee, Kuroda could only watch. He could see the altar was stained with blood, even in the silver light of the moon. The girl upon it was naked, young, just beginning to flower into womanhood. Her wrists and ankles were fastened to the altar by the stems of roses. Her every movement dug the thorns deeper into her flesh.
The demon bent low and sniffed her pale skin. "Ahhhh, fresh." His smile was a terrible, jagged thing. With the nail on the tip of his pinky, he lightly traced a rectangle on the girl's flesh. Blood bubbled up in the wake of his tracing - his claw had cut her flesh as smoothly as the finest of swords. Gripping the edge of the rectangle, he tugged roughly. The patch of skin tore off the girl's thigh. She whimpered quietly - too quietly. Kuroda realized he had already cut out her tongue.
The demon set the rectangle of human meat on a tongue made of coals. It sizzled and popped from the heat of Tera-no-Jikinichi's insides. Fat leaked down the demon's gullet, and he shuddered with pleasure.
"What are you doing?" Kuroda cried. "Leave the girl be!"
"I am feeeeding, little samoo-rai. I am eating the flesh of a delicious young virgin. I must eeeeeat." With his pinky, he traced a circle of blood around one of the girl's small breasts. "She tastes like ripened strawberries picked during a slaughter." He grabbed the girl's breast and ripped it away from her chest. She screamed in mute agony and wept silent tears.
Kuroda watched her bleed out on the table as Tera-no-Jikinichi ripped more pieces of her away. He knew he was powerless against the demon, but he could not let this stand. A decision was made, and the samurai acted with no pause or regret. With lightning speed, he pulled his wakizashi from its scabbard and flung it towards its target.
The short sword sunk into the girl's throat and severed her spine. She twitched once, and lay still.
"WHAT??" Jets of fire spat from the demon's toothy eyes. "No! NO!!"
In an instant, the demon was upon him, his hand wrapped around Kuroda's face and pulled him close. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!?" The words rode on waves of fire from the demon's throat, feeding on coal fangs. Sparks bounced off Kuroda's face and twinkled on the forest floor.
"I have done...my duty..." he choked. He felt as if he were talking to a bonfire.
"DUTY! FAH!" He threw the samurai to the ground. "Duty is sacrifice, little samoo-rai! And you knoooow nothing of sacrifice! But fear not! I will teach you! I will teach you! Reap now your reward!!"
Holding Kuroda in the air by his topknot, the demon Tara-no-Jikinichi raked a single claw down the samurai's chest, cutting through his robes and scraping against his rib-bones. A spray of blood and smoke ejected into the air. With a howl, Kuroda clutched his chest and crumpled to the ground. Never had he known pain like this. The wounds burned in his body like acid and infection. Kuroda began to cry.
"See now, sam-oo-rai, this is the price of your duty. Your giri. It weighs heavily on you, can you not feel it?" Kuroda could not respond.
"Know now that you are marked, samoo-rai." The words crackled on his tongue. "You are cursed. This wound will fester, and poison you, and never will it heal, but never shall it kill you, never shall you die. Age cannot claim you. Only when you can satisfy your duty with sacrifice will you gain the power to find peace from my touch."
Kuroda's final vision was the sight of flames licking from the angry teeth of all three of Tara-no-Jikinichi's mouths. Then the flames vanished and a blackness as deep as the demon's skin overtook him.
The sun was high in the sky when the samurai finally awoke. He could hear birds chirping, and the sluggish buzzing of bees. Then he felt that his body was burning. Reflexively, he touched his chest and felt wetness there. Looking down, his torso was blazed with a wide gash. The edges of the wound were charred and blackened, but blood and pus oozed slowly from it, dripping down his sides. The pain was impossible.
It felt like his chest was being crushed.
It felt like his guts were spilling out.
Above those, it felt like a poisoned burn was consuming him, slowly, inexorably.
It took several minutes for Kuroda to find the strength to stand. The girl was gone. The demon was gone. His katana and wakizashi were neatly arranged on the stained altar. He reclaimed his daisho, his symbolic spirit. But his duty was not done. He had to return to the village. He had to hunt down Tara-no-Jikinichi and spare Sachiko from his hunger.
As he took unsteady steps into the forest, he felt the weight of his giri more than ever. But though he may stumble, he resolved never to set it down. Even if it would take him a thousand years.
Iroha (Japanese poem, 1079 AD)
As flowers are brilliant but inevitably fall,
Who could remain constant in our world? No one could.
Today let us transcend the high mountains of transience,
And there will be no more shallow dreaming, no more drunkenness.
User Reviews
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2005-10-26 20:25:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very nicely done. Did it take long to research this story?
Submitted by MANICMOTHER (user info) at 2005-10-26 19:48:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It is always a great pleasure to read your work.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-10-26 19:24:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
WTF HUGE PICTURE!!