1985

Revisit Death Prompt 2: Horror

Prompt is secret squirrel; if you figure it out and haven’t paid for one yet. Half off. You’ll start to notice that the word counts don’t absolutely matter after this point.

This is the second piece after a lull from college, I am graduating with my associates this year; man it took forever. Transfering to Uni, it will be a long ride but, worth it in the end. Writing is the dream. Psychology is the advocacy; something deep within my bones. You’d have to kill me to take either from me.

I will be honest I didn’t read much of MA Knight until recently; but who doesn’t love LESBIAN WEREWOLVES; I mean everyone saw Ginger Snaps which had some softcore lesbian vibes in there. Is it just me? Maybe. I worship women, you’ll learn soon enough in my own writing.

Their series is FEVERCHAIN a contemporary horror romance in Pinetown NJ. If this is your jams. Check it out. It’s worth it.

---

[Photographer UNKNOWN circa 1970-1980s, Sukeban smoking a cigarette.] Edited by yours truly.
Stream of Consciousness POV, Zero draft.

                 [[[[ Lord, give me one more chance ]]]]

---

There’s a mirror, a reflection. It can’t be mine. Inside my eyes are hollow. Welts underneath my sleeves, the invisible. We travel along the sidewalks with unattainable dreams. Fantasies wretched into our brains. Swelling into balloons, childish toys, our aviators. Outsiders, the nameless. Take me anywhere, drop me anywhere, let me fall.

By land, by the city side train. Rage festers in my tongue every time my bat swings. I am sukeban, I belong to no one. When nightfalls, bones crack against my instruments. Any I can find. A scavenger, a rodent, no name. When they scream, it’s the only time I smile.

She kisses my bloody lips. I remember her face in fragments. Her skin snow white, moon flesh. Her tongue lathers a sip of rye down my throat. It burns smooth, devours my fears. She leaves tiny scars on my wrists when I’m not looking. Caught up in the moment. Her tongue, a thick tentacle searching for my source. Suction that gum smacks, pop. When I hit my cigarette, she disappears into the smoke. I wonder if she’s my future self, I am supposed to love. A feeling foreign, I’ll kill it slow.

I tie on my private school girl uniform, it’s my last year. Repeated. Coins and blessings, unholy. They don’t know me. They don’t see the real.

Plan is to make a deal to burn this city off the planet. High on adrenaline inside the train, I’ll finally have a name. They’ll remember me, their only monument to this ruined age.

“Hikari, you’re late again.” I hear a girl’s voice whisper behind my seat, scolding hot. I imagine her paddling my ass with each strike making the perfect match. I lean my hair back, partial wet, clumped mascara.

“I hope it pains you, forever.”

“This is why you don’t have any friends, Hikari.”

“Life isn’t as serious as you think. You’re so pent up, marrying you sounds like it’d be miserable, burikko.”

She jabs her pencil into the middle of my head as an act of courage. I didn’t take her wrists this time. I love to play dirty with Manami. She keeps all her expressions out in the open. Her family’s coffers are filled to the brim. It’ll be a loveless marriage, but she’ll never die.

The halls are dressed white, painted like a prison. I see my dreams when I wake up, they paint the walls when my eyes flutter. All the people here flock to their cliques, bodies traded for coin, they fade through every paper they consume and become another commodity. Magnates. In 33 seconds, all their love will die, dreams lost traded for gold.

I see the faces of my enemies in my waking life, they spread past my body in fear. I taste their agony on my tongue, bloodlines mix for a corporate exchange. When their mouths open, poison speaks. It’s distorted, under the water, where it becomes my shelter. In this hell, I am torn. Parts of my body react in rage while the internal organs melt in flux. The voices of my ancestors call me home.

On the lonely road, I’ve been here before; sometimes my body doesn’t feel like it’s mine. It belongs to another. It consumes my existence until I am exhausted. I lay outside in the grass smoking cigarettes when everyone runs track. I hear the drums of their feet smash against the sand. Heartbeats without power, dremels waiting to shine.

Don’t look at me. I am not here.
Don’t look at me. I am somewhere else.

The snow white girl from the train lies down next to my body and kisses my cheek. “Don’t worry. They cannot see me.”

I shove the cigarette into the grass and touch her breast. It felt real. The runners faces don’t acknowledge me. I sigh with relief as she climbs over my waist. Her face is relaxed, high cheek boned beauty. At least she wasn’t born a boy. Their faces are squished together, sandwiches left to rot. Boys are ugly, they pretend they’re better than us; and they never will be.

Her eyes turn in a circular motion between blackness and cherry red. Long fingernails caress the bone part of my hips and dig at the skin, I let her bleed me. The warmth leaving my body feels exhilarating. I push her thighs, so she can trap me further, she pulls her body back arched. She’s shadow and light, moving full circle.
“No one can see you either, Hikari.”
A smile forms on the corner of my lips, “I noticed. Who the fuck are you?”
She claws at my bottom flat lip and slices it. Her lips drip over mine, candied thick honey sticks to our breaths. She sucks on my blood, it strains from my skin. Eyes rolled back, I want a version of her where we can live forever.
“I am the curse you called in your dreams. You want to burn this city, don’t you?”
My fingers clasp between hers, she’s a wildcard. No name, just like me. “You’ll come with me when it’s over?”
She smiles, her fangs stick over her lips. “How long do you want me?” Yearning hides underneath my meat. This creature calms my nerves as she rubs me and places a cigarette in my mouth. I can’t tell if I am her pet or her master. There’s secrets in her eyes that cannot be found. When I suck in the smoke all my worries wash away, pouring rain.
“I want your name and then I’ll decide.”
She began to unbutton my shirt trying to derail the question. I watched her. I wouldn’t stop her. Fight and flight at war with each other. Girls, come and go. This felt different. If she was my curse, does that mean we already belong?
“Some called me Yuki-onna, but I like Yuki when it’s the right person. You feel right to me. You won’t betray me, will you Hikari?”
A contract. The ritual was in the blood. To forget you is to hide. Cities, change; but she knows what I want. I’ll give her everything to set myself free.

It’s been me, on my own for as long as I can remember. Ghosts that wish they had skin. Ghosts that wish they had a voice; loud enough to break past the barrier. I’ve been so downtrodden in my thoughts I didn’t notice her kimono covering my naked body. Blood rushes to the skull. I want to scream, but all I can do is whisper.
“Stay with me until my body is no longer, and when it’s no longer. Take me with you.”
Yuki leans down and kisses my lips. Sealed with a kiss.

When Yuki was no longer inside of me, my clothes remained intact as though the act was a fantasy. A dream within a dream. The cigarette ash stayed still, its tower hovered over my face. My loins hurt from all the scars she left behind. Abrasions have become gifts I have started to cherish. Yuki is a mystery to me. Wrath, my biggest challenge. A way to lose myself inside of, willing hunger. My disease, her disaster.

Yuki contaminates my body, she alleviates my loneliness. It’s a way of killing time. She disappears after a few drags of my third cigarette as if the curse isn’t strong enough to keep her here. I can still feel her presence somewhere lingered on my neck. Nails and goosebumps. Skin raised, never to deflate.

I am not jealous of this city and what they want to create, I just don’t think arranged marriages should be a bird cage. People become doormats of their pain they cannot comprehend. Their sacrifice is the only option. This is the last prefecture that holds allegiance to the old world. I couldn’t change even if it made them feel better. Born without importance, pieces of me missing from the fray. They’ll feel me, when they can fly.

Cold water touches my face, in the mirror Yuki blows kisses at me, her face is disfigured. I’d lick the wounds, and swim over her curves and dislodged bones. Yuki is beautiful, she teaches me how to tread water. She feels every part of me that still knows how to be me.
“Hikari, are you licking the mirror?” Manami interjects, my tongue slides down the dirty glass.
I smack my lips together, I don’t remember doing this. “What if I am? Are you turned on?”
Manami scoffs, “I don’t touch myself thinking of some scum sukeban.”
My body pivots, I turn and shove her against a wall, “But, you like the attention, Manami. Most popular girl, every person fawning over you.”
“Baka. I am not interested in your boyish nose and big boned boy body.”
“That’s very specific for someone who pretends not to notice me.” I breathe on her neck and I feel the warmth in her body flushing. Her veins, a river could run dry in there. “What if I told you, we’re all going to die?”
“I’d consider it a blessing in disguise. No, seriously, Hikari. You’ve changed. What’s going on?”
Manami my childhood friend, abandoned me at the first taste of fame. “I’ve been this way my whole life. You’ve just never paid any attention. It’s a joke. We all die in the end.” I push myself from her body, her cheeks flushed a pink rose. I hear Manami panting, and I like it. Still a virgin, holding out for marriage.
“Hikari, they’re going to ship you off to Paris. You should be proud. You get to see the world.” Manami tries to change the subject and touches my shoulder.
“See the world? Without a choice? I can’t wait.”
I can feel Yuki’s jealousy through the mirror.

“I want to kill Manami.” Yuki blurts out on the way home, my bat slugged on my shoulder.
"Leave Manami out of this. She’s a dumb girl from the past. I like to fuck with her, because she’s expressive. There’s no love for her.”
Yuki sneered in my direction, “Says the girl who still protects her. You want her more than me. I don’t want competition.”
Fair point. It’s not proper to keep Manami alive, while Yuki is teaching me how to curse and use manmade chemistry. Our trades are in sex and blood. “How about this Yuki. During the summer festival, we corner Manami. You can kill her. I’ll watch. And we burn this city down with her corpse as the sacrifice?”
“Now, you’re talking my language. This is the pedestal I crave.”
A couple of girls, other sukebans sat at the outskirts of town, never seen them on my side. One of them eyed me as if they were waiting for me to pass through.
My bat slides off my shoulder. Yuki disappears into my flesh. I let her take control. Swallowed my pride, and her body, my body moves in ways I can’t comprehend.
First girl gets beheaded, ripped off at the nerve. Blood tastes marmalade. My lips are all over the flesh wound. Can’t stop myself. There’s a window where my vision fades in and out. See through mesh curtains poked against my eyes. Honeycomb light. Yuki gives me anger, a taste. She takes my impurity within and we sin. She doesn’t say sorry as she empties their heads.

I couldn’t look away.
I couldn’t look away.
Yuki’s pure. Yuki’s pureblood rage.
Take me home.

Three months later.

My body’s become unrecognizable. Scar tissue has formed mountainous landscapes over my body. Burning feeling that won’t let go. I’m alive without a soul. Yuki has painted kanji curses with cloth from my ceiling onto the floor. She uses my blood to make them real. I start to cough up blood in bowls, she collects for later. My head is dizzy. Brains open wide, deserted barren equal to the loneliness of my life. When I touch her body, I feel nothing now. Flesh on flesh, my curse, our disease. We’ll never know if this was the right decision, we’re far past the exit line.

Yuki has replaced my body parts with her own and we’ve traded organs; so she can exist on this plane longer. My face is bruised and bleeding, covered in gauze except for my eyes and lips. She still needs to fuck those. It’s harder to have thoughts of my own anymore. Yuki penetrates my brain with poetry. Haunts me with her dreams. Her body keeps me warm, the summer festival is just hours away. I’ll need my family’s sword to use as a cane to prop me up.

Everything’s not alright anymore. I feel alone in my bed when she touches my body. I am damned for existence, she’s the damned that makes it real. Siamese twins separated at birth. We love to hate, and hate to love. Yuki fucks me, killing me and I am too weak to stop her. Soon enough, I’ll live in her realm. Where all the ghosts and vengeful spirits live.

In static, I suspend over the floor hunched, gauze wet with my blood. Yuki wraps my body with gauze and layers of regalia from her world. A kimono infused with speckles of gold. It’s red and black, scripture unknown. Ancient script, I can taste at the back of my throat. Yuki puts the sword in its sheath so I can grip its weight to balance myself. Fallen, and found. She kisses the nape of my neck for protection, it stings my scalp.

“It’s almost time, my love. I know it hurts. It won’t last long, Hikari.”
I bite my lip as the cloth wraps around me, you get what you deserve. You make the deal, and transfer your tragedy for curses you cannot lift. My fingers grip tighter, it feels as though tiny canveronous insects are crawling all over my body eating at what’s left of me. My body’s aflame, but god I like it.
“We deserve each other Yuki, my bride.”
“Don’t be so sad, I’ll give you a name. It’s all you’ve ever wanted.” She tightens the cloth, I spit blood on the floor, the rorschach painting looks back at me. A demon without eyes. No longer longing for the sun or the moon. The time when the feelings gone.
“I say it in jest. It’s hard to be this bad.” I laugh, my body barely able to stand up straight.
Yuki unwraps my face, and lets me see her transformation in the mirror, a pair of fangs over the lips like hers. She tells me I am beautiful, this strange feeling captures us. A still life portrait of our fate. Her hands move over my jawline, it’s sharp enough to cut. Still human with body modifications. I feel her essence take over my brain, her virus eating away at my sorrow. All I can feel is vengeance, and it will be mine.

Innocences last cry, dolls hair frayed, its touch and embrace. Long walks between my family and I, their shoes clanking against the wood on the outside. Before the birds woke up. It’s the ending of this plane, and soon begins another. Blossoms fall before my face, where Yuki is no longer, a girl just wanted to be loved. We’re the lost and found. I don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t want to forget the string of pearls and the sounds from the piano hollow my life out. It feels futile to grasp at what is already gone.

My parents corpses were left side by side in the grove, shame on your family, carved into their chests. Ethics for a new chapter. Our backyard is an oasis of overgrown blossoms. They didn’t have time to teach me how to fly; so I found another. Plucked at their life strings, feathers shed and never return.

Yuki has her arm wrapped around my left holding me up, my right is using the sword as a cane. I am unrecognizable, an omen. Degenerated girl, regenerated girl. My bride sucks in her breath as though she is orgasming every morsel of life we pass through. People begin to collapse, older folks frail of essence. I hear their wooden bodies fall, and shatter. Splinter without a sound. I can barely breathe, it’s torture. Old days, gone. Violence overshadows our eyes and we’re under her spell. In a lifetime, this city will be lifted from its roots and be remembered by a photograph. A polaroid with shadows of life.

I catch Manami’s glimpse at the corner of my eye. I hope she turns away and runs toward the flames. I hope she becomes dissected by her future husband and survives. Manami makes the mistake every human believes, demons cannot experience fundamental love. My transformation is not complete yet. In an act of protection, I shield Manami’s body over my Kimono on the floor where bodies have already lined up cold next to us. Yuki smacks, her lips. I don’t shutter.
“You have less than three seconds to run or I cannot save you.” My colorless words barely made it through, burning sounds had gotten louder from the end of the festival. Someone set the fireworks in mid collapse into a makeshift ramen shop. The invasion had already begun in minutes of our passing.
“I don’t know who you are. Why do you know my name?”
I laughed, blood splattering on her face. Of course, she forgot my name. I am no longer Hikari. I want to cry but there’s no water for my tear ducts. I cup her face, her eyes take breaths from my throat. People I used to cherish, call me crazy, but, I used to be a sentimental fuck. Manami is beginning to fall, but I grab her to me. It’s too late. My bloody lips caress her ears, soft melon peach. Yuki from behind, removed my sword, stabbed me straight through and into Manami’s body.
“I heard from Hikari, she traded with your family. You’re going to Paris instead. It’s where you wanted to be.”
Manami is dying, her white kimono expands vermillion.
“I didn’t know Hikari loved me to sacrifice herself for my dream.”
“Hikari is a little masquerade of happiness to know you’ll be free.”
Manami’s body becomes cold, I can’t keep it warm if I move her. Her beautiful brown eyes glass over grey and white film frozen in time. I wanted two more seconds with her. All that I love is, all that you were.
“Are you ready to transform, instead of swooning over your plaything?” Yuki spoke annoyed finger still on the sheath.
“She deserved lies because she never told me the truth. It’s fair to be merciful gods. Demons. Whatever we are. Yuki. I don’t want to watch my stomach collapse on her pretty white dress. Get this show on the road.”
“Did she ever give you mercy? Why did she deserve it?”
“Don’t be stupid Yuki, for as long as you’ve lived you know that some memories are untainted even if they happened long ago.”
“I asked you not to betray me.”
“I never betrayed you, my bride. We will complete the transformation. You will live with me for eternity. I will fight for you. I will kill for you. You’ll never be alone again.” I coughed, the blade stopped burning. “Manami is a pebble in my future. I will never see her again. I will make peace with that, can you?”
Yuki removed the blade and gutted my stomach over Manami. My double vision doubted her words. My hands are over Manami’s face, cupped my fingers from her drinking the poison that lives deep within me. As though this kind of betrayal would make a difference or change this night. Everytime I close my eyes, something within me dies. Disappears into the black.
“You’ll never sleep alone. You’ll never be on your own. Say, good night. Say sweet dreams, my love.”
Yuki torches the bottom of my kimono, and I feel my body burning, wax melting. A statue where I belong. Every nerve in my meat screams. Protection, a lie. A betrayal of the heart. I don’t stop cupping her mouth, as the flames rise up over my hair and singe my body into red gilded scars. There will be a time for everyone to know.
To say good bye. To say good bye.
Breath pushes out of my system as a rite of passage, the one last hurrah. My violence.
The city burns, and we will be free.
The city scorches the earth, and no one will remember why.

We arrived in a golden hearse covered in spirit houses of the dead, Yuki left behind in her rage. My betrayal allowed her to consume all the exhaustion in the air. Their soulless bodies scour the emptied fields and leveled homes, the signs of the city have lost its title as if a portal slabbed down in the middle and sucked it down its black hole. The whole country will create folklore, conspiracies of train stops of where it once was; but Yuki says the higher gods will overwrite it. The people will never know how in a blink of an eye in one timeline how nearly hundreds of thousands of people disappeared in one single summer.
We’re dressed like royalty, full hannya on my face, Yuki the beautiful snow white goddess squeezing my hand as we take the last train station off this plane. I am smoking a cigarette, there’s a sofa bed inside the hearse where we’re sitting upright. A limo. A hearse. A passenger carriage as we meet our end. I hear the bells, their rituals of songs for the dead. Well wishes, and the underworld waiting to greet us.

”They’ll welcome us home, Kijo.”

All the confusion and regret has left my body. I feel grounded in her embrace. We open our jaws and shove our tongues down each other’s throats in attempt to choke either party.

Ready able, willing to die.