Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Fiction
vr 3.00
2008-02-16
"Against Life" by Abraxas | 2006-10-31
Chapter Five
Nature completed my body as commonly as any other man would be created. And I appear to be normal. But what that force of creation left raw and incomplete, my mind, Naraku completed. He, that model of perfection, was the author of my soul. Naraku, my Naraku!
The hopelessness cleared and a purpose emerged – at last I discovered a mission my master would be proud of – if I could not be a hero then I would be a villain.
You believe my thoughts to be malformed. Twisted and evil. I understand and do not judge. Know that by act of will I transcend the limitation of the world while you languish within the prison of the flesh. It is because I am different that I am wrong, yes? Oh, yes! I know you do not understand and judge.
Yet. I am content. Because I take pleasure at being unnatural. Accepting myself, realizing the correctness and the perfection of my vision, I drew hidden secret plans against the world. My war, like Naraku’s war, would be against Nature. Against life.
Confined by the domestic-life of the farm I was helpless. I could not reach beyond scheming and plotting. Impatient with the situation I gleaned the way out of the crisis. It was undeniable and imperative that I withdraw into the world.
There, again, my practicality tempered my rashness. As much as I wanted it I could not escape without the funding. I knew the project would be expensive and I needed the profit of the harvest. I kept the farm the rest of the year. My skill at agriculture was keen enough that I could have retired my struggle but my heart was not into that business.
I was melancholic those last, few months though I could not understand why.
It was not my estrangement. My alienation. Why would it be? I was always forever, eternally alone therefore it could not be? Why would it be? Because Sango avoided me? Because Shippo did not visit me? Not the least – I swear it – the idea that they would have mattered. To be pitied by Kagome, to be prodded by Inuyasha – to be mocked by Miroku’s philosophy – exile was paradise compared with that.
The cause of my depression must have been self-doubt. Doubt because I felt my talents would not be up to the task. Doubt because, despite my determination, I did not know how to execute my vision. That I refrained from transmutating animals throughout that time did not help the situation.
By the end of the year, after I sold my harvest and my farm, I started that trek into immortality.
Before I left I told Shippo, through letter, that I was leaving to attempt to reclaim artifacts of Naraku’s. I knew the effect the notice stirred. I did not know the size of the party that would be dispatched to follow. I wanted, I prayed, that it would be only one of five but I knew the tightness of the group would not allow it. All would be upon my trail.
So be it – an artist needed an audience.
My target was Urasue’s lair. It must not have been known – suspected – how often, how deeply Naraku was fond of visiting that witch demon’s cave. He would take me and I would follow him into the chambers deep within the mountain. He wandered and inspected as if looking for something, someone, any trace of it held by the fabric of the substance of the caverns. As I trailed, from place to place, as I explored year after year everything about that lair was burned into memory. I knew it was the only fragments of my past that remained and I knew, too, it contained certain, necessary ingredients.
The journey by foot took a full winter’s month. It was arduous, slow, dangerous. I moved by night – I recalled the location of the lair by stars – I rested by day with the sun and its warmth overhead. There were villages along the path and from time to time I stopped and slept. I chose the grimiest, filthiest inns; I knew the group, with Miroku’s taste and ability, would not be nearby if they, too, chose to stop.
At the inn, by the daylight, while I wavered into and out of sleep, I peered through the window and spied upon the group that I knew was not, ever, more than a day, less than an hour away.
It was paranoia – I admit it – I did not have proof only intuition.
And there it was: the cave of the demoness Urasue. It had been about ten years since last I passed through its corridors and age had not been kind to the labyrinth. Bit by bit the elements of Nature consumed the cavern into oblivion. But I did not have time to be sentimental and I worked immediately at setup. First, the lighting of the torches. Then, the cleaning of the debris and the uncovering of the details. Last, the organizing of the workshop.
I was amazed. I thought I understood the scheme of the lair. But then and there I was struck by a curious familiarity that seemed to be out of place, askew through time. Such as it was, Urasue’s and Naraku’s and, by extension, my laboratory were parallel by form and by function. From the fixtures to the instruments, from the styles to the arrangements, similarities could not be denied.
If it had been a very different excursion I would have stopped and contemplated the revelation.
I scoured the lair until I found the supply. Alas there was very little left of the substance.
I panicked. Almost cried. At the lowest moment I actually – and I admit a shame of it – I actually considered giving up the project and retiring the art entirely.
Writhing upon the floor, like an idiot, I wept. Feeling broken and discarded, like trash, I retreated into the memory of my childhood. Before, right before, Naraku’s influence. When I lived day to day at the mercy of Kagura. What was it she said? About going too far? About knowing what happened inside Naraku’s room?
Upon the ground. It came. The solution occurred. My plan only had to be adjusted not abandoned. The transformations I envisioned were to be simple yet fundamental.
True, the project would not be as extensive as I thought it could be, yet the subject would be as daring and as bold.
Reenergized, I set the trap and waited. I receded into the bowels of the fortress. I watched shadows and darkness drift about the corridors. I heard sounds of intruders echo through the passages.
An interloper approached. It did not seem to be human. No. It was Kirara. I pulled a cord and exposed a vat – a gas bubbled into the environment. I had been trained to be immune to the effect of the ether so while the cat-demon slept I was awake and alert. I dragged the beast into the dungeon and chained it against the wall. It would not interfere.
Into the recess of the laboratory I returned and waited.
Sango entered into the scene. She recognized the scent of the ether and covered her face with her mask. She would not be affected by the alchemy. As she passed through the vault I tugged a rope that slowly and gradually lowered a heavy wooden gate into place. It could have been faster but I did not want to startle my sister until too late. And while that gate dropped, inch by inch, she explored noting the tools and the basins.
She noted, too, the random, telltale sprinkles of fur that revealed the path of the cat-demon.
Still searching, still exploring, she discovered a pot and uncovered the lid. Even from my location, remote and distant, I saw clearly and acutely her face contort into disgust. She drew back from the urn with its strands of long, silver hair and balls of flesh and almost crashed against the vat filled with water and oil.
I advanced like death through silence –
She reached into the fluid –
I inched nearer and nearer like the predator to the prey –
She caught a glimpse of my reflection against the water –
I struck while she shrieked.
As I lay my sister into that vat, as I ripped the clothes off of her body, my consciousness waned. At first it was my vision that seemed to be fading yet at length, moment by moment, the effect magnified across the whole of my senses. Suddenly I was disconnected. Suddenly I was not confined by the prison of my body. My awareness grew into a new and queer dimension altogether: I perceived myself as if from a distance as though I were not an actor but a witness mesmerized by the performance.
I do not suggest I was unaware of my actions. Certainly, throughout that operation I controlled my faculties. It was just that the excitement proved to be too much for my senses. Regardless, I worked caught within a dream-state like a fly ensnared by a web. My hands perpetually gliding over the flesh. Cutting and slicing and reshaping and rejoining.
While I kneaded Sango’s breasts, teasing and groping, I was struck by the realization that the art was like an act of love and I laughed almost into hysteria at the thought of the intimacy even the suave, sophisticated Miroku could not imagine.
I cannot judge how long I worked. Minutes, hours, days. Labels did not matter. Time, if it existed, was measured by the amount of hair left in the spool and the number of flesh-balls left in the urn. Progress itself was gauged by the water of the vat that contained my sister as it turned from a clear, silvery fluid to a dark, burnt umber. Oils floated atop the water and added their own plethora of hypnotic colors. Of the prestige itself, only the contours could be seen, the details were cloaked by the cloudy, murky blood. Yet I toiled. My hands with neither eyes nor light to see knew from experience where everything would be and what would be done with it.
I gashed a wide, deep rent into the abdomen. An object bubbled onto the surface. I feared it was an organ that should not be reworked and I panicked at the prospect of my failure. The mass appeared to be round, the skin of it thin and translucent. It was unlike anything I encountered though it seemed to be familiar as if out of the nightmare of the past.
With fingers afraid and uncertain, I grabbed it, I tore it. I looked within and flung aside the object. Revolted and disgusted. I screamed at the top of my lungs. I do not recall if I uttered anything like words. If my hate of Miroku reached that place where language itself crumbled into a mere utterance of sound.
Damn it! It was the residue of the monk’s vile seed. Realizing what it was – what it could have been – I laughed. I stopped Miroku. I could not be replaced or marginalized by the offspring of the monk. My revenge was complete.
And I scorned Nature that proved to be an impotent guardian and protector of its mystery.
I was absorbed by my work so much so that I did not detect the invasion. The gang broke through the gate and I did not notice it. It must have been a violent undertaking – since the barrier had been fortified by the children of Urasue – but I did not mind it. I did not hear them yelling 'Sango' and 'Kirara.' I did not see them crash into the laboratory. I did not know I was watched until I looked and caught those faces of my sister's friends.
“Monster! What have you done?” Inuyasha growled, his eyes especially wide and electric. He readied his hand over his sword.
I smiled and stepped back – I did not fear the half-demon, though, it was too late now too late.
“Kohaku?” It was Kagome's stern yet fragile timbre. “Where are Sango and Kirara?”
I laughed and cut-off Miroku.
“You killed my master. You destroyed my family. You thought you freed me. Dumb, foolish, blind mortals – if you learned what I learned – you only feared Naraku. What of me?”
“What are you talking about? Where’s Sango and Kirara?”
“I heard enough of you, monk!” I flung a ball of flesh at the man. I laughed at the disgust that followed. “Enough of you plunging yourself into my sister like an animal. No. I won’t allow it. No. Sango is mine, not yours, and now I take her away. I free you, Miroku, like you freed me.”
“Shut up and give us back our friends you freak!”
Inuyasha unsheathed his sword.
I smiled at the half-demon – a wicked smile taught me by the undead.
“Oh, aren’t you beautiful!” I gasped and licked my lips.
I winked – the half-breed drew back.
“He’s insane. He’s totally insane.” It was Shippo. “Guys, I never saw this.”
It was then that life stirred within the vat. The group was paralyzed by the fear, the terror of the sight of what emerged through the bloody and oily foam. Until Miroku cursed and Kagome shrieked and Shippo staggered. Only Inuyasha appeared to be unmoved.
“What the hell is that? What the hell is that you freak?”
“But can’t you recognize her? Can’t you see her?” There was a long, listless silence as the figure raised its arms above its eyes. “It’s Sango.” I approached her and grabbed her arms, her hands, and stroked her naked, wet skin. “I fixed her.”
“You – it was you!” Shippo clutched Inuyasha’s leg and cried. “It was you!”
“What kind of monstrosity –”
“Monstrosity, monk? My work, my art! I was taught the skill by Naraku and I mastered it. This, what you see before you,” I teased, walking around the vat while holding my sister’s hand and turning her body to display it, “this is my greatest creation. It’s the ultimate expression of Sango. It’s what she could have been if Nature had not left her raw and incomplete. Look at her, look at her, say that is not beauty!”
I aided my sister from the vat to the floor. I studied her body like an artist studied his canvas. I beamed, confident with the triumph of the genius I unveiled, I laughed. The achievement would have pleased my master infinitely. Indeed, except for fragments here and there, what was displayed in that cave, through that torchlight, could not have been mistaken as human. It was so new, so radical, it seemed to be alien. But as I stared, and as the audience gazed doubtless reviled and horrified, I could not help notice my sister’s singular and particular flaw: a resemblance of humanity!
An earthly-taint remained about the breasts that I could not expunge.
Looking at my hands, now covered with blood and oil, I was reminded of that night I found Naraku within the chamber. Only, it was not the way I remembered it. He was there and Kagura was there, too, naked and restrained upon the wall. I approached while my master tortured the demoness, while he shredded her breasts and clawed her sex.
Beautiful, isn’t it, Kohaku?
Kagura’s torn, frayed skin dangled and dripped red, hot blood upon the ground.
Despite the mutilation enough of their form remained to hint of their once true and proper shape.
My master placed a knife into my hand and without thought – without question – I plunged it into the woman’s large and distended abdomen.
Back within Urasue’s cave I looked at my hands anew.
“Sango is mine, monk, you cannot have her! You will not have her!” I grasped my sister and clung onto her body. I grinded into her back like an animal mocking Nature’s way. I grunted while I taunted Miroku: “Is this what you like Miroku? Is this your idea of beauty? Animal! If that is how you make art. Writhing like maggots over corpses!”
Silence melted into scream. I cackled. My superiority over Nature could not be denied. I was so ahead, so advanced, that I too was like an alien who had to be screamed at. My transcendence out of humanity made me an object of fear. So to the fools, whose act of creation I mocked, I must have seemed to be monstrous and deformed.
But it was not I who inspired the fear. And I did not realize the true cause of the panic until it was too late. Far too late. It was not until a rush of warmth splattered against my face that I understood the tragedy my action provoked. Say it, Kohaku, you idiot! In my haste to be perfect my aim overshot my reach. Damn it, I had been so careful. To the minutest detail I planned and executed the operation. Yet I allowed myself the luxury to overlook what proved to be the undoing. I could not be blamed – it was not my choice, it was the necessity – and, ultimately, it was their fault. Their fault! Their fault that I was forced to use the hair of Urasue instead of Naraku. While Naraku’s was always fresh and alive, Urasue’s had been dead ages. Such as it was, the hair – the cement of the transformation – was brittle and almost empty of demonic essence.
The stitches were not strong enough to maintain the transmutation. My motion loosened and broke them. Then and there I watched Sango collapse through my embrace and fall into a pile of flesh and bone. A shaking, quivering mass of something that once had been alive.
I fell onto my knees and clutched what remained of the work of my hands. The flesh was immobile and while I touched it turned cold and hard. I looked at the broken, mangled pieces of my sister and I gazed at the faces of those who destroyed my happiness. I saw within their eyes reflections of my own, permanent inhumanity.
Was my revenge total? Was their world shattered too? Understand I could not help but cackle.
Artistic ends justified failures.
My triumph was short-lived. I accepted it. It was meant to be. Thus, in memory, it would be perfect, always, unmarred by the ravages of time and the cruelties of Nature. She was too beautiful, too perfect for the world of course she could not endure within it.
The group stumbled out of the cave. It could be they were too traumatized to act. They could have killed me at that moment, at that instant. Why I exist I do not know. Honestly, I do not know. The understanding will be lost to me, forever and eternally, concealed from me within that enigma of humanity. Fools.
One by one the torches died and I was alone in the dark, in the silence as if I had been entombed. I expected the sound of a voice imploring me back into its bed, instead I found the cold, hollow solitude of Urasue’s abandoned lair echoing its emptiness into my ears. I urged myself onward, I willed myself back into being and I staggered out of the cave into the world.
The sun was rising, the clouds were parting. It was daybreak. Unlike anything I recalled experiencing. And for the first time, too, I saw in Nature and in humanity a canvas upon which to practice the art.
I was the master, now, I knew I could not be stopped.
Naraku! Your demon lives!
END
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