Wattpad Multicultural Short Story Submission

Great Escape

What do people who have nowhere to go dream of? This was a question I never thought I'd ask myself, let alone one I'd have such an easy time finding. My daily routine, apart from my father whooping me with a wooden sword, was reminiscing on a freedom I never thought I'd lose. I actually became nostalgic for the outside world, even the seemingly unpleasant things like my mom's complaining and the petty gossip of the Americans populating Tokyo. Even the pained cries of a generation that came to me for consolation was a world better than my current situation. At least I made the choice to help them. I was FORCED to come to a pagoda by a vengeful spirit (tengu), I was FORCED to fight my father with a sword every day until my mind or body broke.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have gotten drunk and trashed a shinto shrine. If I took that late shift I was thinking about, me and my dad probably could've avoided getting Spirited Away, and I never would have seen that monster populating my nightmares:

"I've been waiting to get my hands on you. Your meddling in Japan has made life hard for me, so don't expect me to let you go easily. I've placed you and your father in my mansion, and your only means of escape is to entertain me. If you or your father best me in a sword fight, I'll let you both go. But the only way to do that is to sharpen your mind to be sharp as a blade."

Act 02

And that's how we ended up where we are today. Almost two years to the day, we let our cycle of self-destruction repeat. My father was allergic to the concept of weakness, so he had a habit of acting tougher than he was. He was a 'rub some dirt on it' type that thought every problem in life could be surpassed by sheer will. Ironically, he was in his own sort of quicksand, as his pride prevented him from progressing. I might have been the reason we were here in the first place, but he was the reason we were stuck here. He was stronger than I, so we went as he went, and of course, that was a big problem.

Humans were never meant to remain stagnant, however. Just as I got sick of taking my father's beatings, I imagine he at some point got sick of giving them. Perhaps he realized the futility of his methods, perhaps the satisfaction of beating someone who didn't want to fight wore off, but one day, I felt that we both shared a common interest in changing the way we went about doing things. No matter the reason, I knew after a couple weeks that something had to give.

"Hey Dad, be honest, do you think this actually works?"

"What works?"

"This. Beating the crap out of each other. Swinging our sticks around until one of us passes out?"
"Don't tell me you've forgotten. We're men facing a demon. If we're not strong, they'll eat us alive. Remember what that thing told us. Keep going and we'll eventually get out of here.

"'A swordsman keeps his mind as sharp as his blade' were his exact words."

"Right, so what we have to do is keep on our path, shake off yesterday's failures, and keep going."

"How many times?! How many goddamn times are you going to charge into the wall headfirst?! We haven't accomplished anything in two years and you want to just keep doing what we've done countless times already.

"What have I taught you since you were young? Nobody's gonna give you anything, you have to take it. So, if you want me to listen, knock me on my ass."

His obsession with slamming his head into the wall was both his most admirable and infuriating quality. Unfortunately, I knew nothing would change until I did. With shaking hands, I accepted his challenge, the same one that we'd agreed on 699 times before, and just as he had a hundred times before, he threw caution to the wind. He walked towards me with a lack of poise in his posture. It was like he was just walking with a word.

"Didn't you teach me to finish what you started? Or have you one soft on me?" I asked. I was deliberate in my attempts to strike at his ego. It's like the tengu said, I could either strike his flesh or count on his mind being made of paper.

Alright, moment of truth. I already talked myself into getting up once, I don't think I can do it again.

I waited for my dad to strike first. My strategy was to let him use his momentum against himself and see how that worked. The first time he swung, I backpedaled and caught him in the neck. He swung again, I dodged again. Once is coincidence; however, twice is a pattern. Thrice. Quatro. Cinco. Seis. With every duck and dodge, my confidence grew. This whole notion of using my mind as a sword... maybe it wasn't crazy, after all.

For all the huffing and puffing about how tough he was, he sure was humbled with one hit to the vertebrae. Fortunately, I didn't kill him, but it was a bit scary when he took a couple of hours to wake up. When he did wake up, though, he was surprisingly a good sport.

"It took you long enough to get one."

"I imagined you'd be madder."

"Mad? Nah. I'd be madder if you never learned how to handle your problems. We both know you're not as strong as me, so when things go wrong, you've gotta find another way through. Be sure to make the most of this, though, cuz if we fail today, then it's back to the same thing tomorrow.

It took a couple of hours for my dad to recover, but when he did, we both knew what to do, where to go. At the bottom of the mansion, the devil waited for us to find our feet.

"So, there's two of you this time."

"Yeah, I think I figured out what you wanted us to do. 'A swordsman keeps his mind as sharp as his blade'." I said, brandishing my bamboo beating stick.

"I'd say you've learned your lesson. You're free to leave."

"You thought I'd forget the second part of what you told me two years ago, huh? About protecting and preserving?"

"So you wish to fight beside your father? The man who's beaten you mercilessly for 700 days? That's the one you want as your partner?"

"Me beating him hurt his pride, but he nevertheless put his faith in me for today. I did what he wanted me to do, so he put his faith in me to restore our freedom!"

"Hmm. Very well. Show me what you've learned."

I sprinted to the side of the room. The tengu's attention drifted to me in tandem. As he did so, however, my father sprinted towards him and swung with all his might. The tengu broke his stick clean in two, and I could have easily lost focus if my mind wasn't sharp, but I kept my attention on the mission ahead. With one strike, I took the beast's sight from him, striking him in the eye to greatly weaken the goliath. As if to show that he practices what he preaches, the beast stood straight up, shaking the strike from his memory.

Apart from that, things had gone according to plan. For the most part, anyways. Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate dad's stick breaking midway through. Fortunately, he seemed to take something from me about fixing what wasn't working halfway through. At least, that was my explanation for why he was crawling on the beast like he was playing Shadow of the Colossus, wrapping his hands around the tengu's neck to serve as a nuisance. The tengu threw him off with ease, but the distraction's affect had been achieved.

So as not to let the moment escape me, I took my bamboo and struck the monster

again, using my full strength to shove the pole into his leg. The monster howled in pain, recoiling as he sought to get to his feet. As he scratched to get my dad off his back, I banged my bamboo beneath his elbow, further causing him to lose his composure. Then, after nailing the beast's leg, I joined my father by his neck and, like I did to knock out my dad, struck him hard in the neck.

Our victory was surprising enough, but I never thought I'd see in a million years our captor smiling, as if he were content to see us earn our freedom. As we both put our hands on the sliding door, we both pulled with all our strength, leaving the tengu as but a memory.

With a bittersweet adieu, I gave my father a word of advice: "Maybe you should let me take the lead more often."