Jigoku Shoujo: The Saved and the Damned

Insult to Injury Part 2

Michelle Alders was just finishing setting the table when she heard the doorbell ring. She was about to go answer it, but her 21-year-old son Samuel told her not to bother and went to answer it for her. Samuel was taking college classes online and staying at home while he finished his studies. Michelle had always been proud of him, but Jason was secretly her favorite because he was the baby of her small family. 

Suddenly, Samuel burst back into the room. The anxious edge in his voice made his mother look up quickly. She was suddenly afraid.           

"Mom," Samuel said, "There's a cop at the door. He wants us to come with him. He says there's been an accident and wants to know if...if we can identify the body."            

Michelle immediately followed him to the door, growing more terrified every second. She took her phone out of her jeans pocket as if to call Jason or her husband, but stopped. Either of them could be the "body" the policeman wanted her to identify. Her husband would be driving home from work around this time, and Jason had gone out on a bike ride. But it couldn't have been Jason, could it? He would have been on the bike trail. And it might not be her husband either. It could be a friend, or even someone she didn't know.            

Mechanically, her mind full of unwelcome thoughts, Michelle got into her minivan with Samuel, started the engine, and followed the cop car to the scene of the accident. Distracting red and blue lights flashed everywhere from the police cars surrounding the scene. Michelle wished they would stop moving for a second. They were making her head throb painfully, and she could hardly see what had happened.            

Bringing her car to a sudden stop, she threw it into park and jumped out, leaving the door open and the key in the ignition. There was a silver car in the ditch and a woman standing beside it. The woman was about Michelle's age, and she was screaming hysterically, looking like she was having a mental breakdown.

Then Michelle saw the body lying in the grass near the front of the car. As she approached it, she realized it was the body of a teenage boy, and she broke into a run. It can't be...it can't be... she thought, tears coming to her eyes. It couldn't possibly be Jason.            

But it was.           

Jason's spine was broken at the waist and at the neck. His glasses were gone, and his terrified, staring face was covered in blood. Michelle stifled a gasp with her hand and turned away, shaking, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. She was too shocked even to cry.            

"Ma'am, do you know who this is?" the policeman asked her gently.            

"It's—my son," Michelle managed to choke out. Tears filled her eyes again, and she began to sob sporadically. Samuel put a hand on her shoulder in an awkward attempt to comfort her, but he looked like he was feeling the same way, though he was better at holding it in.            

"Why didn't you teach your son not to ride his damn bike in the middle of the road?!" the middle-aged woman screamed at her.            

"You shut up!" Samuel shouted furiously, taking a step forward like he was going to punch her.              

"No, you shut up!" the woman screamed back at him, "You don't know what it's like—to see a boy fly into your windshield and die right in front of you!           

The mental image this conjured up made Michelle cry even more.           

His mother's reaction made Samuel even angrier, but the policeman intervened. "Give her a little mercy," he muttered to Samuel, "She's having a panic attack and doesn't know what she's saying."           

Samuel backed down.