My Modern Kaidan: Meibatsu

Chapter 1

冥罰

めいばつ

meibatsu

(noun): retribution, divine punishment

(JapanDict)

. . .

"Get her off the stone," my dad says. "It will be easier on the grass."

I watch as my dad and Auntie roll the body onto the patch of grass in the middle of the garden. Disappearing around the side of the house, my dad returns with a machete and a hacksaw I didn't know we had. He hands the hacksaw to Auntie and they begin to cut and chop. Their arms move feverishly and the harder they work the further the blood spatters out so that it gets on the stone anyway.

"This one is stubborn," Auntie says, referring to the elbow she's managed to saw an inch or so into.

My dad reaches for the discarded shovel, lying in a puddle of water beneath the real murder weapon, the fountain. He brings it down with a heave, the blade of the shovel pushing further into the flesh but still failing to disconnect bone.

"One more time," Auntie says. " On the other side."

They roll the dead woman over onto her stomach. Her left cheek flops onto the ground with a sickeningly heavy thwop, and her hair falls in just the right way that I can see one eye locked on me with such vicious clarity it's as though she's not dead at all.

"Relax," my mom says, coming up beside me with a wine glass. She hands me a glass of my own. "It's all over now. Drink that. You earned it."

The first thing I notice as I bring the glass up to my lips is the stench, the smell of rotting. It's been hard to believe this is what she's been drinking this whole time but I let the cold brown liquid flood my mouth anyways. No turning back now.

But I still can't stop looking at that one eye, the pupils becoming a deep black pool that draws me in, further and further. Everything blurs away and it's just me and that darkness, the cold water from the glass, and a ringing in my ear I can't ignore.