S E W A K T U

The Birth of a Weeping Iblis

It was the third day since the last time he had a blink of sleep, yet today was still not the day he could finally get one. The straight jacket felt tight and choking around him. He rolled on the padded floor, his breath labored, his jaw hardened, he growled like a wounded lion. From the corner of his eyes he could see something bolted and crashed against the padded wall, tearing the already torn pads and sent scraps of cotton flying around the room.

He was consumed with wrath and rage, but above all, despair. The monster had brought it all out, things he had bottled up and hide, and now he gave in to it. He could hear screams and sounds of things breaking in his head; he saw men, big and sturdy, hitting on a crying woman.

So where was he again? Ah, right. He wanted to kill them all.

***

The day before, 2.55 a.m.,

Shimamura opened the door and entered a room equipped with only a table and two chairs. A standing fan was buzzing faintly on the corner of the room, bluish white light was glaring from above them, and a camera was taped on the corner of the ceiling; its eyes staring right to where he would sit. On one of the chair sat a man; his long black hair tied up in a bun.

“Professor,” the boy, perhaps barely eighteen was his age, bowed before he took a sit.  There was a clock on the wall, across him, its hands ticking ever so slowly. Tick, tock, as if it was saying. The sound echoed throughout the room.

The assessor handed Shimamura a paper folder. He received it in silence. It has been his third day here and every time it was the same procedure again and again; he would look at several photos and read several articles, and all of them will made his stomach stir and his heart strain in stress.

“Destruction is a good thing to do,” the scientist promptly said as Shimamura began to sort through the attached photographs. He winced at one of them. “It saves people, and you have the power within you to do so.”

Shimamura nodded. He stared at one of the photographs closely. He doubted it, that credo, but at the same time he believed it. He had had enough of crying to sleep night by night. He had had enough seeing his sisters getting beaten up and raped. They are just same old stories repeated over, and all over again.

The clock struck three. Shimamura looked up and around. He could see the room turned bluish and the light dispersed, rippling through the air as if they were underwater. He was used to it, but it still felt strange to him. Whether it was real or it was just his imagination, he did not know, and he did not care, nor he felt any need to ask anyone about it. He simply had to keep silent and be good. Be good and everything would be alright.

But you do know you are no good.

The boy felt something dropped in his stomach and his breath stuck in his throat. That voice again. He looked around warily. The owner of that taunting cackle must be close now. The voice was no longer a hissing whisper like it was every other night.

Shimamura looked down and saw one of the photographs again. It was a picture of a woman, her face was blurred but he could see mixture of purple and red, bruises and blood all over her.

“I want to save them,” he thought.

You do not. You can not.

The lad jerked his head up.

You are weak and you can not do anything.

“I can!” Shimamura rose from his seat. His chair fell back with a loud thump. The assessor looked up in surprise. He kept his eyes on Shimamura closely, his hand signing to the camera.