Slim: Book 6

The Shack

I remembered the trail that I walked on. How could I have forgotten it after being lost on it with Naru for the better part of a day?

But instead of going on and on into the autumn colors, it faded into a clearing of turned soil. Dried stalks of some vegetable stuck up from the ground, and dots of winter vegetables decorated the corners with green. A little girl watched me among the trees, her legs bowed inward and swathed in her own long, black hair.

Is it her? I wondered, but instantly I knew that it wasn't. It was the same intuition that had lead me many times before in cases I had no place being in.

In the middle of the man-made clearing, I saw the shack-or tiny, little home. It looked like it could have been one of the late survivors of the feudal era. A woman swathed in that same, long black hair was slumped over her knees on the edge of the porch, only her pale legs speckled with dirt and a long hoe leaning next to her to say what she had been doing. Only a few dirty carrots sat at her feet. She looked to have given up half way through her daily task.

As I drew nearer, she sat up, slowly and methodically, as though in some pain and desperate to move cautiously. The pale round face that poked through couldn't have been much older than seventeen or eighteen.

Her dark eyes looked through me, at first, then widened in disbelief.

That is her, I thought with a surety. The one that woman says will be eaten.

The world cramped about me, shifting, changing, upheaving till the sky turned black and the shack was suddenly in flames. The horrid death throws of a man screaming as he burned pierced the air, lancing my spine with how familiar it sounded to when I'd heard a pig once that had its slaughter botched.

The woman from before stood next to me, just watching, no longer surprised by my presence. She looked more like a ghost than ever, in her worn, pale yukata and bare feet. She could have been the spirit who had come to me in my dreams.

And then, as the man's screams faded, a little cry could be heard. A child.

She transformed. The ghost vanished, and something with wings flung itself into the flames, black hair flung out behind her like crow feathers. I started running towards that stupid hoe, which had fallen on the ground, and started shoveling dirt at the fire. The river was too far away. Cursing every god I'd ever known, I dropped the hoe and started flinging out dirt with my hands.

It was pointless. It had always been pointless. The shack was old, tinder, really, and collapsed within moments, both girls inside.

I saw the man's face, dripping with blood as he bit into some unknown meat. He wasn't ugly, merely plain, like any other face you'd meet on the street. But he had such long arms.

Then I was back. The shack was still on fire, it hadn't fallen in yet. The young woman, the daughter, had just run in to save her baby.

Except, instead of going for the hoe, I went in as well.

Fire. Burning.

I was outside again, transported by some unseen will.

"NO!" The word tore through my throat with a vehemence from my very soul, and ran in again.

But the fire wouldn't touch me. Even as I watched myself burn, I knew I didn't. I could see the woman I had tried so hard to save curled around her five year old daughter-the poor product of her father's rape. A mother wouldn't care. She had told her to go down to the river and wait for her, but apparently she hadn't. But, then, I should know better than anyone about the intuition of a child that something was wrong.

Next I saw my own face-or rather, my face as a child through my father's eyes, wrinkling my nose at my smell. Then I was seeing my smaller self again, watching me, or my father, with eyes big enough to swallow the world, as though I could see his guilt.

And then I was in the fire again.

And then there was me, a little girl, laughing and walking down that same path I had just taken to reach the shack. Except, I wasn't little anymore, and I wasn't alone. A young, handsome man with cool eyes and a gentle smile led me, hand in hand.

You see me...

I saw myself again, except this time I was dressed in the yukata I had gotten at the spa, sitting as the black haired young woman had on her porch, with my legs hanging over and my head to my knees, some dirty carrots at my feet.

Burn him...Burn me...

The same young man stepped out of shack-Naru-also dressed in the spa yukata. He put a hand on my shoulder and I straightened up.

And then the shack was on fire again, lighting up the night with amber, the daylight and blue sky flicked off like a switch. I watch as I ran towards a burning shack, my hands held out for the flames. I watched, and I followed after myself, the up heaving, vomit like reaction running through my body.

Except, as I ran into the fire this time, screaming that pig-like noise of suffering just as I had heard the other man make, it wasn't just cold flames I met. A dark, long limbed, slim creature stood waiting for me, their head seemingly bowed down as though tired, just as the young girl had rested her head on her knees.

But there was no head. Just a torso, gaping open like a big maw.

I'm in hell, I thought to myself, watching the maw grow closer, the flames charring my flesh-no, my father's flesh.