PIED PIPER | dazai osamu

12: inflamed: the torrent starts.

"Hey. Did you check what we need to buy?" You slip on your coat, pausing to pop an Aspirin pill into your mouth, caught by the webbing under your tongue. It brought a bittersweet reprievement to the pounding headaches: That if you were feeling fine for the next three seconds, then that was a sign that you didn't need to go to the hospital.

Dazai looks up from his desk, nothing but gibberish and keyboard smashes typed into his word document. (Kunikida was none the wiser, thinking that he was finally doing his work.)

"We don't have meat. Pick up anything you want," Dazai says. He hums in thought, trying to picture the fridge in his mind. Then, he shakes his head. You give a thumbs up.

"I'm going home earlier today, so I'll prepare dinner today," You wave goodbye to Atsushi. He eagerly reciprocates it. "See you later."

Pork or beef? Chicken or fish? Crab or lobster?

Probably beef. Dazai did mention a while back that he wanted to eat a beef bowl. The red, marbled meat is cold under your fingertips, the plastic wrap gleaming under the light.

You return home. When you walk into the kitchen, you pause. Did you hear something?

A blink. An unsure shake of your head as you placed the knife down and swiped your hands on your apron.

Scrtch...skrt...skt...

There it was again! The scratching noise! The same one that you had heard back at the Agency. It sounded like something small was brushing against the wallpaper or the woodworks behind. Maybe it was a rat or a possum.

You stand, knife still in hand, waiting for another noise. Nothing but empty air greets you again. You turn around.

Tying the apron, you pull the knife out from its wooden rack. A momentarily glance at the grey reflection. You sink the knife into the red meat; it reaches the wooden surface of the cutting board with a soft thump. You pull it out and then...

Blood pours like water out of the incision as though the meat was still alive. You stare in silent confusion.

It fills the board: an enormous puddle of black. You retract your knife—the knife that was smeared with crimson. It gleams, wet and glistening as though it was bleeding, for the blood never stopped dripping. The blood puddle reflects your face—was meat meant to bleed this much? You hold it down. The pool of blood blooms into an enormous puddle spanning across the counter and the cutting board. Your heart thuds in sudden terror, fingers trembling as they tightened around it.

As though induced in a daydream that you broke out of, there is no longer meat in your hand, but the knife is still there. Your eyes reveal that your other hand is now holding down a decomposing shin. It is a white leg, clearly discoloured from the gravitation of death—bruise-like discolouration blotched on the surface. The foot had been sawed off, and the bone that was wrapped in rotting flesh was spotted with holes—it looked like the inside of a croissant.

A painful cry, as though it was your leg in your hand, escaped your throat. A chilling burst freezes you inside out.

You let go of the leg almost reluctantly; no, it was not out of reluctance, as easy as it was to assume that holding onto it was your unconventional crutch of stability, but it felt as though your brain was refusing to believe that this was happening. Your fingers clawed at the yellowing flesh, trying to muster enough courage to let go. And you did—but as a delayed response, the flesh came away with you like boiled meat to a bone. The long, sliver of alabaster white shone from the bone underneath the layers of decaying flesh.