Excerpt from my novel FATE.

 

Who's that Comes to Play...   
                                       The farmhouse stood eerily still on the paddie hillside, shrouded in a thick, swirling mist that hung to the ground like some living entity, its bamboo door half open. The widow could sense Yurei dancing with defiance within the sulfurous-smelling mist, flickering in and out of existence as if the very core of their domain was trying to break through to the Now.
       As she stepped forward, she called out the family name, but only the whispering wind answered. The ground beneath her feet felt saturated and slimy, as if she were walking between two realms. She knew that texture, the liminal zone between life and death where she had often gone before to seek guidance from the spirits.
       The fenced-in compound was lifeless. The atmosphere was permeated by a disquieting hostility, as if a suffocating darkness lay just beyond the bamboo door, hinting at sinister forces waiting to emerge. It seemed to whisper secrets of lurking evil, creating an unsettling juxtaposition between the bloodied exterior and the foreboding spirits that lingered just out of sight.
       The two hunting dogs lay still at the farmhouse's entrance, their bellies gruesomely ripped open, a chilling reminder of a brutal encounter. Scattered around them were hen feathers, remnants of a wild struggle, but the absence of any hens created a haunting emptiness. This was clearly the work of Tanuki dogs, notorious for their cleverness and aggression. Yet, as the Itako widow looked around, an unease lingered, hinting that something beyond the ordinary had occurred. The air felt heavy, as if reality itself had shifted.
       It was not until the widow had ventured into the mud farmhouse, calling out shamanic prayers into the dark interior to ward off evil spirits, that she heard a child mumbling. The farmhouse was thick with the stench of human decay, the sound of buzzing flies, and the cries of vengeful Yurei fighting over the souls of the deceased parents, who unleashed their wrath upon one another for the life inflicted on them. Their translucent images flickered like candle flames in the darkness. They became the prize for the Yurei, who believed reclaiming the souls would grant them peace in the afterlife.
       The naked child was hunched in the corner near her dead parents, oblivious to the horrors surrounding her. She kept murmuring, her gaze fixed beyond the Itako window, who was acutely aware that she needed to act swiftly to prevent the child from meeting the same grim fate. The child seemed lost in her own terrifying world. It was a reminder, not that the Itako widow needed reminding, that something had passed through here and had not yet left, clinging to the room, to the bodies, to the child, to reality.
       The murmuring child was frail and emaciated. Her skin was almost gauzy, her hair matted, and her small dark eyes, like two black spots, held that remote gaze, as if she only witnessed what was there. That same gaze would later reappear throughout her short life, when her mind slipped back into a mud farmhouse on some remote hillside, where memory tangled with grief and despair, and the spirits of her dead parents asked her to tell them stories ... and Minamoto heard.
       She was raised by the Itako widow, not as a daughter in the conventional sense, but as a mortal who needed watching, listening, and patience, because she had seen beyond the world the living inhabit. Seasons passed. The child grew taller, quieter, more inward. Under the widow’s guidance, she learned the Itako way, slowly, ritual by ritual, silence by stillness, forming a deep and uneasy familiarity with ancestral spirits, memory, and the voices that do not belong to the living alone.
       When she walked away from the home Minamoto had built for them, it was a heartfelt confession she left of her suppressed early childhood and the fate of her parents, a truth that did not arrive all at once, but returned in fragments over the years.
       All that was glyptic in her note was unknown to Minamoto. 
       This was a heartfelt appeal for compassion from a troubled mind that would eventually succumb to despair, as her parents called out to her to come and tell them stories.

Popular posts from this blog

            J umping S hip                                                                      by DAF                                                 S tanding at the ship's railings, smoking and with the fresh smell of whisky on his breath looking out at the port, was like having a knife stabbed into his back. He hadn't been 'home' for twenty-two years n...
Read more
                The 13th Dog                                                           By DAF                    Jill woke up before Jack .. it was her habit at this stage now of their relationship. She liked to have the coffee simmering for Jack in case he had to leave the house without breakfast. They have been together for almost over twelve years or maybe twelve and a half, nobody was counting. She knew if she was to wake up Jack right now and ask him ...    ''Hey, sleepy head, how long are we together now ...'' J...
Read more
The Story Of Long Jonn Slone McRoen < Excerpt from my novel FATE >  By DAF The Sisters... All six children, five daughters, and one son, Jonn were home-schooled by their mother and hired private tutors. The Slone McRoen daughters matured into capable young women, competing with any male in the county in education and the traditionally male-dominated sport of fox hunting. Four daughters would live out their lives as spinsters, possessing a level of independence and education that rendered them unsuitable for marriage to the men of their era. As a result, they found themselves ill-suited for the traditional matrimonial expectations that dictated a woman's role as a wife and mother. The youngest daughter will marry Billy 'Limey' Stone, the foreman of the family limestone quarry. In a society that often prioritized domesticity and subservience for women, the five daughters became representatives of a different kind of woman for her times. Engaging...
Read more
The Letter   An Anti-War Story by DAF                  It was a cool autumn Sunday morning with a new freshness in the air that made you feel good to be alive even in a military cemetery where everything was free from human disturbance and had that ambiance of serenity about it. But, if you were in a relaxed mood you could hear birds in the distance singing at their finest as if they were trying to outdo each other for first place in nature's contest for the best bird song to be heard in any resting place. Rows and rows of neat little white headstones in perfect lines that could not be improved on where a country's military history is recorded that if you were to lie flat on your stomach, totally devoid of any distractions and lift your head looking straight ahead, that was the only headstone you saw, the one in front of you, not the one on the right of it and not the one on the left of it and certainly no...
Read more
THREE WISE GUYS [A play I wrote for stage some years back to be acted out by Three Wise Guys.] Written By DAF 'Look, I don't care what you say, but he doesn't know his ass from his elbow'. 'If you say so, but I think he is smarter than he is letting himself on to be'. 'We can talk like this all day and say what we like but it's not going to change anything'. 'So, what we do now'. 'I'm thinking, give me time on it ... but we have to find him'. 'Take all the time you need, in the meantime are you going to eat that sandwich, that is, not to let it go to waste, that is .... if you don't mind like, that is .... please'. 'I'm sick of this playing God game, the God with the big 'G' game, where is He now in all of this mess'? 'I can't answer that, He doesn't tell me what His plans are'. 'That's it, make a joke of it all, a wise guy, that's all we need around here now, another wis...
Read more
A FATHER and SON STORY                                                                             By DAF     A native of the rainforest lived all of his life with nature thinking and knowing that it was the giver of all he needed in his lifetime. He respected nature and now knew its ways that were passed from father to son. He was also doing the same for his own son, passing on the skills and the way of survival to live in the rainforest, but he also knew the future was changing and may not be quite the same for his son as it was for him. The son was also going to a school run by missionaries during the w...
Read more
The Frog and The Swan   by DAF               A frog is posing on the edge of a pond in contemplation of his reflection in the water and feeling very sad and discouraged when a swan came up to him and said... ''O.K. Froggy, now I have been watching you for most days now like this, and I have to say you are making me unhappy just looking at you, so .. what's the matter Froggy.''  The frog falls back onto his back, legs and arms akimbo, and looks up to the sky as if the answer 'just' might be there written in the clouds and eventually says... ''Sometimes in my day I feel I am drowning but I try not to let it get me down and in time I come around and jump up and down saying at the top of my voice, today is a good day, but then, I just might get that drowning-feeling all over again.'' The swan, looking at the frog with a smile says...  ''That's a typical feeling when you are getting on in years Froggy .. ...
Read more
 The story of Captain Yurigata Suri Minamoto   < Excerpt from my novel FATE > By DAF     H is reclusiveness was a self-imposed safeguard against his emotions. By distancing himself from others, he believed he could maintain some semblance of control over his inner turmoil in avoiding the resurrection of the pain of a lost love that came w hen the interference of an outsider's opinions or judgments threatened his own judgment .. but it also left him feeling lonely and trapped in a cycle of his own discontent. Known for his formidable reputation and as a man who had earned the respect of other skippers in the whaling village and beyond was by all accounts a loner . Minamoto would never entertain the idea of remarrying for the sake of female companionship .. that was a n indulgence he w ould not allow himself emotionally . His solitary nature was not born of some contempt towards ...
Read more
THE NATIVE and THE MISSIONARY [I wrote this short story sometime in January 2010] Written by DAF A young fourteen-year-old native boy is sitting outside the longhouse cross-legged on the bamboo ruai [ verandah ] with his grandfather. The afternoon sun after the rains was rising in temperature and the dogs were lazing nearby waiting to see if the old man was going hunting, a way of life that had not changed much with the old man but for the grandson, it was a different matter altogether. The missionaries had come and young minds are curious to hear new and far away stories of lands especially when they are promised a better 'afterlife' if the life they live now is kept to the rules of a book that was written in more years past then there are trees around the village. The grandfather decided not to hunt that day because he could see that the boy was not his talkative self and had something on his mind, besides, yesterday's hunt brought a lot of meat into the vi...
Read more
         The Toss of a Coin                         by DAF                                                                                        ''I don't need to be pardoned for my past sins. What's in the past is in the past unless you take pleasure in opening up festering wounds that never seem to heal over. Time can heal many wounds but it doesn't make a deal with your memories. This one you cope with yourself in y...
Read more