Re: NuclearStudent's Story Repository
Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 10:11 pm
Index
Burnt Woman Burns Body
A spider crawled on the boy’s eyelids. As they hovered above, Hanako’s hands shook, then snapped down to slap it off and away. The spider did not move or even break, but simply disintegrated, like the glassed landscape that the dirt beyond them had been reduced to. At ground zero in an empty field, where the world had turned volcanic, a scarred girl crouched over the burnt corpse of an acquaintance and wondered why she was alive.
Nobody was left on the emptied campus. The nurses and teachers had surely been flattened, together with everyone else who’d failed to go north. It was only by luck that a late train had trapped her in a Hokkaido winter, away from her hometown, and away the sickness which had ended the world. She’d come down as soon as the fallout had faded, evading quarantines and robbing the dead in the vain hope that something would remain.
The summertime sun shone on the ash-flaked corpse in front of her. In this heat, the track smelt like hot tar and sick-sweet bodies. Judging from the smell, Hanako had arrived just a little too late after the bodies had thawed. She stared downwards and sighed. She knelt down, got on her knees, and cupped her hands over the body. Then she lowered them, bit by bit, to feel a dead face too clean and untouched to belong to an uncursed body.
She’d deal with it the way she’d seen other people deal with it. First, as she’d seen, she’d pat the corpse down to feel all what remained. She moved her hands downwards from the dead boy’s face, patting the brittle remains of his hair, testing the spongey softness of his decomposed shoulders, and feeling the half-fused way his shirt melted into his skin. She fought down the urge to jerk her hands away when grease from melted fat slicked her fingers. It was her duty to keep going.
She took a moment to breath deeply before moving down the sides of the body. She bit down on the inside of her cheek when she cut the skin of her finger on burnt-black rib bone. Her fingers rasped against a section then wet again in grease from another. Then he felt the lump where his pocket should have been. She fished her fingers into the ruined denim and pulled out a darkened plastic case.
The case had half-melted. She crack it against the ground, like an egg, and just manage to catch a little slip of paper which fell out. It was a note. From Kenji Setou, owing Hisao forty-three hundred yen. Well, she’d known the only Hisao in that area and the circumstances on how he’d died, so the body before her must have been Kenji Setou.
Hanako shook her head. Try as she might, the name rang nothing. She closed her eyes, trying to connect with Buddha, with karma, with anything. She had no idea how to pray but simply sat there, waiting, as if her silence would guide the dead boy’s soul into reincarnation. Then she lifted a heavy can of gasoline from her side, unscrewed the cap, and began to pour.
The large red can glugged and spat liquid unevenly, and it was with effort that she controlled the flow as if she was serving tea again in a room with windows. Then Hanako took a length of her cheese wire from her pocket and put it slowly around the corpse’s neck. She breathed once, twice, and yanked the wire with hideous strength.
The weak spine of the beast snapped and the snake-length of an alien white worm within protruded outwards. As it squirmed away from her. She nodded, sickened but satisfied that the juices from the worm would feed her and flush the fallout from her system. The corpse began to twitch, but before the headless body reanimated, Hanako pulled a lighter from her left pocket and a little can of hairspray from her right pocket. In lieu of a fuse, she popped and struck sparks into a jet of flame which breathed over the body.
It began to sizzle, with the pain distracting the newly reborn zombie. As it screamed Hanako stepped back, scooped up her rake, and began to swing the end with abandon. Too weak for stabbing, the tines of the rake broke off in the burned flesh of the dead boy. She knew how painful fire was, so she allowed herself to smash the dead without fear, secure in the knowledge that burning meat meant crippling pain.
She stopped, breathing heavily, after seeming hours of battering. She had no idea where the mind was in those zombies. In the heart, perhaps. Maybe the worm stitched together a web in the chest, like a ready-to-walk cocoon for its children that would rise once it had done the work of spawning. Half-born and weak as these caught corpses were, she could take care of them. For now.
When she ran out of gasoline, if she couldn’t find any from stations around, she would have to find other ways of dealing with the dead. Even though other food was available, she needed that little dose of worm to keep her going. Worm served like how good company did, a comfort, a companionship, a flash of memories in the moment being formed, and in replacement of everything that had been good in her life.
She closed her eyes, nodded, and began to walk away. The glassy burned-out track behind her began to vanish in non-euclidean fashion, disappearing impossibly quickly. She wondered if she was dreaming all of this. When she accidentally trapped her fingernail in an edge within her lighter and felt a tugging pain, she knew that she was not. She let her breath whistle out of her lungs.
When she was far enough from the field to outrun the smell of burnt meat, she put her back against a wall, slid down, and cradled her eyes and scars with her arms. Tomorrow, she’d find a new place to go. She’d go on as she’d done for months, feeling the pain of being exposed to everything live and dead in the world.
Index
Burnt Woman Burns Body
A spider crawled on the boy’s eyelids. As they hovered above, Hanako’s hands shook, then snapped down to slap it off and away. The spider did not move or even break, but simply disintegrated, like the glassed landscape that the dirt beyond them had been reduced to. At ground zero in an empty field, where the world had turned volcanic, a scarred girl crouched over the burnt corpse of an acquaintance and wondered why she was alive.
Nobody was left on the emptied campus. The nurses and teachers had surely been flattened, together with everyone else who’d failed to go north. It was only by luck that a late train had trapped her in a Hokkaido winter, away from her hometown, and away the sickness which had ended the world. She’d come down as soon as the fallout had faded, evading quarantines and robbing the dead in the vain hope that something would remain.
The summertime sun shone on the ash-flaked corpse in front of her. In this heat, the track smelt like hot tar and sick-sweet bodies. Judging from the smell, Hanako had arrived just a little too late after the bodies had thawed. She stared downwards and sighed. She knelt down, got on her knees, and cupped her hands over the body. Then she lowered them, bit by bit, to feel a dead face too clean and untouched to belong to an uncursed body.
She’d deal with it the way she’d seen other people deal with it. First, as she’d seen, she’d pat the corpse down to feel all what remained. She moved her hands downwards from the dead boy’s face, patting the brittle remains of his hair, testing the spongey softness of his decomposed shoulders, and feeling the half-fused way his shirt melted into his skin. She fought down the urge to jerk her hands away when grease from melted fat slicked her fingers. It was her duty to keep going.
She took a moment to breath deeply before moving down the sides of the body. She bit down on the inside of her cheek when she cut the skin of her finger on burnt-black rib bone. Her fingers rasped against a section then wet again in grease from another. Then he felt the lump where his pocket should have been. She fished her fingers into the ruined denim and pulled out a darkened plastic case.
The case had half-melted. She crack it against the ground, like an egg, and just manage to catch a little slip of paper which fell out. It was a note. From Kenji Setou, owing Hisao forty-three hundred yen. Well, she’d known the only Hisao in that area and the circumstances on how he’d died, so the body before her must have been Kenji Setou.
Hanako shook her head. Try as she might, the name rang nothing. She closed her eyes, trying to connect with Buddha, with karma, with anything. She had no idea how to pray but simply sat there, waiting, as if her silence would guide the dead boy’s soul into reincarnation. Then she lifted a heavy can of gasoline from her side, unscrewed the cap, and began to pour.
The large red can glugged and spat liquid unevenly, and it was with effort that she controlled the flow as if she was serving tea again in a room with windows. Then Hanako took a length of her cheese wire from her pocket and put it slowly around the corpse’s neck. She breathed once, twice, and yanked the wire with hideous strength.
The weak spine of the beast snapped and the snake-length of an alien white worm within protruded outwards. As it squirmed away from her. She nodded, sickened but satisfied that the juices from the worm would feed her and flush the fallout from her system. The corpse began to twitch, but before the headless body reanimated, Hanako pulled a lighter from her left pocket and a little can of hairspray from her right pocket. In lieu of a fuse, she popped and struck sparks into a jet of flame which breathed over the body.
It began to sizzle, with the pain distracting the newly reborn zombie. As it screamed Hanako stepped back, scooped up her rake, and began to swing the end with abandon. Too weak for stabbing, the tines of the rake broke off in the burned flesh of the dead boy. She knew how painful fire was, so she allowed herself to smash the dead without fear, secure in the knowledge that burning meat meant crippling pain.
She stopped, breathing heavily, after seeming hours of battering. She had no idea where the mind was in those zombies. In the heart, perhaps. Maybe the worm stitched together a web in the chest, like a ready-to-walk cocoon for its children that would rise once it had done the work of spawning. Half-born and weak as these caught corpses were, she could take care of them. For now.
When she ran out of gasoline, if she couldn’t find any from stations around, she would have to find other ways of dealing with the dead. Even though other food was available, she needed that little dose of worm to keep her going. Worm served like how good company did, a comfort, a companionship, a flash of memories in the moment being formed, and in replacement of everything that had been good in her life.
She closed her eyes, nodded, and began to walk away. The glassy burned-out track behind her began to vanish in non-euclidean fashion, disappearing impossibly quickly. She wondered if she was dreaming all of this. When she accidentally trapped her fingernail in an edge within her lighter and felt a tugging pain, she knew that she was not. She let her breath whistle out of her lungs.
When she was far enough from the field to outrun the smell of burnt meat, she put her back against a wall, slid down, and cradled her eyes and scars with her arms. Tomorrow, she’d find a new place to go. She’d go on as she’d done for months, feeling the pain of being exposed to everything live and dead in the world.
Index
