Prompt: Kurozuka

I have for now given up on taka onna. Not because I’m unfamiliar with the history of Japanese prostitution but because I realised that my two entries on taka onna contradict each other. One says that they’re a reference to the high price of the second-floor courtesans. The other says that they weren’t prostitutes — or courtesans — at all but… female incels? And since fandoms are using ‘incel’ as a catch-all insult nowadays towards people they don’t like, I don’t mean it as an insult. I mean it as a legitimate word with its legitimate meaning: someone who is involuntarily celibate.

As an aside, this is one of the reasons why I don’t like this moral outrage at words, especially from people who are still name-calling everyone they dislike or disagree with about fiction. They’re just doing it with words that are deemed “acceptable” and which conveniently imply that the people they’re name-calling are not only wrong but also morally reprehensible, which essentially reduces real people into outlaws.

Old English utlaga “one put outside the law” (and thereby deprived of its benefits and protections), from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse utlagi (n.) “outlaw,” from utlagr (adj.) “outlawed, banished,” from ut “out” (see out (adv.)) + *lagu, plural of lag “law” (see law). Formerly it was lawful for anyone to kill such a person.

A person who is excluded from normal legal rights.

And they’re doing this because of disagreements about fiction. They’re usually also the same people who like to lecture others on how you’re supposed to talk about fictional anything. Which is both absolutely insane and ironic.

But I digress.

So I decided to skip it and landed on kurozuka which are old hags who feed on the livers of unborn babies. So keep that in mind before and if you want to read.

Thank you!

Words: 984

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Kurozuka

Her mum was late.

Asura glanced at the clock on the microwave, glowing in the gloom of the kitchen. It was almost eleven.

She turned back to the window, peering outside through the ghost of herself. The street was still empty, a nearby lamp flickering on and off intermittently. Asura exhaled fretfully, her chest tight with nameless foundless apprehension.

“What’s taking mum so long?” she muttered and paced away from the window again, tugging on her hair with restless hands.

Her mum had gone out to the store, saying she wanted a snack and fresh air. The pregnancy made her crave all sorts of whims. She’d asked Asura to go with her but she’d been busy texting with her friend. When she’d left, she’d said she’d only be a minute but that’d been over an hour ago.

Asura stopped in the middle of the living. The television was still on, droning on almost inaudibly. She stared at the screen sightlessly, abruptly jerked, and came to a decision. Asura turned off the television before she went to the entrance, slipped on her shoes, and went out into the night.

She shoved her hands inside the pockets of her hoodie and half-jogged along the deserted streets to the nearby store. It shone in the darkness, garish and overbright.

Inari, a college student living next door, said her mother had left over half an hour ago. As Asura rocked on her heels, he frowned and asked, “Want me to help look for her? I can close the store for a while.”

A flush climbed up from the soles of her feet despite the worry gnawing at her insides. “It’s okay,” Asura said hurriedly. “Mum wanted some fresh air so she’s probably just taking a longer route.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, she’s probably back home already.”

Asura waved as she all but rushed out of the store, berating herself mentally. She turned left at the corner and stopped, putting her face in her hands and muffling a cry. After a moment, she exhaled a breath and moved along, hopping up the stairs to the road that curved along the root of the mountain.

She flicked nervous glances at the nemorous hills, towering steeply upward. The dark wall of trees bowed in the gust of wind, the rustle of leaves sounding unnervingly like whispered voices. Asura shivered and tucked the hair whipping over her face behind her ear. Her heart jolted when she saw two headlights approach her but the car drove past her without slowing down, the hum of its engine fading.

After a while, Asura stopped before she even realised what she saw.

Underneath the distant street lamp, on the first step of the stairs leading up into the mountain, was a shoe on its side.

Asura stared at it, struggling to breathe past the abrupt tightness in her chest. Her heart pounded in her ears, drowning out the sound of her steps as she approached it slowly, half-dreading and half-hoping that it’d disappear.

It was her mother’s shoe.

Asura drew a painful, short breath and looked up the moss-covered stairs, illuminated with intermittent street lamps. The trees grew thick and close to the dirt path, their shadows strange and amorphous between the lights. Asura took a shaking step up the stairs and then another, climbing the mountain.

It was unnaturally quiet.

She couldn’t hear even the insects.

Asura barely dared to breathe, her pulse a dizzying fast beat. She stopped beneath the faded, decrepit torii and stared at the trail leading off the path. The grass and shrubs were crushed, flattened, as if something big had been dragged through. Something human.

With nerveless fingers, Asura fumbled for her phone and belatedly realised she’d left it on the sofa at home.

She darted a look down the stairs and then into the dark, her stomach a hollow pit of dread. Asura thought of her mother, missing and alone and pregnant. She followed the narrow, trodden trail into the woods.

She smelled it, first. A strange, metallic scent in the air. Then she heard it, the wet crunching noises. Asura’s steps slowed to a crawl; she tugged her sleeve over her fingers and put her hand over her nose and mouth, her stomach twisting into a terrified knot of revulsion. Her skin prickled with instinctive fear.

Abruptly, she stopped.

A shadow was moving in the copse ahead, blacker than the surrounding night, its head bobbing disturbingly up and down as if it was tearing into something. In the choppy patches of moonlight that ponderously seeped through the tangled branches, she could just about make out another figure lying on the ground, something odd and unsettling in the angles of its limbs.

Asura gasped before she could stop herself, a scream gnawing its way up from the pit of her stomach and snagging in her throat, closing off her breath.

It was her mother, her eyes gleaming glassily in the gloom, her face white and uncannily rigid.

Asura was barely aware of the shadow’s head jerking up and turning around, the wet gloss around its mouth. It stood up, its posture eerie and stooped in the dark.

Something dropped to the ground, something small and pale and bloodied, and Asura’s stomach turned with horror as she realised what it (she) was.

Her legs gave out.

She wasn’t aware of sobbing, her voice high and pleading and futilely calling her (dead) mother.

The shadow stalked towards her, its movements disconcertingly noiseless and sinuous despite the gnarled hunch of its shape, its yellow eyes shining underneath the filthy, matted hair.

Asura crawled clumsily backwards, bits of gravel and detritus biting into her palms, leaving small trails of blood.

Her senses fragmented into seconds that lasted hours. Her heart drummed so fast she thought it might give out.

Asura could smell the air of decay on its flaking skin.

Everything went dark.

fin

As usual, I can’t really say how I did with the ~horror~ because I don’t feel anything about my own writing. But I think I did pretty well with the adjectives and adverbs this time? I think I was a bit in the “zone” too since I had to go out right before I finished this, and I felt so irritable and anxious about it afterwards, ha ha.

Also, I wish I could find a good horror ambience to listen to while writing these. I was listening to a video but after a few minutes I was like, “shut uuuup” and closed it, ha ha. So no luck with that one.

I’m not sure if listening to horror ambience helps with writing horror, though, or if it just feels that way because I’m listening to it, ha ha.

Oh well, whatever. At least I finished something and it turned out relatively long too. I mean, considering my current writing skills.

Thanks for reading if anyone did!

Prompt: Ubume

Yay, finally a yokai I could write about. Honestly, I had to skip so many of them that I feel bad.

Words: 689

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Ubume

Chizuru hated night shifts.

The desolate darkness outside turned the windows into opaque mirrors, the artificial lights harsh and overbright. Most of the customers were either shifty as hell or drunk, crawling back home from drinking parties. If she had one more old man tell her how much he’d like to see her servicing him in his house, she wouldn’t be held responsible for her actions.

At least it was raining, she thought, glancing at the ghost of herself in the window. It was flooding down, pattering hard on the roof like bullets. Chizuru doubted anyone was out in a weather like that.

She turned back to the manga she was boredly reading. The one good thing about night shifts, she supposed, was that the boss wasn’t there to get on her case for slacking off.

She flipped a page when she heard the automatic doors slide open. Chizuru started hastily upright. “Wel–“

Her voice died in her throat.

The girl who stepped in was drenched, her bare feet leaving wet grimy tracks on the floor. Her long hair was tangled, veiling half of her face, uncannily black against the white tint of her skin. Her dress was unclean, the hem ragged, clinging soddenly to the bone-thin curves of her body.

Chizuru watched her shuffle to the shelf of baby food, an inexplicable shiver crawling down her spine and settling uneasily in the pit of her stomach. Water was dripping off the girl, each drop sounding inordinately, disconcertingly loud in the shrinking confines of the store. Chizuru averted her eyes, unnerved, darting apprehensive glances at her. The girl picked up boxes of formula and Chizuru struggled against the instinct to bolt when she shuffled towards her, her every nerve screaming.

She stopped. Chizuru kept her head down, her eyes to the side.

“I need these,” the girl said in a hollow quiet voice as if it was coming from the bottom of a well.

“Ah, okay,” Chizuru said, her voice too thin. She checked out the boxes, her hands unsteady and nerveless. “That’s nine thousand yen.”

“Here you go,” the girl said in that same hollow quiet voice that screeched against Chizuru’s mind. The girl held out her hands, the tips of her fingers tinted blue.

Chizuru shuddered as she felt a pile of dead wet leaves drop into her hand. She stared at them with blank incomprehension for a moment. “Wait, you can’t pay with these,” she said without thought.

The girl stopped.

Slowly, she turned to look at her through the tangle of her black hair. Chizuru started, averting her eyes, and then gasped with debilitating pain as cold fingers clutched around her wrist, the touch burning like ice.

“Help me,” the girl said, and all the lights in the store began to flicker violently. In the flashes between darkness, Chizuru saw blood dripping down the inside of her thighs. “Help me,” the girl repeated, her fingers digging into bone.

Chizuru screamed, jerking backwards. She hit the shelves behind her, the items tumbling down to the floor in loud thuds.

She dropped into a crouch, hiding her head in her arms, her breaths quivering too fast and unstable. After a while, when she became aware of the silence, Chizuru tentatively peeked up. The items were still scattered on the floor around her. The formula and pile of dead leaves were still on the counter.

The girl was gone.

Chizuru eased herself up against the wall, her legs trembling and weak. She hissed as pain seared through her arm. She glanced down and saw the dark pink mark around her wrist, shaped exactly like five clutching fingers.

There was still water and blood on the floor behind the counter.

Chizuru closed the store early that night, leaving her resignation letter in her boss’ office. She never went near that store again, but two weeks later she saw in the news that the police had found a missing girl in a nearby house. The owner had kept her locked up for years. She’d died giving birth.

The child had been found dead too.

He’d been only two weeks old.

fin

I actually re-wrote bits of this for sharing purposes. But, I don’t know, I don’t really feel anything about my own writing? I think I need to get more creative with adjectives and the like. Even though I don’t consider Lovecraft’s tales horror, he did have a knack for describing the emotion of horror.

✧˖°.Positive thinking.°˖✧, though. At least these scribblings are slowly becoming longer? *checks* Well, they kind of average around 600 words so never mind.

But I am slowly accumulating possible cases for my japanese ghost detectives to investigate so I’m tagging this as writing progress anyway. Low self-esteem can’t stop me!

Also, disclaimer: I did check what baby formula would cost in Japan but I have no idea if this is legit information so take it with a grain of salt.

Prompt: Jorogumo

It’s late and I need to go to sleep. Like, now. But I finally finished jorogumo and since I had such a hard time writing this, I figured I’d share (and make it everyone else’s problem too, ha ha). I say that with fondness. ❤

Since it is late, this is totally unedited. I’m not going to bother with this further. However… well, aside from the horror this is slightly more suggestive, I think? Like, sexual content suggestive? I blame the whore spider (or the bride spider if you want the euphemistic name).

Anyhow, here it is.

Words: 299

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Jorogumo

He saw her, leaning on the bar.

Her long black hair cascading like silk down her bare back. Her skin smooth and pale like jade.

She stood alone, men hovering in her peripheral, the most gentlemanly ones pretending not to stare. She tipped a shot back and then glanced over her shoulder as if sensing his stare, her eyes dark like acorns and her mouth painted red.

She smiled, slow like an unfolding flower, and Hibiki felt himself blush all the way down to his toes. He quickly looked away and caught the edge of her laugh from the corner of his eyes.

When he chanced a glance up, she was there, her smile like a crescent moon. The world around her blurred, the noise of the club becoming a meaningless murmur. Hibiki couldn’t remember a word she said, what they talked about. All he remembered was the light touch of her hand on his wrist, the low cadence of her voice.

He remembered the tilt of her head when she asked if he wanted to go to her place, the sway of her hips when she got up and walked away, and the jittery disbelief of his luck when he followed her.

He remembered the wet heat of her mouth when she straddled him in the taxi, the fleeting incredulity at the sprawling old house, which he forgot as soon as he stepped inside after her and she slipped out of her dress.

He didn’t remember the door closing behind him.

He remembered the strange furtive rustling in the ambient darkness and the cut of her shadow on the wall in the wan light of the moon.

The last thing Hibiki remembered was her seemingly crawling out of her human body and multiple flailing limbs reaching for him.

fin

Also, I’m sorry, Japan, but I referenced Chinese poetry in this. Well, I guess it’s fine since there are loads of Chinese influences in Japanese culture? Although I’m not exactly sure if they still like someone saying that even though it was a point of elitism in the earlier centuries? Particularly among buddhist monks.

I hope this came across even as a bit creepy.

Prompt: Nekomata

(And bakeneko.)

I realised yesterday that I really hate my tags. ( ╥﹏╥ ) Like, there are so many of them. I don’t know what to do about it. And as a result, it honestly made me less interested in using this blog, ha ha. I guess I could just — stop using it because it’s not as if I’m obliged to and the initial reason why I got this in the first place has kind of lost its meaning? Also, the internet is a graveyard of defunct and missing blogs so what would one more be?

Hm… I guess I need to think about what to do. And if I ever want to start anew here or somewhere else, I guess I need to invest in a blog that’s better for showing off pictures. Because this layout doesn’t really work for that, I think.

Anyhow~ Here’s today’s prompt writing exercise. I actually ended up rather liking this one so I decided to share, ha ha. I think I’ll make this into a case too in that ghost detective story. And this time it’s even an originally evil yokai. Or well, since evil is kind of a loaded term that I don’t want to use lightly, let’s say “not human-friendly yokai”.

But recently I noticed that there are actually quite a lot of stories that tell about people investigating ghostly crimes. On the one hand, I suppose that’s good because it indicates that people are interested in reading them? But on the other hand, it’s like… can or will I stand out?

I — guess I’ll think about that when it comes time for that bridge?

But anyhoo, here’s a very short story about a creepy cat. ❤

Disclaimer: While writing this, I realised that Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service also had a black cat but the name was a total coincidence, ha ha.

Words: 541

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Nekomata

Kiki had always found the cat strange. As a kid, she’d thought it was scary, always staring from the shadows with its unblinking, blue eyes.

It had been her grandmother’s first. She’d always loved cats, and had got it from somewhere in her old age as a companion. Kiki could no longer remember the details or if her grandmother had even said anything at all.

She’d died six months ago, and Kiki had somehow ended up taking the cat in. Her flat was the only one that allowed pets. Not that it mattered. Two months after her grandmother’s funeral, her parents had died too. And then her cousins had started dying.

Kiki hadn’t understood and she’d tried going on in spite of the relentless, inexplicable tragedy and death. Then the gossip started, at work and around the neighbourhood. People whispering and whispering and whispering whenever she passed, avoiding her gaze and presence.

Cursed, they said. An omen of death.

It’d been six weeks since Kiki’d gone to work or outside.

She lived in her own flat like a ghost, her only company that cat. Every night as she went to sleep, it stared at her with its unblinking gaze, the shadow of its long tail splitting in two in the wan light of the moon coming in through the windows. It flicked and swayed somnolently, hypnotisingly, until Kiki fell asleep.

Every night, she had disturbing dreams.

She dreamed of shadows walking past her flat, beneath the flickering lights of the street lamps, familiar shapes slumping and shuffling. She dreamed of the faces of her family in the windows, rotting and decomposing. Sometimes she would wake up to loud, violent knocks at her door and she’d huddle under the blanket until they stopped.

At other times, when she hovered on the boundary of sleep and wakefulness, she thought she heard a voice in the flat. A furtive, unsettling voice that stopped as soon as she woke up fully. On those nights, she’d get up and go through the flat but the only thing she found was that cat. It would sit in front of the windows, staring outside intently.

Gradually, Kiki started thinking that there was something intelligent, something sinister in its gleaming blue eyes.

She thought about getting rid of it. Taking it to the doctor to be put down. Snapping its neck. Drowning it in the bath.

How old was it again?

Kiki stopped eating, and sleeping. She lay awake in the bed, staring at the iridescent flicker of its eyes in the darkness. The cat stared back, something maliciously amused in the ceaseless flicking of its tail, as if it could read her thoughts.

There was only so long she could resist the weight of sleep, her eyelids growing heavier until she simply lost consciousness.

She never woke up.

Not even when the cat jumped noiselessly off its perch on the sideboard and padded over to the bed. Its shadow on the wall grew, and grew, and grew and then its enormous jaw unhinged.

In the morning, the cat got up off the bed and went into the bathroom. The face of Kiki stared back at it from the mirror, her usually dark eyes now an eerie, gleaming blue.

fin

I usually don’t like making my tales very explicit so if some parts seem confusing, I suppose you’d need to know nekomata lore? Well, if anyone has questions, I will answer them.

It’s late and I’m too tired to proofread this so mistakes and all that, ha ha.

Hm… I don’t know, did I manage to make it sound creepy? I can never really tell with my own writing because it honestly doesn’t make me feel anything?

Prompt: Yamauba

Hee, for once I have good news that probably interests no one. I’ve been doing those “prompts” which are just me picking a japanese folklore creature from the yokai books I read last year and free writing it. A few days ago, the prompt was yamauba which are basically these mountain hags. They’re not necessarily evil since, according to some accounts, they might be similar to baba but I’m trying to do horror so horroresque it is.

Anyhow, as I was writing the prompt I started thinking, oh, I actually rather like how this is turning out. So I think I now have an idea for a case that my ghost detectives can investigate! I rewrote some bits of the prompt and figured I might as well post it here. So without further ado for those it might interest.

Words: 813

∞

Yamauba

Azuri was never going to forgive Kaneta for talking her into this.

The beam of her flashlight swept over the threadbare walls, stained dark with spreading patches of mould. Fallen leaves and bits of earth littered the gnarled floors, rustling inordinately loudly as she moved apprehensively further in.

“’Let’s do a test of courage, Azurin’,” she muttered under her breath, repeating what Kaneta had said to her. “’It’s going to be fun, Azurin’.”

She flinched when she felt a breath on the back of her neck and whirled around, her heart pounding sickeningly fast. The corridor behind her was empty, long veils of gossamer swaying soundlessly by the flashlight. Azuri exhaled, scrubbing her hand over the prickling on her nape. “It was just the draft,” she said to herself, and ignored the slight waver in her voice.

They were on a field trip in the mountains and the girls in her class had got the idea of doing a test of courage. It was just a thinly veiled excuse to have a date with the boys because what better way to start a young love than wandering around in the middle of the night in search of ghosts and abandoned huts. Azuri hadn’t been that excited about it, and she’d been even less excited about it when it’d turned out that they had an uneven number of boys and girls and she’d pulled the short end of the stick and had to do the test alone.

She should’ve just gone back to the room, Kaneta’s pleading expression and crush on Yukuri be damned.

The black holes in the shoji seemed to stare at her, the shapes of the shadows queer and sinister. Azuri kept flicking her flashlight at them, her breathing tense with increasing anxiety and fear. “Okay,” she said, her voice unconsciously low. “Okay. I think this is far enough. Time to go back.”

When something pattered quietly on the roof, she jumped and dropped the flashlight. It clattered to the floor loudly, the beam spinning over the time-worn walls. “Shit,” she said, picking it up with nerveless fingers. She listened for a moment and then let out an explosive breath, pressing the flashlight against her forehead. “It’s the rain, Azuri,” she told herself, and after a pause opened her eyes in alarm. “Wait. Rain?”

Azuri rushed back to the entrance and stopped on the engawa outside. The few drops she’d heard inside had turned into a torrent, sheets of water falling down the edge of the eaves, splashing the porch. Azuri stared into the blurred darkness despairingly; she could barely make out the trees looming over the hut, the long drooping branches scratching the roof and the walls.

“How am I supposed to get back like this?” she cried, dropping down into a crouch and putting her face in her hands.

Did anyone even wait for her or had they all run back inside?

The wind picked up, tearing through the trees and banging the branches against the hut. Azuri flinched, huddling more in on herself. She shivered, and then she thought she heard something. She looked up warily, the beam of her flashlight angled at the underside of the roof. Azuri listened, her head tilted. The rain was so loud, all other noises drowned beneath the relentless hammering.

She heard it again, muffled and distant, piercing through the night.

“…what is that?” she asked, haltingly. More noises followed, similar but different. Azuri was inordinately aware of her heartbeat, pounding with increasing unease. The thought hovered in her mind but she didn’t want to voice it.

The noises sounded a lot like screams.

Abruptly, they stopped as if cut off. The hair on the back of Azuri’s neck prickled, her body aching with unexplained tension. She clutched the flashlight, her knuckles white. She inhaled a quick sharp breath, and instinctively clicked the flashlight off.

She thought there was something moving in the dark.

Barely daring to breathe, Azuri strained her eyes. A shape seemed to move in the rain, a prowling void against the black outline of trees. It moved oddly, unevenly. It reminded her of Kimotsuki when she’d broken her leg. Azuri wasn’t aware of trembling, shivers wrecking through her.

She blinked, and the shape seemed to be gone.

Slowly, Azuri looked around. She couldn’t see anything except for the glint of rain by the flashlight and the swaying outline of trees.

“It’s okay,” she muttered. “It’s okay. It was just the wind. Or an animal. Or you’re delusional.”

She exhaled tremulously, her thumb hesitating over the flashlight’s button.

There was a sound behind her, negligibly small. A creak as if someone had stepped out on the engawa. Azuri stared ahead, petrified. A childish thought filled her mind that if she didn’t look, there would be nothing there.

The last thing she felt was cold, gnarled fingers sliding over her throat.

fin

Mostly this was a free writing exercise as well so mistakes and all that.

Can I tag this as writing progress if I haven’t actually written the progress yet? I guess it’s fine, positive thinking~.

Prompt: Yamabiko

Yesterday’s prompt was tengu but I didn’t post it because I did another Harry Potter chapter instead, ha ha. Well, it’s okay, it was even shorter than this one anyway.

These are actually kind of hard because most of these yokai aren’t evil. For example, yamabiko are this cross between a dog and a wild monkey. As far as I know, they are quite harmless. They like to mimic sounds and are said to be responsible for delayed echoes in the mountains. They do sometimes unleash terrible screams so there’s that, I guess.

But as I said, I’m practising for horror so… horroresque it is. This was actually rather fun to write because it went surprisingly smoothly. I wrote it just now because, as I said in yesterday’s post, I was away for the whole day (and I guess it’s good to practise writing at different times of the day since it’s not like I can always do it first thing in the morning). At first, I was going to skip this but since I’m trying to do better this year, I felt guilty about it and wrote this anyway before bed.

So here for those who might be interested.

Words: 459

∞

Yamabiko

As Fuyuka opened her eyes, pain throbbed through her whole body. She gasped, her ribs aching with it, her vision blackening for a few seconds.

When the world slowly came back to focus, she saw the wreckage of her car a little ways off. She must’ve crawled out and fainted.

Fuyuka breathed carefully, becoming aware of other details in incremental snippets. She was lying down on the ground, her cheek pressed against cold, wet leaves and dirt. Dark coniferous and deciduous trees loomed above her, swaying susurrously in the wind. A steep precipice cut a jagged outline against the far-off streetlamps on top. Fuyuka could just about make out a tear in the railing.

She had no idea what had driven her off the road, though. Or how she’d survived the fall.

Fuyuka risked moving, the pain making her quiver and sweat and pant raggedly. After what seemed like an indefinite amount of time, she collapsed against the trunk of one of the trees.

“Handphone,” she muttered, and clumsily fumbled her pockets until she found it. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling.

A crack fractured the screen. Fuyuka kept pressing the power button futilely, her breath catching in her throat. It didn’t work. She let out a sob, pressing the phone against her forehead.

It was dark and chilly. The wind whispered in the trees and far away something cried. Fuyuka flinched, looking around the dense woods uneasily.

She heard it again. It sounded vaguely like a voice. Like someone calling hello.

“Hello?” Fuyuka tried, her voice hoarse and almost inaudible. She cleared her throat, gritted her teeth against the pain, and tried again. “Hello!”

She waited.

The voice came back after a pause, more distinct. “Hello — hello — hello,” it said.

She stared into the darkness. All she could see was the diminishing outline of trees. Her heart was pounding.

“Who’s there?” she called.

Another pause, and then her words came back to her. “Who’s there — there — there?”

She exhaled a harsh breath, disappointment and despair crushing in their suddenness. It was just her echo. There was no one there, no help close by. Fuyuka made a harsh sound and gingerly curled her arms around her legs, her forehead pressed to her knees.

But wait, she thought as she tried to ignore the pain pulsating through her body and head. Echoes didn’t take that long to come back…

…did they?

Fuyuka lifted her eyes. She imagined the shadows between the trees moved in ways that shadows shouldn’t. She opened her mouth, wavered, her voice catching in her throat. “Is someone there?” she called after a few tries.

It was quiet, pressing against her ears. Even the wind didn’t seem to breathe.

Then.

“Is someone there?”

It was right above her.

fin

And now I’m going to go to sleep. I’m not sure if I should ask for likes (a girl craves interactions on her silly writings, okay!) because I’m not sure how many people even read my blog? But if someone does leave a like then thank you. ❤ I hope this one was a fun read even if it is short.

Also, susurrously is probably not a real word but since English isn’t my mother language I can do whatever I want with it. *hides*

Hopefully, by doing these exercises I will eventually figure out crimes for my detectives to investigate.

Today’s Writing Prompt and Exercise

So in the interest of the new year, I thought I’d try to shape up. My goals for this year are: to stop and re-direct my tired and lazy impulses. I mean, as funny as fandom and internet drama are, they’re neither important nor conducive. Finish the stuff I’ve started and for the love of gods, stop backlogging things. This includes finishing Poetic Edda, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Tomb Raider re-play, Bramble: The Mountain King re-play, and Song of Horror! Like, seriously! Before the equinox!

Other goals: trying to make those writing exercises regular again. Finish an original story, doesn’t matter how long it is, just write something. Finish that Harry Potter character tree and figure out the Dumbles/Tommy stuff. Start the fic! “Just write” even though I hate that advice.

That said! Here’s a snippet of today’s writings. You know, as a commitment or whatever.

The prompt: kodama

The exercise: practising for that ghost detective story. The detectives aren’t ghosts. They just investigate ghost attacks, ha ha. The goal is to practise writing Japanese horror and folklore for that story.

∞

Kodama

The town was perched on the edge of the ocean, the water lapping against the foundations of the wood houses, painted black with pine soot. A single street cut through the town, winding along the root of the nemorous mountains, a jagged, susurrous outline against the sky.

The woods were dark even during the day and uncannily quiet. Here and there crumbling, moss-coated steps led to nowhere. Rotting, dilapidated torii stood among the shadows. In the deepest parts of the forest, queer lights wavered between the old, massive trees that bled if cut.

It was an odd place, the inhabitants said. The trees did strange things. The shadows moved. Echoes took longer than they should to return. A person could get lost in there for days — if they came back at all.

fin

And this word: nemorous. EVERY TIME I’m like,

Hey, let’s use that word.

*pauses*

*totally does not remember how it’s written*

*tries to look it up online*

*internet search engines yield no results*

*increasing frustration*

Is ‘nemorous’ even a real word? It’s not on etymonline? No wonder I didn’t find it there.

The True Golden Rule

I — wasn’t sure what to do with this, to be honest. I wrote the first thousand words of this yesterday as a sort of free writing exercise and I guess it works as that exercise of taking a chapter from a book and writing it from another character’s point of view as well. I always wanted to try doing one but I never got an idea for it before now.

I wasn’t going to post this because it’s fan fiction as well as a writing exercise and I’m not sure if I will or can continue this. But on the other hand, leaving my stuff rotting in my files seems kind of silly too? I guess I’ll post it on AO3 if I ever finish this one?

So, the free writing exercise of the past two days! Warnings: completely unedited and this isn’t supposed to be all that serious, ha ha.

∞

The True Golden Rule

His mother asked if he was going to be fine by himself. Draco was already eleven and thus no longer needed his mother to accompany him, and said as much. Narcissa smiled indulgently and smoothed his hair in her light, pleasant way. Not that Draco appreciated these public displays of affection since he was practically twelve, but he supposed his mother needed the reassurance. She wasn’t used to leaving him off on his own.

“Of course,” Narcissa said, and left up the street while Draco went inside Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions.

He kind of regretted telling her that when he was standing still on the footstool and the doddering proprietor dressed in violent mauve was taking forever with his robes. The woman was utterly incompetent; how long could it even take to pin the proper length of his robes? And Draco was the only one in the shop and couldn’t while away time chatting with someone, and he certainly wasn’t going to chat with Madam Malkin who kept calling him my dear as if Draco was hers or a particularly slow-witted child.

So when the bell chimed and another boy stepped into the shop, Draco perked up immediately. He eyed the boy curiously through the mirror; he was dressed in odd muggle clothes that looked more like overgrown discoloured rags and he was wearing broken, taped glasses askew on his nose. He looked thin and unkempt, with messy black hair and shoes that Draco’s mother would never have let him wear.

He was obviously a muggle, Draco thought, and then reminded himself, Don’t assume! Lots of pureblood families had started wearing muggle fashion even though it was so — unrefined. Father always said that nothing good came from associating with muggleborns or muggles but, well, Draco’s father wasn’t always right and Draco wasn’t going to believe his words without seeing for himself first. After all, Uncle Severus was a magical genius and he was from a half-muggle family. He never really talked about it but it was obvious from his looks and behaviour.

The boy stood up on the footstool next to him and Draco decided on a neutral approach.

“Hullo,” he said, “Hogwarts too?”

The boy glanced at him askance, his expression a bit unpleasant for some reason. Maybe he was just nervous, Draco thought. He could get that, he tended to get offensive too when he got upset. Not that he got upset obviously, he added hastily. Because only little kids did that.

“Yes,” the boy said shortly.

“My father went to get my books and my mother’s up the street looking at wands,” Draco divulged. “I’m going to drag them off to look at racing brooms next.” I think, he added silently in his head but didn’t say aloud because it wouldn’t do to show weakness in front of strangers. Besides, Draco just had to convince his mother who would convince his father. “I don’t see why first-years can’t have their own. I think I’ll bully father into getting me one and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.”

He could already see it in his mind, too: everyone would be awed and ask him how he’d done it, and then he’d further impress them with his mad flying skills and become the first first-year seeker in a century. It’d be grand!

Draco blinked away this momentary daydream and then waited for a beat for the boy to divulge where his parents were but he just kept looking at Draco with that same faintly unpleasant expression.

When he didn’t come forth with anything, Draco asked, “Have you got your own broom?”

He didn’t really think so — even if the boy didn’t look obviously muggle, he looked poor — but again, he couldn’t just assume. That’s what all the Daily Prophet articles said too when writing about muggleborns and muggles. They’re just like us! they declared. You’d be surprised how much they actually know of the wizarding world! Maybe muggles had a second-hand broom shop; they certainly seemed to use brooms for sweeping the ground, funny enough.

“No,” said the Boy of Monosyllabic Replies.

“Play any quidditch at all?” Draco inquired, still reminding himself not to assume and judge.

“No,” said the Boy of Monosyllabic Replies, even more flatly than before.

Draco was momentarily stumped, trying to imagine what muggleborn kids even did for fun then. He waited for another beat to see if the boy would come forth with any hobbies of his own but when he didn’t Draco just went on by himself. No one could ever call him a quitter even if this was the most one-sided conversation he’d had with someone.

“I do — Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you’ll be in yet?”

Surely the boy had to know that at least, right? They explained that in the Hogwarts letter, didn’t they?

Again, the only reply he got was a flat no. The boy’s expression was getting increasingly closed-off and unpleasant. Draco was forcibly reminded of how people looked at him when they heard his family name but he ignored the nasty feeling in his gut.

He curbed his increasing frustration and tried a different approach. “Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they,” he said, going for bracing reassurance. “I know I’ll be in Slytherin, though, all our family have been.” Draco was hit with a sudden anxious thought. “Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”

Everyone knew Hufflepuff was the house of rejects, the ones who didn’t fit in any of the other houses. Even the Sorting Hat sang so — or so Draco had heard. He couldn’t even imagine getting publicly told that he didn’t fit in anywhere and being sorted into the house of leftovers. It sounded like the most humiliating thing ever but maybe Hufflepuffs were just masochists.

“Mmm,” the Boy of Monosyllabic Replies said, the most unenthusiastic and disinterested answer in the world. Forget about knowing anything about Draco’s world, he didn’t even seem interested in any of it.

Desperately Draco cast about for something to talk about that the boy had to respond to in more words than one. He noticed a gigantic stranger standing outside the front window, holding two cones of ice cream and grinning at someone inside — presumably the boy next to him. Because if he was grinning at Draco, he should have to get his parents or an auror as they’d instructed him about creepy strangers. Not that he should trust the aurors either, Lucius had added, which had seemed needlessly self-contradicting even if understandable in light of his father’s — er — history with law enforcement.

Somewhat relieved, Draco said, “I say, look at that man.” He nodded towards the window, eyeing the boy’s expression carefully out of the corner of his eyes and for once there was a hint of recognition and emotion in his face. Aha, he thought. Finally.

“That’s Hagrid,” the boy said. “He works at Hogwarts.”

Actual sentences! Draco cheered. He’d started to suspect that muggles didn’t teach their children rhetoric. Not that he was assuming. Think of Uncle Severus, he reminded himself. He had an eloquent way with words that Draco hoped to emulate someday.

“I’ve heard of him,” said Draco, pleased that they finally had some common ground to talk about. “He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?”

“He’s the gamekeeper,” the boy said flatly, eyeing Draco as if he’d said something distasteful and rude.

Draco stared at him blankly for a moment and almost said, “That’s what I said, didn’t I?” Instead, he rummaged around in his mind for something else he’d heard about Hagrid. The adults sometimes talked about their time at Hogwarts during the soirées his parents hosted at the manor and he was pretty sure someone named Hagrid had featured in them — and then he remembered something he’d always thought sounded unbelievable and funny.

“I heard he’s a sort of savage—” Draco said in tones of scandalised interest “—lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed.”

Most pureblood children got control of their magic by the time they were eleven. Draco couldn’t imagine this at all.

“I think he’s brilliant,” said the boy, utterly cold.

And that was it.

Draco tossed out all thoughts of Uncle Severus and those rubbish Daily Prophet articles from his mind and sneered right back. He didn’t get what was this rude brat’s problem.

“Do you?” he said, equally cold. He had the dark, private thought that if the brat liked that gamekeeper then Hagrid couldn’t be all that either. They were probably two uncivilised peas in a pod. “Why is he with you? Where are your parents?” he asked impatiently, thinking that he should have words with them about their brat’s utter lack of manners and upbringing. He was also thinking if this was one of those ‘stranger danger’ situations he’d vaguely heard about because why would this brat be walking about with a school gamekeeper of all people?

“They’re dead,” the Utterly Rude Brat said, sounding peculiarly cold and emotionless about it.

Draco blinked, momentarily at a loss for what to say. He couldn’t imagine sounding that blunt about the death of his parents. “Oh, sorry,” he said off-handedly for the lack of anything better. “But they were our kind, weren’t they?” he demanded because, dead parents or no, he wanted confirmation. Forget about not assuming, that was stupid anyway.

Besides, the war had been ten years ago. Everyone had dead parents. This kid wasn’t special.

“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean,” the kid said, which didn’t really answer Draco’s question.

Were they muggleborns? he thought. Half-bloods?

He couldn’t imagine any pureblood raising their children without any sort of manners but then, his father had mentioned people like the Weasleys who apparently had so many children they hadn’t had the time to discipline them all. “Vulgar riffraff” had been Lucius’s exact words, Draco thought.

“I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? They’re just not the same, they’ve never been brought up to know our ways,” Draco goaded, trying to hint at what he thought of this brat’s manners and disinterest in his world that he was invading. “Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine,” he added, giving the brat a reproachful look down his nose even though he at least seemed to know what Hogwarts was if nothing else.

“I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families,” Draco finished off, repeating what Lucius usually said to people who were concerned with public respectability. At least then Draco wouldn’t have to deal with rude muggleborn strangers day in and day out. He narrowed his eyes. “What’s your surname anyway?”

He needed to know so he could avoid him at school and quite possibly judge his entire family while he was at it.

But before Draco could get his answer, Madam Slower Than a Geriatric Turtle rudely interrupted. “That’s you done, my dear.”

The brat hopped off the stool and went for the door without another word.

“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” Draco called after him because he just — could not. His mother had raised him better than that even if her exact teachings had been, “Never be rude first, Draco. You’re above that. But make sure you finish it and break their nose if they ask for it”. Besides, if Draco didn’t get the last word, it’d bother him for the rest of the day.

He fumed silently in his thoughts for a while and when Madam Oh You’re Here Too Draco started fussing at the hem of his robes again, he snapped, “And would you hurry it up too?”

The woman had the audacity to give him an offended look and Draco scowled right back. “If you didn’t start serving other customers while still working on my robes, I’d already be out of here,” he pointed out acerbically.

“Well, aren’t you a pleasant young man,” Madam Never Heard of Customer Service said coolly and for a moment Draco considered kicking her in the knee but no, that was for vulgar riffraff. He settled on glaring at the woman so she would get a move on. He was surrounded by gits and incompetents!

His father did say that Diagon Alley wasn’t what it used to be. It was a disgrace.

The bell chimed again and this time a young girl stepped inside with an air of indifference. She, too, was dressed in muggle clothes even though her clothes looked much more expensive and refined. She noticed Madam Malkin, shifting her long dark auburn braid over her shoulder. “Good day,” she said, and even her diction sounded better than that brat’s. “I’m here for school robes.”

“Of course, my dear,” Madam Malkin said, seeming relieved to get away from Draco’s disapproving, demanding glare. “I have everything here — step right there and we’ll get you robes in a jiffy.”

“Wouldn’t that be the day,” Draco drawled just loud enough to be heard. Madam Malkin gave him a cool look and then slipped robes over the girl’s head.

Draco side-eyed her suspiciously. He wasn’t sure if he was all that interested in trying to talk with another muggleborn but at least this girl seemed more well-bred than that Utterly Rude Brat. Whatever, he decided. If this girl turned out to be rude as well, he’d just never talk to another muggleborn ever again. Except for Uncle Severus — even if he was a half-blood but it was practically the same thing anyway.

“Are you going to Hogwarts?” he drawled.

The girl glanced at him, her eyes dark like Uncle Severus’s. In spite of himself, Draco relaxed just a bit. “Unfortunately,” she said in a clear, distinct voice.

Draco gave her an inquisitive, mildly surprised look. “Father does always say that the place has gone to the dogs,” he declared, commiserating.

“I can see why. They really wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Father wanted to send me to Durmstrang,” Draco offered.

“Durmstrang?” the girl inquired. Her expression was impassive but not hostile, and Draco didn’t mind so much.

“It’s another wizarding school in central Europe,” he supplied, slowly warming up to her. At least she knew how to string together sentences that consisted of more than one word, wasn’t inexplicably rude, and seemed interested in his world.

“I was going to go to Wimbledon High School,” the girl said in turn.

Draco had never heard of it. He frowned, feeling slightly dubious. “Is that a muggle school?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t going to another wizarding school?” he asked, feeling rather perplexed. He’d always heard that muggleborns were excited about having magic — as if it was something to be excited about instead of something that just was.

“I didn’t really see why I should,” the girl stated. “I don’t need magic much, I should think. I prefer a more hands-on approach anyway.”

Draco frowned, unsure if he should feel insulted — because imagine saying that you didn’t need air — but instead curiosity won. “What do muggles even do in a school?”

“The usual, I imagine. Music, drama, sports, debate.”

Well, it didn’t sound so different, Draco supposed — except for drama. He found himself demanding, “What’s drama?”

She explained.

It — it sounded so interesting. Draco was going to have to do performances in the Slytherin common room. Crabbe and Goyle could help him. He could make them play props because Draco didn’t think they could read scripts, let alone memorise lines.

He was busy imagining all the glorious plays he could do when Madam Rude To Customers suddenly declared that he was done. Draco noted that she didn’t add my dear and gave her a haughty look down his nose. “It’s about time,” he declared and stepped off the footstool.

He regretted it immediately when he had to look up at the girl and his voice came out slightly tentative. Malfoys didn’t do tentative. “I’ll see you at Hogwarts then?”

“I imagine so,” the girl said, and Draco thought he could see her mouth quirk in a faint smile.

He left the shop and rushed up to his mother as soon as he saw her walking towards him in the crowd. “Mother, guess what! I think I made a new friend!” he drawled excitably, and then his expression crashed into a terrible scowl. “But first let me tell you about this horrible rude brat I met in the robe shop,” he said and launched into a rant, feeling much better when he could vent.

Narcissa listened indulgently and took his hand as they headed for the bookshop down the street to meet up with his father. Draco let her because his poor mother must’ve felt quite anxious in that horrible wand shop by herself.

Fin

For now~. I think this is my longest free writing exercise to date! Or does it still count as free writing if I do it over two days? Are there rules about it?

By the way, the girl is Lara Croft (the original and only). I will get those two in the same universe eventually even if it kills me, ha ha.

Can’t post this as original fiction and I kind of don’t want to put this in the Harry Potter category either. So I guess writing it is.

Writing Prompt Exercise

I didn’t quite manage to post this in the morning before I had to run. It feels a bit silly to give myself prompts but what’s a girl to do by her lonesome? And apparently you can just choose a line from novels. So I figured all that reading has to be conducive for something and then spent half the night yesterday looking for this sentence I vaguely remembered being nice but didn’t post as a quote because it wasn’t that kind of sentence. I didn’t manage to find it either so I settled on this sentence from Lovecraft’s Tomb:

. . . few care to brave the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the water-worn stones.

And let me tell you, it was a terrible mistake. I spent an hour staring at that sentence before I thought maybe it’s just the present tense that’s tripping me up and switched it up for the past tense. (You can change the tense in a prompt, right?)

Also, apparently I wasn’t in the mood for serious and I really don’t know how to mimic Lovecraft’s style so… Sorry about that, Lovecraft? I tried? But I did manage to use words I’ve never used before so that was nice? Unless I used them incorrectly but writing is a learning experience. So here you go, a bunch of fantasy clichés:

Writing Prompt Exercise

Few cared to brave the depressing shadows which seemed to linger strangely about the water-worn stones. Rhedys wasn’t one of them. Rhedys was a trained witch, somewhat, and she’d been raised by her brothers whose job it was to go where other people dreaded to go in search of forgotten treasures and glory.

And she’d dragged Eirian with her so she wouldn’t feel lonely.

“After you,” she said courteously and kind of shoved him.

Eirian leaned away, his arms crossed, and raised his eyebrows. “You’re the one who wanted to come here so you go first.”

They both stared at the entrance to the burial mound. It yawned open into untreaded depths, black as a pit. The light from Rhedys’ staff didn’t seem to reach past the stone slabs, engraved with unremembered signs.

“This is ridiculous,” Rhedys said.

“Why did you even want to come here?” Eirian inquired.

“Well. I thought if people don’t really come here, it should still have treasure left in it.”

“Or they’ve already been taken by the people who did come here. Or there’s a good reason why people don’t come here and that reason is usually a gruesome death,” Eirian pointed out.

Rhedys frowned. “Are you really working for us? That’s not very adventurous of you.”

Eirian rolled his eyes and dropped into a crouch. He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the burial mound. Disturbingly it didn’t make a sound.

“That’s… weird.”

Eirian stood up, patting off his hands. He looked over at Rhedys and smiled brightly. “After you,” he said.

“If it’s magic, I can take care of it,” Rhedys said.

“You’re going to set off fireballs in an enclosed tomb?”

“I know how to control them! And I’ve been practising other things, like detrapping.”

“Well, detrap away,” said Eirian and gestured at the signs on the stone slabs.

“You’re the hermeneut,” Rhedys pointed out primly. “That’s why I brought you along.”

Eirian gave her a look, amusement lingering in the corner of his mouth, but he didn’t call her lie. Instead, he sighed and held out his hand. Rhedys gave him her staff and he was just about to take a step towards the burial mound when it happened.

A hollowed scraping noise was steadily rising up from the tomb. It was such an incongruous sound that Rhedys belatedly realised how unnaturally quiet the copse surrounding the mound was. She exchanged a look with Eirian, who gave her staff back, and then they both stepped back. Rhedys pointed the staff at the entrance.

A moment later a pebble rolled out of the tomb and stopped neatly right at their feet.

They stared.

“Okay,” Eirian said, clapping his hands startlingly together. “You’re not going in there. Your brothers will kill me if anything happens to you and as much as I asked to be hired, I don’t think I’m getting paid enough.”

“And if you think about it, raiding graves is quite disrespectful,” Rhedys added.

“Yes, exactly, we shouldn’t disturb the nice undead. The poor things are used to having no visitors in their eternal unrest.”

They backed away until they couldn’t see the burial mound anymore behind the ancient, moss-cloaked trees and it was only then they turned around.

“As much as I don’t dislike these excursions with you,” Eirian said, “next time pick something that’s already been raided a few times. We’ll steal the faceplates off the locks or the wallpaper.”

fin

This time it was 573 words! We’re already moving up in the world!