Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.


When the bars and restaurants of the village of Wimbledon finally close in the wee hours of the morning and the streets empty, the people in the shop window ads can relax and make their presence known. Amongst the war-painted and angry-looking wrestlers in the poster for next week’s bouts, Jeremy is first to break the silence. ‘Thank goodneth for that, my jaw wath cramping with all that grimathing – why do I alwayth have to be the one who lookth like he’th gurning?’

Bruno doesn’t respond. He’s trying to peer around the corner to catch more than just a glimpse of Serious Jane and Party Jane in the High Street optician’s two-for-one stylish frames ad. ‘Hubba hubba, girlies, get yourselves over here and say hello to a real man.’

James, in the optician’s window across the road, wearing Gucci frames (plain glass – his eyesight’s perfect, but a job’s a job) and tasteful cardigan, sniffs and turns away. Serious Jane always tells him to ignore the wrestlers. There’s more to life than Neanderthal-browed morons like Bruno, she says.

James does quite like the Jane twins, but he finds Party’s purple hair, pink horn-rimmed glasses and extroverted manner a bit intimidating, and Serious, in her more sober wire frames and lab coat, always seems to have her head in a book. He sighs: if only there were a Jane halfway between them.

The Janes normally enjoy each other’s company, which is just as well, since they’re stuck side-by-side day after day. However, Party Jane has a headache tonight and tries to persuade Serious Jane to swap places, so that she can have a little bit of peace and quiet, instead of going clubbing with the guys in the wrestling ad. ‘Look, I’ll even let you wear my spangly top, the one you’ve been coveting since these new posters went up.’

Just then, a wail comes from across the street: ‘Look what they’ve done to me!’ There’s a synchronised gasp as all eyes turn towards Supermarket Sue in the Tesco’s near the station. She’s sporting a bushy moustache and ugly thick-rimmed black spectacles, thanks to the evening’s graffiti artists.

Beekeeper Bill, sharing the same window, wraps a fatherly arm around her shoulders and says, ‘There, there.’

Much tutting ensues, and a crude stick figure, also in thick black paint, on the wall beside Sue’s poster says, ‘I’m really sorry about what’s happened to you, Sue, but don’t worry, it’ll wash off in the next rain. I know, because that’s when I usually vanish. Those louts come round here every evening, but they’re getting no better at painting. Banksy needn’t have any worries about their competition—I’m the best they’ve ever managed to paint. They’ll be back tomorrow, and we really ought to do something about them before things get worse.’

James clears his throat. ‘Excuse me, everybody. I’ve got a suggestion. What if we douse the streetlights around here early tomorrow? That’ll make the rest of the public leave this bit of the village early, and we can set a trap for the yobs. Here’s what we’ll do…’

The next night, the poster people are ready. The street is dark, only the moon and shop security lights illuminating the scene. Two teenage boys dressed in heavy metal tee-shirts and tatty jeans approach. The taller one, additionally sporting a scuffed leather jacket, is carrying a can of spray paint, and he tells the other boy to keep a lookout while he gets to work. He approaches the wrestlers and mumbles something to his companion about giving them afros and beards.

With a hissing sound, a waist-high mist suddenly envelops them.

Party Jane had switched on the fog generator in her poster background’s night club and is directing the flow out on to the street. Serious Jane is shining lasers from her poster’s lab at the night club’s disco balls, spreading brightly coloured spots of light across the fog and up and down the walls. Both Janes start playing spooky music. To be more precise, Serious is playing the piano, and Party is screeching her fingernails on the window while making howling wolf noises.

As the boys jump round in surprise, Bruno leans out of the poster and growls, ‘We don’t like your sort around here. You’re going to pay for what you’ve done.’
Stickman shrieks a maniacal laugh, and the boys pale.

Beekeeper Bill opens his honey pots, and with a cry of, ‘Fly, moi lovelies,’ shakes loose a swarm of bees. He thrusts a finger in the direction of the boys, and shouts, ‘Attaaaack!’

With tearing noises, the bees rip themselves from the supermarket poster and buzz directly towards the youths.

The boys scream and drop their paint. They whirl in panic and run, but by now, the mist is above their heads, and they can’t even see each other, let alone where they’re going. Every turn they make, they’re confronted by a leering face or the roar of angry bees. Tripping over kerbstones and bouncing off trees, they make it as far as the common before they slam into each other and knock themselves unconscious.

Early next morning, a pair of patrolling police constables find the boys lying where they fell. Both sport black painted moustaches and glasses, and the taller one has something rude drawn on his forehead as well. They prod the youths with the toes of their boots to wake them.

Both boys sit up and clutch at the police officers’ legs. They start spouting some hare-brained story about a mysterious fog and ghost people coming to life, finally sobbing, ‘Help us, please. The bees. The bees!’
​
PC Jones mutters something about morons spending too much time sniffing the contents of their spray cans and deserving all the unpleasant hallucinations they get. PC Atkinson nods in agreement, but is only half paying attention. She’s wondering about the detailed drawings of bees someone seems to have carefully cut out and scattered on the grass around the boys.




                                                                     💀💀💀

L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, ‘The Feather and the Lamp,’ sits alongside works in anthologies such as ‘The Monsters Next Door’ and ‘Best of British Science Fiction 2022’ as well as Short Édition’s ‘Short Circuit’ and the ‘Horrifying Tales of Wonder’ podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE ‘Transactions on Neural Networks,’ which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less fun. When not writing, L.N. unwinds in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.




​Darkness seeped into the trees, like a napkin sopping up ink, filling up the world from the ground up. Pines stood black against a glowing twilight sky. Traces of the sun's presence lingered still, clinging to clouds and turning them pink, but it was dark enough that I could slip out of the hill. The music drifted on the wind from far below the earth, and the sound of hundreds of feet dancing to the strange rhythms could be faintly heard - far away.

The moon was low over the trees, and poured its silvery light into the clearing. The stars opened their eyes one at a time, then danced their way across the horizon, laughing as they twirled hearing music that mortals don't comprehend.

Jake was there, covered in moonlight and smelling of earth, warmth and life. His eyes were closed and he slept – dreaming of cold lips, cold skin, and shimmering translucent wings. He was still wearing his work clothes. His work boots were crusted in cement and the gray dust had caked into the crevices of his hands and under his nails. He worked with concrete. Making the little buildings that humans liked to make. Paving paths. Pouring the mud and letting them bake like cakes in the sun until they are something new and durable. Well, as durable as humans can make anything.

Human things are terribly easy to break. Everything about them is soft and yielding. With nothing else, water can warp their roads that wend this way and that. Frost pushes them up and collapses them down. Add a seed and the trees would crumble their works like paper. So fragile. More delicate than a spider's web.

They thought so much of them too. He could talk for hours about the precision that went into some of the larger buildings that cut like knives into the sky. Jake didn’t want to simply pour the concrete, he had dreams of drawing up the plans and resurfacing the world with his visions. Jagged glass and smooth stone glittered in his mind – far more beautiful than the rugged outlines of a raw earth. Precise lines and measured steps were the dance he enjoyed. Music that was mathematically sound was all his ears could hear.

It was adorable.

The night he came to the clearing he had been drunk and lost his way. I may have helped him become lost. Oops.

Fey lights should never be followed – humans used to know such things. He strayed from the path and has remained lost ever since. Though he thinks he knows the way. He even thinks he’s returned home. Returned to his wife and two little children and their warm blood and warm kisses. But those were dreams he had in the light of the day. Warm dreams for warm blood. Were he to actually wake, he'd learn that the children haven’t seen their father in some time. The count of human days makes little sense. Sun. Moon. Stars. They all dance on.
​
Sometimes other warm folk call his name and he turns his head as if to answer. But his eyes never quite open, and the music from the hall deep in the earth picks up its crooked tune. He reclines in the grass, content to be fed dew and cobwebs. He will never leave until my dream is done. Fey dream for a long time.

​
                                                                    💀💀💀

Katy England has been writing for longer than she likes to admit. A journalist and communications expert by day, modder and fiction writer by night. She spends much of her time in the great expanse of the Maine woods with her husband, triplets, and select fish. Her greatest accomplishments, to date, is that her children like her stories and that the crows come to her yard when she calls them.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.



​The shouts from the flat next door faded in traces of last night.

Promise to come back.

Yukiko steadied herself with the fingertips of one hand against the wall, Patrick’s scent lingering on her neck and breasts, stomach and thighs—the scent that she’d refused to wash away in Nashville, now evaporating within this aged Osaka apartment, consumed by the familiar and unnerving odor she’d known most of her life. Why was this furniture still here? 

Yukiko’s mother had been dead for two years, the apartment vacant ever since. Yuki’s father had returned from the hospital only to gather enough belongings from fifty years’ accumulation and leave for good. But this furniture, the heavy odor… It was as though her mother would enter from another room at any moment, laughing that Yuki had dreamed everything.

Yukiko trembled, her gaze going toward the bedroom. Chapped lips parted in her confusion.

Her father had told Yukiko he’d moved the furniture out months ago, that the apartment had been emptied except for the altar, awaiting Yuki to return so a monk from her mother’s shrine could be invited to perform the proper ceremony to transport the altar to her father’s new apartment. Yuki felt strange, even stranger than the day twelve years ago when she had moved out of this apartment and into her own. This place had been her home for nearly thirty years, the place she could still call home even after leaving. But now—her mother dead, her father having moved out—what could she call it? 

An urn, she thought sadly.

She’d returned from America to perform with her father that which was called for on the second anniversary of her mother’s death. Yuki had returned to America after the funeral, before the ashes could be interred properly, to care for her husband and son. Saiichi had demanded she return to him as soon as possible to do what a wife must do.

As the forty-ninth day following her mother’s death approached, Yukiko could not afford the expense or time to return to Japan for the traditional internment of ashes. Her father had cursed her, not Saiichi, but, in the end, had relented, muttering that Yuki had at least been home when her mother died, had helped him through the funeral arrangement as he lay in the hospital under treatment for a weak heart, a heart that had grown strong in the last two years.

She had taken care of everything, had sat without sleep for nearly forty-eight hours with her mother’s body, burning incense, greeting visitors, wishing all well while maintaining the composure the situation required.

Not until her father’s release from hospital care and her return to the U.S. a week later, had the weight of her loss been accepted fully. She collapsed and sobbed not against Saiichi’s, but Patrick’s chest as he held her softly, his own tears warm against her neck in the frigid January rain that soaked them both. That had been the first time they touched so intimately. In the time of death, their mutual attraction deepened and became a bond of comfort and love that she had never felt with anyone before, especially Saiichi.

If you need me, call me. I’ll come to you.

Yuki stepped unsteadily back toward the door, her hand reaching blindly behind, searching for the knob, wishing it to be Patrick’s hand taking hers, moving up, sliding over her in loving exploration and caresses. She could feel him now, the feathery touch of his lips, his sweat blending with her own, could hear her own whispers as he guided himself into her, her nipples still sweetly sore against the fabric of her bra.

Remember this moment, he whispers to her. Remember when I die.

Two years after her mother’s death, money and time had finally allowed Yuki to return to Japan. First, a monk from her and her mother’s shrine would perform the necessary rites to transport the altar to her father’s new apartment. Afterward, her mother’s ashes would be interred in the shrine’s cemetery. Then Yuki could return to America, to the place she would choose to stay forever if Saiichi’s company would only allow the time she needed for her son to grow old enough to understand her feelings for someone other than the man she’d married. For now, however, she needed to concentrate on reconciling with her father as best she could to bid goodbye to her mother. And then—yes then—she could return to America. To her son. To Patrick. And to Saiichi until the time came when she could say goodbye to him.

If his company will allow me that much time, she thought.

Yukiko felt for the knob of her parent's bedroom door and whispered, “Patrick, give me strength.” She slid the door open. Light flooded the dim room, the neighbors’ angry voices again intruding, sniping, snapping her back to the present. Light and sound swirled. Her mother’s scent—that acridly sweet odor of sweat and bean paste—overwhelmed with longing and sadness. Darkness flooded from the edges. She felt her muscles go limp, unable to resist, and succumbed to the essence she’d known as a child.

***

Yukiko stared out the window as Osaka passed in a blur—buildings pressed against one another, gray clothing flapping from multi-floor banisters in a chilling wind under gray skies that threatened snow. She thought, they’ll freeze, recalling in some far reach of her mind the days her own clothes had frozen when the weather turned unexpectedly bitter. Her mother had laughed, had brought the stiff garments into the tiny apartment to hang them in doorways and from light fixtures. The woman had then settled with the girl in the middle of all those thawing garments for word games and stories.

“Are you okay?”

Yuki blinked, her mind registering again the rhythmical clacking of the train, its surge and ebb against the terrain. The car carried only thirty or so passengers now, nearly empty compared to rush hour when commuters packed in like tuna. She sensed her father shift closer, but not close enough to touch—too public a display for an old man to hold his daughter’s hand now, to offer comfort. She wasn’t twelve any longer; she was forty-three and beyond such displays of affection. She closed her eyes briefly, pictured herself on the platform of a crowded station, one foot stepping toward the edge, a growing breeze caressing her face as a train rushed in.

“I’m okay,” she said.

The old man chuckled, his shoulders rising and falling with the sound. “Furniture…” he muttered in dismissal.

She’d regained consciousness at the apartment before anyone noticed her in the doorway, her head splitting inside, but not a mark on her to betray the embarrassment of fainting. This, she’d thought sullenly, is only part of my punishment. Did my mother die because of me, because of Patrick? She’d said nothing to her father about the incident, only asked about the furniture.

“What furniture?” he replied incredulously, his face sobering somewhat when she had not smiled to his laughter. “I told you already. The furniture is gone. All I left was the altar—for you, for now…” He looked away, his words clipping into silence under the clatter of the train.

Yuki shook her head slightly, almost imperceptibly. She refused to accept that she had imagined the furniture. She knew what she’d seen, yet he was telling her that she’d seen nothing because there was nothing to see. “Let’s go back,” she said. “I can show you.”

He regarded her for a long moment, eyes hard, face unreadable, callused by decades of harsh glares, vacant of sympathy or love. What had her mother seen in this man? 

What do you see in Saiichi? Patrick asks.

He is Masayoshi’s father.

“You need to rest,” Yukiko’s father said, his voice flat, betraying nothing beyond logic. “I’ll go there Monday to make certain everything is ready for the monk. Then you and I will return on Saturday, as planned, to meet the monk when he will move the altar to my apartment.” He sighed heavily and turned his gaze to his hands which lay motionless in his lap. “I wish you had brought Masayoshi. He needs to see his grandfather. He’s been in America too long.”

She glanced away, feeling his disdain, accepting her shame but realizing it was born of regret that she was not stronger. She fought the truth in her own mind, to tell him that he might see his grandson sooner than anyone had planned, that her husband’s company could collapse at anytime and destroy her dream. The American partner in the corporation faced bankruptcy, and the Japanese company was not in much better shape. If the banks foreclosed…

Someday, she whispers to Patrick, someday I may have to move back Japan. What then? What do we do then?

He holds her tenderly, his chest moist against her breasts. You don’t go have to go, he tells her. I promised you I would never do anything intentionally to hurt you, never do anything you don’t want me to do. All I ask is that you stay with me. You don’t have to go. You don’t...

To make this trip, Yuki had left her son with her husband against Saiichi’s protests. “You should take him,” Saiichi said. “It will require too much time off from work for me if you don’t take him.”

“If I take him, I can’t do everything I must while I’m there,” she argued. “Who would help me? My father? Of course not. There’s no one.”

“Why must I always make the sacrifice for you?” Saiichi shouted. He spun away, storming from the room, leaving her with tears threatening, but she would not allow them to fall. With her son, this trip would have been impossible. She could not care for him and take care of the business of her mother’s memorial. Later, Yukiko thanked Saiichi for his kindness and understanding, but secretly she cursed him for she knew Patrick would have made no argument, would have accepted responsibility and more gladly—for her.

When she called Saiichi from Nagoya Airport after her plane landed from the U.S., she asked, “How is Masayoshi?” 

“Happy,” her husband replied flatly. “Breakfast was calmer without you. No arguments.”

The train trembled and slowed, then stopped. She rose beside her father, and they filed out of the car. Ten minutes later, she began preparing dinner in her father’s new apartment. The apartment smelled of pristine materials, foreign and disinfected. In the U.S., her home smelled familiar, comfortable, filled with the scent of her son, the sourness of her husband, and the occasional fragrance of Patrick. She closed her eyes, stirring the vegetables, drawing a deep breath. Would she be with him in the end as he promised, as he had begged her? Why had she fallen so in love with him? Was it because of his kindness, his gentle nature? Or was it because of her husband’s lack of those same qualities? Did it matter? What had happened, happened.

I want to be with you at the ceremony, Patrick tells her.

She sighs softly against his chest. My mother, she whispers…I was not a good daughter, but I must be now. I must be. I’ll burn incense so she will have a peaceful journey into the next life. It’s like Obon in August, when we welcome the spirits of our ancestors and burn incense for them and relatives who have died recently. I want you to be there with me, but…

That last word hung in time, echoing.

Patrick shifts, bringing his lips a breath away from hers. I’ll burn incense for her at the same time you intern the ashes, he whispers. His words bring tears to Yuki’s eyes. She caresses him, wraps her body around his, tries to become a part of his soul.

If only I had met you ten years ago, she whispers, before him, before… 

Patrick places a finger to her lips.

No regrets, he says. We met when we were supposed to meet. No regrets.

His skin slides against hers. He moves slowly, gently down her body, with more love than she has ever known.

She closes her eyes and wishes she could die in this moment.

***

The man across the narrow alley from the old apartment appeared in his doorway. Yuki felt his eyes on her. When she turned to look, she found her own father glaring at the man, his face hardened with the familiar hatred she could not understand, even after all these years. The man and his wife were loud, yes, but was that any reason to hate them? They had done nothing to hurt Yuki’s family. Why did her father hate them so much? She fumbled with the key, finally disengaging the lock to open the door. She paused in the doorway, twisting halfway, pasting a smile under eyes that fluttered bashfully as they met the man’s gaze. She bowed slightly with “Ohayougozaimasu” on her lips.

The man bowed and smiled sadly. “Ohayou.” He turned back into his own flat, back to the scornful voice of his wife, demanding him to leave those people alone.

“I don’t like to come here,” her father grumbled, the door clicking shut behind him as they entered the apartment. “I would have moved years ago, before you left, had your mother allowed. The last time I came, Ichikawa told me that I should leave your mother’s altar here.”

Yuki smiled at such a ridiculous request. “Why would he say that?” 

“He’s a damned fool,” her father growled.

She detected a deeper understanding within him, but she let it go. She watched the old man kneel before the altar, his shoulders rounded, his eyes closing. What do you see, Otousan? she wondered of her father. Are you holding my mother’s hand? Are you arguing with her? What do you see, old man?

Yuki looked slowly around the apartment, unable to comprehend. The furniture, as her father had assured her, was gone, and only tatami mats, aged and worn, remained. But she had seen the furniture, had smelled her mother’s odor. It had not been an illusion.
Yet it could have been nothing more.

A wave of dizziness washed through her, and she reached a hand to the wall to steady herself.

“You okay?” her father asked. She heard material rustle as he stood.

She nodded. His hand started out to her, but stopped short as he regarded her briefly. He turned his attention abruptly back to the altar where he knelt once again.

Afraid, Yuki thought. Always afraid to touch, to be touched. I am your daughter.

Unlike traditional altars, permanent and always open, the altar Yuki’s father had selected for his wife’s memory was self-contained, a simple oaken cabinet, chosen for its convenience and mobility, standing about three feet high, two feet wide, two feet deep, the doors plain, the darkness of the lacquer finish a square blemish against the wall.

Yuki swallowed and drew a steadying breath, allowing her hand to drift away from the wall. Both of her hands now felt lost, confused, rushing to meet each other, uniting to bring her gaze down. Her memory flowed back to another hand, rough-skinned but gentle, a hand she’d held for comfort throughout childhood.

Her father knelt, buttocks resting on his feet, head slightly bowed before the photograph of Yuki’s mother, a picture of the woman with a rare smile, her hair gathered into a ball atop her head, her body clad in her favorite kimono. Her father’s back faltered slightly, posture bowed by decades of hard labor as a merchant marine. He closed his eyes, and Yuki moved quietly beyond him, drifting through the living room, still trying to comprehend what she had seen the first day.

Vaguely aware of the voices from the flat next door, she might have smiled another time. Their arguments might have brought small comfort that some things do not change. But even their arguments would pass away someday, just as she would someday join her mother.

She moved to the bedroom, slid the door closed behind her. Her breath caught against the sudden and growing fragrance of her mother. Her ears rang, and her knees weakened. She squatted, her lips parting in silent dismay. A futon, not there a moment before, now lay before her. On the futon, her mother coupled with a man, his face hidden against her neck. The man thrust, held, shuddered, and relaxed. Slowly, his head began to rise, and Yuki squeezed her eyes shut against the image.

Patrick’s face welled up in her mind, and she could almost feel his gentle lips upon her skin, floating from her neck to her breasts, down her belly to sip at her thighs.
She heard a grunt and opened her eyes again. The young, muscled body of the man rose and moved away. Her mother’s gaze turned to her, eyes filled with joy and sadness, indescribable in their turmoil. Yuki’s balance gave way, and she fell backward, her feet slipping helplessly from under her, the tatami mat pressing painfully into her buttocks. Her mother’s image shimmered and vanished, leaving her with only the faint remnants of the woman’s essence, the smell of sex lingering in her nostrils.

***

“It was only a dream,” Saiichi told her. The phone link crackled. Even in this time of instant electronic connectivity, telephone conversations remained subject to whimsical lines. “We have more important things than the crazy hallucinations of your mother to worry about.”

“You think I’m crazy?” she half-whispered.

Saiichi sighed heavily. Yuki had never been clear-minded, never sane enough for Saiichi, the one man who was supposed to understand her. And if he could not understand, then, as a husband, he was supposed to accept. But always, always, other things were more important than she. From the start. From the moment they were married.

“It wasn’t a dream,” Yuki whispered.

“Whatever,” he said in exasperation.

Why had she told him? Did she hope he had changed in her brief absence, that he’d understand now, sympathize? Like Patrick?

“The company…” Saiichi said finally.

The words hung on the line between them. Yukiko knew exactly what the long pause meant, what he would say next. “We have to move back to Japan.”

Although she had tried to prepare for this moment, the words echoed like a gunshot, and Patrick’s name came to her lips so quickly, so completely that she could taste him. She tried to concentrate on Saiichi’s voice, but his words wavered in and out of focus. She would return to the U.S. briefly, he told her, long enough to help him finalize affairs, to care for their son, to pack, to leave.

Her voice was even and calm as she said sayounara and disengaged the line. Tears did not sparkle in her eyes until after she had dialed another number and heard Patrick’s voice. Still, she held back, unable to utter the truth, unable to tell him.

“I had a strange dream last night,” Patrick said. “Darkness surrounded an old Japanese woman who stood in a spotlight, as though she were onstage. She wore a western style dress that fell just below her knees in length. She had on an apron, and her hair was cut just below her ears, curled in a tight permanent. She was a little chubby…”

“Okaasan,” Yukiko whispered. “My mother.”

“No, surely not,” Patrick said. “I’ve never seen a picture of her. And even if I were to dream about her, why would she cry?”

Yukiko told him of her vision, of her mother and the man whose face she had not seen. Patrick remained silent for a long moment, and she thought the line had disconnected.

“Have you talked to your father about it?” he asked finally.

“No,” she said. Again, silence.

He asked, “Why would your mother cry in my dream?”

***

Memories, as faded as the photographs in the album in her lap, flooded her mind, snippets at which she grabbed, but each escaping into another fragment. Her father appeared in a few of the photographs, dressed properly and ready for work, about to embark on journeys that would take him to foreign lands for months at a time. He would return after each trip for a few days to make sure his finances were straight, that his wife and daughter were cared for, then leave again.

Yukiko recalled vague memories of her father before she was old enough to go to school. She would find him sprawled on the tatami mats, asleep. She slept on the futon with her mother in the bedroom, just as she did when he was gone. She wondered why no passion passed between him and her mother unlike the couple across the narrow alley. Every breath between them was passion, whether kindness or anger. And the man always had a wink and a piece of candy for Yuki. Sometimes, he would race her to the park when her mother was busy with housework, but her father didn’t care for racing or for parks. He was a stranger who visited from time to time.

She turned the page. In one photo, she stood beside her father, her head rising only to his waist, both he and she dressed in swimsuits, his eyes coldly solemn toward the camera as she twisted to look up at him, regarding him as one might regard a strange fish pulled from the ocean behind them. In another, her father had begun to step away from her as the shutter released, her fingers in midair, slipping from his grip. In another, her mother stood at the water’s edge, back to the camera, head turned, face profile, young and beautiful, more beautiful than Yuki recalled.

Yuki closed her eyes and wondered what would have happened had she not been here two years ago. She had returned during America’s Thanksgiving season because her father had been hospitalized after growing suddenly ill, his heart rate becoming dangerously irregular. On the fourth night, Yuki and her mother had watched a television travel special about Nashville. She had pointed out landmarks to her mother, landmarks that had become as familiar as her own hometown—Opry Mills, downtown restaurants where she’d dined, the zoo. “Someday,” her mother said, “I want to visit you in America.” 

The following morning, Yuki’s mother prepared a wonderful breakfast of rice and miso soup and rolls filled with black bean paste. Yuki devoured the food, noting only in passing her mother’s lack of appetite.

The morning glistened with sunshine, the wind crisp and clean. They entered the hospital, her mother telling her to go ahead to her father’s room, that she’d be up soon. She was tired and wanted to catch her breath first, she said.

Her father was still sleeping when Yukiko entered. Only a few minutes passed as she stood barely inside the doorway, gazing at the man, refusing to wake him. A nurse came to the door and told Yuki that she was needed in the emergency room. A dozen minutes later, Yuki learned the horrible truth, that her mother had fainted, vomited, and aspirated. The emergency room team had done all they could, but it had not been enough.

Not once had her mother complained of discomfort or pain, not once since Yuki’s arrival. But the autopsy revealed she must have been in great pain because her intestines had been completely blocked. Had she not vomited and aspirated when she fainted, she would have lived. Would she have seen a doctor had Yuki not returned? Would she be alive today?

Yukiko drew a heavy breath and turned another page. Only one photograph had been placed here. Her mother stood tentatively beside their neighbor, Mr. Ichikawa. The look on her mother’s face appeared strangely relaxed. She wore a smile of tenderness and acceptance.

Yuki’s heart quickened. She closed the book gently and allowed the tears.

Are you crying? she asks.

Stay with me, he whispers. Please.

***

“I see no purpose,” her father said, “but it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. If you want to stay the night, do so.” 

He regarded her with eyes that betrayed confusion and disgust. Why, she wondered, had she never seen love in those eyes? But wasn’t it love that had kept him with her mother for all those years? Wasn’t it love that paid the bills, that gave her opportunity for college, that gave her the things she’d needed? Wasn’t that love? 

“It was your home more than mine,” her father said finally, his voice softer. “A ship was more of a home to me than the apartment. Stay, if you want to, if you need to. After tonight, you won’t have another chance. After the monk moves the altar tomorrow and you mother’s ashes are interred…” His words trailed off, and he sighed, glancing down. After.

“Stay there, Yuki,” he sighed. “You should say goodbye.” He managed a smile, and then he reached for her, awkwardly taking her shoulders in his hands. He stared into her eyes for a long moment at arm’s length before bending to kiss her forehead. Her knees threatened to buckle. She could not recall the last time he had kissed her.

The flat across the alley was silent and dark when she arrived. She slipped the key into the door and entered the apartment quickly, closing the door behind, eager to avoid contact with anyone on this night.

In the U.S., Saiichi was preparing to move the family back to Japan.

What of Patrick?

Her lips trembled. “He should forget me,” she whispered. She allowed her words to drift into the silence, knowing that such mistakes as love cannot be erased, only endured.

Love is no mistake, Patrick says. People come into your life when you need them, when they’re supposed to.

Why had he come into her life? To confuse her? To cause her this torture? 

Why didn’t you come before my son was born, before I met Saiichi? Why?

She wanted Patrick more than she had wanted anyone in her life, body and soul, to live with him for whatever time she had remaining. But wasn’t that selfish? Should she not place the well-being of others before herself and choose the more difficult road, the one to honor her son by giving him his true father? She sank to her knees before the altar.

“Mother,” she cried softly. “What should I do? What should I do?”

She did not know how long she had been with head bowed when the knock at the door came, so softly that she thought at first it was her mind playing tricks. Then the knock sounded again. She rose slowly, thinking she would not answer, that whoever was there would go away. The knock came again, more determined. She scratched in her purse, withdrawing the book of matches she’d brought. She quickly lit the two candles on the altar, eager to get rid of whoever would bother her now. She opened the door slowly, and immediately was taken by the eyes that held her gaze.

“Gomennasai,” Mr. Ichikawa apologized. “I thought I heard voices.” He glanced down. “Is your father here?”

“No.”

Mr. Ichikawa’s face relaxed somewhat. “May I talk to you?” 

A moment’s pause, and then Yuki stepped aside for him to enter. She glanced across the alley toward the apartment, then closed the door gently, quietly. She turned to Mr. Ichikawa slowly and rested back against the door, her hands cushioning the small of her back.

“How is your wife?” she asked.

Mr. Ichikawa gave a slight shrug. “She’s okay. She’s sleeping.” He glanced toward the altar. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I…” The word caught, and he searched.

Yuki waited patiently, keenly aware of his struggle. The room’s lighting swam around her. She felt woozy and drew a deep breath, held it to regain her bearings.

“Your mother’s altar…” he said. His eyes reddened as he looked toward the open altar, the urn filled with what remained of her mother, the photograph. “Must you move it?”

She smiled curiously. “My father will not live here,” she said. “He can’t continue renting two apartments.”

“He doesn’t deserve—” Mr. Ichikawa snapped, but he stopped short, and looked away, his face red with the outburst.

Yuki moved a step toward him, but did not reach to comfort.

Mr. Ichikawa gave a vague shake of his head. “Your mother always loved you more than anything.” He stepped around her, opened the door, and entered the alley. “More than anything on earth.” He closed the door between them.

***

Yuki lay on her back before the altar, listening to the muted sounds of the streets that drifted in, strangely subdued and patient, as if they knew her sorrow and were trying to honor her. The noise quieted further as the night deepened. She grew light, and she could feel herself floating toward sleep. Darkness engulfed her. Abruptly, a brilliant light ignited before her, and her mother stepped into its circle.

“Okaasan,” she cried in her dream. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

Her mother smiled as she drew close, taking Yukiko’s hands into hers. Yuki saw that her own hands were those of a child. She felt her mother’s warm embrace, a kiss upon her forehead. The old woman’s scent overpowered, and then she evaporated, leaving Yuki standing alone in darkness.

Yuki heard heavy, passionate breathing, a grunt and stifled cry, followed by gentle sobs. The darkness lightened to reveal her mother, coupled with a man she thought to be her father, but then the man raised his head and placed a finger softly to the woman’s lips. Yuki’s eyes widened as bizarre feelings of betrayal and joy rolled through her like thunder.

***

The morning brought with it sunshine that split the room, thousands of dust motes drifting lazily through the shafts of light. Yuki sat up, eyes going to the altar, to the photograph.

She glanced at her watch, then back to the altar. Her father and the monk would arrive soon. She moved to the altar, taking a small envelope from her purse. She lifted the urn into her hands, cupping it tenderly. Abruptly, she wedged it against the altar and struggled to force off the top, finally breaking the wax seal. She removed the lid carefully, whispering a prayer to herself. In one hand, she opened the envelope and cupped it to the urn’s rim as she tipped in ashes. She sealed and placed the envelope into her purse. She then lit one of the candles and resealed the urn, wiped the urn clean of the candle’s smoky smudge, and set it back in its place.

***

The altar looked so out of place to Yuki in her father’s new apartment, but it was where her mother would be remembered and honored from now on. The internment tomorrow should go quickly, a brief ceremony, conducted by the same monk who had moved the altar, attended only by Yuki and her father.

She waited until her father was asleep, and then she left the apartment. The journey took a half-hour, even at this time of night when trains were relatively empty and sidewalks sparse with people. She made her way quickly through the old neighborhood and slipped the key into the door for what she knew would be the last time. Already, it had been rented, but her father, having paid through the end of the month, refused to return the keys to the owner until the lease expired. She opened the door, but, instead of entering, she stepped across the alley and knocked. She knocked again. She held her breath as the door finally opened.

Mr. Ichikawa cocked his head questioningly. “Is anything wrong?” he asked softly.

“Sumimasen, it is late. Tomorrow my mother’s ashes will be interred. Please,” Yuki said, “please come to her apartment. I…I have something…”

He stepped out, closing the door gently, and followed her into the apartment. She closed the door behind them and regarded him in silence for a long moment, wanting to say the words, to ask him one question about her mother, but she could not, just as she knew he could not explain. She fumbled in her purse and withdrew the envelope. She held it out to him, but when he did not reach for the envelope, she pressed it into his hand.

“Part of my mother,” she managed in a broken whisper.

Mr. Ichikawa’s eyes moistened, his cheeks blushing.

Clumsily, Yuki turned and fled the apartment for the last time.

***

The monk lit the incense, pressed his hands together, and bowed slightly as he chanted.

Smoke rose toward the sky, unbroken by a breeze of any kind.

I can’t be there, but we are together.

Yukiko’s eyes burned with tears, and she turned away.

Come back to me.

Her mother had set the example.

Please.
Duty, honor.

The monk’s chant ended, and he whispered, “How strange.” 
​
Yukiko raised her eyes, following the monk’s gaze up as the incense trail twirled and twisted above the small memorial stone, blending with another line of smoke that seemed to come from nowhere, gray within gray, thin lines braiding, spiraling up.
Despite the chill in the air, Yuki’s skin moistened with sweat. She felt Patrick’s gentle embrace, his lips sliding over her, caressing, chanting his love as he entered her. She caught herself as the moan built from within, closed her eyes to the incense trail. His name threatened against her lips, but she refused to release it. And she knew her mother would weep in Patrick’s dreams tonight.

...


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C.S. Fuqua’s books include Fatherhood ~ Poems of Parenthood, Walking After Midnight ~ Collected Stories, Big Daddy’s Fast-Past Gadget, Native American Flute ~ A Comprehensive Guide, and White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems. His work has appeared in publications such as Year's Best Horror Stories XIX, XX and XXI, Pudding, The Horror Show, Pearl, Chiron Review, Christian Science Monitor, The Old Farmer's Almanac, The Writer, and Honolulu Magazine.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.


​Ed, Dirk, Kaya and Jean warmed themselves around the campfire, telling spooky stories.  The start to their camping excursion was unmemorable.  It had rained all week and pitching the tents was a challenge with all the mud, but it was the weekend now.  There was plenty of beer and hot dogs and s’mores and so on, and they’d managed to get a campfire going with dry wood, old newspaper, and those those chunky not-chicken nugget firestarters they had purchased at the gas station convenience mart on the way.  So all was as it should be.  There they were, just hanging out, sitting around the campfire and shooting the shit with their best buds.

The full moon hung heavy in the sky, wispy tendrils of clouds occasionally obscuring the rust orange hues that flickered about its lower bulge in the atmospheric dust.  Dirk had just finished telling a werewolf story as the faint baying of a hound echoed in the distance.  He took a long drag off of the joint he held aloft in his right hand and took in his surroundings. The grounds were pretty much empty after all of the rain and there were no other camping parties to speak of.  Someone was set up three or four sites down the river, but he more or less appeared to be a transient minding his own business just trying to get by and stay dry, not out partying for the weekend.

Ed popped another marshmallow on a silver spear and plunged it into the fire to set ablaze.  It crackled and popped as the outside charred to black soot.  He turned it to sear the surface evenly, black ash giving way to molten white lava blistering forth from within.  Ed sandwiched the burnt husk oozing white between two squares, one graham cracker and one cheap chocolate, and tossed it in his mouth to consume in a sloppy sticky gulp.

“This is the life,” he quipped, mumbling while half-chewing, a satisfied smile creeping across his lips as he speared another marshmallow to start the process anew.

“For sure,” Jean agreed, snuggling closer to Kaya under the wool blanket that they shared, their hands delicately and discreetly darting about some rather provocative personal locales out of sight of prying eyes.  Not that Ed or Dirk cared, the girls could do whatever they liked.  Ed found it kind of a turn on, though he would never so boldly admit it as to insult his friends – he knew full well he wasn’t their type and they were both already spoken for, each to their own, anyway.

Dirk's left hand poked at the smoldering fire with a stick to enliven it a little and embarked on telling a new narrative of suspense, of a group of lost campers who were picked off one by one by a serial killer who stalked the woods with a hook.  Or was it a machete? Or a large axe?  He eyed the lone camper several sites away trying to discern if he had any such belongings to build a story upon.  It made no difference anyway; Dirk had spun a similar yarn three narratives before while they sat around the fire skewering marshmallows in essentially the exact same fashion as they were now.  His words all spilled into one another like a hodgepodge of harrowing horror from one twisted tale to another.  Between fables, he would pause for a long toke before continuing to the next.

The boundless bag of marshmallows continued to be speared one at a time and flash fried in the fire only to find themselves one by one making their final journey down Ed’s cavernous gullet.  Dirk told story after story as werewolves, ghosts, serial killers, supernatural phenomena and other horrors wove in and out of the smoke filled air.  The girls continued to cuddle together under the blanket, wrapped up in their own little world.  The fire blazed on into the night.

Dirk paused for a moment as if crafting further suspenseful lulls in his myth-mongering while taking in something close by to work with.  He took another hit and looked around.  Everything was still exactly as it should be.  It was the picture perfect camping trip.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, had changed.  He poked at the fire quizzically.  It burned on as it had been, smoldering without extinguishing itself or burning too hot and blazing out.  Ed popped another s’more in his mouth, still clutching the nearly full bag of marshmallows.

“What’s happening?” Dirk asked.

“What do you mean?” Ed responded   He speared another marshmallow and set it into the fire, turning it to be equally ravaged by flame, before drawing two and two together, “Oh wait, is this the start of another tale of supernatural suspense?”  He threw his chest out a bit and boomed in that old-school voiceover narrative, “What you are about to see and hear defies explanation, for mankind cannot comprehend the truly terrible, the uncanny unknown, the rare ramifications of…”

“No,” Dirk replied.  “Something’s… well… not quite right.  It’s, it’s like we’re on pause.”

“Pause?” Jean quipped.

“Yeah,” Dirk answered.  “Like everything is just staying the same.  You two… Ed… me… the campfire story… the fire.”  He looked around.  “It’s all just so… consistent.”  Dirk’s gaze came to rest on Ed, “How many marshmallows have you eaten?”

Ed glanced at the bag and spoke through a glob of sugary gooeyness, “I dunno.  Three or four.”

“Dude, you’ve been eating those things all night one after another like they’re going out of style,” Dirk looked taken aback.  “You’re going to turn into Stay-Puff at that rate.  Like seriously.”

“Well, I’m sorry Mr. Who’s-Keepin-Track-Anyway…” Ed rebuffed  “What’s it matter?  You want one?  Well, you can totally have one.  I’m not stopping you.”  He held the bag aloft.

“No, it’s not that,” Dirk said.  “It’s just… that bag should be gone by now.  And the fire and…  It’s all just so static.”

Jean thought a moment and said, “Maybe we were all killed by that mass murderer at Campsite Whatever-the-Hell.”  She gestured towards the transient loner before continuing, “And this is what Heaven is, just sitting here around the campfire with our best buds.”

“There’s no place I’d rather be,” interjected Kaya as she nuzzled up to Jean.

“Heaven…  Hell…  Whatever…” Ed said as he popped another burnt marshmallow s’more in his mouth.  “I think the difference between the two is just in what you make of it.”

“Maybe,” Dirk said, still eyeing the surrounding woods suspiciously.  He studied the roll of gently smoking pot-filled paper in his hand.  It hadn’t changed either.   He continued pensively, “Even a good trip’ll turn bad if you’re on it too long.” 

“I don’t think it makes any difference,” Jean exclaimed.  “I’m here.  I’m happy.  That’s all that matters right now.”

“Amen, Sister,” Kaya giggled.

The group sat in silence for awhile.  They seemed to gain a little more clarity of their circumstances as they studied their surroundings.  The full rust-tinged moon continued to hang heavy in the sky, slightly obscured by very occasional wispy clouds.  Their far neighbor continued to mind his own business.  The fire continued to blaze along.  The bag of marshmallows continued to remain mostly full despite Ed’s ravenous attack upon it. Nothing changed. Everything just kept going.

Dirk looked again at his joint, snubbed it out, and put it in his pocket for later.  “Guess we best just make the most of it, then,” he said as he grabbed a marshmallow and skewered it to plunge into the fire.

“That’s the spirit,” Ed smiled, teeth white and black with marshmallow goo.

Dirk started in on another twisted tale, of a group of friends finding themselves in limbo, forever lost to the flickering light of a smoldering campfire, roasting s’mores and telling scary stories…


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Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist.  Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video and writing.  Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, and institutional critique.  She lives in Kansas, USA with her husband and is an avid art collector who enjoys playing board and role-playing games, junk store thrifting, and mail art. Her spirit animal is the deer. Her favorite foods are unagi don or broiled calamari steak and frosting with or without cake.You can read more of Weigel’s writing on her website here.  https://jenniferweigelwords.wordpress.com/