by Al K. Line
Using a touch of magic, I unlocked the gate rather than jump the wall again, and was back out on the street. I walked for a while, just to get some distance in case anyone with magic happened to see me, until I was lost to growing crowds in the middle of a crazy market. It was chaos and I'm not used to it, don't like being jostled and pushed about, not aided by my utter forgetfulness and hardly being seen at all. I like my space and this confusion of people made Cardiff on a busy day look like a ghost town.
People were selling all kinds of things, from ripoff gear to high end, genuine tech. To live chickens, and more fruits and vegetables than you could make sense of. Everywhere were noodle stalls and people eagerly devouring all kinds of goodies. I managed to get myself a bowl of ramen, took a seat at a rough wooden bar, then tucked in with a spoon and a pathetic attempt at controlling my chopsticks—I'm sure they give foreigners ones imbued with a malevolent spirit or something, they never do what you want them to.
Once I'd eaten and felt sure I was at no risk for a while, I checked the notes on my phone and put everything in order. I searched for the addresses and saved maps so I could see where they all were in relation to each other and the city. There were five main residences or hangouts she split her time between, the dead gangster saying that each was well-fortified with endless goons—all vampire—and all kick-ass serious. Five, an important number to many Japanese. The five elements, five colors, five senses, the list went on—I doubted it was coincidence.
Seems the ones that had set the zombies on us earlier were about the lowest of the low as I'd suspected, the keepers for the zombies and sent because they were closest and had a fairly easy way to deal with a wayward wizard and a necromancer. Kimiko probably thought little or nothing of my presence, dismissing it as just another in a long line of people coming after her for revenge and being put in their place easily.
She underestimated me, which was good. That would make it easier to kill her.
I checked in with Kate. She was just hanging out in the suite with Grandma and Dancer, who were both back safe and sound. Grandma moaned in the background about the Council and how snooty they were, but confirmed they'd said they would go deal with the zombies. Hopefully she warned them about the hellhounds, too.
With a promise to be careful, I hung up.
Right, five properties, five chances to find my nemesis. Time to get busy. Guess I'd start at number one and hope I got lucky.
It has to happen once in my life, right?
A Shock
I took the subway, about the best way to get around the megalopolis that is Tokyo, trying my best not to freak out and blast people for barging me. Underground in the city was like a different world, full of manic or severely depressed salarymen, crazed shoppers, and everyone was either talking away on their phones using earbuds or headphones, looking like they were having conversations with invisible people, tapping away on a screen, or reading manga.
I'd heard about the massive upsurge in hairstyles over the last few decades, but still wasn't prepared for the onslaught under such intimate conditions. It explained the insane number of hairdressers on every street in the city. Everywhere was color. Pinks and blues and reds right out of anime, an overwhelming and heady mixture of scents of innumerable products battling for my nasal attention, and for the locals it seemed it was entirely normal. I liked it, it made me feel like I belonged, but my bleached, now fading back to brown hair was tame and boring in comparison to the wonders I studied as I tried to distract myself from the press of bodies.
Nobody looked at anyone else. Eye-contact was a big no-no, same as it is in all major cities on public transport. I don't know why, but it's as if people think if they look you in the eye they'll get accosted. I never have that problem, perks of being the everyman.
It was all good, the less conspicuous the better as far as I was concerned.
Girls with crazy, pink hair, short skirts, and long, over-the-knee socks giggled as they pointed at their phones, half-dead salarymen sat in a stupor—probably dreading going to work the next day—and all manner of weird and wonderful characters came and went. Such a diverse and rich culture, it truly is a delight, but the pressure of the sheer volume of people in the city weighed down on me, making me feel antsy and uncomfortable, like I couldn't breathe.
I was relieved when it was my stop, and I got off and up to the surface as fast as my legs would carry me. Okay, it took half an hour as it's confusing as hell on the subway and most stations have so many exits to the surface you don't know where on earth to go. Shinjuku has sixty. It's nuts!
As I walked the few blocks to the first property, down a quiet residential street lined with a mish-mash of modern monstrosities and ancient wooden buildings, a mix that did not sit well with me or the landscape of large overhanging trees and beautiful gardens next to bare concrete yards of small apartment blocks, I got the strangest sensation.
There's no other way to put this. My bum itched something terrible. I scratched but it made no difference. It felt raw and tender, like the skin had been broken. I thought back over my day. Nope, I may have had my face and fingers gnawed half off but my backside had been fine. I'd have noticed the hole in my suit and the wind blowing at my nether regions if that had happened.
What then? I tried my best to ignore it and kept on walking, the streets changing as I got closer to my destination. It went from rather disorganized and cramped city planning, or lack of, to a wide, open street with expensive houses in traditional style, all thick tiled decorative roofs and large front lawns with high hedges. I was getting near, I was also getting damn uncomfortable in the posterior.
Giving in to the irritation, I scratched again—something was far from right. Putting my hand down the back of my boxer shorts I nearly keeled over when I felt a little hard nub right where my coccyx was.
What. The. Hell?
Unwanted Appendages
I glanced around nervously, wondering if someone had done something sneaky. I didn't know what, and I couldn't think straight in my panic. Had I bumped it? I must have, there was no other explanation.
I thought back over the day again but couldn't recall anything that would explain it. Then it came to me, a connection with the damn gangster as I took his magic, a feeling of something off for a moment as I drained him. Visions of creepy stuff he did, foul deeds committed on others and the knowledge that this was a man who had done many things too terrible to even think about. He was a warped wizard and deep into underground culture full of fetishes and bizarre parties with others that abused the Empty to get off in perverse ways.
And there had been a sly smile, just for a moment, as I took what was his. He'd put a warped spell or curse on me. And it had stuck. With his emptying magic, he'd channeled what he had to change me, used a specialized, and mostly forgotten in our part of the world, spell and imbued me with the partial essence of an animal.
I was monkey.
Was there no end to the madness of this small island? How the hell did people cope with the insanity? This wasn't proper magic like we used back home, this was nonsense. Scary and freaky and I was way out of my comfort zone. Back home we blast holes in each other like real wizards, we don't have homicidal pigs, or spells that turn you into gibbering baboons or whatever it was that part of my body was morphing into.
I put a hand behind me and down my boxers again, utterly alarmed to discover the nub had grown to at least six inches and felt like an energetic, hard and muscular snake in my trousers, and not in a good way.
Panic really set in and I may have run around in the street just a little, perhaps screaming, "Get it off me, get it off," or something like that. And I may have pulled down my trousers and boxers and repeatedly whipped my head around to get a look.
It was longer now, a foot at least and all pink and raw like my hands earlier, fresh skin covering a strong prehensile muscle that would allow me to swing from trees, or lampposts, anyway. But I didn't want to swing from anything, I wanted to keep my feet
on the ground and I did not want the thing that was now whipping about wildly and was already two foot long and showing no sign of stopping.
Terrible visions of the Alien film franchise popped into my thoughts, panic rising as I wondered if maybe it wasn't a tail at all but part of a creature that was eating away at my insides, ready to burst through my backside in the grossest way possible. No, I was being stupid, it was a tail, but I think my fears were justified.
Now I was chasing my own tail, clothes around my ankles, trying to grab hold of thick meat that had a mind of its own and kept thrashing at my legs like a whip, leaving red welts that blistered and burned. Now it was slicing across my tattooed legs, red contrasting with the darkness, me spinning out of control as it grew faster, pain increasing as my traitorous coccyx welcomed the new appendage.
Then hair sprouted painfully and that was the last straw. Brittle, hard hairs that pushed through alien skin like needles and grew just as fast as the tail.
I pulled up my boxers and trousers, thinking maybe I could contain it or at least hide it from my own hands as I wanted to grab it and tug it off but it was too wild and kept pulling from my grasp.
Trousers up, the thing squirmed like a snake in a bag, and I was sure it would break through. I reached down, grabbed it, but damn it was like an eel coated in lubricant and angry as all hell. The hair was slick now, coated in whatever goop the bare flesh was, oozing onto my legs and making me panic it would be a despicable, supernatural acid—the Alien thing again. I know, it was silly, but you try staying calm in such a situation.
The tail banged about as it grew but then it was too long to whip up out of my trousers. Taking the opportunity, I fastened my belt as tight as I could manage, tried, unsuccessfully, to compose myself, and moved from the road where I had been acting rather manic and dashed down a side alley for privacy even though the streets were strangely quiet.
My breathing was out of control, ragged and stress-induced, and all I could think of was that I'd turn into a monkey completely and nobody would ever know. What to do? I didn't know what magic to use to counter such a spell, and the guy who did it had blown his brains out. He was probably smiling from some deserved afterlife in between having despicable things done to him.
Ah, maybe my buddy could help. After all, she had a tail, probably knew a lot about them. "Intus," I screamed into the void, hoping my tiny imp friend would hear my cry for help.
I waited impatiently, leaning against a lamppost and pushing hard against the tail to stop it spasming and generally terrorizing me. It seemed to take the hint and I felt the muscle relax. Such a strange sensation, I could feel it. There were nerves and I felt it just like it was a natural part of me, which I absolutely, under no circumstances wanted.
A hit of sulfur to the nostrils, and a hint of red on my shoulder, told me my friend had arrived.
"What's the emergency? I was bathing the kids." Intus looked stressed, ears flat against her head, tail down, face serious. Intus is normally full of the joys of being an immortal demon, so she must be having a really hard time of it.
"Sorry, I've got an emergency." I undid my belt and pulled down my trousers and boxers.
Intus jumped down onto the ground and stared up. "It is rather small, but I've heard you humans say it's what you do with it that counts, not the size." She carried on staring at my appendage, just not the right one. Talk about hitting a guy when he's down.
"Not that. This." I turned around and the tail lashed out at Intus fast as a cobra. She vanished and reappeared up on my shoulder.
"It's a tail. So what? Everyone's got them." Wow, she really was in a bad mood.
"Look, I'm sorry to disturb you but the kids' bath can wait, can't it?"
She sighed dramatically. "Do you know how long it takes to heat lava to the right temperature and get all the lumpy bits out? No, of course not. And do you know how hard it is to keep the kids all in a line and make them go in one after the other? No. They all want to get in at the same time, saying they don't want to be the one having all the dirty lava. Ugh. Nightmare."
"Nightmare! This is a nightmare. It's not supposed to be there, it isn't mine." I yelled, regretting calling her.
Intus frowned, then a smile spread across her face. "I think it suits you, gives you character."
She was being no help, so I pulled up my clothes quickly and buckled my belt again before the tail became wild. It had settled down so I wasn't risking it.
Intus looked around and said, "Hey, this isn't Cardiff." She sniffed and said, "Ah, the smell of Japan in the evening. Lovely. Do you know I haven't been for ages, maybe... Gosh, probably a century at least. What's it like, is it nice?"
"Nice? Nice!? I've got a tail! No, it isn't nice. The sooner I get back home where things make sense the better."
"You are such a baby at times, Spark. Oh, and congratulations on not being dead. I know you seem to think it's very important."
"I've told you before, we aren't like you. Not being dead is about as important as it can get." Now wasn't the time for a conversation we'd had so many times already—she'd never get the death thing.
"Well, nice chatting to you, and congratulations on the tail. Be seeing you. I have to go check on the kids. You can bet they've hidden the pumice by now. Cheeky little buggers love the lava and I bet they've got it all over the floor, too."
I couldn't even begin to imagine what Intus' home looked like, just knew I never wanted to visit. Now she had me sidetracked and I needed to focus. She was staring at me funny, waiting impatiently and stamping her foot. "Hurry up. Sorry, Spark, but you know... the kids."
I angled my head away, my tinnitus getting worse thanks to more regular contact with my red friend.
"Okay, sorry. You have a tail, how do I get rid of it?"
"Hmm, never thought about it before. It would be like chopping off an arm. Ah, that's it!"
"What? Do you know how to take it off, make it go away? Anything? Come on!"
"Blimey, keep your shirt on. I've got just the thing." Intus disappeared in a cloud of rotten egg smoke then was back in a flash, down on the ground wielding a three foot scythe with a blade so sharp it was slicing the air in pieces, cutting through reality and revealing a glimpse of her home world.
The moment I saw it my head went fuzzy then my brain turned thick, like concrete was being poured in through my ears. The tinnitus screamed at me as nightmare visions of an immortal hell filled my mind. Trillions of imps ran around manically, throwing socks in the air, endless mountains of spare change higher than Mount Fuji were home to billions of tiny imp children sliding down the steep sides, and molten lava streamed around vast islands of misplaced keys that were lost to evil, red skies, and row upon infinite row of studious imps sat at miniature wooden desks carefully weakening the stitching on the crotch of garments of all description.
I blacked out at the sight no human is ever supposed to see. Imp language, their way of life, their world, it's all unknowable to us. If Intus spoke aloud in her native tongue I would be dead in a moment, too alien and too full of magic for the human mind to process or even hope to cope with. I came to and said, "Stop waving it about. Ugh," or something just as pathetic.
Intus looked down at her hands as if unaware of what she was doing, and then planted the scythe on the ground and stood impatiently, my tiny demon friend holding something so sharp it could cut reality asunder.
"Oops, sorry. But it's really sharp, should do the trick."
With my head as cloudy as a Welsh winter sky, and mind still screaming, I stood up, dropped my trousers again, and turned sideways. I gulped, and mumbled, "Just make sure you chop off the right appendage. You sure this will work?"
"Dunno, never used an immortal, infinite scythe to chop a tail off before. We use it for the gardening."
What she gardened I had no clue. "Infinite scythe?" I asked, taking a step away—or a rather pathetic shuffle with my clothes bunched around my ankles.
"Yeah, means it's well sharp. Y
ou know, infinitely sharp."
It made no sense, but then so little did at that point, so I just said, "Do it," and closed my eyes.
"Just don't move," warned Intus.
"I won't." I held my breath and kept holding it, and still nothing happened. An eternity passed until I finally had to breathe again. I opened my eyes and looked down at my friend.
"I wondered when you were going to start breathing. Don't you need to do it regularly to stay alive?" Intus stood with the scythe thankfully pointed away from me.
"Um, yeah, comes with the body. Will you please get on with it?"
"I've done it, all gone." She nodded at my backside.
I looked down but could see no tail. I put a hand to my coccyx and it was as it had been, just ever-so-slightly tender. No monkey tail. Result! Hitching up my trousers, I said, "Thanks, Intus, you're a real lifesaver."
"What are friends for? Maybe one day you'll do a spot of baby sitting in return?" she asked hopefully, wiggling where eyebrows would be if imps had any hair.
"Um, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves."
"Worth a try. Right, busy, busy, got to finish the bath before it turns solid. It's a nightmare chipping them out of it, takes years. See you soon, buddy."
She was gone, taking her infinitely sharp scythe with her. Sometimes it pays to have truly Hidden friends.
There was no sign of the tail, gone now the spell was broken.
Hardly feeling in the mood, but knowing I wouldn't rest until it was done, I continued to house number one.
Time to make a few corpses. Hopefully one would be of a beautiful Japanese assassin and now gangster Head.
Such is the life of a foreigner abroad.
Nice Eyebrows
With a phantom tail still whipping about in my trousers and my mind made up I would never return to Japan no matter how long I lived—assuming I didn't die here—I checked my phone again to make sure I had the right address then peered through the simple gate.