Seeing through the lies.

Each night I feel more…well, not human. In fact I feel less human with each passing night, I am some new kind of animal now. But I also feel less a monster. Infrequent now are the times when the Shadow fills my mind and blots out reason, replacing it with lies and a cruel desire to hurt.

Terrible Thunder Talons works with me once a week, inflicting terrible injuries upon me. Once I would have been shocked to even think that a body could survive such damage, but that was before hell. Now I know how to manipulate my chi and close wounds that would fatal to a human. Splintered though my soul may be, what humans do naturally, I can do consciously, and to much greater effect.

There are advantages to this new state.

After several nights Swallow’s Song brings in a new visitor. Since no one but Swallow’s Song and Thunder Talons has reason to see me, I assume that it will be a member of the Thousand Ri Scouts, most likely Zhizhu. I am partially right.

Keeper of Forgotten Temples is a young man, though I know that is deceptive. Swallow’s Song appears no more than twenty-five, but I know her to be centuries old. He wears undistinguished clothes, attire that could belong to anyone, though his hair is long and gives me something to identify him by.

As I have been told, in order to serve my Uji, it’s members will participate in my training. Swallow’s Song tells me this is unusual, but so is the accelerated training I have been going through. The Court of the White River wants to round out the Scouts and as quickly as possible.

Keeper is quiet, but confident. His voice is even and has an almost ritual cadence as he speaks of the Great Principle. The Great Principle, or the Fivefold Way, is the base law by which all gaki abide, regardless of their philosophy. I get the feeling that Keeper of Forgotten Temples is a religious man, in part because of his name, and supported by the way he lovingly describes the ancient traditions of the gaki.

I listen to him closely, eager to learn.

The next night Keeper returns and Zhizhu is with him. My interest is kindled even further. Now I have met two of the Scouts, and they have come to teach me. When the others arrive there will be more to learn, and I will be another step closer to belonging to their Uji.

Together they lecture me on the Way of Obligation and the Way of Integrity, two more of the Great Principles. Obligation and Integrity are important virtues for the Japanese, but I feel them more keenly now. Duty is so much more…intense…when it is not just the obligation to be a good son to one’s parents, but also an obligation to stand against the yama kings and fight the runaway terrors of hell. Integrity is not just the concept of Face, but the ability to master your own inner darkness and act in accordance with the will of heaven.

Zhizhu and Keeper lecture me for several hours, and both of them allow me to question them. I want to know what they know so badly. I ask about their dharmas as well, because this question has been much on my mind. So soon after rising from death, the road back branches and there are five paths to choose from. I can only go so far before I must choose one of those paths, and I need to go forward.

My demon tells me the answer, the path that lies right before me. I can hear the enlightenment in the Howl of the Devil Tiger, but I am not sure yet if it is my karma to let out that cry myself.

Zhizhu stalks that road, as does my sensei. Already I have felt their doctrine change me. But Keeper tells me of the Path of a Thousand Whispers. A philosophy that teaches you to live and shed mortal lives, learning the wisdom that one failed to do in the first breath. There is so much I did not do. I was not a good husband to Miko. I was not a good father to Taka. I died before I could finish my work in the lab. I could be a husband again, and do it right. I could be a father once more, and this time not fail.

And there are a thousand more things that I never attempted or experienced that I could learn from. Even my Shadow-self is excited at the prospect of living in ways I never did when alive.

Which way is correct for me? What is my path? I doubt, and my Shadow seizes me. I listen to myself as I talk to Zhizhu and Keeper, questioning them, challenging them. My voice has lost all of its respectful tone. I listen as my voice describes the loving agony of the tigers and I feel my foot hover over the first step of that path.

But I see what my demon does not. Swallow’s Song is watching me and she knows my demon. Zhizhu continues to question me and Keeper peers at me so hard I am sure he can see into my soul.

Unable to wrest control of my voice back, I silently plead for them to stop me. Perhaps Zhizhu hears me, or perhaps she recognizes the demon since she is one herself. In minutes the kimono I have been given in rags around me, soaking up my dripping blood.

I can tell that the Iron Mountain discipline that Thunder Talons has been training me in is a barrier to her, I can see the perspiration on her face, but the agony breaks through. I am grateful for the pain that subdues the Shadow, but its small wicked voice reminds me that this is what I have been waiting for – Zhizhu’s burning touch.

Yes, I’ve been waiting. Three times now she’s come to me, and always Swallow’s Song asks her to use her skills. Always before she stayed her hand. Was it because she sees that I am not good enough? Am I unworthy to be in her Uji? Or just unworthy to touch…?

My demon whispers inside where I cannot close my ears to block it out. Isn’t the pain wonderful? Isn’t her sweet touch excruciatingly wonderful? I desire the pain. I get off on pain.

Despite the blood loss I feel the swift hardening of my member, an instant, aching strain. I almost beg for her to touch it, even the steely caress of a scalpel. I am sure she notices. Keeper and Swallow’s Song must see it as well, but no one comments, though I do not care. I am filled with need. The need for touch, the need for pain.

They leave me sprawled on the floor, my Wind Soul dominant once again. Slowly I draw myself into a kneeling position and bow, grateful for their aid.

Alone, just before dawn, the hot water of the bath washes away the blood and unknots muscle and I think about what happened. That I lost control is regrettable, but hardly disturbing. It is something that I will struggle with until I attain ultimate enlightenment or am destroyed. I am more interested in my body’s reaction to Zhizhu’s torture.

Is it true that pain excites me? Is the Howl truly my path? I lift my left hand from the water and take my forefinger in my right hand. With a sharp twist I snap bone. I blink at the sudden pain, but I have felt more during my nightmare memories of hell than this small hurt. But pain is all there is to it.

Such a small amount of pain though. I heal the finger, then break it again with no different result. I take a firm grip on my wrist and place my elbow over the lip of the tub. Blood spurts as the bone tears through flesh and my jaw clenches against greater pain. But still only pain.

I think back on Zhizhu’s torments, thinking that perhaps it was some special thing she did, the use of hot tools, or blunt trama and I feel the rush of blood to my loins again. I recall images of Sweet Swallow’s Song, her lips against my ear, telling me to choose the music not the pain while her hands wring screams from my flesh.

I feel a quiet rush steal through my soul and see my climax drift away through the water. But it was not the heady spike of orgasm, but the subtle burst that appears only occasionally. The same shining moment as when I first conquered the demon and took control and responsibility for the first time. A spiritual thing.

It wasn’t the pain. It was my body crying out for life. I have had two beautiful women as close to me as lovers. Yes, they were torturing me, but it was with every kindness. Both women hoping that they could help me master my darkness. My arousal was not because of the pain, but in spite of it. It was not pain, but intimacy.

Swallow’s Song is waiting for me when I dry and dress. I tell her that I would like to learn about the dharma’s that await me. It may be a short time before the Jina teachers can arrange to meet with me, but in the meantime she promises to bring me some books to read.

As I follow her back into the chamber where I am kept, I smile and enjoy the view.

The limits of pain

The torture continues, though the lucid periods are more frequent and they last longer. However, the demon within is not quiet. Even without my throat it speaks to me, but I am thankful that only I am subject to its lies.

Zhizhu, the pretty Chinese girl, returns again. Sweet Swallow’s Song asks her if she wishes to torture me herself. I have seen the two women interact twice now and I believe that they are of the same philosophy. I have been told that there are five paths to enlightenment I will be able to choose from, and these two women are fellow travelers on one of those paths.

This time, I am not ashamed. My Wind Soul is dominant, and I listen to Swallow’s Song and learn her lessons. My chin is lifted and my back is straight. I do my best to learn, hoping to impress Zhizhu. Will she think me worthy to join her blood-family?

But it’s not to impress her alone that I learn. I have always loved learning, and what lessons these are! A human being exists in harmony, even the most frail or sickly among them. Their soul is whole. A gaki is a splintered being. The Chinese call it the hun and p’o, the Wind Soul and the Shadow Soul, which are not one, but two. Yin is also cleaved from Yang, and the virtues are in imbalance. When I wake each evening, I must choose to use Yin or Yang chi, and my body is colored by that choice, either more living or more dead.

I have found over the rapid training of recent nights that my body and soul are tilted in favor of the Yang principle. Unless I concentrate each dusk, it is Yang chi that animates my body, burning hot and fast and giving me the semblance of life. A pulse and almost-warm skin.

I experiment within myself, black cycling my own body to feel the coldness. I have to consciously draw breath even to speak, for my lung will not move on their own. My demon whispers that this coldness is peaceful, a soothing balm for the still-burning torments of Hell, an icy shield to protect me from the torments of my training. There is logic in this…but I am beginning to learn that logic and truth are not the same.

I scarlet cycle myself the next evening and the rightness of it is palpable. I black cycle and scarlet cycle to reproduce the results of my experiment and I must conclude that my demon has lied to me once again.

But on that night as I perform for Zhizhu, the demon takes me by surprise. She has refused to torture me, it whispers. Clearly I am nothing to her, she would not touch me, does not want me to join her Uji. I doubt and the demon pounces. I am pinned to the wall by my beautiful sensei, shame threatening to spark Fire Soul, the uncontrollable rage that might be to enough to challenge the Shadow that dominates me now. I have earned pain once again, but still Zhizhu declines Swallow’s Song’s offer and leaves. My dark-self laughs inside.

Can I be right about myself? Do the eyes of demon soul see what I cannot? For a time, I believe. I am unwanted. My efforts are wasted, my intelligence and my progress mean nothing to the beautiful Chinese devil. Unwanted, I will surely be destroyed.

My pain gives my demon strength and I see something new in Swallow’s Song’s eyes. My very flesh is resisting her torments. But my sensei has met this obstacle before, and she knows ways of inflicting agony that could earn her a place as an official of hell. When I am subdued, when the pain has driven my demon inside and the music has lifted my Wind Soul up, she puts down her dripping tools.

She smiles at me, and it is sweet. I would like to kiss her. There is pride in her voice as she tells me that it is time to meet the Oni.

As I am led out of the basement for the first time, I examine what happened. My demon displayed some power, and this pleased my sensei. Of course, the path she walks is one where pain is elevated beyond agony and into enlightenment. The powers of the demon are dear to her. I have seen the abilities she draws from her own darkness and they are formidable.

This is new evidence and I feel a hypothesis forming in my mind. There is much to consider and the ramifications to my soul are astronomical. However, I am missing out on important information as I turn inwards. I have my first glimpse of Outside.

I find myself in a court like an ancient samurai home. There are high walls, made of thick stone and the tops are lined with concertina wire. The only gate I can see is made of thick steel and I suspect that it is barred from the outside. I am not meant to be able to leave this place at will of course. The walls surround a garden, the arrangement of stones and bamboo is simple. Of course, gaki like me, not in total control of themselves, would easily tear apart this garden, ruining the tranquility here. There buildings, much like I would expect in the ancient home of a samurai. The tatami mats and the shoji screens easily destroyed by infant devils like myself, but easily replaced and repaired, a lesson learned from the earthquakes and tsunami’s ages ago.

I follow Swallow’s Song into one of the buildings, which looks like a large dojo. This is where I will meet the First Oni, of whom Swallow’s Song has spoken. He is sometimes called the Demon Daimyo, for he rules the demon court where those newly birthed by hell are taken, just as the Igurashi-sama I have heard about rules all the gaki of this city. Swallow’s Song leaves me there alone.

I find myself missing my sensei. I feel that she is almost a lover to me. Though she has never touched me erotically, there no place I have not felt pain at her hands. I have been closer to her than to anyone since my death. No I am alone, and waiting for the Oni.

I can almost feel him approach, as if my demon recognizes a greater power. My darkness cowers inside myself, but also draws strength from the presence of another’s demon. I try to center myself, to maintain Wind Soul. The shoji opens and he enters.

Terrible Thunder Talons. He is the First Oni, the greatest master of the Demon Arts in city. He stands half again my height and his skin is a coat of thick black armor. His feet and hands are tipped with long jagged claws. I marvel that his demon is fierce that the talons he bears are actually serrated. Wings fold against his back, but they lack membrane or feathers. Long stalks flex and settle behind him as if twitching to lash out and take flight, or perhaps to reach out and seize me. But my gaze focuses on his chest, broad and armored and split by a gnashing mouth. Ivory fangs the size of my fingers point crookedly in every direction, clicking against each other as the jaw chews on air. Blazing orange orbs sit above the mouth, completing the demon face on his body. My eyes move up to his head as an afterthought.

My demon-training begins. On the second night, the dojo collapses after I am thrown through a third wooden pillar. There is pain, but the purpose is different that the sweet excruciations of Swallow’s Song, designed not to suppress my darkness, but to draw it out. I cling to the memory of music, trying to feel the power Terrible Thunder Talons is drawing out of me without letting the demon seize my mind.

I learn that my Demon Art is has been named the Iron Mountain. Unlike the swiftness and speed of the Black Wind or the terrifying power of the Demon Shintai, it is not something I can consciously control. I cannot summon a demon form, or call upon speed and strength. The implants, the tortures of the Wicked City, all toughened my dark soul. All Terrible Thunder Talons can do to teach me is hurt me, and empower my demon to strengthen that resilience.

Already I have made progress. Thunder Talons slashes me and I am thrown across the room. I punch through two shoji walls and crash into a bamboo thicket outside. My new sensei is there before I can rise and he smiles. My stomach is bare, my whole kimono ripped away by the force of the blow and y skin is laid open in a long gash. Raw muscle is visible and blood sheets down my legs. But that blow should have eviscerated me.

My training continues. Most nights I listen to quiet music and learn at the small white feet of Sweet Swallow’s Song. When my demon rises, more infrequently with each passing night, she tortures me and I must conquer the demon and my pain to grasp at the music and true consciousness. Occasionally I am sent to Terrible Thunder Talons, who teaches me the strength of my demon.

Pain has taught me so much. I battled agony to escape hell and return to the Middle Kingdom, seeking a second chance. I overcame torture so that my Wind Soul could blow the Shadow from my mind. Torment unsealed my demon’s power and made me stronger. The way forward seems obvious.

Is that the Howl of the Devil Tiger I hear?

A symphony of pain

Consciousness comes and goes like the tides. In fact, it’s like drowning. Drowning in darkness, drowning in blood, drowning in music. Take your pick.

Sometimes it’s easier to drift, to let go and let the darkness suck me down. Fighting is painful. But there’s not much peace in letting go. Down below the darkness hell lurks, waiting to take me back, and soon I’m thrashing my way back to the surface again, as frightened as when I first bolted out of Mikaboshi’s lab like a startled rabbit.

Of course, there at the brink, between darkness and light, between consciousness and the nightmares, is pain. I’m caught between hell below and agony above. Maybe between two hells, pulling on my soul like children fighting over a toy. It comes to me only gradually that there is a wall of pain keeping me from awareness because someone is torturing me.

The fact that I realize this denotes a degree of awareness. I retreat from the pain into the darkness, then push forward again. The results are the same, I am being tortured. It’s a different feeling than the torments of the Wicked City. There the whole hell was designed to inflict excruciation. The acid rain, burning the skin, the stomach cramping food, processed from weaker souls, the flickering fluorescents that seared the retinas, and the implants, deep inside, orchestrating the agony.

This new torture is different, not ubiquitous, but deliberate. We’re talking movie torture. Hot needles, jumper cables, scalpels. I bounce back and forth between the torture and my hell. I fear it’s driving me mad. But how does one objectively determine if one has lost his mind? There are no tests I can perform to gauge my sanity. Is the music real?

Yes. I determine that it is. I am hearing music every time I rise towards awareness and the torment in my way. This indicates a higher degree of consciousness than I previously possessed. I am in a room, perhaps ten paces square. The walls are dark stone or concrete, as is the floor. I can feel my arms wrenched above my head, though I can’t tell how I am tied because my wrists are numb and throbbing. There is a drain directly below my feet.

I am naked.

There’s a long table against one of the walls covered in the instruments with which I have been tortured, the ones that are polished reflecting the dim light coming from fixtures on the walls. Very few of the instruments are polished, most are dark with rust or blood. The music is playing lightly in the background. The atmosphere is somewhere between a medieval dungeon and a romantic diner.

My hostess embodies the contradiction. She’s a petite Japanese woman with porcelain white skin and a round face. However, her hair is bone-white, despite her apparent youth. If that were her only oddity she might have turned a few heads and nothing more, however, her black leather outfit exposed countless body modifications. Everything was pierced. Long needles were thrust through her skin in shiny rows, spiked studs were mounted on her hands, and her back had been slit open along her spine, then laced closed with black silk. She was terrifying and she was beautiful.

I retreat into darkness.

There’s no sense of time when you are drifting in and out of awareness, your mind not even fully your own. The passage of time is a backdrop against which I can measure progress and change and without it I am drifting. Moments are centuries, time slowing down or speeding up in relation to my perceptions.

I think I am aware again. I can hear the music and feel the pain. I hear a voice and I realize that I am speaking to the woman who tortures me. I expected it to be hoarse and cracked from disuse. My throat is a little raw from screaming, but otherwise smooth. I take a moment, the music fading as my awareness focuses inwards, contemplating what this means.

I have been speaking for some time. Often enough not to have lost my voice, yet I have been unconscious. I hypothesize that another awareness has been speaking from my mouth, but I need evidence to support this conjecture. My gut feeling is not enough. As I try to focus on the waking world again, I hear the woman asking me about the music playing in the small room and I hear my own voice answering it. I claim to recognize the music, a piece that played at my wedding, though I do not remember the name.

This isn’t true and the woman seems to know it. My hypothesis is supported, though I wonder at this awareness using my body and voice. The woman punishes me for my lies and the agony flares brightly. In the midst of the pain I understand.

I am me. I am the consciousness struggling against the darkness and the pain, and I am the voice which lies. That cruel speaker is the self that escaped from hell, the soul which forgot happiness and life. Somehow, when I escaped from the Wicked City, I found that part of me which remembered. But these two parts of me are not fully reunited. I am not one soul, but two.

My dark half is strong, toughened by the torments of hell and made bold by the victory of its escape. My light half is weak and confused, and perhaps would have been lost. I examine the few waking memories I have after hell and I conclude that something lured my higher soul out of the darkness. The music.

Every night it is the same, music and pain. My dark soul rages and it lies with every breath, but my consciousness clings to the music. I fight against my own soul and finally my body is my own, I am afloat on the darkness. I can feel the depths below, and the waves threatening to submerge me again, but for now, the fresh air gives me strength.

That is when my teaching begins. My new sensei is called Sweet Swallow’s Song, a strange, but beautiful name. I listen to the music and I understand. She gives me a choice as well, to endure pain and torment, until I am cast back into hell, or to rise above it and become a person once again. Music or torture. The choice seems simple enough, and it would be to anyone who’s soul was whole, whose internal darkness did not have a voice with which to scream lies and strength with which to wrest their very body from their control.

I learn what it is to be gaki, and I learn that Swallow’s Song is gaki as well. We both began in hell, and we both walk the Road Back. The difference is that Swallow’s Song is far along that road. My own feet drag with the weight of my inner demon, and if I stumble on this narrow and treacherous part of the path, hell is waiting to swallow me up again. That we are both the same is called the Way of Origin, the first of the Great Principles. It is this respect for all who walk the Road Back that prevents Swallow’s Song from destroying me outright.

Some nights I hear the music clearly enough to claim my body, and on those nights I learn. On some nights my darkness is too strong to be denied and on those nights I suffer.

On a night that my demon-self is strong and the music is loud there is a visitor. The door opens and I raise my head – I have not yet been outside that door, I have not earned that right. My wind soul rises to the surface and I feel shame. There is no reason to be ashamed of my nudity, but I feel shamed for this new person to see me as I am now, not yet in control over my own demon-soul.

It is ZhiZhu, a member of the Thousand Li Scouts. Swallow’s Song has told me that if I master my own soul, then I will join this blood family. I want to have an Uji. I crave that fellowship like I crave chi. But with that thought I am reminded that I must steal chi from the flesh of the dead, and my shame is renewed.

ZhiZhu watches me, gauging me. By her name I conclude that she is Chinese, rather than Japanese, supported by the slant of her eyes and the curve of her cheek. I wonder what brought this woman to Nippon, and what made her one of the Thousand Li Scouts. It gives me hope to see another cloven soul who has taken the first steps along the Road Back.

The conversation is mostly between my sensei and the guest. I do not wish to shame myself further by speaking and revealing my appalling lack of enlightenment. When she leaves I raise my head again.

I tell Swallow’s Song that she can remove the chains that hold me. They are no longer necessary. I am ready to learn.

My sensei smiles. The chains shatter without my ever having seen her move. She turns up the music.