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Blind Man’s Butthole
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How many hands do you need to play the game?
Now point the way there.
Hot cops make sure every day is Halloween
for citizens too selfish for anarchy.
Living-making gangs and cults swirl a sub-sovereignty
from an occupied ghost town.
The counter and criminal cultures
irrelevant, immune, and sterile
come together, squat together,
in endless party, endless labor.
The full breasts of a vampire settle over your neck.
She says, “I’m what you get when a whore is laid off.”
Mechanics and historians, mad as mad scientists,
they look at you, the artist, their audience,
with a need greater than any parent for any child, ever.
The alpha-drunks’ homes stay so open
that an old circus lion nearly breaks through
three layers of tattered screen door.
Bar stool in hand, you drive him away…
like a bribe to a bouncer or a bounce to a crasher?
Back up the street. Back up. The scavenged vacation cabin mansions
turn heads like abandoned swing sets.
Back to the paved roads and motorcycle chop shops
unnecessarily yet unironically disguised as toy factories.
Camaraderie is thick there in the industrial music.
On the job injury far from minds living this dream.
So much honor among thieves in a world without sports.
With daily, consolation victories for gentle, troubled giants.
Minds live this dream in blacklights and open refrigerators.
Leftover electricity is plentiful as the sea of leftover liquor
where the pills and porno sank lower than quaint.
No abyss here:
Every bottom become a horizon.
Boredom as impossible as prison.
Orgy the walls of this open asylum.
Once the outskirts of a progressing Purgatory.
Once wastelands surrounding a perfected Utopia.
It is now the island no man or Hell could ever be.
In the fashionable period of every language
its archway translates as “the blinds man’s butthole.”
People come back all the time, but no one ever leaves.
People come back from there saying, “there are no laws and there is no rape.”
A controversial experiment sent a known rapist in to test the riddle.
He came back and tried to rape someone, but said that
“when I was there I did not want to”
“when I was there I didn’t even want to try”
People have come back from there
saying that ‘there’ is The Dreaming
despite the people sleeping there
and the dreams they had there themselves.
If killing death did not kill our dreams.
If realized progress did not forget decadence.
If, after curing blindness, we cannot ask why it isn’t
“blind ‘person’s’ butthole, or just blind butthole”
then we might as well call it “God’s navel.”
We might as well fornicate.
Get blind drunk and meditate
on the artist as scavenger
harlot as savior
and write our names in piss across the tombstone of Chaos
shouting national anthems in essence as
“I’ve my head up my ass, but my eyes are closed!”
If you were close to death, what would you choose for your last words? To whom would you want to say them? Submitted By |
Chapter 1: http://harlotbug3.livejournal.com/56273.h
Chapter 2: http://harlotbug3.livejournal.com/56670.h
Fortune! Deal! The boy who could become either God or The Devil…in bed.
Chapter 3:
Once, when Rin was a very little boy, his mother had taken a broom to him. He’d laughed at the time, knowing it a playful exaggeration to get him out of the house, but he’d also moved very quickly. His mother knew children needed fresh air, but Rin knew that his mother needed the house to be truly clean sometimes, so clean that it made him cry big bleached tears. Kaede had been terrified the first time she saw him exploding out his front door, tears in his eyes. He’d laughed louder to make it obvious that everything was funny, not sad.
When Rin exploded out the front door this morning, he was trying not to cry because everything should be funny, but it wasn’t. Everything wasn’t even clean. Maybe a face full of bleach was what he needed, or at least deserved. He’d hollered something about not having time for breakfast from the laundry room, where he’d selected the cleanest-looking outfit in the hamper. He’d hollered the same kind of something about having a lot of errands to take care of while Kaede tried to holler something back from upstairs. Primula had given him a curious look from the breakfast table as he’d wiggled into his shoes with one hand on the door. She would help Kaede clean and wouldn’t know what she was cleaning. Kaede wouldn’t tell her and the whole thing would be firmly unspoken when he returned.
Rin skidded to a stop at the mailbox.
When was he going to return?
Midnight?
Dawn?
Where would he go? He wasn’t running from a fan club, he was running from his own home, his own-
“Oh! Good morning, young man.”
Next-door, outside the gate to the human home of the God king, a woman was waving her fan in his favor. She wore a beautiful, yet strikingly modern (or rather outright otherworldly) kimono that seemed to clash with her fan on purpose. The woman was actually Sia, but Sia actually harbored a…less refined…personality inside her.
Rin tensed, ready to run in any direction, then realized that it was not Kikiyo, not the unborn yet merged twin princess of the gods.
No.
It just looked a lot like her.
No. It couldn’t be…
“You must be Rin. My daughter has told me so much about you. I feel terrible that it has taken this long for us to meet. She really is quite…impressed with you.”
Fan to her face, her eyes flashed with more testing intensity than any human grin.
“I was hoping to surprise my husband. It was such a feat to get someone to take over my royal duties, thus I am so very anxious to see him…and my daughter, of course.”
“I’ll bet,” Rin mumbled helplessly to himself, watching the matriarch’s fan quicken its flutter.
“You see, good sir, I have knocked, and yet it seems they cannot hear me. I could shout to them, but that would give away the surprise, not to mention that it would not be very proper.”
She bowed gracefully, very gracefully. The traditional style Japanese beauties had never done much for Rin before, but he could see now that they simply hadn’t been doing it right. To work the charms of a true noblewoman required something elegant, something sensuous rather than merely glamourous.
No. Rin had to help her, and be so damn respectful about it that it hurt. That was the Right Thing to do.
“Please miss, allow me. I’m a neighbor and schoolmate of Sia’s and she says I’m welcome to make myself at home anytime.”
Rin bowed and realized his mistake the moment he met those royal eyes again.
“Oh? Is that so?”
“That is …I-her father is teaching me to play mahjong as well.”
“He’s a calculating one, that’s for damn sure,” the noble woman glanced at the house, speaking under her breath in what couldn’t have been a grumble.
In a movement too quick to follow she put her arm through his. Her earlier aside was forgotten, along with the location of the front door. Sia’s father had had a very traditional and very classy home built, but that made it difficult to remember where the appropriate entrance would be as there was an entrance and a formal garden on every side.
“Lead the way, Lord Rin, sir.”
She didn’t move closer to him, but he felt their proximity change in some other than mother way. Rin began to look toward her to apologize (and maybe redeem himself) for not being all that familiar with the house.
“Ooo! I have an idea, why don’t I hide off to the side while you knock on the main door there. Then when they open it I can really surprise them.”
Rin chuckled uncomfortably but was thankful that she had at least gestured toward the right entrance. He swallowed and knew that it looked like a nod.
“I am at your service, my lady.”
The pronouncement was hardly noble, and Rin worried that he sounded mocking rather than nervous. Small relief then, when his escort moved closer without moving again. In fact, she was so graceful that she almost seemed to float alongside him. A vision snuck into his mind, a not The Right Thing to Think vision, of his teacher, jealous that his Oedipus complex had advanced past her. Rin gritted his teeth till it went away, which was only moments before he had to ring the bell.
“Who in the-?! One moment, please.”
Sia’s father sounded agitated. The plan started to sound safer if he were the one to hide off to the side.
Shin-Ou opened the door roughly, but without much force. It looked like the god-king had not slept for days. At the sight of his visitor he scrapped up some more fumes for the furnace, seeming worried rather than angry.
“Rin! Er…don’t you think it might be better if-” Shin-Ou looked over his shoulder, “if-if if you, you know, stayed home today. I can’t go into detail but I think this whole city might-”
“Darling!”
It was obvious where Sia had learned that even the King of gods could be toppled with the right technique. The large figure was no match for a tiny tsunami of affectionate giggles and increasingly intimate caresses. Shin-Ou struggled to his knees, then his feet, his special guest clinging to his neck, loosening only when he held her by the waist at arm’s length to get a better look.
“It can’t be! My little pudding flower! Is it really you?!”
Rin could barely keep up with the few seconds of contact it took to make the god-king into a new man. He swung her around in joyous circles, knocking over a lamp but giving it no more notice than someone else’s wish on a dandelion. The crash made Rin instinctively cover his head, then look around for Sia or anything else that might make this all more awkward. Maybe he should just let himself out.
“I take it you’ve met Sia’s mother, then! I was wondering when she’d finally get to see our human home.” The bombastic laugh shook the room and an uncomfortable yet very loose smile out of Rin.
Now firmly cuddly-backed onto his shoulders, Pudding Flower nuzzled her cheek into her husband’s. Their combined blushes were like a candyman alchemy, transmutating crème and caramel into cinnamon. Rin couldn’t see the surprisingly agile woman’s legs, or the King’s hands for that matter.
“Oh darling, however did you stay warm during the long, cold nights they have here?”
The king grinned, blushed more deeply, and stuttered as the question brought one delicate hand under his chin, the other down his chest. Rin was quite ready to excuse himself when those eyes welded him to the spot.
“Rin, my husband can be so oblivious to a woman’s schemes. He probably hasn’t been an especially challenging chaperone, has he?”
The Right Way to laugh would be innocently, as if Rin had no idea what she was implying. The laugh that came made him sound like he was being tickled by something that hadn’t been cute for a long time.
“P-p-pudding, Sia hasn’t seen you in such a long time. I’m sure she’d be…happy…to…”
Shin-Ou trailed off as his inquisitor made inquiry into his ear with the tip of her tongue. She began whispering something that made all the blood rush to the king’s face. All the blood in the world, maybe.
No.
There was some blood left for another place.
No.
No way!
Rin felt his jaw collapse and his lips slacken in an expression so helpless he could feel his shock loop back in on itself.
A delighted, yet almost sinister giggle erupted atop the royal volcano.
“My my my! That’s certainly one way to show the boy who’s in charge. Maybe we shouldn’t call Sia out here just yet. I’m sure she’ll be just as happy to see me after we’ve had some time to catch up on grownup things.
Rin had seen the king drunk before, he’d seen the king utterly wasted before, but he’d never seen him look so brain-dead. When he heard the king laugh to himself he worried the damage might be permanent.
“Flowers…heh heh…pudding…hee hoo”
“What do you think, darling, can we trust Rin to treat Sia like a lady while we take care of business?”
The click of Rin’s jaw was audible and encompassing, as if he’d been rebooted. Some small bit of indifferent, logical curiosity, perhaps plucked up by the serious nature of the word ‘business,’ made him speak to himself plainly enough to be heard.
“Wait a second, if this is first time you’ve visited, how did you know where the front door was?”
The absurd rudeness of the question made every nerve in his body retract, then loosen when the king looked not at the offending detective, but instead swung his head around to face the suspect on his shoulder.
“And since when have you called me ‘darling?’” The question was incredulous rather than suspicious, but the answer was obvious, regardless.
Pudding flower pouted for a moment and transformed in a puff of smoke almost as white as Shin-Ou’s face would be in the next second.
Rin didn’t gape or glare this time, but he did almost gag.
Rauou, the king of the world of devils, was certainly the more feminine of the two monarchs, but he didn’t look right in the exotic kimono, dainty as he tried to be when he slid off the god-king’s shoulders. He crossed his arms and sat back on the head of a sofa, airily dismissing every part of the spectacle that might cheapen his performance.
“Well, Shin-ol-buddy, I don’t know how you can expect to keep your daughter under control when you can barely control yourself.”
Rin knew that people from the god and devil worlds could use magic, but he had no real idea of how much could be done with it. Right then he had never wanted to NOT know so much in his life. He figured the king of one world might tell him a thing or two anyway as soon as one stopped shaking or chuckling. He imagined, watching the sudden death of the God-king’s bulge, a sea serpent slain with a single strike.
“Rau…ou…you…you-”
“Oh come now, your highness, you know we told our wives to stay in their worlds. Did you think your-” Rauou leaned over to make a show of looking at the other king’s crotch, “charms alone would be enough to break ranks, even under the lemon star.”
“You…you-”
Destruction was climbing the ladder of Shin-ou’s breath. Murder was condensing on his teeth.
Rin barely brought his arms up in a protective gesture in time to block the fine and classy interior shrapnel.
Shin-ou had yelled something like ‘devil, freak, or kill’ all at the same time, and lunged at the smaller king. The attack shattered most of the living room, but Rauou had ducked out of the way effortlessly and went skipping and giggling past Rin so like a schoolgirl that Rin covered his face again. He could feel the rage of the god-king rush past him like a freight train. The pursuit had already carried them to the other side of the house by the time Rin opened his eyes. Surely everyone in the neighborhood could hear them.
“Come back here you decadent monster!”
“Monster?! Have you no care for a lady’s delicate feelings?”
“I’ll show you delicate! This time you’ve gone too far!”
They’d doubled back now and went charging past Rin as if he were less than a tire barrier at a drag race. The unspeakable threats and unthinkable taunts continued, and elevated till Rin stepped inside and closed the door, as much to hide his fear as his shame by association. He stepped over the remains of the living room and into the kitchen, wondering if, with Sia missing, he’d be the one responsible for preventing an inter-world war. Would bringing out some snacks in a friendly way show that all was forgotten? Would getting them drunk make things better or worse? Where the heck was Sia, anyway?
“You would have let my daughter see us like that, wouldn’t you?! Wouldn’t you?!”
“Like what?”
The commotion halted for a second, then another, then multiplied with the sound of more smoke and a voice somewhere between the previous mask and the present marauder.
“Like this? Or maybe like this?”
“Eeeeeyooow! Get off me you depraved little worm!”
The chase continued with multiplied force. Rin grabbed his skull and rested his elbows on the counter. It was hopeless, this was how it all ended. Like this. The indignity of it all.
No.
This was no time to act like a stuffy old woman. He had to be a man, go out there and break those two men up. If one of their daughters were here this never would have gotten out of hand, but wherever they were it was probably better they not see this. Maybe he could just turn the hose on them like a pair of dogs.
“WAAAAAAAAAIT!”
Shin-ou’s command tore the whole world into an eerie silence.
Rin heard Rauou skid to a stop. Rin heard Rauou chuckle, inspiring an even more fearsome command.
“Rauou! Step away from the-donchoomakedatfaceatme!” As deadly serious as he sounded then, he sounded exactly the same but not at all serious in the next moment.
“Don’t make that face at my koi, either!”
Rin decided, there and then, that even if alcohol made things worse, it was worth the chance to end them more quickly. He left cupboards open as he found nothing, nothing useful, and more nothing. A loud splash outside made him quicken his efforts.
“My koi!”
Rin found some pots and pans.
“Oh-ho no-oh!”
Rin found some more cutlery.
“Get out of there right now!”
“I’m all wet! What is someone sees through my clothes!”
Rin found some cleaning supplies, remembered Kaede, made a panicked sound, and started throwing contents onto the floor to make sure he didn’t miss anything.
“You-don’t you DARE! You put Mr. Wet Cat down!”
“Mr. Wet Cat?” Rauou asked, deviously amused.
“Mr. Wet Cat?” Rin echoed to himself, horrified.
The chase became louder and more violent, as did Rin’s search. In a moment of reflexive yet useless courtesy he tried to correct the rug by the kitchen sink. Moving more clumsily than ever, he uncovered a trap door.
A trap door?
A trap door?!
A trap door!
A wine cellar!
Rin laughed triumphantly, lifted the hatch by an iron ring inset with the wood, and turned pale. It was dark down there. In fact, the light didn’t penetrate into this abyss half as far as it should.
“Hello?” Rin bent forward and called down.
“Sia?” He dropped her name more like a ominous stone than a wishing coin.
There was no sound of warning, only a flash of wood that nearly took Rin’s head off. He fell back on his rump painfully. Not knowing what to do with his hands he clutched his skull and grumbled. He opened his eyes after the commotion outside showed signs of spreading into neighboring yards before it would subside.
These types of homes didn’t have attics, but the flash of wood had been a protracting ladder and the ladder led to a matching hatch in the ceiling.
The Right Thing to do, as a voice, was really more of a monologue than a dialogue, but every so often it gave Rin a level of deference.
This isn’t some clever bit of architecture, Rin. This ladder is magic and as likely to take you off the earth as it is to take you to a stash of booze.
I know.
Good. Then why don’t you look elsewhere?
Sia could be waiting for me.
Aren’t you ashamed of yourself enough for one day?
Yes. No. I don’t-maybe she’s in trouble.
If she is waiting for you, simmering under the Lemon Star, coiled like a snake,
you can handle it. You’ve handled it before.
Heh-heh...
Stop that! Damn, maybe you should go up into the attic if only to get out of the sun.
But you just said…
Get up there!
The ladder was taller than it seemed, the attic too vast to even pretend it was a part of the house he found it in. A single domed’ skylight straddled the high peak of the triangular room, highlighting dust motes that seemed like lonely fairies in an attic that was not just empty, but pristine. Rin didn’t wait to ask if retreat were the Right Way to go, but the hatch was gone when he turned around.
Of course it was.
Rin slouched and turned slowly back around, almost laughing, almost crying when he saw the spacious reading chair. He did a little of both when he looked at the end table next to it. There, in an ornate crystal bowl, were about three fistfuls of spherical chocolates hardly bigger than marbles. A pink and white striped origami heart had nestled itself into the clutch.
“Sia?!” Rin had finally been exacerbated to the point of defensiveness now, even as he walked knowingly into the trap.
“Sia?! Kikiyo?! I know you can hear me, so come out right now.”
As he had suspected at first glace, Sia had written his name on the heart and folded it in such a way that begged him to unfold it. The smaller heart became a larger heart.
I spent all night making these chocolates just for you, Rin. I’d planned to bring them to you, but somehow I just know I lost a bit of jewelry into one of them. I can’t bear the thought of losing it (Or of you chipping a tooth! ;) so I need you to eat them here for me…carefully. As soon as you find the one with the gem in it I’ll be able to rest easy. I’m so sorry to keep you, but I had an idea. Maybe if I put on a show while you eat they’ll go faster like candies in a movie theater?
Not thinking, not thinking at all, Rin flopped down into the chair to re-read what he couldn’t have read correctly. The paper smelled like chocolate and very fruity, very girlie body spray. While reading for a third time, Rin reached over and brought a chocolate between him and the paper that now seemed panty-shaped instead of heart-shaped.
The light went out, all the way out, drawn completely and utterly into the center of the room. Skylight or spotlight, he couldn’t tell, but it was all sudden enough to make Rin grip the arms of his chair. He dropped his chocolate in the process, but found it in his lap and popped it in his mouth without thinking, without thinking at all.
A deep grumble spoke as softly as it could, reciting something with dramatic hesitation. This might have made Rin’s knuckles white enough to glow, but it was immediately followed by a delicate synthesis of pipe organs and choir angels. The sound seemed to shape the center light from a cone to a cylinder. The swimming dust motes now made it a pillar of snowfall, an inverted curtain perfect to introduce a hooded, black velvet cloak. A lone voice sang out in what Rin guessed might be English, maybe French. Western singing always sounded the same to him, even when it was so baritone that even a croon sounded like a wail.
It was Sia under the cloak, of course, maybe possessed by Kikiyo again, maybe by the Grim Reaper’s concubine. She walked forward purposefully and the light followed like a veil. Every movement step complimented what was now obviously meant to imitate, or perhaps profane western church music. Each step lifted the ground beneath her feet, or lowered the ground beneath Rin’s chair, he would never remember which, and could not now look away. He could definitely take another chocolate, though, and another to help him decide if heaven had sent malt balls or boxed cremes.
Sia raised her hands toward the sky, toward something vaster. The robe cascaded to the floor and the light vanished too quickly to see more than a flash of skin and black fabric. A ring of green lights, dim and thick as a film room, exploded into life all around them at the precise moment that the music exploded in heroic, romantic, screaming metal.
The princess of the world of gods was dressed for an erotic funeral. The requiem around them now marched to a churning of distorted guitar and thundering drums trailing a banner of choir and organ. Once brooding, the voice sang out with a powerful confidence, as refined as it was lascivious. Rin didn’t know what strip-clubs were really like and he didn’t know where the chrome pole had come from, but Sia’s dance didn’t leave room for questions.
She put her arms behind her head and walked with her hips as much as her legs. It was as if she were taking an aimless stroll with herself, sweeping wildflowers with the trail of her ankle length coat. It was more like a nightgown, more like a net, more and more like the cloak as it began slipping from one shoulder, then the other. In the end it was a net, cast off to catch what it may as she spun onto the pole. Rin didn’t blink, didn’t think to suck on the next chocolate before biting down. The next and the next made his mouth sweet, yet dry. It was too good to stop, he almost forgot to chew the next one as Sia began climbing up the pole, only to spiral down it again, bringing one leg in tight under her and stretching the other outward. Her boot heels impaled the air even as they kissed the bottom of her knees, the black…leather…vinyl? The material didn’t mater. Rin reached for another chocolate and his hand brushed against a tall tumbler of ice and what he hoped was only water. He took a sip without blinking and tried not to sigh too loudly.
Sia’s skirt was made for her boots and had clearly wanted to be a belt anyway. When she effortlessly inverted herself to cling to the pole by her ankles, Rin could see that her panties were tiny and somehow darker than the pitch pushing back at the green light around them. With her hair sweeping just above the floor, Rin saw that her eyes were gone, lidded so heavily that closing them turned her whole face…but then she opened her mouth and he saw that her lips were green, an emerald darker than…but then she ran her fingers over her chest, over the corset that enhanced it.
Rin ate two chocolates at once this time, chewing them only breifly. The music changed again, the singer’s voice becoming impossibly deep, almost inhuman. Sia now gripped the pole differently so that she began to spiral downward again. Another break in the song for the angel organ to guide her safely, then a crashing return to metal groaning sex as Sia lifted her head and body at the precise moment to spread, to sprawl herself onto the floor.
Now to a gently strumming guitar, to a sweeter croon than could be possible from the same man, Sia kicked her legs slowly, treading molasses.
Rin took another chocolate. Another. Another.
Each time one leg came back within reach she deftly undid another button along her calf. One boot she slid off with both hands. Another chocolate for Rin. Another boot she removed with her bare toes. Rin thought of Kareha and took another chocolate not to. In movements too soft for bones, Sia swirled round and sat up on spread knees. Drums began to punctuate the serene music and Sia began to remove her corset, rotating her torso, swinging her hair in slow circles, smooth spheres. The singer rediscovered more passion then and Rin wondered if trying to translate the lyrics would distract him enough to relieve the tightness in his pants.
The corset fell and Sia hid her breasts behind her hair. The guitars climbed to epic solitude and she crawled toward Rin on all fours. He wondered, distantly, if he could turn away. This was not a playful flash. This presence approaching him had coverd herself so that he must look, so that he dare not blink, or breathe. His throat flexed, his hand flexed and reached for another chocolate. It was no kind of cold in there but Sia’s eyes opened for the first time and Rin’s teeth chatted lightly. His hand searched and found no chocolates in the bowl.
Sia’s movements have formed a new now. The guitars are close to some impossible apex. Sia is close enough to touch, sitting up on spread knees again, hair begging him to part the curtains. Nails painted to match her lips trace along her faintly heaving belly. Rin sees the chocolate hiding or spying out from her navel in the gasping moment before she plucks in out and places it in his gapping mouth. It is like that first impossibly bitter taste of coffee and Rin cannot help but pucker. Sia shushes him then kisses the other side of her finger. The singer is hollering like the most romantic of night-fiends now and Sia is turning to leave him. To this day Rin will not admit how sorry he was to know the song was ending there, or how it felt to know nothing.
The drums lightened and returned the pace of the world and Sia sat on his lap, folding Rin’s length against him. The guitar became both more aggressive and more upbeat. The singer was definitely singing something in English. If he translated it he could stay in control. Even if it was profane (and he wholly expected it to be) Rin had to recall his language notes before Sia made him lose something he never knew could be recovered so quickly. She was rocking, grinding into him, her hair gliding over her shoulders, her chest. Her skirt was up, her hips were down, her body-
What was he saying. What were those rocking guitars so…smug about?
Sia leaned back and Rin closed his eyes, knowing he would surely look down at her bare breasts heaving with her as she heaved into him. She curled the back of her neck against his chest, waving another exquisite scent of her hair up into his nose.
Did he say someone ‘looks?’
Did he say the American word for God?
Sia's hands tore his from the chair and placed them on her waist. The Right thing to do would be to sit on them, but he he could only move them as far as her hips.
Was he singing about what heaven looked like?
No.
"Yes." Slipped out of Rin's mouth in a tiny breath.
The singer said he looked like, that someone looked like-The whistling organ, the serene choir, what pornography were they hiding? The repeated line rose with more force now, and Sia bore down with the same.
She must know this song well.
Such an obvious realization brought Rin's mind off his own hips, but that just made them buck with more force than he realized he’d been using. They were automatic. No, they were alive. He was alive. He was healthy and strong and the sun had returned to Sia’s aura. The green and black were hazy behind their passion and the song was over.
It had ended so abruptly that Rin was startled by the sound of his own heavy breathing, then Sia’s, louder than his own. Another moment and his own mindless grunt, silent or blaring, engulfed him. The hard but increasingly less bitter gem inside his mouth disappeared down his throat during the convulsion.
He grasped at his throat and swallowed again wondering what had been wrong with that chocolate. Sia sprang up and folded her arms. He could not see her expression for the light behind her, but she sounded very cross.
“Rin! How could you?!”
Torn from a deep if stunted reverie, Rin’s eyes blinked, bulged, and then crashed back as they tried to do both.
“That pearl has been in my family for generations! I went through all this trouble to make it more fun for you to help, for my candies not to be wasted, and you just-”
Sia picked up the glass of ice water and poured it onto Rin’s lap with almost robotic precision.
And Rin’s lap said: Cold!
And Sia said: …
And Rin’s nerves said: Really cold!
And Sia said: …
And Rin’s brain said: Too damn cold!
And Sia said: …
And Rin’s mouth said: C-C-C-Cr-Cr-CRAZY BITCH!
Then the both of them said: …
Sia moved her hands down to her hips very slowly. Rin nurtured his anger for another moment, knowing he couldn’t bring it back to life, but desperate to be seen trying. It was brief, all life was brief, but Rin knew he deserved to die no matter how long his life had been.
“‘Gods giveth, and gods taketh away.’”
Her tone was serious as if serious meant obvious, but whether he had enraged her, or deeply hurt her feelings, Rin didn’t know. The Right Thing to say would be The Right Thing to do, and so he'd have to say something that was at least accurate if not true. He’d translated that final line in the song, and sang in a lucid if bloodless dream.
“Jesus Christ looks like me...Je-sus Chri-i-ist. Yeah."
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Hi, Norm McNiceguyovitch here, you all know me as Rin Tsuchimi, the lucky guy from Funimation’s “Shuffle.” As an actor I’m expected to attend all sorts of networking and promotion parties and not always because they’re good places to be. If some of them lead me to the type of seedy places where women strip without the sun to blame it on, well, don’t believe for a second that I like it. I’d never wear sexy panties just to have men stick dollar bills in them.
This… “side?” “alternate?” “fan-dom?” story, “Deal! Fortune” is kind of like one of those promotion parties. Don’t take it seriously, but do tune in for the next installment! I’m lucky to work with such good people, and lucky to know that fans can understand and forgive without being asked. Or begged. As an incentive though, we’re offering extra fan club points to make this whole unwholesome experience more fun!
Extra points to anyone who guessed the band before the lap dance!
Extra EXTRA! points to anyone who guessed the song before the translation!
Extra caution around anyone who can make it through the original music video without cringing or calling the producers creepy, cheesy…or expired:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khnzdQSUE
Deal Chapter 1: http://harlotbug3.livejournal.com/56273.h
Deal Chapter 2:
It made perfect sense, really. If you miss sleep the dreams pieced from those scrapes of REM will have to work extra hard. It made as much sense as those dreams being dominated by the very thing that was keeping him up. There was therefore no reason to be alarmed if he spent his subconscious time running from appropriately inappropriately sexualized angel halos and devil pitchforks. It was okay for him to be unsettled, it was okay for him to be a little sweaty, but he was awake now and it was just OK. Maybe if he went back to sleep he might even be able to repair the damage.
The whole world devolving into an insane orgy might not seem such a terrifying prospect to most people, maybe not even to him…until the prospect became a distinct possibility. It was paralyzing enough without the protective instincts of two fathers who were also kings and also deities.
They’d always seemed so good-natured, jovial even. They didn’t throw their unknowable power around like most authority figures he knew. Heck, after the near-catastrophe they’d survived bringing Primula’s magic under control, Rin almost flattered himself to think they shared some man-to-man respect.
Rin supposed it had been as respectful as possible when the king of the world of Devils had promised, in no uncertain terms, that if Rin took advantage of his daughter:
“I will personally keep you alive however long it takes for you to properly regret it.”
No malice in that voice, or anywhere else in however much was lurking in that lean demon frame.
Always equal and opposite, the King of the world of Gods had kept his eyes closed, head down, and arms folded. He sounded grave rather than threatening, as if he feared his wrath as much as anyone else should.
“Sia…my daughter…must be pure on her wedding day.”
The conversation had started and ended with the same warnings, but their attempt to explain the lemon star was more difficult to recall. They’d begun with the story of the truce between the worlds of Gods and Devils. Apparently two ancient kings, their people having been enemies for longer than the oldest record, experienced the same epiphany one night.
It was common knowledge that the two worlds shared the same space, that they were separated by dimension rather than distance. Knowing this, but never considering it, the two kings were (according to both accounts) comparing the star charts of both worlds…no, not comparing, Rin now recalled. They both knew that their worlds shared the same constellations, but their seasons and astrology differed so much the point seemed moot.
Both monarchs, in a tangle of various maps, had selected a star chart for their own purpose, and proceeded to plot points. They realized, after some minutes, that they’d been using a chart from the opposing world. Unlikely as it sounded in any world, the two kings both had an epiphany of peace and both sent an envoy to the other. The accounts differed, however, on whether those envoys met on the same road and fought to a draw, fell in love, or realized they both shared the same human mother.
Rin remembered a brief moment of levity when the two kings smirked at each other and acknowledged that neither world was truly certain which had been the first to make contact with humanity. He also remembered now, with a confused frown, how quickly they’d changed the subject. He’d wanted to ask why no one knew anything about inter-world contact before the official one.
That was pointless wondering, Rin figured, rolling his face further into his pillow and willing himself back to sleep.
Going back to sleep was pointless, too, but worth a try.
At least worth a try again.
The leaders of the two worlds had moved forward with similar optimism to create a star together as a shared symbol of unity. Space travel was easy with magic, apparently, but space was still so vast that the most powerful of them couldn’t be spared to potentially travel forever. Not until the inter-world treaty, that is. Under the new terms a team of powerful Gods and Devils set forth to construct and set forth on a magical ship. They were to go to the nearest star and place the new one in the same vicinity.
The King of the Gods had said, as an aside, and as much to himself as to Rin, that if everything worked out they could go to the museums celebrating this grand undertaking. The Devil king simply repeated the word ‘if’ to Rin and Rin alone.
Everything about the project went without incident…officially. No one was supposed to know that the expedition did find one thing apart from a vast, lifeless void.
They’d come across a third star where only two were about to be. It was also artificial, but not like their own in any other way. Most of the data recorded by the crew was lost because, on the way back, for the approximate length of a day, the Gods and Devils on that ship…
Both kings had paused their exchange of interruptions then, and looked at each other. Their faces were as serious as ever, but there was also an unmistakable blush.
Rin let it be when they settled with “lost control.”
Other details were fuzzier. For instance, how the surface of the star was supposedly tight like the skin of a fruit, or how all people in high positions of government must have a plan should it ever come within close enough orbit to radiate its influence.
There were as many inconclusive documents as there were conclusive myths about how many times the star had made a strange day of the God and Devil worlds. There was no evidence, however, one way or the other, to hint if the human world had ever been affected, or if Gods and Devils could be affected while in the human world. The planetarium incident was the clearest warning they’d ever had.
The only thing for the two Patriarchs to do was make it clear that Rin’s gentlemanly resolve had better burn brighter than an ancient alien artificial sun.
Maybe if he tried some meditation he could go back to sleep. Maybe he could just spend the weekend in bed, play sick with something very contagious. Hiding might really be his only option if obsession led to conspiracy. He’d begun to suspect, following what he’d learned about the two princesses’ other selves, that a more…diplomatic crush could actually be more dangerous.
Before last night’s ominous study session, he’d already begun to imagine wild romantic back room negotiations. If the girls in his life were also as loyal friends as he knew them to be, they might actually be concocting some kind of symbiotic yet ultimately predatory plan to support each other as they sent a champion forward.
No, that was silly.
Maybe all the Gods and Devils were working together to make some kind of giant, light-sucking, chastity-black-hole between earth and this star. That thought was silly, too, but as he lay on his back, stretching his toes at some out of reach relaxation, Rin let himself notice that he didn’t feel any different. The world seemed quiet. The house seemed quiet. The kitty’s paw steps were quiet as it searched for a place to snuggle on top of his blanket.
Did they get Primula a real cat?
Rin considered the question hazily.
They had not, but before he realized this he wondered why the cat seemed so large, and after that he realized that cats kissed with rough tongues, not soft lips.
Rin opened his eyes quickly, but took too long by any standard to recognize the barely teenage Primula. Her hair was out and about, making her tightly closed eyes seem even more intense.
“What the?!”
Rin threw himself back, up and, most importantly, away. His head thumped against the wall, the headboard dug into his spine, the tears began welling up, but he didn’t complain. There were worse things. Unforgivable violations and brutal prison death, for instance.
“I woke up the sleeping prince.”
It was the sweetest, most innocent thing when Primula smiled, but this was a bit sweeter and a bit less innocent.
“P-pri-mu-rim-chan-pri-lu-mu…” Rin didn’t know whether to scream or whisper, and trying to do both hurt his throat. The very young lady, the very VERY young lady, just smiled. He’d never heard her laugh, but he could sense an impossibly cute little giggle coming up like a flesh-melting geyser. She didn’t make a sound though, she just fell forward, wrapping her arms tightly around him and nuzzling his ribs.
“I had such a nice dream, Rin.”
“Primula!”
His gulping hiss sounded inhuman at best, but she took no notice.
“I dreamed that you were rescuing me from that scary place where I was trapped.”
Rin glanced about desperately for…what? For assistance? For a witness? For a very gentle crowbar?
“But afterward,” Primula’s small mumble almost lost itself in Rin’s shirt, “we both grew wings and flew up into the clouds. We were playing and then…”
Primula hugged him tighter.
“Sto-!”
Rin caught himself before he bellowed at the top of his lungs. Something like ‘Rin feels warm’ purred up at him.
“Primula, you have to understand, people your age…they’re not supposed to-”
At this the tiny body relaxed and sat up with the usual blank and even more blessedly innocent expression.
“But people do it on the TV, and when I woke up people were doing it outside.”
Primula pointed at the window, still looking into his eyes.
She had a lot to look at; Rin could feel his retina twang like a bowstring. He could also feel a tiny bead of sweat yawn awake above his left ear and a mangy rodent prepare breakfast somewhere in his guts. A voice too clever for heaven and too clean for hell spoke to his mind through the ethers:
Good morning, Rin. Rise and shine.
It was instinct that grabbed Primula firmly by the shoulders, instinct that lifted them both out of bed in one movement and set her on her feet while he flew to the window. Years and years later, as an old man, Rin would tell people that he really did fly, just a little, but pure wingless flight just the same.
The curtains wailed like the windswept skirts of shy girls (as Rin would later recall the very plain window coverings) and the late morning sun blazed in like a spiritual epiphany. It was, also depending on who and when you ask, a spiritual epiphany, but by the time Rin could process what he was seeing he couldn’t see part of it for his breath on the glass.
There were four backs out there, but only two people. Up against a fence, a utility man was holding a plainly dressed yet radiant woman as if she were an angel he refused to let return to the heavens. If he kissed her enough, clutched her tightly in the right places, surely God would let her stay. They had their clothes on, and would have been quiet if the fence hadn’t been so old.
The same could not be said for the scandal across the street. It was scandal, after all, the real and true definition. There really had never been one in town before, not to share space in infamy with this. Rin was no forensic investigator, but it looked as if a car had hit a light post, killing the battery. As a solution, either the two passengers, or the driver and a helpful bystander, were trying to revive the car with kinetic energy. If they’d thought to use electrical cables, it might have worked, Rin imagined. One of them began using the fallen light post for extra leverage and Rin tried to stop imagining. Why add fuel to the fire, the sun, the frickinLemonstarohmy…
“HOLY FUCKING HELL!
“Is that what those two are doing, Rin?”
Primula hadn’t been scared by the outburst, or maybe her attention was also helplessly frozen to the spectacle outside.
“Primula…” Rin’s nose hurt with the force of the calming breaths he scraped from the air.
The young, young-young-young-young girl just stepped closer to the window.
Ring swung his hand in front of her eyes so quickly that she started.
“Primula! Listen to me now. There is…something…unhealthy! Something unhealthy in the air today! You need to promise me you’ll stay inside and not look out the windows, okay?”
“But why?”
“Please. Primula, please do me this favor. You haven’t done anything wrong…well, except for…but the important thing is that everything should be fine tomorrow. You just have to keep away from the outside and from any strangers and-”
“You’re acting strange, Rin.”
“Primula, if you can just do this for me I’ll promise I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Rin opened his eyes now, breathing a little more evenly, but then, under his hand, he saw Primula smile that smile again that she never should have smiled in the first place.
“NO KISSES!”
That one had actually taken Rin aback. It had sounded like a horrible old hag declaring the rule to everyone for the rest of time. Primula only slouched a little, frowned a little more, and began walking out of his room with a tiny “ok.”
It broke his heart, but relieved his immortal soul or the Right Thing to Do or whatever else he hoped he still had by the end of the day. Though, so far, it could have been much worse. Really. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe he just needed a good breakfast in him to-
“Kaede!”
Rin gasped the life back into his chest as Primula turned curiously back toward him.
“Primula, where’s Kaede?”
“She’s downstairs making breakfast.”
Rin bent forward, letting the sigh of relief take him where it would, which was not far.
“Wait…she isn’t…acting strangely…she’s…”
Rin gulped.
Primula blinked.
“What, uh, what is she wearing?”
“She’s wearing an apron.”
“Oh good!”
The sigh took Rin a little farther this time but, and he will deny it to this day, the thought of Kaede in nothing but an apron gave him a sudden and very vacant grin.
“Wait, don’t tell me-”
Rin felt himself weakening. He’d never fainted before in his life, but he was almost ready to, almost ready to escape however he could.
“Kaede says it’s important to put an apron over your clothes any time you’re about to cook.”
“Over…over your clothes…of course. Tell her I’ll be down in a few minutes, ok Primula?”
“Ok.” She seemed little-cheered, but that was enough for Rin.
He sat on his bed and rested his head in his hands.
Maybe he should lock himself in his room, bolt it from both sides, just in case.
No, the time…the effort might just get him…worked up?
Rin collapsed backward, miscalculated, and bounced off his bed to the floor.
He didn’t cry out, or even mumble, he didn’t deserve to. From his lowly creature perspective he was he could see, however, a box of magazines. One, only one of which, was not like the others. Itsuki had given it to him on the premise that he keep it safe. The real reason, of course, was that any healthy man might, according to Itsuki, need occasional private assistance.
It might, Rin thought with a suddenly dry mouth, be just the thing he needed. If he…various analogies involving weapons, gardening tools, and gym equipment flooded his mind. He imagined himself draining a dam before a storm. That was responsible. It was okay. He wasn’t a pervert; he was realistic.
“If I jerk myself like a monkey till I’m empty I won’t go crazy with some star-struck beast-boner…”
Rin had mumbled it to himself, but it rang in his ears so painfully that his eyes welled up with self-pity. His movements toward the magazine became more and more like a foul mouthed child sent to find the nastiest soap in the cupboard. The box wasn’t as heavy as it felt. The magazines crinkled sickly as he piled them to one side, except for the one he was after, of course. That one was still safe in its discreet black plastic.
Black had never been such an ominous color. He might have to use his imagination alone and throw this away, far away, without opening it. Itsuki was definitely the type to give him blunt, dirty porn. He was also the type to provide something that reestablished Japan as the most perverted nation in the world. Rin recalled a story about a lady and a tiger, but this time the tiger might have tentacles.
Burn it, Rin! Burn it and bury the ashes!
How bad could it be? Really!? Itsuki’s a creep, but he’s not a creep-creep.
At the least, at the very least, it’s going to be full of men. Big men.
Itsuki is your friend, he worries about you. He probably picked something tame. It might even seem too tame after getting so worked up.
…
You ARE a healthy guy, right?
…
A little precaution today could save your life.
…You could end up like that guy in the planetarium.
The thought of Kaede finding him in such a state, of Primula finding him like that after she’d…
The thought was formed well enough to send the magazine flying across the room. The thought formed some more and sent Rin across the room to pick it up, open the window, and toss it out as far as he could. He took the extra consideration to make sure he threw it like a Frisbee instead of a football, but he didn’t aim. Pandora’s periodical hit a pedestrian in the back of the head.
The street around this person was quiet now. The car had limped away and the fence was silent, appropriately inappropriately silent around a lone person in a trench coat…on a warm morning. The man rubbed his head, looked around, picked up the magazine, looked around again, and opened the wrapping. After a few page turns he looked around more urgently, tucked it under his arm, and walked. Then he jogged, then he sprinted away.
Rin hung his head and collapsed back onto his bed a little more carefully this time.
The posture wasn’t very comfortable, but the sun felt nice through the open curtains. The sun was warm, not hot, warm not bright, more like a blanket than a lamp. His skin felt good. His muscles felt good. His junk was feeling more valuable by the second.
It was nice, sighing and chuckling at the same time. Rin smiled and ran his hands through his hair. He sat up and thought of his teacher. She didn’t normally wear glasses. She didn’t normally give extra credit, either.
The neighborhood was quiet except for the birds. The birds sounded so sweet and happy compared to his teacher and her dirty, dirty mouth. She was still so gentle, though. A bird would probably eat from her hand. Anyone would. The sun felt good and looked just as good on her skin. The sunshine would feel better if he sat up straighter, better yet if he gave himself some more air. Kaede’s apron, probably from being near the stove, was almost as warm on his back as the sun was on his chest. Her hand replacing his was as sweet and gentle as a breeze through fresh blossoms. The sudden knot of fear in his throat froze him more like stone than ice. He was still warm. They were both so warm.
“Let me…let me help you, Rin.”
Kaede’s breath tickled his ear and he shivered, then shivered again. His knees in his hands felt at once too hard and not sturdy enough. He gulped, gasped, opened his eyes, and closed them tightly.
“It’s okay, Rin. Everybody already thinks I help you…with everything, b-but no one has to know. I won’t tell anyone…if you don’t want me to.”
Small voices shouted on the foggy shores of his mind like distant seagulls. How Kaede had managed to sneak up on him, how Rin could make her stop; these questions all melted, sank, or drifted out on the tides of a vast hot spring. All Rin could manage was the ghost of Kaede’s name, dissipated into steam through his teeth.
Some line some toe had drawn in the sand disappeared in foam. The space in his head the Right Thing used to patrol was being renovated into a garden, a fountain rimmed with dancing nymphs. Panic was close enough to excitement that the questions easily morphed from anxious to curious. He wouldn’t let himself remember, but Rin definitely wondered whether all good cooks, with their skillful hands, had this talent.
In one hungry movement, Kaede licked her hand, wrist to fingertip, and continued more confidently. Her neck pressed into his shoulder, her breasts into his back. She gulped and he felt it everywhere. She gritted her teeth for half a moment and he felt it everywhere. Those slender tendons, the soft bit beneath her chin, Rin had noticed that area just the other day. Through his shirt into his shoulder it was already so soft that, if he actually touched it with his hand-
Rin gripped the bed. There was nothing keeping him there, nothing he couldn’t deflect with little more than a shrug, but her neck…why her neck? Her hand felt better, and better, so delicate, so… but her neck was pure. No one could touch her neck, her throat, that vital, vulnerable area. She leaned in closer and swallowed again. Her neck. Her hand. Kaede was an angel. Nothing real could be so soft.
“It’s okay, Rin. You can relax. I want to help you. It feels good, doesn’t it?”
Her breath, at once hushed and heavier, touched his own neck and he bent forward with a gasp framed by a helpless smile. Kaede’s breasts shifted slightly, then her shoulders.
“Let it…let it go. Let me-”
Rin knew, not bothering to wonder, not able to judge, that Kaede was touching herself with her other hand. She drew a very deep breath, slowing the hand on him. She kept drawing it steadily even as two quick little gasps tumbled out of Rin’s.
Kaede was an angel. Everything she did was caring, caring for him or for herself only so that he could be cared for. It was ok, it was good that she did this, it was good that she let herself feel it too. The sun didn’t feel different, it must be, but it didn’t feel different. It was warm and beautiful. This was warm and beautiful and felt so very good. It felt better and better and yes, wonderful. Yes. Yes, the sun felt good, the sharp and tightening breaths between them were good, they were good. Even if they regretted today no regret could kill now.
Rin let it go. A rush of pins took control, a stampede of fallen-asleep feet spread out from his belly into the entire world. He nearly collapsed to the side, holding on with one elbow and half a hand. Kaede feel with him, her neck still on his shoulder, her hand still on him. Explosive, impossible sensation still flooded through her touch. Again, he knew, without needing to wonder, that she was coming up right behind him.
Her neck tensed, she made a tiny, unbelieving noise. Her neck remained tense, her muscles hot and vital beneath the stainless skin. Ragged gasps passed over him, up and into the sunshine. Kaede relaxed her grip, but her hand, her arm, her whole body hesitated. Rin didn’t know what to do, either. Should they hold each other now? Should they go about their day with the same normal polite distance? The Right Thing To Do was in the fountain, trying to shut it off…or scavenging change. The nymphs giggled and the fountain bubbled up something between Seppuku to atone for letting a perfect being sully herself, and Rin throwing himself out the window to find a cave that had never seen the light of day. The more his mind fought, however, the weaker his body became, and going back to sleep seemed a better and better compromise.
“Oh no! What have I done?”
Kaede was upset. Rin had to do something fast. He had to climb out of this beautiful blissful tar pit and reassure, and apologize, and board up the windows and at least mumble something.
Rin mumbled something. He didn’t know what.
“How careless. I’ll take care of it, Rin.”
Kaede was upset, but not lost innocence upset, not even burnt dinner upset. She was kneeling down across from him, wiping at the wall and floor with her apron. Rin thought he heard her mumble something about club soda.
A half-delirious surge of chivalry stood Rin up, closed his pants, and spoke for him in as casual a voice as there never was: “Don’t worry, Kaede, I’ll go get some soap and towels.”
Rin turned on his heel and marched toward the door. His thoughts were flimsy prayers caught between Primula missing the whole event and Kaede forgetting it. Maybe he’d survive today and even tomorrow. He’d find the cleaner and make a joke of this. Sure. The cleaner could be anywhere, but he’d find it…but maybe too late. Rin turned back and forced a laugh.
“Where is the cleaning stuff, anyway?”
She didn’t answer, but Rin knew he had to hurry. Kaede shouldn’t be cleaning up his shame with her apron, especially when it was all she had to wear.
[Author’s Note: No apologies. No dice (roll)? No navel either? You see, I wanted to keep my momentum and asked what the next prompt would be. They told me “Wattle.” Not sure if that will be the next prompt, but I guess I’ll just start week/chapter 3 with “Navel” in mind.]
[Note:] Anyone who has had me as an editor knows that I detest apologizing for a work. This is a naughty fanfiction and thus comes from the bottom of the literary barrel. It will continue and end. I haven’t written fanfiction for almost a decade, which means that I’ll soon be at the age where ff is creepy rather than silly. I don’t feel creepy or silly (regarding this) because I was eager to do something fun, something to make people smile and laugh and just maybe get naughty.
Within the confines of the law. Sorry kids. Go to your rooms and play quietly.
Wait...leave the door open.
[Side Note:] http://harlotbug3.livejournal.com/32750.h
[Title:] Deal! Fortune! The boy who could become either God or The Devil…in bed.
Rin lived surrounded by royalty and modern Japan. The arcades sold cats and the school uniforms defied gravity. Well, no, that’s not accurate. The arcades sold a chance to win a toy cat, and the school uniforms demanded gravity. To be more specific on that first point as well, Rin had the king of Gods and his daughter living next door on one side, the king of Devils and his daughter on the other. He also lived in a modern suburb and, whenever things seemed like they couldn’t be worse, he thanked heaven (and hell just in case) that he didn’t live in a bustling, bursting metropolis. The stories about nice guys thrown into city life could easily make him turn red, green, or white.
Devils and Gods had been integrating with the human world for more than a generation. They integrated so well, in fact, that the controversy of whether to refer to them as “Devils” or “Gods” or “people from the world of-” already seemed silly to Rin and his peers. The only controversy Rin could see was whether their ears were cute. Some of his friends really liked the long ears the Gods had. Others really, really liked the really –REALLY- long Devil ears. When pressed for what he favored in a girl, Rin liked to consider himself “not picky.”
Of course you’re not picky, Rin, you asshole. You’ve got a whole damn harem to pick from.
Rin would insist that only people who’d never had half a dozen girls vying for their love would call it a blessing. In all fairness, however, both of Rin’s parents were killed in car cash when he was a little boy. No, not his genitals, just his parents, but still.
Which brings us to Kaede, a childhood friend and arguably the first lady in his life. The same crash that killed both his parents also killed her mother. In the aftermath, Kaede’s father took Rin under his wing. Kaede’s father isn’t around much. He’s a good man, a good provider, but he’s probably the only guy in town with more masculinity issues than Rin. Let’s give him a break and hope he’s enjoying his business trip as much as he can. After her own…adjustment period, Kaede also began taking care of little orphan Rin. Is she more like a maid, or a big sister? You might get more than two answers to that question.
Kaede has shoulder-length sunny orange hair and is as sweet as she is cute, which is to say her very existence has conjured a capital “Pee” Psychotic fan club. It might be more accurate to call them a gang when they set out to prove their adoration by murdering Rin in broad daylight. These gangs aren’t too quick, or too sharp, but Rin’s school chums also do their part to make up for Kaede’s coddling.
His right hand man, Itsuki, seems at times just as much his nemesis. An arrogant womanizer determined to bring out the beast in Rin, he is also a model academic and looks good in glasses. He can take a punch, but his nature vs. nurture debate will remain beside the point until he either sneaks a jab at decreasing Rin’s harem, or joins it. Rin could use a wing man, even if it isn’t Cupid.
Mayumi makes for an interesting equal and opposite to Itsuki as the self-appointed energetic queen of gossip and small breasts. She doesn’t have half the academic talent of Itsuki, but certainly has twice the sense of romantic justice. Everyone’s seen the short hair with two long strands on each side style, but it looks oddly girl-next-door in grayish green. She doesn’t blame her looks (Who wouldn’t love a left blue and right magenta eye?) on being half-devil, but she does bemoan her inability to use magic.
Yes, people from the other worlds are genetically compatible with humans. Yes, they can use magic. We could talk about the magic and mingling, but that would make it difficult to talk about Rin’s older friends in the next sentence, so let’s just say that it gives them more than long ears.
Yes, Rin also attracts senior students. Lock up your daughters, mothers, and pets just to be safe.
Fuck you, Rin.
Asa is another childhood friend who isn’t very good at hiding her attraction to Rin, even in plain sight. With spring green hair, cut in a one-sided variation of Mayumi’s, she might be a beautiful girl made cute by bold, almost tomboyish behavior, or a cute girl made gorgeous by the same. She’ll knock you out, and Rin off his feet, one way or the other. Too confusing? Just ogle her friend Kareha, a bubbly, buxom blonde from the world of Gods. Her people are polygamous, as she’s keen to remind us, and so she’d probably chase Rin more seriously if she wasn’t so optimistic, or if she took anything seriously…other than love.
We’re confused again, aren’t we? Let’s brings things back home then.
Ma-ou seems a little too effete to rule the world of Devils, and Shin-ou a little too boorish to command the Gods.
What about the queens?
Do you want this to be more confusing?
Just know that these big daddies both love their princesses so much that they’ll take up human world homes on either side of Rin. The heir apparent daughters to otherworldly powers both met Rin as children on separate occasions and fell in love. The heir apparent daughters are both so gorgeous that there are now three psychotic fan clubs out for Rin’s blood.
The princess of the Gods, Sia, has a long proper name that sounds Greek and terminal, long burgundy hair, and a cheerful, active personality. Opposite her, shy and reflective, is Nerine. The princess of the Devils has really long bluish-purple hair and really, REALLY large…ears. Nerine’s eccentric little cousin of sorts followed the lot of them into Rin’s town, then into his home. This gives Kaede another person to take care of and Rin a Lolita complex to suppress alongside a harem instinct. Any well-balance person could see Primula adding more fuel to the emotional fires, but forcing Primula back home wouldn’t really qualify as sane.
You want to disappoint her? You want to look Primula in that blankly innocent face, with those wild lavender-gray pig tales, and tell her no? Go ahead. I dare you.
Does it matter whether any or all of these young ladies is the perfect match for Rin? No. Does it matter that royalty from the other worlds seem to have noticeably more problems with magic overflow? That depends on who you ask. Was this whole scenario dreamed up as an excuse for yet another barely legal orgy? No. There are important philosophical and personal questions to consider here. If it just so happens that a celestial alignment traversing the God and Devil worlds might send a cascade of sexual energy into the human world, then everyone will just have to deal with it the best they can.
Won’t they, Rin?
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[Chapter 1: Instep]
“Life is study.
Life is study?
If life is study, not a cabaret, not even a parade, then life will invariably give you back and neck pain. Is reproduction a part of life, or a field of study? It can also give you back and neck pain, so what does it matter?”
The smarmy infotainment jockey on the TV didn’t add much to the café’s atmosphere, but Rin had tried studying in peace and it hadn’t worked. There was always a chance that you could do something wrong your entire life, so why not take a chance to change things up. He’d amused himself with this thought as he’d left Kaede and Primula back at home. It sounded like something Asa would say, really, and being alone in public was just as likely to make him depressed as focused, especially when Asa heard about it.
Asa’s friend Kareha just so happened to work in this older café far from the student hang outs, far from distracting girls. Distance means nothing to Luck, of course, and he could just imagine Asa teasing him when Kareha told her, as she surely would, that Rin had “taken himself on a date.” That was the phrase that stuck after the fifth time Kareha had asked why he would meet a date in such a place. Rin was determined to focus on his studies without being rude to her, but he was beginning to wish he knew her well enough to tell her to bug off.
“Maybe a certain professor of astronomy at the local college could shed some starlight on this question.”
Rin refocused his annoyance at the primped talking-head wasting his enthusiasm on the recently middle-aged and nearly invisible café patrons.
“So, Rin…are you really studying, or did you just need some time away from your harem?”
Kareha giggled. All the time. Always so girlishly that he could never really be annoyed, but almost always at some scandalous innuendo.
“No, Kareha. And no I don’t have a harem. I have exams. I was trying to find a distracting but not distracting place to study because I couldn’t concentrate in my room and-”
“The professor, who for legal reasons must remain nameless, was found in the campus planetarium in a near-coma after what experts on the scene described as a ‘days-long masturbation marathon.’”
The anchor tried, and mostly succeeded, to hide how personally and professionally ecstatic this made him. Rin tried, and mostly failed, not to spit his coffee all over his notes. For their part, the other café patrons shifted, clinked, and even gasped like the living. As if such a story on a semi-serious news station wasn’t shocking enough, Rin glanced over at Kareha to find her frozen, not with giggling glee, but with intense, almost fearful concentration.
“Mr. Manager, will you please turn up the volume on this news report, sir?”
The manager twitched like a student caught napping in class and obeyed without taking his eyes off the screen.
“As scandal is rare at this university, and as the incident involved no other students or faculty save the colleague who called the paramedics, the dean has tried to keep the incident quiet. We at Coon-Balls news do not intend to disrupt the education of our country’s future leaders, but recognize the importance of knowing when something so…inexplicable and, if I may, inexcusable occurs within their midst. More on this as the story develops. Next up, do oysters really have the special properties so many attest to, and-”
“What constellation was he looking at, you idiot!”
Kareha’s merciless command stole the looks of disbelief away from the TV. Rin braced himself in the booth so desperately that a little more coffee slipped over the edge of the mug onto his notes. Kareha changed her expression just as forcefully.
“Oh my my my! Thank goodness I don’t attend that college. Tee-hee!”
The patrons grumbled, chuckled and returned to themselves in unison.
Kareha put her coffee pot down on Rin’s notes, wiped the sputtered coffee off the seat across from him, and sat down. She watched her hands wrestle each other for information as Rin looked for the real Kareha somewhere else in the cafe.
“It couldn’t be…it’s only a legend…even if-”
To Rin’s young and inexperienced perceptions, it almost looked as if the hushed mumbles and squeaks spilling out of her were a kind of token resistance to her own increasingly naughty thoughts.
“Kareha, what the hell was that all about?”
“Hm?” She met Rin’s disbelief with a suddenly innocent and oblivious smirk.
A gut-wrenching fear he hadn’t felt since he’d been simultaneously targeted by the most desirable women in two, maybe three worlds, made a second appearance a little bit lower in Rin’s system.
“Kareha, do the Gods have something to do with that professor? Do the devils?”
“Little Rin, whatever are you talking about?”
“Do I look that helpless when I try to laugh off a question,” Rin asked the both of them under his breath.
“You heard the newsman. That professor was all alone.”
“What I heard is you being serious about it. I’ve never seen you serious about anything.”
Kareha gave him a sly smile, then put her hands in her lap, squeezing her shoulders and other parts closer together. “Now Rin, you haven’t really seen much of me, have you?”
The fear, curiosity, and humor drained from Rin’s face. “Nevermind.”
He’d learned, probably enough for a lifetime, not to give an inch to this kind of conversation.
“Okay, Rin, I admit this might be something…something-”
“I said nevermind, Kareha. Please take the coffee pot off my notes.”
She topped off his mug and put the pot back where it had been.
“It could just be a coincidence that some pervy old star-fucker got caught with his pants down.”
It was unnerving to hear the lighthearted, if immature, girl use such slang, but Rin refused, flat out refused to take the bait.
“Actually, Rin, in your situation…it might be safer if you did know.” Kareha was shifting in her seat now, as if she had to use the restroom, or-
No. Rin would not take the bait.
“You see, the stars in the world of the Gods are…different.”
“What do you mean different? What about the world of the Devils?”
Rin closed his eyes and inwardly cursed himself for asking reasonable questions about what was sure to be a ridiculous (even if it were true) story.
“No one really knows how much the stars and planets impact people in the human world, and usually the same can be said about the others.”
Rin glanced up, quickly, but a glance was all it took to see that Kareha might actually be struggling with something both very serious and overly mature.
“When I started to,” Kareha let off a few steamy giggles, “you know, become a woman, my mother told me about the Lemon star.”
Rin told himself not to ask what the Lemon star was. He even tried not to think about anything colorful and moved the coffee pot off his notes himself. Without looking away from the divine and scandalous space just above his head, Kareha picked the pot up, topped off his mug, and put the pot down on another of his school books.
“Oh my my my! She told me it last happened ages and ages ago to her great grandmother…but- Oh my my my!”
Whenever Kereha got especially excited about something romantic, scandalous, or otherwise juicy, she was known throughout the school to enter a kind of magical trance where she literally glowed and sparkled. This made friends uncomfortable because they knew what it meant and others uncomfortable because they could guess.
“This is your last break tonight, Kareha,” the manager grumbled, “and would you please try not to…do that.”
Kareha made an unladylike noise somewhere in her pink face and tried to clear her throat with dignity. She closed her eyes and sat up straight.
“The Lemon star is said to exist in multiple places at once and to have such an unpredictable orbit that it’s almost impossible to know when it’s going to align until it’s too late.”
“Too late?”
Too late. Kareha caught him looking up from his notes, beamed some kind of forbidden triumph, then lowered her head. Rin could tell that she was biting her lip. Hard. He didn’t care. Heaven and Hell help him, he had to not care. He tried to crank up the volume of the voice in his head reading his notes back.
Rin felt the table shift as Kareha leaned closer and felt his hairs stand up…essentially everywhere…at a growing change in Kareha’s voice.
“Supposedly it ended a war between the Gods and cured a plague in the land of the Devils long ago. Some people even say it happens all the time but no one notices…or wants to bring it up.”
He tried to imagine the historical events in his own notes, the captains and statesmen shouting at him to honor their legacy. They were reciting their achievements when smooth, graceful hands started snaking their way over their broad shoulders and-
Rin reached for his math book.
Kareha grabbed his hand in both of hers.
“Can you feel anything Rin?” Her fingers were soft and very warm over his. Her voice was amused but very serious.
“You mean b-besides your hands?” Rin tried to strike the conversation down with a deadpan.
“If that astronomer was looking at the Lemon star with his telescope then…oh my my my!”
Kareha tightened her grip, and was about to light up again when Rin, out of reflex as much as bravery, leaned forward with his other hand and knocked on Kareha’s forehead like a tax-collector at a heavy door.
“Hello-oh! Kareha? Anybody in there who cares if I fail the exam or not?”
Kareha blinked rapidly and looked around, remembering where she was. Rin sighed gruffly back at his notes.
“You can’t really be thinking of homework at a time like this, Rin? This conjunction is supposed to…bring people closer together,” Kareha actually tried to calm herself with a quick breath, “but in your case there could be real trouble.”
Rin began to recite some statistics out loud, then louder as Kareha continued.
“If everyone who---wants you---suddenly wanted you---ten times as much. Think about it.”
Even though she was whispering, and he was interrupting, she was still twice as loud in his ears.
“It might not even affect the human world unless they look through that telescope, but it could just as easily drive everyone near it…everyone in the country…everyone in the human world-”
“Kareha! I told you to knock it off, or at least take your boyfriend and do it outside!”
Rin looked fearfully over at the manager and was about to assure him that he was nobody’s boyfriend when Kareha caught him by the shirt and pulled his ear next to her lips.
“How many wives do you think you could satisfy in one night, Rin?”
She sounded eager for him to show her. For real. She might not be playing the popular make-Rin-uncomfortable game, but she let him go before he could ask, or plead. When Rin looked back at her she was considering her hands as they considered each other. Again Kareha looked very bashful but very eager for something. This time, though, as she watched her hands wrestle for information, her fingers moved more slowly, more gracefully, and used their nails.
“Sometime I wish I…wonder if I…w-wish-wonder if I could blame my first-”
Rin gave her a very blank, very disbelieving (not in her, but in his situation) stare, and stated, as clearly as he could:
“Kareha, I need to study. Please let me study. I’m going to ignore you now.”
He really believed he could do it this time. Mr. Rin would be a man, a hard worker. He would ignore the silly girl oozing flirt frosting all over the place and focus on his exams. She could go on about whatever naughty stuff she wanted and it would all blend into the pleasant background noise of the café.
“I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I think I’m the only student I know who isn’t technically a virgin.”
Rin stopped redrawing an equation he almost knew by heart. He closed his eyes and took a very slow, very quiet breath through his nose. This was not the time to speak, or to listen, only to study. Life was study.
“I don’t know if I’m embarrassed that I was so young…or that I liked it so much.”
The lines from his favorite mechanical pencil became darker, but didn’t stop their progress.
“Oh Rin, I can’t believe I’m telling you this first of all people. I barely know you…what you must think of me.”
Rin was thinking that she was saying what she thought she was supposed to. No. No, he was thinking about how to work this equation when it included negative numbers.
“But it was so wonderful, even if we were under the influence of the Lemon star.”
Somewhere, out of the brawl in Rin’s brain, a voice spoke calmly and clearly, telling him to stop her. It was the voice of the Right Thing to Do, there was no mistaking it. There was no analyzing it either; when all the jokes and bothers were through, Rin had to be a good person.
Kareha wiggled out of one shoe. The stocking was slightly loose at the toes, so Rin felt that first as she moved her foot up Rin’s bare calf and into his cargo shorts.
Somewhere, at one end of the brawl in Rin’s brain, a door opened and the Right Thing to Do stepped out for a smoke. It would still be watching through the greasy windows, so Rin would at least, at least try to keep ignoring her.
“He wasn’t that much older than me, he didn’t have his own place or anything, but it couldn’t have been the first time for him. He was too good at it. He’s probably bent over some lucky lady’s toes right now.”
Kareha wiggled her own and Rin shivered.
Wait…toes?
The thought plunged Rin into a confusion that might have been welcome relief if he could recall what it rescued him from.
“You see, Rin, my first job was in a shipping store. The manager never kept the same schedule twice, and sometimes I’d have to run the whole place by myself. There was only one other employee, but he worked different hours so we only saw each other in passing. Still, we always said hello and goodbye for just a little longer than we had to.”
Kareha giggled and shimmied her foot a little bit farther up Rin’s leg.
Rin switched back to history. As Kareha’s story continued, he continued bending closer and closer to the book till it was all he could see.
“He was from a far away country and looked different from everyone. My God-world ears seemed almost normal compared with his short, tight hair, his dark…dark skin…his big, juicy lips…”
Rin braced himself for whatever might happen when Kareha lit up while kicking him so delicately. She didn’t light up, and she moved her foot away. Before Rin could be grateful, though, she wiggled her toes into the pit of his knee and made a satisfied sigh that was as inappropriate as anything she’d said so far.
“When the holiday season came around, we both had to work longer shifts and one day we were left alone in the store together. The manager left for lunch and insisted that we close the shop and take lunch at the same time. We’d both brought our own and went to eat together in the stock room.”
Rin noticed that she was speaking, and breathing, more rapidly, but he didn’t notice anything else, not a word of how some idiotic manager left two hormonal teenagers alone together.
“It really wasn’t very polite of me to take my shoes off while we were trying to eat, but I was breaking in new shoes and we’d both been running around all day and-”
She started breathing more heavily, then gradually seemed to be calming herself down.
“You really are ignoring me, aren’t you, Rin?”
Rin told himself not to try to respond to show her he was ignoring her. That would be stupid, like leaving Kareha alone with any unsuspecting guy.
“I’m sorry, but if I don’t tell someone about this I’ll just explode. This guy, he looked so concerned when I complained that my feet were killing me. I pulled off my socks…I-I wasn’t trying to be sexy about it or anything, really…and I took some lotion out of my purse and-and all of a sudden he was there, taking the lotion out of my hand. I was startled, but I just looked at him, and he just smiled, and he was so handsome and he just mumbled something about how you can’t get the right angle doing it to yourself.”
Kareha was moving her foot up his leg again, wiggling her toes. It didn’t tickle. It felt really good, but that didn’t matter because he almost had the history of whatever he was reading memorized for whatever reason he was memorizing it.
“He just started massaging my feet as if it were the most normal thing to do for someone you barely knew…and oh…oh my my my…it felt so good I didn’t say anything. After a few seconds I just laid back on the bench we’d been sitting on and…and I think I said something about how I’d give him a year to stop. He said I should take care of such treasures. I don’t know what I said, but I know he started using more force and I let out a sigh or a moan and he-he…”
Rin looked over at the notes he was copying. They looked like something from one of those machines that predict earthquakes. History was full of earthquakes. History was important.
“I think he told me that I, that my feet, they deserved special care. EXTRA special care. I couldn’t believe it, but he started to use his mouth and-”
The table shook as Kareha gripped its edges and slid her foot so far forward that the tiny fold of stocking at the end of her toes tickled something it should not be tickling. Rin trembled. He was not thinking about history. He was listening very close to a very deep and heavy whisper.
“It felt SO good, Rin. It felt so good that I couldn’t talk, so I just tried to caress his ear with my other foot. I felt it everywhere in my body. I…I wanted him to do what he was doing everywhere on my body. I pictured how we must have looked and it was beautiful. I started to hold my legs in place so that I didn’t accidentally kick him or something. Then-then I started to touch myself all over and touch myself down there and I wanted him to-but I suddenly-I must have had an-”
The coffee mug, the coffee pot, and a few other condiments tipped over as Rin broke his mechanical pencil against the table. Pieces shot past his head and landed somewhere on the café floor. Rin looked at his hand and the damage around it. His coffee was cascading into the booth space beside him. The pot had only had half a cup in it and had only completely ruined maybe a third of his history notes. The café attendants were all watching the TV intently and mumbling to each other as they watched a police chase.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry, sir!” Kareha jumped up, applied her already moist dish towel to the table, then hobbled quickly back into the kitchen, her other shoe still under the table.
Rin stood up, put his books in his backpack, put some money next to the overturned coffee mug, and walked out of the café. Somewhere along the line he’d thought to clutch what was left of his history notes in one hand. This way they wouldn’t stain his other notes. It was important to preserve his notes. He had exams to study for. Exams were important. He would have to find a different place to study. Kareha was not a good study partner. Kareha was a freaky foot-fetishist.
---
As he walked home, Rin’s thoughts became more cohesive. They all orbited the mental image of every girl he knew on a table, skirt up, toes in the mouth of some exotic pagan icon of masculinity. Still, they were cohesive thoughts. There was no such thing as a Lemon star. Stars didn’t really affect people anyway. The girls in his life were sweet, and lovely and just a little sillier than usual, so the right thing to do was to be a good friend. No, the Right Thing to Do was to acknowledge that they believed they were in love with him and so he’d better not toy with their emotions even if they were too immature to be real.
The Right Thing to Do was to greet the two men outside his home courteously. There was no reason to let his nervousness make him rude. The kings of the God and Devil worlds had been eager to impress themselves on him for a while now. They were probably just exercising another routine in encouraging him to study with their own daughter.
“Good evening, Rin.”
“May we have a word, please?”
The two kings spoke in tandem, but almost as one. It made Rin recall a science class where he learned about liquid nitrogen, and another where he learned about the earth’s core.
“Good evening, your highness, uh, your highness.”
Rin bowed to one king, then the other. Maybe he should have bowed extra low to the king of the Gods. It was one of his subjects he’d treated so dishonorably, after all.
“Can you spare a moment?”
The king of the Gods knew. He always seemed so carefree and encouraging, but he was terrifying now and it must be because he was going to kill Rin in some way the girls’ fan clubs could only dream of.
“Of course you will-I mean-I mean of course you can.”
Rin bowed again, directly between them, just in case. He thought about how vulnerable this made him. That was the point of the gesture, though, right? He hadn’t done anything wrong.
The king of the Devil world stepped forward, arms crossed, eyes on Rin and everything inside him.
“Rin, tell me what you know about astronomy.”
---
More chapters as October continues. Rin has at least five more encounters to look forward to. Maybe six. Might as well make it seven, for luck.
You’re lucky, aren’t you, Rin?
[The Box of Smell] OR! [The Emperor’s New Nose]
Once upon a time there was a young emperor who ruled over a vast and prosperous land. Unfortunately, for all its graces, the kingdom remained isolated, not by geography or culture, but by the powerful emperor’s equally powerful flatulence.
For almost a generation now, all attempts to establish scholarly or trade relations with neighboring kingdoms had either failed or were being perpetually postponed. Envoys would be received with the utmost courtesy and care yet, when the time came for the emperor to negotiate terms, he would invariably break wind despite all attempts to control his body or alter his diet.
Sometimes the gas would come in a sudden blast, like a crocodile chocking on a trumpet. Even when the emperor could anticipate them, however, they would escape in high pitched squeaks, causing diplomats on more than one occasion to look about in shock that a rat or mouse might have invaded the royal chambers. The true shock, of course, would come seconds later.
The emperor was at first insulted by his steward’s suggestion that a sizeable bucket be kept on hand during all meetings. And yet, when the fourth emissary in a row became suddenly and violently sick all over the royal floor, the emperor nodded in defeat that it would be best to prepare for anything.
Not for “the inevitable,” but for anything.
The emperor, from the day he accepted his father’s crown, was known admirably for his unwavering faith in both himself and his subjects. Even when envoys began to arrive with scarves around their faces in summer and visible quantities of smelling wax smeared beneath their noses (never, sadly, to any avail) the emperor would prepare for the meetings with a confident optimism matched only by his regal humility when he apologized to the revolted envoys.
Despite the most regal attempts to counteract this foulness, the kingdom grew more and more isolated as word spread. When reports began to come in that young men were having trouble finding wives outside the kingdom, that no one wanted a prospective husband who would bring his new brides to the “land ruled by stench,” the emperor felt obliged to entertain more drastic measures.
He became gravely ill, or disoriented, or unnaturally foul-smelling, or all that and worse on a dozen different experimental medicines. In a moment of weakness he nearly considered the repeated suggestion of another steward, that someone be present during all proceedings willing to be blamed for the gracelessness in the air. At first this solution had insulted the emperor’s strict sense of honor and fairness, but following a particularly disastrous remedy, the emperor only hung his head and sighed that “every kingdom within a hundred days must already know who is to blame.”
---
The emperor’s fool, a childhood friend, loyal and wise beyond his station, came to the emperor one night. Knowing that the mighty will of his liege was at last on the edge of despair, for what emperor could woo, much less keep an empress if he could not maintain even the simplest of diplomatic relations, he approached the emperor not in court, but in his private chambers.
“Good evening, old friend,” the emperor nodded weakly, “although it is not proper for a fool to seek such an audience, we have known each other since we could walk and, in all honesty, I could use some mirth before I retire.”
The fool removed his comical hat and bowed formally.
“Your excellence,” he began in a tone more formal than some of the stewards, “I know well of your…peculiar ailment. Indeed, it should be my place to make light of these things, perhaps even to encourage you to do the same. Yet, as I’m sure you’ll recall, I have yet to mention it even once.”
The emperor gave his fool a measuring look, and became himself more formal.
“I must admit that, while I am sure you are correct, I had not considered this. Do you seek some special favor in exchange for your restraint? Perhaps you’d like to be commended for refusing jokes too ready-made for you?”
Thought not intending to be gruff, the months of humiliation had also made the emperor more defensive, even to those he trusted.
“Forgive me for not making myself more clear. I merely hoped to show that I do not consider your genuine discomfort cause for amusement…that curses are rarely anything to laugh at.”
“Curses?!”
The emperor was suddenly very alert, and not a little agitated. It was well-known that sorcerers, while not forbidden, were not permitted contact with anyone who served in the court. Far from fearing or dismissing such things outright, the emperor insisted that kingdoms were best governed far from the influence of forces that, in the emperor’s words, “could not be held accountable.”
“Yes, your excellence. Curses. It was my strong belief at first and my unshakable certainty now that you have been cursed. What you need is not a doctor, but a magician, or at least one who is both.”
The fool braced himself for the emperor’s anger, preparing an apology worthy of such boldness from one who should never presume to advise the emperor. To his surprise, however, the friend he’d known to be serious even as a small boy began to giggle like a simpleminded drunkard.
“Of course! Of course that is the answer!” The emperor bellowed between his growing laughter.
“I do not mean this in jest, sir.” The fool spoke as sternly as he dared.
The emperor’s laughter subsided and he replied with the clarity and determination he was best known for.
“I know, my friend. I laugh not at your wisdom, but at my foolishness. When a dozen representatives in a row had all but fled my palace in disgust, I suspected as much.”
The emperor stood up and placed an affectionate hand on the fool’s shoulder.
“I’ve never revealed this to anyone, but I do not keep you close for your wit and humor alone, formidable though they are…”
The fool looked up at his old friend now, trying to hide his nervousness with a jovial smile.
“I keep you close because you are the one person I trust in all the world who consorts with witches, sorcerers…with magic itself.”
Knowing that he could no more lie to the emperor than his own mother, the fool simply bowed.
“The time has come then,” the emperor declared, as if to a captive audience, “for you to go forth and search the lands for a magical solution to my woes. Search for it and return with it and I will reward you in such a way that you shall think me jesting!”
---
And so the fool searched all the strange and dubious places where someone might find magic. He came away from a few sources feeling foolish even for a fool. He came away from others feeling disenchanted, even for a scholar of magic. Mostly he came away disappointed, for no one had heard of the curse set upon his noble lord, none of those he could convince of his seriousness, that is.
At last he came to a cave on the edge of the village his mother had been born and raised in. The fool had tried, from the beginning of his quest, to forget he’d ever heard of it. The stories his mother wove over the fire, about the witch who’d lived in that cave since before fire, still clung to his heart like a first encounter with death. He approached it slowly, feigning bravery with all the performance he could muster.
The most horrible hag he could imagine emerged from the cave before his feet could touch the dead earth at its mouth. The yellowed bones and grayish gourds strung about her made an eerie rattle as she hobbled toward him then past him as he froze to the spot.
“Let’s be quick about this, m’boy. I’ve got more important things to attend than emperors.”
The fool turned and gaped at the wretched crone now retracing his steps back to the palace.
“But…but how did you-”
“I can smell royalty all over ye. No one comes near this cave less someone very important or very stupid sends em, and you don’t seem no more stupid than most.”
She made a horrible coughing laugh, but barely slowed her march. When the fool caught up with her and tried, with the utmost seriousness, to explain the emperor’s problem, she stopped and laughed and coughed and coughed.
---
The emperor had declared to everyone in the palace that the fool might return with someone unusual, perhaps even improper, and in such case to admit them both courteously, yet carefully. Still, guards and drudges alike all paused aghast at the filthy and altogether frightening witch (for what else could she be) that trailed closely behind the emperor’s fool. So hideous was she, in fact, that no one took a moment’s notice of the fine merchant’s clothing so oddly placed on the royal fool.
When they entered the throne room they were alone. No guards. No stewards. No emperor. The witch put her hands on her crooked hips and fixed the fool with an impatient stare. In trying to avoid her eyes he glanced at her foot, tapping on the polished marble. He turned away fully when he saw the grotesque toenail tearing its way out of her shoe.
The emperor must have emerged from a secret passageway, for there he was to welcome the fool home with a hearty clap on his shoulder. It was all at once a surprise and a relief.
“Oh! Your excellence, please forgive me. I have searched as far as I dared travel…and farther.” The fool gestured with his eyes to the hag behind him who was glancing about the throne room as if she certainly wouldn’t buy it for the asking price.
“Never mind that. I’m prepared to… trust your judgment.”
The fool took a deep breath, held it, and stepped back to introduce the ugliest (living) thing to ever enter the throne room.
“Emperor of these lands and peoples, law and lord of its ways, may I present-”
The fool looked at her mischievous grin, and realized that he’d never asked her name, her experience, or anything else. During their journey back to the palace he’d tried to believe he was being followed by a stray animal that would go away if ignored.
“Oh be quiet ya fancied-up carbuncle! Lord of the lands and the louses and all that knows why I’m here and that’s more important than who I am, innit?
The emperor nodded at his fool who, now as uncertain of his own name as he was of the emperor’s wishes, merely backed away to a corner.
“Well now,” the witch began circling the emperor, rubbing her hands eagerly, “perhaps his eminence is a bit lonely, hm? Perhaps he should have found an empress to impress his trade partners rather than the other way round. Perhaps he’s still very much a boy, hm? Perhaps all the boyish vulgarities a prince couldn’t enjoy are enjoying HIM now!”
“We are not here to discuss my childhood, but my present condition.”
The emperor’s regal calm only added to the witch’s glee at his hidden discomfort.
“Oh a condition, is it? Well, we’re all in some condition or other, maybe another condition can blot out this one?”
The witch rolled up her billowing raged black sleeves and cracked her knuckles.
“I’ll just turn ye into a pig, a big stinky hog, then that stink won’t be so unnatural! Maybe a dirty little monkey? He could swing around and throw his filth all over the throne room, eh?”
Determined to get some satisfaction from this thankfully private humiliation, the emperor squared his shoulders and forced himself to will the witch into seriousness with a glance.
The witch smiled, wide and wild, her bloodless lips stretched tight around jagged teeth.
“Maybe I just need to stick me magic finger in ye, get to the root of the problem, and-” the witch made a suggestive motion with one gnarled, warty claw.
“Enough!” the emperor roared, clenching his fists and, with that very gesture, just as dramatically filling the entire room with the most improper sound and the most unpleasant smell.
The witch made a show of holding back a sickness in her throat, then smiled hungrily. “Oh by the 13 devils of the 14 deaths, that’s a curse if ever I’ve smelt one.”
She seemed ready to burst into laughter, but instead stood up a little straighter, speaking like a kindly old grandmother, just as the emperor looked ready to execute her himself.
“You really do need my help.”
Taking no notice of the weakening resolve in the emperor’s face, the witch produced a small and simple metal box from some hidden place in her rags.
“There is only one cure for this rare but powerful curse. I must, your excellence, take your nose.”
Acting on instinct, the fool stepped forward, ready to defend his lord against any attack if necessary.
The emperor calmed him with a hand, keeping his eyes on the box. It was unremarkable, cheaply made even for a peasant.
“Have no fear, m’lord. This is magic I work. You’ll be no less handsome for the spell, and yet, you’ll know your nose to be gone.”
Acting before he could consider hesitation, just as his brave father had taught him, the emperor bowed and waved the witch forward. Her fingers were soft, gentle, and colder than ice. She made to lift his nose from off his face, but merely mimed the action. Still, the emperor swore he heard something small drop into the empty box; he did not open his eyes till he heard it close.
“I’ll take your nose with me to a secret and magical place, weave a spell into it, and return it to your face by the next new moon. Till then, only those around you will be aware of your curse.”
“But wait! It is for the lords of other lands…for the prosperity of my people that I seek a cure. It is small-it is NO comfort to me that I remain oblivious to my own plague!”
The witched raised a hand and closed her eyes kindly, again regarding the emperor as if her were her own grandson.”
“When I return your nose to ye, then and only then will ye…have your air…your heir, hm?”
The witched cackled, turned on her heel, and hobbled quickly out of the throne room. Her laughter, and fits of coughing, echoed throughout the palace.
---
For weeks the emperor despaired and despaired anew. From the moment the witches laughter vanished, he’d found that she did at least posses some magical power; nothing in his kingdom smelled of anything. The roses in his garden, the food at his banquets, there was no scent even of the flatulence that still came whenever he was forced to give audience. He would apologize more deeply and solemnly than ever before, fearing that the next already reluctant envoy would surely be the last.
With food now flavorless, the emperor lost his appetite and grew thin. The fool could find no comfort for the emperor save to tell him that they were one day closer to the witch’s return. Alas, the emperor raged and wailed as never before when the new moon came and went with no sign of anything resembling a witch.
The next morning, however, the emperor arose with a soreness in his head (likely from the strong wine he’d used to force himself to sleep) yet also with the distinct aroma of breakfast in his nose. The maid bringing his tray shrieked and nearly dropped the glorious meal as the emperor lunged for it. She laughed then.
“I’m happy to see your appetite has returned, my lord.”
The emperor laughed, rudely, with food spraying from his mouth, and gave the maid the day off with three weeks pay- NO!-three weeks and two days pay, for it had been precisely that long since the emperor had enjoyed his breakfast.
By the afternoon the entire palace was alive with song and laughter as the emperor’s joy in every scent spread like a wild fire of incense. By the next day the throne room had been redecorated and the envoy of the closest land had been sent for. To make certain the emperor’s enthusiasm and humility were both equally expressed, he sent his own royal carriage to convey the representative of the proud yet, frankly, not at all wealthy nation.
The envoy was visibly nervous at first, wondering if the emperor were in fact preparing to speak the unspeakable truth preventing most every envoy from seeking audience with the emperor. Their discussion was formal, as was the topic of bandits in the forest their kingdoms shared, but also more friendly than the envoy could recall of any such meeting.
The emperor’s flatulence came, forceful and putrid, at the very moment that the envoy was congratulating him on luring one of the bandits out of the forest for capture. The envoy turned pale and, despite himself, began to slowly bring his hand up over his face. Before anyone could hide, however, the emperor gasped and nearly sat up from his throne.
“Oh my!”
But horror had no room to take hold on a face filling with ecstasy.
“Ha! That must surely be the fish! I do love a good fish, though I dare say it could not have been that good…or perhaps I love it too much, eh?”
The emperor leaned forward, trembling with his own half-restrained chuckles, smiling expectantly for the envoy’s own laughter. The representative was a master of tact in his own right, and considered forcing a laugh, but instead he recalled, for the first time in years, his first dinner with his wife’s parents.
“As it happens, your excellence, when I first joined my mother-in law for supper, the family had prepared a large tray of fish. She-”
And the envoy stifled a sudden laugh himself.
“She, her mother, though there was no sound, I knew it was her by the looks thrown her way by both father and daughter,” a blast of laughter nearly escaped the man’s sober mustache, “she, my mother-in law, produced such a foul cloud that I could not finish the meal, delicious though it was. The worst is that-” and here the envoy allowed himself to laugh “her mother kept eating the fish…even though her own eyes were watering!”
The two men laughed and laughed and produced a plan that captured every last bandit in their forest. From that day forward the emperor never again embarrassed himself or the representatives of other nations. His people grew more prosperous. His sons and daughters grew worldly and just.
---
Yet…the emperor’s fool will tell you, though he knows nothing of witchcraft, that the emperor has tried, on select occasions, to cast a spell to lighten the air of an overly serious meeting.
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Because I can stick Victoria's Secret catalog clippings to it without any adhesives.
