Her father had been telling her for months her kimono had grown too short—rather than complimenting her for growing tall. This isn’t quite what he was trying to protect her from. The humming blade—her own blade—cuts through her flesh and bone just above the knee, sending a fountain of blood spilling from the edge of the silk robe gifted to her by her grandmother on her 10th birthday.
She feels little more than the rip of a band-aid. The sting of allowing her enemy to rip the weapon from her hands stings as much as anything. Then, she sees the scene the cut creates. Beside her right foot, the bottom half of her left leg lays bathing in blood without her. Her screams fill the air. The blade moves to her throat. The vibrations caused by the constant flow of electricity moving beneath the hollow, yet sharper than ever, blade having the desired effect of silencing her and sending her paralyzed body crumbling to the floor. She smells the burning flesh but feels nothing but fear.
Though he wears a blackened cowboy hat, the smooth-faced man doesn’t bother to wear a mask. He doesn’t care if these two see—they’ll both be dead soon.
She squints into his clouded blue eyes, trying to present herself as a threat. He smiles, removes the blade from her throat when a third voice yells out. She tries to move but finds herself unable to do anything but look. Her father is on his knees on the other side of the man, begging for her life in Japanese. “Please. Spare my daughter.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The man in the hat uses the bowing man’s cheek to clear the blood—the blood of the daughter whose life he is begging to be spared—from the blade. “You know what you will do for me, Takumi.”
The American drops the blade onto the wooden floor at Takumi’s knees. He lifts it as if trying to catch a fly and presses the button at the base of the handle, hoping to prevent his home from going up in flames. Blade in hand, he stares into the glassy eyes of the unmoving girl. “I am sorry, Emi.” The movement is subtle, his head rolling towards her is not.
The American pries the sword from the dead man’s hands, then walks over Emi and places it in hers. Before releasing it, he presses the button at the base. The current resumes its humming within the blade. He stands, adjusts his hat. Using the ceremonial candles the father and daughter were meditating before no more than ten minutes ago, he turns the curtains that hang as the front door into flames. The girl is left alone to die for the sins of her father.
Or so she thinks…
