This was my second time in search of Akeno. The first was with Mike months ago when we took our ‘Grand Tour’ of Tochigi and Ibaraki, which provided such classics as the Cosplay Factory and the Pearl Love Hotel. We came by the street we thought Akeno was on after dark, cruised it lasciviously several times, got out to search around a newly built ‘Big Bob’s’ love hotel complex, and decided it had been torn down. Only later when Paul alerted me that we might have had a bad map and a slightly miscued location did I fix upon going back.

The second time I went with Su Young, on a Sunday. We had hoped to go to the beach, as we had hoped for every Sunday stretching back for months, but like all the previous ones it was grey and rainy, so on a whim we decided to head out to Ibaraki.

We turned up to the fine-tuned location and there it was. We headed in and were wowed by the initial view facing us- the podium, chairs arrayed around it, general dilapidation and half-burnt texture. In our wonderment we stared open-mouthed for a moment or two. Then a mosquito bit me.

I hurried to take my photos. All the whileI was shooting, setting up tripod, mosquitoes were biting me. I cursed my failure to bring insect repellent. Arrgh! I climbed to the stage for some more shots, peered into a few of the side-rooms, but beyond that there was very little exploration to be done. It’s a great location for what it was, and for the lead shot. But after that there isn’t much to see.

SY was already outside, taking photos of a piece of green glass on the floor. I came over to check it out.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think it’s glass.”

“It’s very nice.”

Sadly neither of us has a macro lens so none of the shots came out.

She was not interested in the main building really, I think because of its tawdriness and the mosquitoes. Instead she took photos of the insides of television sets, and a lone inline skate lying in the forecourt.  We did however go up to the second floor together, where there was just one room, and one master chair overlooking the main hall, with a control panel before it. We didn’t hang around to see what the switches did though thanks to the mosquitoes.

After that we were off to a famous Wedding Hall, which SY enjoyed much more due I think to its wholesome vibe.

The video doesn’t really show much as it was so dark inside, but maybe you can get a feeling of the place from it.

Akeno Gekijo Strip Club Haikyo from Michael John Grist on Vimeo.

FACTFILE

Location – Ibaraki.

Entry - Easy if you have the right map.

Highlights – The initial view when you enter, the weird master chair, the green glass.

RUINS / HAIKYO

You can see all MJG’s Ruins / Haikyo explorations here:

Ruins / Haikyo

42 Photos

Military, Industry

7 Photos

Theme Parks

7 Photos

Hospitals

4 Photos

Apartments, Schools

3 Photos

Hotels, Restaurants

5 Photos

Museums, Bowling, Vaults

2 Photos

Love Hotels, Soaplands

6 Photos

 

“What did?”

Silence.

“You don’t remember?”

“Did I ever know?”

Silence. Reflection.

“I don’t think you ever did.”

“Then that’s good.”

“Yes. It is.”

Image from here.

The sun shines brightly against the window. I can hear the ducks squabbling in the canal just outside the window. All it would take, is me to open the blinds. Just like that.
But I can’t.
I can see them from the corner of my eye,  her hair tumbling down the drape of his sighing naked side. Dark hair, like rags. Barely covering the beggar. But it’s warm here so that’s ok.

*

“You said you didn’t love me,” she says.

“I didn’t mean it.”

“Which?”

“Do you remember the humming bird?”

“No”

“The hummingbird.”

“Hum.”

“That’s it.”

“So?”

“So I love you.”

She recalls lazily the last girl they shot.
Through the eye, the orb just disappeared. I heard about it all. They were very pleased with themselves.

She whistles a noiseless tune as the postman wanders by outside. He’s lost. He normally whistles too, but today he’s lost. He’s lost his mind, I think. Just like everyone.

A lady in Sainsburies had told Steven to fuck off and die yesterday.
She made the list.

He told Tracy.
She said they’d cut out her eyes and make her eat them. But I’m not too sure.

I see the frame of my head, filling with memories.

“You remember?” he asks her.

“No. Did it ever really happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t care.”

“Me either.”

Just us and the ducks. The postman’s gone mad.

SEE the room. Dusty. Smell of old, things gone by. Smell of mold, and here they are. These two like hens in their roost, swaddled close in each other’s bodies. The mad gleam in their heads. The lust for satiation. He, over and around, she. Hair dripping like candle wax across his pale white skin. They haven’t moved for days.

SEE cobwebs. Up in the corners. Spiders rattling over their skin. Bare plaster walls, sodden with mildew and soggy blu-tack. Scraps of paper where posters once hung. The rusty slivers of nail, still surviving.

“Hey,” she whispers.

“What?”

“I need the bathroom”

Her hair sucks away from his back, leaves only threads where the dim electric light has tanned his skin. 40 watts, glowing dimly. The rush of a train outside, over the tracks. She staggers up and walks like a cloud through the empty corridor. Boards creak beneath her feet.

He calls to her.

SEE the files, papers scattered over the wooden floor. The splintered, dead wood rot floor, littered with yellowed certificates of achievement.  100 metres in 9.5. Grade 2 piano.

SEE the folder. THE folder, he called it. Big black briefcase, clicking locks. Click. Inside, a bible. Pages torn out. ‘What to do if you’re feeling suicidal’ from Gideon’s advice page underlined. A gun, black and foreboding. Packets and packets of white powder and lighters. Dollar bills. 3 plastic wallets, each blackened on the inside.

One for a finger.
One for a ring.
One for a shriveled left eye.

Sealed in mint perfection 2 years ago.

Spent shell casings. A thumbtack, with 3 ladybugs impaled on the end. 15 bottle caps, Newcastle brown ale. A letter from mother. Says in its spidery hand ‘DIE’. A crayola scribble of the house and grounds. One of the well, one of the library. One stapled to something else, underneath, a polaroid colour photo. Grandma’s raving face, bloodied, kitchen knife half in her chest, mama standing above the blade. A scribble of red on white paper overlapping.

Tracy drew that. She’s all grown up now.

GO down the hall. Old grandfather clock, stopped working when they shoved the old man inside. Had to break his ribcage and legs to make him fit. That had been a crazy night. They don’t look inside anymore.

“Just me, now,” he says.

Rolls over but I can’t see his face. No-one can. Pulls out the gun, puts it to his head. Pulls the trigger.
Hammer clicks against the safety.
Click
Click.

“Trace!”

“Yeah.” The call, distant.

“Come save me!”

She comes.

“What?”

“Do you ever think about it?”

“No.”

“Can you really not remember?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old are you now?”

She stands, counts her fingers. Three on the left hand are broken backwards. The nails curl browned around and around, useless.

“14, I think.”

“Come save me”

SEE her jump atop him. Pull up her shab drab glamour dress gone pallid with the moon’s passing, no longer sparkling, flops for the beggar and inserts him into her.

“What was it like?” she asks

“Different. Brighter.”

“There were more people around then.”

“Yes. bad people.”

“They were noisy.”

“We took care of it though. Do you remember that?”

“I don’t know.”

He takes the barrel of the gun and puts it in her mouth.

“Sing for me.”

She begins to sing, warbling like a pigeon, the black metal clicking, click, against her teeth as she bobs up and down like a merry-go-round. Or see-saw. Like a pogo stick.

But it wasn’t always like this.

MY LIFE

I was born a boy. Couldn’t help it.

Look, a boy. That’s what they must have said.

If only they’d known.

I grew up. It takes years, but it flies by when you’re looking back. I remember once eating candy floss on the pier, some pier near some water. A sea, I think it must have been. Since then, I’ve had all the time to think.

5 minutes later I‘m 20 years old. I kiss a GIRL. The girl kisses me back, and it’s great.

23, and I make love for the first time. She’s drunk, it’s my graduation ceremony. Honours in music studies, Cambridge. Wow, said my folks. The standard boy-girl pairing. So normal. She reaches down, I think she’s a freshman, touches things, and I let her take control.

5 minutes later, I’m 24. Sat in the washroom of some rock club in Oxford, visiting a friend doing a Masters. 2 guys with piercings in their faces, green hair and red hair, kiss. I can see them in the reflection of the mirror. Their boots are swamped with ankle deep urine, like, nobody can shoot straight in these places. I’m being sick, clogging the damn sink, and this makes it worse.

27. My grandparents die, one after the other, 1 week apart. I hope that happens to me, someday.

28. I get raped. Tell no-one. It’s a man in an underground car park, a big black man. Threatens to kill me if I tell anyone. Here I am, gripping my suitcase, screaming out inside. He threatens to kill me but I’m dead already. Already dead, he can’t kill me more than this. I’ve had sex once and I’m getting raped by a guy. Changes things.

Something.

31. I get married. A sweet girl. She could never have known.  I didn’t, really. We had kids. Steven first, then Tracy 5 years later. My kids. I loved them, perhaps a little too much.

Elenor never knew. I never knew. It was just something, love I guess.

It makes me chuckle to think my dad’s in the clock now. He was the only one that ever gave a shit about them, really. And look what they did for him.

48. The disease hits. The old go first. Nuts. It eats away at your brain, they said. TV carried up for 2 weeks, but then it fell apart. Scientists did some work, before they started killing each other off and eating their equipment. One guy was live on TV whilst he ate his microscope, glass, metal, his teeth crunching and cracking and slivers of metal sticking out of his throat, because they’d all gone away.

They said it was like rabies. Germs in the air, eating your brain. Everyone went crazy.

MY LIFE NOW

2 years ago they locked me up. But not to any wall, radiator, nothing like that. The two of them, after my mother had murdered Elenor, whom she’d always secretly despised, and my dad took his own life with my old colt 75 that rests in THE folder now, they tied me to myself, with garden twine. My legs to my arms, my arms to my legs, my neck to my feet.

Then they beat the shit out of me, with table legs.
It must have lasted about 3 days. The sun came up, and went down through the blinds that haven’t opened since, about 3 times.
The table legs broke over my head, so they moved to throwing plates at my face. Then they went outside for a while, prised the drain piping from the side of the house, and came back to fill me in.

I thought I would die. I wished I had died. I don’t know why I didn’t.

They’d take it in turns to smash me. Every slug seemed to make them angrier. They’d beat me with their weak hunger stricken arms until they were panting, exhausted, and had to take a break. Then they’d get a drink, maybe have sex, and come back over to fuck me up some more.

It wasn’t pretty.

In the nights I’d lie and groan, and they’d jump up and scream at me to be quiet, then smash me about some more.

I don’t speak anymore. Not because I’m too obedient, although I am, but because I can’t. I don’t know. I think I lost my speech box.

It became a chore. Each day, all day, they’d beat me then take a break. Beat me, then take a break. Beat me, then break.

SOME OTHER TIME

I feel the days run into each other, now, like eggs cooking, the yolks flow and merge until they’re just a yellow stain on white, and nothing more. Sometimes they’re here, and sometimes they are gone. I lie here, longing for my scraps, thinking how much difference there is between the life of a duck, and the life of a man.

MY PHYSICAL CONDITION

I have one eye left.
9 broken fingers, 1 missing. My ring finger. They were careful to preserve it, and the ring, in separate plastic wallets. In THE folder.
No teeth, no nose to speak of. Every breath I draw rattles through my dry twisted throat.

My skull is fractured in at least 5 places. I can feel the lines with the back of my hand.  My jaw was shattered, so I can’t speak. Now it’s just a big clump, hanging. It takes me hours to chew a single bite of food.
My arms are broken and set in their broken positions. The right at the elbow, both bones of the forearm, the left at the shoulder, dislocated permanently, snapped through the skin at the top. Both my hands were pounded to dust, and I can just about twitch my fingers

Both legs imploded at the knees. My hips are buckled. All my ribs are cracked and compress my chest. They put me in the clock with my father’s corpse once, and I couldn’t move, for a week.
And I’m still tied up.  I just lie there, and occasionally I get to watch them couple with each other. My kids.

The postman doesn’t even come in anymore.

SOMETIMES

I remember once reading a book. It was full of stories.
I liked stories. Sometimes

Sometimes, as I lie awake unsleeping, and the house is silent but for the grandfather clock not ticking and the dog shuffling sadly about, I feel my head fill with ideas. I feel, in the summer warmth, beads of sweat trickle down my face, dropping in the mushed meat, FIDO bowl, that I and the dog share, I feel memories of perhaps, the way things are meant to be.

But I’m never sure, if that’s how I remember it, or that’s how it is.

MY HOUSE

It isn’t my house anymore.

They’re moving around upstairs. I can hear them. I watch as toys are thrown down from the attic. A purple monster with a helmet. Scalextric track, useless now. Her My Little Ponies and pink butterfly bed sheets. Comics, the thin papers fluttering in the air as they fall, pattering against the walls like sick butterflies.

It’s their house now.

SEE him, her, staring at the blank grey television. They laugh sometimes, point, touch each other. They get bored easily.

“Want to come walking?” he asks

“Walking where?”

“To see what we can see.”

“Where?”

“Down by the big road, silly.”

“Oh, of course. Will there be accidents?”

“I should imagine so, now let’s go.”

She tuts. “Naughty boy, tuck yourself in,” and he zips up his fly.

“You’re just jealous,” he says.

“Not. It’s mine too’

“Yes,” he says, “it is.”

The door slams and they’re gone.

FEEDING TIME

They pop the can by throwing it against the wall.

“My turn.”

Pop.

“Now me.”

Pop.

“Now me.”

Splat.

Then they tip the gooey meat, smelling of gravy and cold steak, sloppily into the bowl that has never been cleaned. They shove it across the floor, and the dog and I fight for it.

I didn’t eat at first. But I do now. To have that overwhelming smell before you, then to have the dog come and take it away. It isn’t right. So I eat now. And they watch, maybe hoping I’ll choose to die. I wish I had the heart to do that. I don’t know if this is defiance, then, or a worse form of surrender. I don’t know if the distinction matters anymore.

Remember how things used to be. I do.

MY DREAMS

I dream of the sea.

MY FUTURE

More of the same. Always stretching out, forever. Always behind me, passed like the life of an insect. Like spiders. Sometimes I wish they’d get up and clean the place up. Brush away the cobwebs. But then I realise I’d have nobody then. No friends.

Sad.

“You sing so pretty,” he says.

“Thank-you, kind sir.”

Then he flips her over, fucks her from behind. She squeals, facing me. Her eyes catch mine. She stares at me, and I stare back. It used to be all about power. Her staring me out, trying to revolt me. But there’s nothing there anymore. I have nothing. He finishes, settles back into the bed. She walks over, stands over me. Takes a piss on my head, and I can’t move. Walks away.

My kids.

I haven’t moved further than a yard from this spot since they did it. I can’t. Sometimes I wish I was just a yard further into the room. Then I’d catch some of the sunlight through the crack in the blinds on my face. Be able to see out, maybe a bird flying by. Clouds.

But I can’t move.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you too,” she says back.

My kids.

END

DARK FICTION

You can see all MJG’s stories here:

Madness

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Jabbler’s Mons

I heard about Namegawa Island from a chap called Richard, who visited the place while it was still open, sometime before 2001. He put me onto the location with maps, photos, and general info. He told me he had entered via a long tunnel, and wasn’t quite sure what the access status would be. I didn’t think about it again until Paul suggested we go check out his Yui Grand Hotel haikyo, and I tacked Namegawa on to make it a road trip.

Ah, Namegawa. Namegawa actually means ‘flowing river’ or something like that. It was once a bird park. There were flamingos, and monkeys, and hotels and a swimming pool and some sports facilities.

Paul and I rolled up around 2pm, and were quickly awed by the daunting prospect of getting in. The most obvious entrance, situated centrally before a wide empty car park, had a sturdy gate across it, which was raised higher with loosely strapped wooden beams wrapped up with barbed wire. It looked like the exact kind of fence Steve McQueen might get caught up in. Added to that there was a security guard booth with a light on and a car parked outside very nearby.

We moved on. At the far end of the car park was a fence much more easy to climb, so we did.

It was raining hard this whole time, by the way.

At the top of this service road we dead-ended at another tunnel, smaller but also completely boxed off with welded metal bars. I gave it a quick ratle but it was plain it was going nowhere. So I folded up my umbrella and took to the mountain slope.

Climbing up the mountain-side (I keep saying mountain but I suppose it was really a hill, but a very steep hill) was unpleasant, and meant scrambling over slick mud and through thickets of bushes and trees. Every movement brought fresh showers of cold water cascading down from the boughs above, while mosquitoes buzzed around my ankles and my feet slipped in the muck. I scrambled up on all fours, pulling on roots and scrabbling in the dirt, and waited for Paul at the top.

A few minutes later he came strolling up the mountain like he was Mary Poppins, walking tall and only occasionally using the umbrella to hook onto trees. I was quite impressed. He repeated this same feat on the way down into the park. I abseiled down a steep section using roots to hang onto, then watched his tall figure weaving ethereally between the trees like a will o-the wisp, umbrella in one hand and camera tripod on the other. I worried he would fall and slide all the way to the bottom, smashing his head on trees all the way down, but to my amazement he completed the descent perfectly, and probably ended up a lot cleaner than I was.

At the bottom was a muddy grassy path, with a few pink playground hippos watching us with beady eyes.

I rinsed off my muddy hands in a tyre-rut puddle, and we set off through an open tunnel into the park proper.

It was difficult to know when we reached the actual park though, because virtually everything had been ripped out by the roots and removed. Where buildings had once stood were now concrete foundation slabs. I consistently voiced my displeasure at this. “Why couldn’t they just leave a few buildings? Why tear everything down?” Well, compaints aside, they had. We wandered in slow convoy through the park, umbrellas bobbing under the onslaught of the rain. We came across a strange small observation tower half-choked with trees. We tried to get into it, but the rain, muck, and overgrowth forced us back.

On the hillsides above us were dotted odd structures, one shaped like a silver concertina, the other a large concrete block. We wondered at their purpose, at the same time as we knew there was no chance we’d hike up to find out.

At the bottom of the park we came to the swimming pool. Here a few buildings remained, mostly because they were already built into the ground and would have been hard to remove. We looked inside the changing rooms, and the empty shell of a cafe. Other entrances into the cliffs has been thoroughly boarded up, but some previous enterprising haikyoists had levered the boards away, allowing us entry into various subterranean corridors, which always ended in a jammed shut elevator shaft. These elevators would have once led up to the hotels that were now demolished.

We wandered up one remaining path, hoping to find something, but only got screeched at by monkeys in the canopy, and in my case briefly startled when something like a grey fox spurted from the thick grass almost under my feet.

After a few hours of this we were both getting a bit tired of the rain and walking around empty paths. Neither of us savored the idea of trecking back over the mountain, so we headed for the main gate instead. Standing up close to it, looking at its flimsy babred boards at the top, I could see no way over that wouldn’t mean resting my body directly onto those flimsy barbs. I decided not to think about it any further and just went for it.

I got up to the flimsy boards easily enough, but then was very unclear how to get over them. I ended up holding my weight on my hands, like a break-dance in a freeze, as I struggled to lift my legs over the wire. It was weird, and at moments I felt quite stuck. Somehow though I managed to get down on the other side. To my everlasting gall though, as I hoisted myself over with a supreme effort, Paul managed to squeeze round the gate’s side. I was flabber-ghasted! He persuaded me afterwards though that there was no way I would have squeezed through, which may have been true because Paul is quite the skinny fellow.

As we walked away from the gate I realized I was bleeding. Somehow, while twisting my weight on my hands, a barb of wire had cut a deepish slice into the back of my hand, between the knuckles. “Oh great,” I thought. “That’ll need stitches.” Then to my horror, to add insult to injury, I saw what looked suspiciously like a leech clinging to my wrist very close to the cut.

Aaaargh!

It had somehow buried through a hole in my watch strap. I pulled the watch off and held my wrist out to Paul. “Pull it out!” I whimpered pathetically. He gave it one tug but it held fast. It came loose on the second.

A quick note- that’s not the best way to get rid of leeches. Even now, some three weeks later, I still have a healing spot on my wrist where I suspect the leech’s jaw is slowly working its evil magic beneath my skin. The best way is apparently to let them drink their fill, then drop off of their own accord.

The barb wire slice has healed up fine, by the way. I didn’t get stitches because I couldn’t be bothered, and butterfly stitch bandages seemed to do an OK job. It’s a light scar now.

Namegawa Island Haikyo from Michael John Grist on Vimeo.

FACTFILE

Location – Chiba.

Entry - Challenging, either over a steep and overgrown mountain or over a tall and precariously barbed wire fence. We did both.

Highlights – Getting in and out, damn leech, walking tunnels leading into the cliff.

RUINS / HAIKYO

You can see all MJG’s Ruins / Haikyo explorations here:

Ruins / Haikyo

42 Photos

Military, Industry

7 Photos

Theme Parks

7 Photos

Hospitals

4 Photos

Apartments, Schools

3 Photos

Hotels, Restaurants

5 Photos

Museums, Bowling, Vaults

2 Photos

Love Hotels, Soaplands

6 Photos

 

“She’s a big girl,” said his father, but Tarragon didn’t understand. He saw his father’s face leaning over him, smiling, and he smiled back. “They say, when she dances, the earth quakes for miles around.”

Tarragon made googling noises. Then he saw Alegria. He saw her hand, batting and patting at the whuffs of cloud in the sky. He thought it was his father’s hand, but when he reached out to touch it, he couldn’t. So he watched it. He watched it balling up clouds, shaping them into elephants, stringing them across the sky.

As they drew closer he watched the hand stretch up into an arm, then into a shoulder, then into a neck, and then he saw the hair.

He clapped his hands in his blankets. He wrinkled his toes like monkey feet with happiness. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It was like the sun, a brilliant spray of golden shine effervescing around a giant weathered face.

He saw the great chain of stolen wagons and rooftops across her naked chest, braided together in bent metal and warped oak, a giant necklace barely covering her vast pendulous breasts. He watched as she moved, shingles and chocks of wood falling free, rattling down her great earthen belly, wide as the Helakios amphitheatre and tanned as brown as the dirt, to rest in the folds of her thick sailcloth skirt. He saw her vast haunches, the cliff-top buckled beneath her feet, the behemoth staff be her side.

Most of all though, he saw her hair. He watched it for as long as he could. When they passed out of sight, he cried quietly into his blanket, and didn’t know why.

Image from here.

*

The second time he saw her, he was a young man. He rode the same wagon and cracked the same whip over the same old donkey’s head. He watched the same sky, and he felt the road’s same red dust tingling in his eyes, tasting like rust in his mouth.

Everything was the same but for his father, who lay cold in a beech-wood coffin in the back of the Sheckling cart. Tarragon was taking him for burial in the city, because he’d requested it. A space in the Sheckler’s tomb would guarantee his family trade for another generation.

Everything Tarragon saw was tinged with sadness. The sky was open and empty and seemed ready to swallow him complete. He’d never felt more alone in all his life. Then he saw the elephant-shaped clouds, and clouds shaped like pigs, and cows, and even humans, and he remembered the crazy tales his father had once told, of giants and monsters and far-away wars, and he wondered if some of them were true.

Then he saw Alegria. The sun was setting behind her head, and for a moment he thought her dizzying golden hair was the fiery trail of some celestial chariot, come for his father, and he felt happy and secure again for the first time in years.

Then he saw the rest of her. He drew closer. He saw again the necklace of old roofs and tin wagons. He saw again the white sail-cloth skirt and the great brown belly. But most of all, he saw her hair, flaming in the wind, lilting with the dance of light and shadow across her face, the brilliant golden glow eclipsing everything else. He stared and he stared until the giant was gone and only fine after-images of her tendrils of hair remained.

*

The third time he saw her he was an ambitious young journeyman, on his way to Helakios to study barbering at the King’s Royal Institute. It was night, and he could only make out the shadow of her figure against the stars.

As he rode by she called down to him. Her voice was like soft thunder rolling over him, shuddering like the shivering rush of an outgoing tide.

“I’m alone,” she said. “I’m all alone.”

Tarragon felt the earth shaking, and for some reason thought of dancing. A moment a wave of water drenched his wagon, and he knew she wasn’t dancing. She was crying.

“You’re not alone,” he called up to her. “I’m here.”

“But nobody stays,” she said, an infinite, timeless sadness in her voice. “You won’t stay.”

“Why don’t you leave then?” he asked. “Make friends somewhere else.”

She sobbed. The wave of sound hit Tarragon like a belt across the face. “I can’t move. The weight of my hair holds me down.”

“So cut it,” called Tarragon. “Then you’ll be free.”

“I try,” she said, then let out a racking sob. Tarragon was thrown from the wagon by the wave of sound. “But I can’t. It would take 100 men with 1000 saws weeks to cut this hair. And nobody will help me. It’s a curse.”

“Ahh,” said Tarragon, then added, “I’m very sorry.”

“It’s OK,” said the giant voice, floating down from above, “I’m used to it.”

“Good-bye then,” called out Tarragon, as the wagon led him away. He felt a sudden loneliness steal over him, but he didn’t know why. “Good-bye.”

On the wind, he heard her faint answer. “I used to love to dance,” she said. “Would you dance with me, if I could?”

Tarragon opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what answer to give. Soon the wind rushed in to fill out the distance, and he knew she wouldn’t hear him, even if he answered.

*

It was 6 years later that Tarragon became official barber to the hair of the king of Helakios. In that time he’d worked his way up the barbershop ziggurat, starting off with the lowly dock rats who paid him in lice and cauliflower ears for his trouble, moving up to the scum merchants who catered to the Outriders, all greasy locks uncut for years, and from there to the working girls of the Scallazen prefect, trimming both their upper and their under-curls, neither of which he much enjoyed, being a barber of refined and exquisite taste. They’d told him at the King’s Royal Institute (KRT) in his hometown of Seraphston that not all hair-barbery was pleasurable nor was all the gossip edifying to hear; but none of it prepared him for cutting the under-curls of the town’s cheapest madams. The sheer number of curls overwhelmed him, each one an assayation so difficult he often spent nightmarish hours reliving the experiences, attempting to extrapolate the optimum manner of both speed and perfection.

Thusly he improved his craft.

The madam’s spoke to their clientele and soon he was trimming the beards of the city’s janitors, sweeping the dust from their overlong taches and teasing out the thorn-locked tangles of their crest-hair. He dallied briefly with the underground ascetic movement, but found the gossip and the stench of blue-root juice too overpowering to stomach. This earned him notice at the courts of various minor criminals, all itching for a status symbol over the fat-headed ascetics who seemed to have inherited the best of their forbears money but the least of their intelligence. He moonlighted with one set while informing for the other, and so his usefulness to the Outrider class became clear, when they announced their plans to buy out the criminal contingent completely and move them from the city, lumped and whole, and deposit them fairly and squarely in the sea by sequester of the King.

Thanks to Tarragon the plans went ahead and the core proponents of Helakios’ crime wave were decimated by the Outrider coup. And so, the Outriders in turn passed his name higher up the chain of command.

In the 39 and a half day war against his hometown of Seraphston, in which 24 dogs were injured and one accidentally stepped on, he brought hostilities to a halt when he cut the hair of both commanding armies’ generals, surreptitiously and under guise of a trading Sheckler, then presented the totems to either side as a gift of the other’s peaceful intent. There was nought for it after that but for them to surrender gladly, and as each to the other did so, the war was over, although one dog unfortunately was stepped on.

From thence his lights came to the attention of the King, who soon made him Barber Royale. And so it came to pass one fine summer morning, with the chrysanthemums blooming from their twined ironwood branches, as they sat in the triangle garden and Tarragon snipped between the blades of the King’s omnipresent crown, that the King said this to Feragon:

“I truly require a strong rope.”

“Your majesty surely knows his mind best on this matter,” said Tarragon, as he so often did, having learnt the courtly ways from first the madams and then through extensive study of the particulars of obfuscation, or the art of non-saying as it was known back in Seraphston.

“Yes I do,” said the King, “I rather do, but in this case, it wasn’t actually my idea.”

“The ideas of others are often a most charming though fickle thing,” said Tarragon, using the gift of presenting two disparate opinions simultaneously, though seemingly of the same ilk.

“Yes,” said the King, then, after a moment’s thought, “what?”

“Charming though fickle,” Tarragon repeated with more confidence than he felt.

The King seemed to think about this a moment longer. His crown juddered as he thought, as thinking involved chattering his teeth together very quickly. For cutting at this stage, Tarragon often pretended to, with a few light snips in the air above the King’s head. He didn’t want the Kings shuddering to off-put his deft barbery.

“Yes,” said the King finally. “You’re quite right. Fickle and charming. But listen here. That doesn’t remove the base need. Ropes, man. I need the strongest ropes a man can make.”

“That sounds very foresighted but also grounded in today’s pressing needs, lord,” said Tarragon.

“Yes,” nodded the King. Snip snip went the scissors above his head. “You’re quite right. I am foresighted, but also grounded.”

Snip snip.

“But I need ropes. Giant ropes to pull my siege engines to the castle Brick.”

A light went on in Tarragon’s head.

“Giant ropes?” he asked.

“Must you repeat everything I say?” said the King.

“Sir, I may, or may not, have the very answer to the question myself.”

“May not? What question?”

“And then again sir, I may.”

*

The very next day Tarragon set off down the red dust trail back to Seraphston, with 100 men at his back, carrying hammocks slung with 1000 fresh logging blades and provisions for seven days. Alegria saw them coming and covered her eyes so they could not see her shame.

“Hello Alegria,” called up Feragon. “Do you remember me?”

She shrouded herself in her hair and turned to look up at the sky.

“Very well,” said Tarragon, and proceeded to organize the men. First they slung up the shanty town around her, a tent village pinioned from her sail cloth skirt and anchored in the rock about her squatting feet. Some of the men stood close to her white-whale thighs and pointed up at her massive mounded breasts, scarcely covered over by the increasingly threadbare necklace of carts and other crafts. They laughed. Alegria stifled tears and prodded at the clouds.

Tarragon tried to explain to her that they’d be cutting her hair. He told her she’d once told him he’d need 100 men and 1000 saw blades and enough food for a week to free her of her hair, and now he had brought them. She only felt she was being mocked though, as the men around Tarragon laughed and jeered, and she stared up at the sky.

So he began. The first day they staked down her hair. They used mallets to drive metal hoops round each individual hair, a hundred in total. The hairs lay streamed out behind her like golden rays of light. Tarragon was amazed at how smooth her hair was. He’d expected it to be rough and brittle, full of insects and vermin, but it wasn’t. It shone like gold but it was supple and smooth as oil.

He gave instructions in the morning. He didn’t know any more about cutting giant hair than they did, but still he told them what he thought should be done.

“Cut diagonally,” he told them. “Use your saw blade until you find the grain of the hair. Cut in slices and take a rest. Drink a lot of water. Don’t look up.”

“Won’t we be cutting in zigzags?” asked the men.

“Why shouldn’t we look up?” they asked.

“What do you mean, slices?”

Tarragon shook his head firmly. “I’m in charge here,” he said, “now do what I say.”

And so, they did.

Each hair took one man a day to cut, his sweat dripping into the ground, his hands raw and blistered from the saw handle, the hair resilient and slippery smooth beneath his blade.

“There is no grain in this hair!” moaned the men. “It’s like trying to cut a madams heart- it doesn’t make a dent!”

But they managed. And every day the hairs were coiled and strapped and put in leather bags, spread behind the donkey sleds, and sent back to the city and the King, where he would begin the factory processing plans Tarragon had left behind.

They cut for seven days solid, every day all day. Alegria spoke not once. Tarragon called up to her several times, to ask if she felt lighter, if the weight of hair was reducing any. She ignored him and fluffed with the clouds.

A strange thing began to happen after the week was out. Only Tarragon seemed to notice at first, and it worried him. He felt it in the circumference of the hairs, the ones they cut and the ones they packed. He felt it in the tremors her slight movements made in the earth beneath his feet, and the wind caused by her breathing.

The strange thing was, she appeared to be getting smaller. He didn’t say a word though.

After the week was up he set back to Helakios and worked on the factory, where they fed the hairs through circular saws and strimmed them down to a manageable size. They were braided or knotted and affixed with hooks, and the King took him down to the war machines depot where he saw siege engines, great towers scaled with cat’s teeth, crossbows as wide as a the city gates and wound with the ligaments of dead newts, acid fused. He saw catapults with great drawbridge winches, firebombs mixed with the sulphur and freote from the Ashacanti volcano. He saw the King’s plans in large, and he wondered, what had the opposing King of castle Brick ever done to deserve such an onslaught?

But he didn’t worry much. His ropes were the key to the haulage of such heavy material, and he had no intention of letting the King down. Most of all though, as he thought on the problem of the hair, he thought about Alegria. It was her hair, after all. And he wondered if she really had been getting smaller. Did he imagine it? Or was it just stress?

He lost a batch of hair. He did it on purpose. It wasn’t easy to lose. He had to sneak into the factory at night and cart out the hairs one by weighty one. He buried them all over the east Morengia woods. Then the next day he reported the theft. He explained how they would need more hair, and so had to go back. The King agreed, so back the 100 and Tarragon went.

He ordered the workers to up the pace. He wasn’t certain about her changing size until strange reports started to come from the men. They were finding the iron hoops they had were too big to hold the hairs steady. They found the hairs they cut were easier, and they could finish one and a half every day, then soon one and three quarters. They found the hairs getting shorter. Every day the hairs they had were thinner.

He explained to the men. “Of course they’re thinner. I picked the fatter ones first because they were the best. So now they’re thinner. It’s very clear to me.”

But he wasn’t sure.

He went back over the older hairs, and he compared them to the newer hairs. He measured their lengths and their widths and when the men asked him what he was doing he said: “Quality checking.”

What he found was poor quality. The hairs were shrinking. All the hairs were shrinking.

He paused the hair-cutting the next day, and he left the men behind and returned to the city. Alegria actually said goodbye as he left, which were the first words she’d granted him that whole occasion.

In the city Tarragon inveigled himself back into the war room. He saw the new machines the King had ordered constructed using the giant’s impervious hairs. He found spiked discus hurlers wound with slices of the golden hair. When he tried to operate them though, they were jammed. He found drill bits studded with the wispy stubs of golden hair, slack in their bindings and drifting to the floor. He found swords with blades of hair, he found the great weaved haulage ropes, now just messy tangles lying in the dirt.

“You with appraisals?” came a voice from behind him. Tarragon turned and beheld a stocky bald red-faced man, wearing a vest that seemed to be woven of hair, which had shrunk all the way up to the neck.

“Yes I am,” he said firmly.

“Where’s your badge then?” asked the man, flicking at his chest. Tarragon knew the best form of defense was a strong offense, so went directly to work on it.

“Badge?” he scoffed, thrusting the man’s hand away and reaching out to the shrunken vest. “I don’t need a badge to tell me this is hardly up to scratch, is it? What were you thinking when you made this? Is this for babies in combat? Whatever will the King say about this bib?”

The man backed up and nearly tripped. “I explained all this already,” he spluttered, “how can I help it if the bloody hairs shrink when I work them? How can I help that? Witchcraft it is, and no mistake, and not my doing.”

Tarragon gulped. “Witchcraft? I think not. Witchcraft with hair? Whoever heard the like! Clearly this is your malfunction, this is your error in manufacturing.”

“Oh I see,” asked the man, his face turning even redder. “And I suppose the flail’s my fault too?” he demanded, pointing at a lack-lustre cracked cat of nine tails hanging from a hook on the wall. “It doesn’t even crack anymore because the bindings are done in- your precious hair that is, and you’ll blame me?”

“It must have been the glue you used,” said Tarragon.

“There’s no bloody glue!” stormed the man, now crimson-faced. “It’s all tying isn’t it? And now the hair shrunk and it’s useless!”

“Well,” said Tarragon.

“And what about the helmet? Bonze made one, got his gran to knit it for him, and because he’s an odd bloke he slept with it on- and when he woke, it was digging into his skin and there’s marks still on his head where it shrunk about and cut in like cheese wire.”

“Well, that can easily be explained,” began Tarragon, but the man cut him off.

“And you know how many bows we strung with that stuff? How much prime Alpinese rowan bush we had to import to make all them ivory inlaid bows that we strung with that hair? 5 hundred! And you know what? All of them snapped clean through, the hair just pulled them to pieces. And don’t get me started on the underwear Bonze’s gran was knitting for all of us! I wasn’t wearing it at the time but I tell you, it took more than a quick pruning with scissors to have it off. 5 blokes! 5 blokes underneath a vice-clamp with hacksaws next to their down nethers, and I was on cutting duty for half of em! It ain’t right.”

“Well, perhaps,” began Tarragon timidly.

“It’s witchcraft, I tell you!” stormed the man, sighed in disgust at Tarragon’s babbling, and walked away.

*

Tarragon fled the city. He went back to Alegria and he woke the men and he urged them to double production. He’d never seen hair of the sort before. He was fascinated. He was sucked in. He couldn’t stop himself from pacing the lines and chattering incessantly at the men to go faster, work faster, cut more.

It was a kind of magic to watch the hairs shrink.

They worked through the night. By morning the threads were a quarter as thick as they first were and could be cut in an hour. By midday they were an eighth and it only took 10 minutes. By half past three it was a minute a hair.

And then it dawned on the workers.

This was just hair.

Tarragon sent them all back to the city, and he finished the cut on Alegria himself. She was no longer a giant. Her hair streamed only a few feet from her back. The necklace of carts and rooftops rested on the sailcloth on the ground around her, her naked in the middle, confused, silent, watching.

Tarragon took out his scissors and with the sun high in the sky and all shadows burnt to nothing, he finished the job himself.

Alegria stepped out from the wreckage. Her body was normal. She was quite beautiful.

“Alegria,” said Tarragon, because it was the only sound he could think of.

“I feel so strange,” said the new Alegria, her voice luxurious, like her deep brown stomach, smoothing down into limber brown legs, up into the full breasts the men had once laughed at as ‘mammary hills’. She reached out to touch Tarragon’s face.

“It’s a big change for you,” said Tarragon, unsure what else to say.

She stepped towards him.

“I remember when you were just a baby,” she said. “Laughing at my clouds as you went by. I made elephants for you.”

Tarragon felt tears pricking at his eyes at the sudden memory of his father.

“Don’t cry now,” she said, stepping so close he could feel the heat off her naked body. She smoothed her soft brown hands over his cheeks, the tears shedding onto her skin.

She stared at the silvery drops on her fingers.

“Your father died,” she said. “My father died too.”

Tarragon took her hand.

“We cannot stay here, Alegria. The King will come for us. All of his weapons have been destroyed by your hair, he’ll try us for witchcraft and kill us both.”

“Shh,” said Alegria calmly, resting a palm over his thumping heart, looking into his eyes. “What is your name?”

“My name? It is Tarragon. Please, we must leave.”

“Shhh,” she said again. “Tarragon, will you dance with me? It has been such a long time since I danced, and I do love it so.”

“Dance, now?”

She laughed, a sweet golden sound.

“There’s more ways to dance than you could possibly imagine, my dear,” she said, and took his hand. “Now, please come with me.”

She took a step, and disappeared. His hand went with her.

“Alegria!” he called, suddenly filled with the fear that he’d already lost her, she was already gone. There was no answer, though he felt sure he could still feel her hand holding his.

He looked around the deserted hilltop but there was nothing to see, only hair everywhere, human-sized and shredded. The great white sail whipped noisily in the wind. The cogs and wheels and slates of her old necklace lay uselessly on the top. In the distance, he could make out a plume of red dust splayed up from approaching riders, he guessed the King’s mounts, no doubt coming to find him and try him for witchcraft.

He looked back to his hand, but it was still invisible, hidden halfway behind whatever veil Alegria had cloaked herself in. He still felt her palm wrapped around his, the warmth from it, a sense of invisible connection.

Then he smiled. There were worse things, after all, weren’t there? He didn’t leave himself time to answer that question. He stepped after her, and disappeared.

*

When the King arrived, his riders in tow, he didn’t know quite what to do. They stood on the hill-top for a long time, looking out longingly at the castle Brick on the horizon and shuffling their feet.

Eventually, the King sighed, remounted his horse, then set off back to his castle, muttering something about fickle barbers.

*

That night there was a storm over Helakios. Thunder rolled in from the plains, and a bolt of lightning dashed through the Royal Dome and blasted the king in the head, stripping away his hair and leaving him bald with the crown fused to his skull. The hair would never grow back.

The storm abated soon after. Ferragon and Alegria danced on.

END

DARK FICTION

You can see all MJG’s stories here:

Madness

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Jabbler’s Mons

Lost Japan was first published in 1993 in Japanese, a collection of biographical shorts concerning the author’s life in Japan. It won the prestigious Shincho Gakugei literature award in 1994, the first time for a foreigner. In 1996 it came out in English from lonely planet, and was met with positive criticism, with numerous reviewers falling over themselves to espouse Kerr’s view of Japan as ‘unique’ and ‘brilliantly informed’.

Kerr first came to Japan in 1964 as the son of a US Navy family, and has been back and forth numerous times, living here for extended periods, buying a house in a remote valley, getting involved in cultural teachings, kabuki, calligraphy, and art collecting. The book is a series of vignettes about all these various aspects of Kerr’s life, with lavish detail poured upon the art of kabuki, interesting facts shared about the thatching of traditional Japanese houses, and an insider’s guide to the world of Asian art dealers. Throughout are the seeds of what will become the latter book ‘Dogs and Demons’, as he first considers the meaning of Japan’s concreted hillsides, the slow asphyxiation of kabuki under the weight of its own pomp and circumstance, and the ugly unorganized power line-striped morass of big cities like Tokyo. These are the things destroying the Japan that he loves.

I didn’t like it. I finished this book not out of any sense of enjoyment but out of a strange kind of indebted feeling to the author, after he blew my mind so thoroughly with ‘Dogs and Demons’. That book is an endless tirade of facts and figures and real history bearing out his suspicion that there is something seriously awry in the management of Japan. It was angry, raw, and it confirmed for me many experiences I’ve had in this country as a six-year resident, things I’d noticed but now accepted as the norm. I got angry alongside him. And I suppose all that colored my perception of ‘Lost Japan’. Where ‘Dogs and Demons’ bit hard and wouldn’t let go, ‘Lost Japan’ gave a slobbery knock-kneed smooch.

I tried to put the other book from my mind as I read, but just couldn’t get away from making the comparison. ‘Dogs and Demons’ was fiercely relevant to the way I look at Japan. It answered questions I’d long wondered about. It felt like it was important, and it mattered. ‘Lost Japan’ however did not feel important. It did not speak to me about Japan on any level that I care about. Kabuki? I went once, and fell asleep. Perhaps that says more about me than the book, but I couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t clean out the saccharine fluffy taste in the back of my mouth as I read of Kerr’s exploits in art dealership, calligraphy and numerous other flouncy seeming things. ‘So what?’ I wanted to ask. ‘What does it matter?’ How I managed to finish the final chapter gushing about Japan’s lost ‘literati’, essentially worthless rich bohemians who sat around and wore berets and smoked cigarillos and talked idly of ‘revolution’, I’ll never know, but it was a supreme testament to the other book that I did.

Basically, this book is the simpering wuss-cousin of the ferocious ‘Dogs and Demons’. If you’re interested in the ‘high art’ of Japan you’ll enjoy it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.