Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

“Princess Lump,” they had sneered. “Princess Landfill.” They had filled her plastic slippers with shit. They had snapped photos of her sitting on the toilet with their cell phones and had posted them on student Web sites. They had mashed her face into skinny Ryo’s acne-filled cheek screaming, “Love! Love! Love!” And the teachers just turned aside their gaze. As if in witnessing this abuse they would somehow be sullied themselves. The teachers had no authority. The cliques of students, sneering and aloof, ruled the school.

One morning she had changed into her school uniform, but she could not leave her room. She had crawled back into bed and retreated into silence. All of her mother’s entreaties, threats, bribes, manufactured kindness, and a final failed attempt at spanking had done nothing to change her mind.

Masako had become a hikikomori .

The three-quarter moon streamed a pale light through the gauzy curtains. Masako shook her head, blinking her eyes in confusion.

She had been standing at the open refrigerator, cramming leftover croquettes and salty cucumbers into her mouth, gulping sweet liquid yogurt. She could not remember entering the living room. She wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. Bread crumbs fell to the floor.

The hard edges of the neighborhood were softer in the night. There were shadows, plenty of dark pockets where one could hide, and the narrow street, aglow with orange lights, looked as if it had been washed in a golden rinse. Like old-fashioned tinted photos. It beckoned.

The cool night air sank into her face, her skin, and she raised trembling hands to push back her monstrous hair. Her fingers caught in the unwashed hanks of her knotted strands. But she felt like she was aglow.

Her slippers slid and slopped on the pavement, her bare feet simultaneously sweaty and cold. The sound echoed against the city of concrete. Masako glanced down. She had left the house wearing her inside Hello Kitty slippers, her filthy school uniform, without a jacket.

She must look appalling, she thought. But the air was as sweet as sugar water. Masako slip-slopped down the dark sidewalk, eyes half-closed, mouth half-open. She wanted to swallow the night and carry it inside her.

Masako wasn’t mad. She knew that she looked mad, and that if anyone saw her in public this way they would call the police or chase her away. So she turned away from the headlights of some four A.M. shift employee on their way to work and ducked down a side street.

In the near distance a dog barked, a hopeful ring in the sound.

Teeth clacking, fingers aching, she walked more quickly, moving with purpose toward a glowing Lawson’s sign. She cast furtive glances all around as she stood by the door. She peered into the hyperbrightness of the interior, her eyes tearing even more at the shocking artificial lighting. The late-night convenience store was empty. The clerk sat propped behind a book, his head bobbing with sleep. Probably a university student, she thought.

The door chimed its two tones, and the store clerk jerked upright. “Wel—” choking off when he caught sight of her hair, her filthy and crusty school uniform. Her indoor Hello Kitty slippers on bare feet.

The clerk cleared his throat, loudly, as if to assert something. Masako’s ears burned. She stared at the display of manga, tabloids, and soft-core porn magazines. They were all wrapped in plastic so that no one could browse. Her lower lip wobbled, her vision blurring.

The door chimed once more.

The store clerk made his noise again: disapproving and also a warning.

Someone shuffled. The slap, pad, slap, pad of uncaring feet. Masako, eyes cast downward, watched as a pair of filthy sneakers came into view. The wearer had to drag his shoes, which were devoid of laces, in order to keep them on. The hems of the navy blue school uniform pants were ragged and caked with mud and pine needles. The cloth tattered and worn.

That smell.

He did not reek with the tang of urine and unwashed flesh. Of the musty sweet animal oil of filthy human hair.

He smelled of trees.

A bony hand clamped around her wrist.

Masako froze.

The too-thin hand, almost tenderly, turned her wrist over so that her palm faced upward.

He gently placed a small something in her hand. Then folded her fingers to close over it.

Masako shook and shook. Someone had touched her. She could feel something small, slightly oblong, inside her fist.

He had touched her.

Unable to help herself she glanced upward. Just as the thin dirty young student strode on, his gaping sneakers dragging loudly. She only caught one glimpse of a pockmarked profile before he was past her.

His face.

Were there wrinkles? Gray stubble mixed in with black? The student looked like he was over thirty years old. Was he an old pervert, pretending to be a high school student?

Masako grimaced.

The tiny object enfolded in her fingers burned. What vile thing had he put into her hand? Quaking, she slowly revealed the dubious gift.

On her dirty palm lay what could only be a seed. Pale yellow. Slightly conical. She had seen it somewhere before, she was sure of it. But she couldn’t say what it was. Gross. It almost looked like a little tooth. What did the hentai want?

She raised her head to glare angrily at the middle-aged man.

But he wasn’t there.

Masako’s arms pimpled with a skittering cool breeze and the hairs on her neck tingled.

A motion. Low. Upon the floor. Masako’s eyes shifted in time to see the long naked tail of a rat disappear behind an ice cream freezer.

She shook her head. It didn’t make any sense. What did it mean? How could a man disappear? He had to have been at least 185 centimeters tall! There wasn’t an exit in the back of the store. The only way out of the Lawson’s was the way they had come in.

Could it be.?

The tiny dubious gift clenched inside her hand, Masako lowered to her haunches and peered cautiously behind the freezer. It was dark and dusty. Was there a small hole in the wall?

“Kora! Kora!” A rude foot jabbed her right buttock. “You’re not going to puke inside. Get out! Get outta here, you freaky kid!”

Masako, startled, began to topple, and she extended her hands to catch her fall. The little seed fell to the dirty floor.

She desperately scrabbled after the tiny gift.

“Hey!” the store clerk exclaimed. “What did you steal! Give it back, I’m calling the police!”

Masako popped the seed into her mouth.

She squeezed her molars together, grit from the floor grinding disgustingly against her tooth enamel, then a rich oily flavor began to fill her mouth, nutty and slightly sweet.

Pine nut.

The store clerk angrily grabbed the back of her neck.

But she never felt his touch.

The ground zoomed toward her as everything swelled, up, away, the tins of food, the shelves of sanitary napkins and contact lens solution rearing away from her, receding into a blurry backdrop. The floor accelerated, growing suddenly enormous, the details of the seams between tiles in high resolution, filled with crumbs, rock particles, oily smears, and strands of long black yarn.

She had lost her slippers. Because she was on all fours, upon the ground.

“Oh!” Masako gasped.

But the sound that escaped her mouth was a high-pitched squeal.

Her hands.

They were not her own.

The nails were thin, narrow claws. A fine pale fur covered them. In wonder, she turned one over. It was as close to a hand as it could be. But it was still a paw.