5 Minute Reads - Anthology

Waiting

By DesultoryWriter

It was dark.

Without her skin to keep her internal organs and blood properly arranged, her insides sloshed and mixed into a strange, disorganized soup. Centuries—or what felt like centuries—of sitting in a container of her own innards had caused her to forget what it was like to stretch her arms as far as they could go, to run and jump, to exist as an organized person.

She forgot how much time had passed. Had it been a year? Or a decade? Being inside the sack for so long had caused her to question everything she knew, even how to breathe. It had a strange effect of blurring the hard lines of reality.

Yet... it was enjoyable, to question the gods. It was not difficult for mortals to become so caught up in their busy, unimportant lives that they never pause to look at the world around them. Being in the sack forced her to stop and reflect—whether she liked it or not—and meticulously question, question, question.

She had many epiphanies while in the sack. Some were mind-changing, some were not, but one never changed:

She was going to kill her mentor for what he did. She was going to do it creatively. Artfully. She would bleed him out and paint the walls with his blood, then peel the skin off his body and put him in a sack of it. And most importantly, she would damn all consequences to the fires of hell.

But for now... now she would wait patiently. If she was forced to wait a thousand years, so be it. If her mentor died before her, she would make his afterlife hell if he was not there already.

Presently, however, she had no idea where she was. Hell, she could have been buried a hundred feet under the ground and she would never know. A muted feeling of panic spread through her at the speed of molasses. Another side effect of the sack: everything seemed to operate at half speed.

But she eased her worries. Every now and again, she sensed a man's presence. He would approach, pace, and speak a few phrases in the muffled, staccato language of Nansei before leaving.

Which meant she was no longer in her sand-blasted, desert homeland. How or when she left the desert, she had no idea, but surely she had not gone far.

Every time the man decided to pay her a visit, she called out to him in his mother tongue. She had no mouth, of course, but she did not need one; the words would always find themselves in his mind. But every interaction was met with hostility, even when she was screaming for help. She would kill him, too, when she escaped.

A wisp of a presence entered the vicinity and she paused.

It was not the usual man, she gleaned immediately. This one was smaller. Purer. And... lonely, like her. Yearning for a companion. Delicious.

So she purred: Hello, little one.

The boy did not reply aloud, but she could sense the burst of questions in his mind: Who's there? Who are you?

It's just me. In the sack.

A pinprick of confusion. The...bag? Papa tells me to stay away from the bag. The boy was hesitating. If she was not quick, she would lose her chance.

She spoke quickly, but it was difficult in the sluggish nature of the sack. You don't have to come any closer if you don't want to. Let's just... talk.

He hesitated again. Muted panic flared through her and she seized her chance.

We've both gone too long without a friend, you and I. I'm lonely, too. What's your name?

She could practically see the boy wringing his hands with how nervous he was. The boy spoke aloud in a muffled tone, "M... Masamune. Masamune Sato."

Masamune... what a nice name. Though I have doubt in my ability to spell it.

Little Masamune, however, wasted no time with flattery or humor and demanded, "What's your name?"

If she had a mouth, she would have smiled.

Just call me Ko.

* * * * *

It was a mistake.

He shook so violently that the iron cord in his hands clattered to the floor. Sweat soaked his entire body and though his lungs could not fill themselves enough, he found himself unable to breathe at the sight before him.

Her black blood roiled and frothed on the floor. The tan leather sack that contained her less than a moment ago—her skin, he realized with a stab of horror—wrapped itself around a small pile of wriggling, black-soaked bones. It writhed for a moment, rearranging itself, until—

Oh, gods. He stumbled back and choked out something like a sob. She's getting up.

A hand stretched toward him before slamming to the floor. He jolted, and knew that his mother and brother behind him did the same.

She curled her fingers, nails scraping the woven mat as if trying to grip the floor--or merely testing her brand new appendage.

Her skin enveloped the rest of her innards, until the vague shape of a head formed and a mouth split open.

If the wrongness that pulsed from her smile did not make his knees give out, her next words did.

"Hello, little one."