September 1993
"You can't always get what you want. And you can't always get rid of it with pennicilin."
When I said the word out loud, the sky suddenly clouded over and thunder started ringing out. The road was too narrow to turn around on. I had no choice but to go through the old tunnel. I suck at backing.
As you may expect, the tunnel proved to be impassable. My car was mired in muck and mire before I ever saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I put a tony Curtis tape in the deck and sat a moment contemplating my next move.
The babe sensor in the back of my mind started buzzing. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw, in the dusty half light, a feminine form shrouded in translucent white linen coming my way. I turned around and watched her appoach. Her hair was slate black, straight. Her gown slid away from her stark white forearm as she reached through the window and rested a cold hand on my shoulder. Moving her face near mine, she gave no expression, a corpse's mask. Oriental eyes narrowed, lips parted showing a beautiful smile, and a beast's teeth. Frozen, I had no resolve to move, to defend. I sat and waited for death. Then she paused and said, "Ah, gaijin da!"
She seemed quite relieved when she found out I could speak Japanese fluently. I agreed to wait there while she went to get Kobayashi, the leader of their coven. Kobayashi showed up, greeted me and advised me to relax. His English was passable, but heavily accented, and antiquated. It seems he studied English from 1872 to 1879 from a Dutch missionary. He then went on to make me an offer I couldn't refuse.
"The only thing that keeps us from killing you and drinking your warm blood is that we need your services. And, the fact that you're a foreigner puts you in a higher risk group for, you know, the big "A".
"Hey, corpuscle jockey, just bacause I'm from the other side of the pond doesn't mean I fish from the other side of the pond! If you know what I'm sayin'."
The girl and three others stood near him while he explained. They seemed to be listening intently and would shake thier heads occasionally and say, 'Wakannai'.
"We kill people. Because we have to, and because we like it. But half the fun of killing is hearing them beg for their lives, or entreat their gods for help; Inoue there likes to explain in detail exactly what he's going to do to them."
Inoue heard his name and looked a little self-concious.
"But recently, a lot of foreigners have moved into the area and we can't seem to communicate."
"Cut to the chase man I ain't got all day," I grumbled.
"We are prepared to pay you 150,000 yen per month to teach us English one a week."
"I usually get 200,000 yen for those hours."
"We offer the added bonus of not killing you on the spot."
"Do I get dinner with that?"
"Of course. Can you eat sushi?"
"Yes."
"I can't. Ha ha."
Anyway, they helped me get my car out. That dumb-shit Inoue ripped some of the trimming off the rear passenger side. And I went home to wrestle with my conscience. Should I betray my comrades in foreign residency status at the risk of great personal gain? Or should I refuse them and risk being hauled off and murdered in the middle of the night?
After hours of wrestling with my conscience, I finally pinned it for the three count. I had made up my mind. I was going to...
To be continued