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Wishes and Suffering (Part two)
Apparently it was too long so I hand to split it up. Anyway, on with the story...
Five years passed and there was still no sign of suffering, Akachan was a perfect and handsome boy. Negai still worried. She worried so much she had trouble staying in the present and would watch Akachan every move making sure nothing happened. She started to wish that Jason and Akachan weren't there so she could be in peace. One day, Jason didn’t come back from work and Negai started to have terrible ideas. What if I wasn't good enough and he ran off with someone else, she had thought, Maybe he got killed by a crazy person.
The next day police found his body in a drying machine at the laundromat where they first met. She expected to feel pain but instead she felt relief. One less suffering to worry about. He was out of her life. But she still worried. She worried her child would get stuck in a closet or get stabbed by a knife.
A week passed without her mourning, but then her child went missing. Negai broke down. She cried for her dead husband and cried for her missing child, then she remembered the old lady.
Negai raced down to the meadow. She yanked a dandelion off the ground and blew,
“I WANT THEM BACK!” she yelled, then she spun around. The little lady sat there.
“What. Did. You. DO TO THEM!” Negai screamed in agony.
“Nothing.” the old lady said simply, “You worried and you worried so you killed the cause of your worry.”
Suddenly memories came flooding back to Negai, stuffing a screaming husband into a dryer and turning it on, smiling. Stuffing a crying child into a closet and watching the knife plunge into his skin.
“No,” she gasped, as the child's cries echoed in her ears.
A siren hollard as a police car flew down the street, doors slamming. “You're under arrest.” yelled a man. Handcuffs clamped on, biting her skin. The man shoved into the back of a car and drove to the jail. Negai let her body sag to the jail floor in grief. She closed her eyes. Her soul crushed. She felt remorse. She faded away- but there was a part of herself that didn’t want to let go. This part was mad.
She felt a surge of control, she felt invincible. She threw back her head cackling madly. The old lady would be the first to pay.
This is entirely mine, and I've submitted it for writing contests multiple times, but it's never won anything. Anyway, enjoy.
Wishes and Suffering (Part one)
“I can give you your wish, but two sufferings will be your price.” Those were the words that changed her life.
Her name was Negai, Japanese for wish. Negai was ugly, she thought so and everyone else thought so. She would go on dates, but the men would excuse themselves from the table and wouldn’t come back. No one would hire her and people would stare at her in disbelief. Each night she would cry herself to sleep.
One morning she got up and headed to the meadow- her favorite place- and set up a picnic. She loved the flowers and hoped she would look better sitting by them.
“Mind if I sit with you?” a voice asked. She looked up and saw him, his blond, windswept hair and his hands tucked neatly in his pockets. The man of her dreams. He looked at her with his bright blue eyes and gasped.
“Sorry, wrong person,” he said hurriedly and turned around and sped away. Negai started after him, her heart in her throat. She waited for him to come back but, as the sun set, she had to tell herself that he wasn't coming back. Then she cried, deep, despairing sobbs that shook her body. She put her face in her hands. A breeze wrestled with her hair. Negai looked up, a single dandelion in a patch of grass looked back at her. Negai picked it and said with all of the heart,
“I wish I was beautiful and my life would be perfect!” Negai blew as hard as she could, sending seeds everywhere.
“I could make that wish come true,” said a frail voice behind her.
“Oh, yes please!” cried Negai, spinning around to see who had spoken. An old lady leaning on a stick looked back.
“I can give you your wish, but two suffering will be your price.” she said grinning.
“Is there another choice?”
“Yes, you can live like this for the rest of your life or you can pay three sufferings.” her grin widened.
“Then I’ll pay two,” answered Negai, quickly.
“Very well, then” and the old lady disappeared.
Negai was glued to the spot, she didn’t feel different. She thought perhaps it was all a dream, a fantasy. Negai packed up her stuff and left the meadow.
Negai picked up her stuff and headed home, walking to the town a mile away. Street lamps flickered on and Negai realized she had to head to the laundromat. She opened the door and dropped the picnic basket in surprise. The man of her dreams stood there.
“Here let me help you,” he said, racing over to her and picking up the basket.
“My name’s Jason” He said sweetly as he handed the basket to her,
“Negai,” she said, embarrassed.
“Wow, your name is beautiful, just like you.” She was so startled she almost dropped the basket again. They talked for a bit and Jason continued to compliment her looks. Before she left he asked her on a date saying that he thought he had found his soul match. She walked home, feeling as light as a feather realizing, after glancing in a shop window, the wish had come true, then she remembered the sufferings. Oh well it can’t be too bad right? But little did she know, in a few years she would pay for this beauty in ways she could never have imagined. She would regret her wish the rest of her life.
A year later she and Jason were married. One night, as she cradled her swollen belly sitting by the fire, Negai couldn’t help but worry about the two sufferings. What if one of her sufferings would be that her child would be ugly, she thought frantically. She took all of her old things and threw them out erasing her old life. She chucked old pictures in the fire. Toys she used to never go without, in the garbage, anything she had hated or loved was gone. There, she thought, but she still worried.
When the child was born he looked just like Jason and was perfect. They named the child Akachan. As Akachan grew Negai started to worry about his safety and went about clearing the home of dangerous things.
I open my closet and my favorite jacket is gone. The End.
pehfpi3rubh3p9ur as somone who brings a jacket wherever they go this is terrifying
Have you ever walked into a room and found a vampire?No, not the sexy kind, but a foul creature with bony limbs and ashen skin? The kind that snarls as you enter, like a beast about to pounce? The kind that roots you to the spot with its sunken, hypnotic eyes, rendering you unable to flee as you watch the hideous thing uncoil from the shadows? Has your heart started racing though your legs refuse to? Have you felt time slow as the creature crosses the room in the darkness of a blink?Have you shuddered with fear when it places one clawed hand atop your head and another under your chin so it can tilt you, exposing your neck? Have you squirmed as its rough, dry tongue slides down your cheek, over your jaw, to your throat, in a slithering search that's seeking your artery? Have you felt its hot breath release in a hiss against your skin when it probes your pulse—the flow that leads to your brain? Has its tongue rested there, throbbing slightly as if savoring the moment? Have you then experienced a sinking, sucking blackness as you discover that not all vampires feed on blood—some feed on memories?Well, have you?Maybe not. But let me rephrase the question:Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly forgotten why you came in?