Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter (39 page)

The
other woman reached out and took Yuki’s arm in her hand with a soft touch. “My
name is Aki.”

“’Lover?’”
Yuki asked.

“It’s
not my real name. And love has nothing to do with this. We should leave here,
fast.” Yuki gathered up her torn skirt, and wrapped it around her waist. Her
blouse was in shreds.

“Wait,”
Aki said, walking to the corpses. She rifled through their pockets, taking out
wallets and emptying them of cash. “Payday,” she said merrily. Aki stuffed a
wad of bills in her brassiere, tucked another into her garter belt. She
unbuttoned one of the soldiers’s jackets, and gave it to Yuki. “I can quit for
tonight.”

The
two women left the alleyway, and Yuki retrieved her grocery bag. They walked at
a brisk pace, but not enough to arouse suspicion. They dodged their way through
the crowd, and turned a corner. Shouting began in the distance. Aki broke into
a run, Yuki followed.

They
dashed down the narrow sidewalks alongside narrow streets. The crowds thinned
out, and finally disappeared, as did the lights.

“I
live near here,” Aki said, panting lightly. “Where do you live?”

“Where
I can,” Yuki said, out of breath. “Nowhere since my home was bombed.”

Aki
decided not to press Yuki for painful details. “You can stay here, then. I have
room. Not much, but enough for two.” They walked down the street in silence. They
shortly came to Aki’s apartment building, which had survived the war with
moderate damage. Aki’s apartment was on the second floor. It was small, barely
twenty feet on a side. A futon lay on the floor, and the furniture was
unmatched—a rickety table and chair near a rusty sink and kitchen area,
with paint peeling from the cupboards. A tiny bathroom down the hallway held a
shower and toilet for the whole floor. To Yuki, it felt like the Imperial
Palace.

“Let’s
get you cleaned up,” Aki said, guiding Yuki to the bathroom. A small shelf
under the mirror held a few bottles. Aki took a washcloth, wet it, and dabbed
at Yuki’s face. She applied hydrogen peroxide, which stung.

Aki
sat down at the table, and counted the money while Yuki watched. They had taken
over five hundred dollars from the Americans. It was more money than either had
earned in all the months selling themselves. “You can stay here,” Aki said
casually.

“Only
for a few days,” Yuki rushed the words.

“And
then what? Back to your park or warehouse? Baths in the river? Back to
starving?” She rubbed Yuki’s ribcage, and that flush came over Yuki again. “Back
to facing
them
alone? Next time you go up against five GI Joes, you
might not have help.”

“I—I
couldn’t,” Yuki stammered.

Aki
stood and faced Yuki. “We both have a gift,” she whispered. “And we both have
the same purpose. I was going to kill an American anyway tonight. You just gave
me a bigger opportunity.” Yuki looked into Aki’s eyes, fearful.

“Don’t
be afraid, Yuki. I won’t hurt you. You’ve been hurt enough already. So have I.”
Aki told Yuki her story. Aki was only twenty, and from Yokohama. She had
married at seventeen to a man several years older. Hideko had been drafted into
the Navy, and died when his ship sank at the battle of Luzon. Her city had been
leveled by American bombers, and her family lost.

Aki
searched for her family, to no avail. She lived on the streets, much as Yuki
had. Her gift came to her when two Japanese soldiers tried to rape her, and she
killed both of them. Horrified, she resolved to use her power only on Americans—her
own people had suffered enough.

Yuki
told Aki of her life since the war. After an hour, they both were emotionally
exhausted, tears flowing. They readied for bed. Yuki borrowed a robe. They fell
asleep side by side. Yuki woke that night, and found Aki’s arm around her
waist. Yuki’s robe had fallen open, and Aki’s hand had reached up and cupped
one of her tiny breasts. She could feel Aki’s larger ones against her back. Yuki’s
breathing became shallow, her heart beat faster. Aki’s touch, even in sleep,
was warm and comforting, so unlike the rough handling she’d received from the
Americans. She clasped Aki’s hand in her own, and fell asleep smiling
beatifically.

With
the money taken from the Americans, and with the commotion last night, they
decided to take a few days off and look for better housing. It was hopeless. The
Americans could requisition what they wanted, have the government pay for
installing electricity, plumbing, even swimming pools—but homeless
Japanese remained homeless. Aki and Yuki crowded into subway trains like ants,
but Americans reserved separate cars or even entire trains for themselves—and
most of the seats stayed empty. It was one more reason to hate them.

The
banking system was still shaky, so half the money went to a small lacquered box
on a shelf. More went to clothing. “Work expenses,” Yuki observed. Aki favored
shorter, low cut dresses, while Aki preferred more modest ones. They both made
the women more presentable, and allowed them to charge more.

They
worked as a team, sometimes enticing the occupiers separately, but quickly
found the promise of two girls at once made the Americans lose their senses. Two
on one made an easier kill. They did not question the course they had chosen. Not
quite a year after the war, the economy was still in ruins, job opportunities
few. People still lived in subway stations, still starved. The money they made
was more than they otherwise make.

Still,
Yuki confessed one night, she felt absolutely no pleasure from the act. The
lurid magazines that had flourished in the less repressive postwar culture
talked about the mechanics and pleasures of sex, but it still eluded her.

“You
were a virgin when the two sailors tried to rape you. You’ve never been treated
well by a man.” She rolled onto one elbow. “So sex with men has unpleasant
associations.” Aki reached over and slid a hand inside Yuki’s robe, covering
one small breast. She began teasing the nipple. “But men aren’t the only
option.”

Yuki
was breathless, but hesitant. “That’s not—”

Aki
put her hand to Yuki’s lips. “When I first saw you, your spirit reached out to
me. I think we who have the
ikiryoh
can sense each other. But I sensed
something else, too. You’ve always felt different. You weren’t attracted to
boys. You wanted to watch other girls, but couldn’t”

“I—that’s
–“ Yuki stammered. Aki was right. Her hand moved into Yuki’s robe again,
and teased her other breast. Yuki’s head swam. Aki’s hand squeezed her breast,
rubbing a nipple between long delicate fingers. The hand traced a feathery
light pattern down her belly, finding the dark curls nestled between Yuki’s
legs. Aki’s fingers squeezed her outer lips, searched out her clitoris. Aki
slipped one, then two, fingers inside her, probing deeply, moving in and out.

Aki
leaned over and kissed Yuki. Her lips were soft, not rough with beard stubble. Aki’s
touch was soft and light, her tongue dancing over Yuki’s lips and teeth and her
tongue.

Yuki
threw her arms around Aki’s neck, pulling Aki onto her. Yuki let one of Aki’s
thighs slip between her legs, and she pressed her sex against it; she could
feel Aki doing the same, her rough public hair scratching her thigh. Aki held
her waist tight. Their bodies fell into a rhythm, cool smooth skin against cool
smooth skin.

Yuki
felt something new rise in her. It wasn’t
ikiryoh
. It began between her
legs, made its way up her spine, through her chest, spread outward. It reached
her head, and she screamed out, calling Aki’s name. Aki let out short, sharp
moans. Aki bit into Yuki’s shoulder, and Yuki screamed from pain and passion. She
felt her body and Aki’s tense, fingernails and teeth digging into flesh. Their
bodies tensed for a long moment, and they collapsed to the futon.

“I
think I may stay here after all,” Yuki sighed.

“I’m
glad,” Aki replied. They lay silently for a long time.

“Am
I the first?” Yuki asked.

Aki
paused, and put her chin on one hand. “I’ve made love with at least a dozen
women. Most of it was when I was younger, silly schoolgirl crushes, I thought. But
they didn’t go away. The other girls discovered they liked boys. I never did.”

“What
about your husband?”

Aki
shrugged. “It was arranged by my parents. Hideko did little to change me. He
made it worse. The Americans, they know they’re only renting this,” she said,
pointing between her legs. “Hideko treated me like property. He beat me when I
disobeyed his orders. When I heard he had died, I felt nothing.” Her mouth
became a grim line.

There
was another protracted silence. Yuki broke it again. “Is what we’re doing
right?”

“With
each other?” Aki stroked her breast, teasing a nipple. “What does it matter? I’ve
never felt this way about anyone else.”

“Not
that. What we do at night. To the Americans.”

“Fucking
them or killing them?”

“Both.”

“There aren’t any other jobs yet, unless you want to be a maid and wait on
them. Something better will come along, though. I don’t plan on doing this
forever.”

“Do
they deserve to die?”

“Did
your family? Did mine? Did the people in Hiroshima or Nagasaki? They can talk
all they want about the wonderful reforms, like letting women vote. But I can’t
vote my family back to life. Punishing Hirohito and Tojo and the others doesn’t
make my life better.”

Aki
reached out and touched Yuki’s cheek. “I remember thinking before the war how
pointless my life was. I worked in an office as a secretary. I did nothing but
type letters all day. It was boring and repetitive, and at night I would go
home to another boring and repetitive life. Being a good obedient wife for my
husband, always following his orders and taking his beatings when I failed to
move fast enough. Never complaining when he forced himself on me. If not for
the war, that would have been my life.

“But
now the world is new again, we can abandon the past. I have a purpose.
We
have a purpose, Yuki. We can’t—won’t—go back to our old lives. And
we can take a measure of revenge on the Americans, for what they have done to
us and to Japan. One small step at a time.”

* *
* *

Their
newfound love—it was love, Yuki decided, not a silly crush—had
another effect. The rage that fed her
ikiryoh
became harder to summon. After
a week, Yuki could no longer summon the anger needed for the spirit to leave
her body. Aki could, but just barely. Yuki worried that she would have to make
a choice between Aki and her
ikiryoh
. Both gave her life a purpose, but
being in Aki’s arms gave her contentment that she would never find elsewhere. It
helped wash away the filth she felt from the Americans.

At
night, on the street with Aki, Yuki could occasionally sense others with her
power. The spirits were often weak and faint, their owners oblivious to what
they harbored. But once in a while, she would feel herself being sought out
from afar, by a hungry spirit, searching for sustenance. American or Japanese,
she could not tell. She was afraid.

Another
thing they noticed was that small cuts and bruises healed almost instantly, as
if the energy they took from the Americans added to their energy. Aki had
another thought, which she shared with Yuki lying in bed as dawn broke.

“We’ll
live forever,” she whispered. “We take energy from others, and it enters us. We’ll
never age. We’ll never die.”

“Mmmm,”
Yuki murmured, slipping into dreams. “Forever sounds wonderful.”

* *
* *

“I
want to watch,” the young sailor said, waving a twenty-dollar bill at them. “I
want to watch you fuck each other.” His manner was crude, leering, but hid
something darker just beneath, waiting to escape.

Yuki
was shocked and repulsed at the offer to make their love a cheap burlesque show
for sale. And she was more than a little scared by what she sensed from this
short, skinny, rat-faced, greasy-looking American sailor. Before Yuki could
turn him down, Aki accepted the bill, and they led the sailor into the back of
the shabby deserted building that they used for sex.

The
sailor sat on a rickety chair scavenged from upstairs, while Yuki and Aki
disrobed. They knelt on a futon and began kissing.

“This
is humiliating,” Yuki whispered in Japanese.

“I
know,” Aki said brusquely, her tongue flicking in Yuki’s ear. She looked over
at the sailor, who was watching earnestly, his pants undone and fist moving up
and down his member. Her disgust was swept away by Aki’s hand reaching between
her legs, and a finger entering her. Yuki grasped Aki’s buttocks and drew her
in closer –

and
then she felt it. Another presence in the room, reaching out to her. She closed
her eyes and could see it, incandescent green, and angry. Aki gasped; she felt
it too. They both turned and looked at their customer. His member was in his
pants, and he wore a look of pure hatred and evil.

“Fucking
whores,” he groaned. “goddamned filthy cunts. Whores. Dirty unclean whores.” In
a panic, Yuki tried to think of some way to stop the assault, but was too late.
She felt the being enter her, and begin devouring her. She screamed in pain. She
was dying.

Yuki
summoned her
ikiryoh
to fight back. She felt her life being sucked away
from her quickly and brutally. Her body grew weak, and she fell to the dirty
futon in a heap. Her consciousness faded, from white to gray to almost black
–

But
she refused to die. Yuki dug deep, deeper than ever, and summoned up the old
hatreds, forgetting the bliss she felt with Aki.

—
Her brother Hikaru, who had often teased her about her ears, but who had read
to her at nights, and protected her from the mean boys. Dead on Saipan, his
brains leaking out the back of his ruined head, laughing eyes unseeing...