by G L Rathweg
Charles, Ian, and Ramon swallowed their fear and surrounded me. They shouted together and then attacked in unison this time faster than I could see. What I did see though, was Nick turn and hightail it out through the kitchen, probably to head out the back exit. But I didn’t get to speculate anymore, as Dangun was responding to the three remaining demon’s attacks.
Dangun spun in place like a top, the blue aura flaring out and covering all four limbs, as he struck each attackers clawed hand or kicking foot knocking them back. Then he sprung forward, first hitting Ramon with a palm strike to his back and firing blue aura into the strike, causing Ramon’s heart to burst out the front of his chest.
Not stopping to admire his handiwork Dangun spun again with a long hooking roundhouse heel kick and took Ian across the side of his head. The blue aura flared again and when my foot connected his head cracked and crunched down to the side. Going almost down to his bicep, clearly breaking his neck.
“Fuck this!” Charles yelled, in a high-pitched girlish scream and turned to the front exit.
He hit the door at a full sprint and pulled but it didn’t open because it was locked. Dangun laughed and then struck out and punched a glowing fist through the demon’s back and pulled his heart out then held it up to the terror filled eyes of the dying Charles. The heart was black and twisted looking.
The blood was also black and viscous. It pumped out of the slowly beating organ like ooze flowing from a sewer. Then Dangun flared the blue aura around the heart and it began to burn, hiss, and sizzle as it cooked. Charles gurgled one last painful breath then collapsed to the ground.
“Well that was satisfying on a spiritual level.” Dangun said, while turning about and surveying his handiwork.
The bodies caught fire and again turned to that black aura which Dangun gathered in his fist
“Hey man, Nick took off out of the back we need to get him.” I told him.
“No, we do not. He is gone I can no longer sense his presence. Don’t worry we will see him again. Now you must take back over and care for your woman. My energy is spent. You must hurry because I may have used too much of your power reserves.” Dangun said, then gestured with his hands.
Then somehow we blinked back to me being back in control of my body and him being wherever I had just been.
“Wait, what do you mean too much power? Hey what is going on?” I asked a bit frantically, as I suddenly felt weaker than I’d felt ever before in my life.
“Goodnight Hiro I must rest for a bit. Get somewhere safe and with those you trust.” Dangun said, and suddenly I could sense his presence was asleep.
“What the hell man! Wake the fuck up!” I railed, saying a few more choice things before moaning from Tiffany caught my attention ending my tirade.
Well, that and being physically weak as fuck.
I forced myself with all my willpower to stumble over to Tiffany who was just coming awake. I made it after what felt like crossing a dozen miles and tumbled to the ground at her feet. She was barely conscious but was coming to and I sat up using most of my remaining strength. Her clothes were torn and her makeup was running all down her face. She was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I put my hand on her shoulder and used my other to check her breathing.
“Hey, it’s me Hiro. Everything is ok. You’re ok.” I said, softly.
She blinked her tear streaked eyes open and saw me. She immediately began to freak out and tried to get away from me.
“Get off me! Fuck off! No! Help! Help! Rape! Nick is raping me!” She screamed, as she kicked, punched, and tried to bite me.
I took the beating and abuse. I just kept calm and kept repeating the same thing. Besides, I couldn’t fight her off anyway it took all my strength just to keep my hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, it’s me Hiro. Everything is ok. You’re ok.” I repeated again, softly.
I continued to say it as she kept raging until she finally heard me or exhausted herself enough to look at me and listen.
“Hiro?” She asked, looking intently into my face as if seeing me for the first time.
Technically, with my new facial and body features she kind of was.
“Yeah Tiffany, it’s me you’re alright now. We took care of those guys.” I said, this time with a smile.
“But you don’t look like Hiro. I mean you kind of do and if I look into your eyes I feel like it’s you but…” Tiffany said, her voice trailing off as her eyes roamed my new body in disbelief.
“I promise it’s me. Are you ok? Do you need medical attention? Should we go to the hospital?” I asked, bombarding her with question after question.
“No, I’m ok they didn’t… He didn’t get all the way. I’m just a bit beat up and emotionally fucked.” She said, tears still flowing down her cheeks as she cracked a choking laugh cry sob thing.
Then she reached out to me and held me as she started sobbing in earnest. I won’t lie it hurt. It hurt a fucking lot and my body felt like she was poking me with shards of burning metal, but it was worth it. Totally fucking worth it to have Tiffany pressing up against me and using me for comfort. It was something that I had wanted for a really long time. So, I just sat there in immense pain and complete euphoria as she cried. Eventually she stopped as she slowly ahold of herself.
She broke off the hug and somehow that released an even more intense wave of pain. She sat back as I winced sharply and sucked in a painful breath.
“Oh my god! You are hurt bad aren’t you? Do you need to go to the hospital?” She asked, looking me over again with a new light in her eyes as she surveyed the blood covering my face, hands, and clothing.
“No, not the hospital I need to go home and rest. Can you help me get there?” I asked, wincing again as another giant wave of pain and nausea hit me.
“Yeah, let’s go.” She answered, assertively and now all business.
I had to hand it to her she really was a tough chick. I mean I don’t think I was handling things as well as her and I hadn’t almost been raped. My mind was running a million miles an hour and it kept saying the same thing. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, and fuck on repeat.
It was hard for me to stand up, but Tiffany pulled me up and supported me. We hobbled out awkwardly towards the back exit through the kitchen. She began to bombard me with questions as we walked. But after the fifth time of me grunting and hissing in pain, not to mention almost puking, she stopped asking me questions saying we’d talk about it later.
I was feeling too shitty to be worried about Nick ambushing us and honestly had forgotten about him until we were both sitting in Tiffany’s beat up 92’ Honda Civic. She had to help me into the seat and buckle it because by this time the pain was so excruciating I could barely move my limbs.
I think I mumbled my address to her but wasn’t quite sure because right then I blacked out due to the pain.
TRACK 4 – REDBONE – CHILDISH GAMBINO
Crazy fever dreams assaulted me and time seemed meaningless. It felt like I was living past life after past life of men, and sometimes women, I had never known. The feeling was so real and visceral it felt like it was me living those lives and in some way I was.
After the tenth life cycle of birth and death I transcended from being in the person’s life to watching from above as if I was some type of guardian angel. A few life cycles later I realized Dangun was next to me, but instead of acknowledging each other we just sat in silence and watched. Hundreds of lifetimes went by until finally we came to the last and it was Dangun himself. He didn’t say anything when the life cycle started but somehow, I just knew it was him.
I watched in a bit of awe as I began to see the similarities in our lives even from the most early of ages. Granted his was much harder being from an ancient and primitive time and all that, but our experiences as a whole were very much alike emotionally. Actually, when I thought back on it all the lives we had seen and lived were hard and emotionally difficult to say the least. I shook my metaphysical head and refocused o
n the story unfolding before me.
This time Dangun narrated the happenings below in a voice that while not emotionless was in the tone of someone who had told this story and seen it more times than they could count. It was kind of neat how his voice sounded out in the ether around us, like a disembodied narrator relating a story. I felt like I was in an episode of the Wonder Years albeit a weird, possessed marital arts demon thing reincarnation themed episode.
I was born in a tiny village of no name in the northern mountains of what would become the great Koryo Empire. The village was on Baekdu Mountain and what would become my capital city…
The little boy was born in what was no more than a mud hut that his mother lived in without his father. He had abandoned them long ago. The mother birthed the baby in that tiny hut with the help of the village shaman and after hours of painful labor, Dangun was born. A squalling little whelp of a baby who only quieted down after his umbilical cord had been cut and he was handed still covered in birth filth to his mother.
The mother stared at the baby with love and affection and the little baby stared back now, quiet and content now that he was in his mother’s arms. The mother watched her newborn breathe in and out alive and she was happy. Then her face creased in sudden pain. She felt more contractions and her blood began to flow from her birth area. The midwife panicked and tried to do something but it was of no use.
Another baby came and this one was not alive like the one before. This one was a lifeless monster of a thing that came out already dead to the world. Already taking his mother with it.
“My little Dangun I am sorry. I love you, goodbye.” The mother whispered, and then closed her eyes for the last time.
Little Dangun sensing his mother’s passing began to wail and cry in his mother’s lifeless arms. The midwife finally admitted defeat and gave up on trying to save the mother and took the baby. Tiny Dangun wailed and wailed as she left the tiny mud hut not looking back at the already cooling mother’s body, crying infant cradled in her arms.
The life memory stopped and Dangun and I were alone again in that blackness where we had first met. We both floated there quietly each in our own thoughts about what we had just seen. I was annoyed that I didn’t get to see the rest of Dangun’s life, but I had so much other information to think about it wasn’t that big a deal.
We had such similar lives and both had lost our mothers right after childbirth. Both our mothers taken by death abandoning us. Leaving us alone on the beginning of life’s twisted journey. Eventually, Dangun looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“I believe your mother also died when you were a child. Is that right?” He asked.
“Yeah, she died when I was a baby. Just like you.” I replied, in a sad voice.
I had always wished I had known my mother. I mean my grandma was great and all, but I just wished that it could have been different. I’m sure Dangun felt the same way. We were both quiet again for a minute then he spoke again.
“Yes, I believe there is some connection to the loss of the mother when we are born that gives us our Elemental Affinity or lack thereof is a better way to say it. Even the other lives which were lived before us have some type of traumatic birth incident although not all have the same Void Affinity as us.” Dangun explained, in a very professorial tone.
“You know I was thinking that just a moment ago. I noticed the horrible childhoods across the board. But what is the Void Affinity thing?” I asked.
“I will need time to explain the entirety of the Elements and system of Cultivation. We do not have the time now as you and your woman have just arrived at your destination.” He said, then disappeared back into the recesses of my mind.
I blinked my blurry eyes open and saw a soft yellow light. I realized I was curled up in the fetal position and still in Tiffany’s Civic. She was looking at me with concern written all over her beautiful face. I managed a weak grin which I was hoping was rakish but judging by her response was more ghoulish and repulsive.
“I promise I don’t feel as bad as I look.” I tried to say it as a joke but winced halfway through ruining the attempt.
“Yeah, I’ll believe ya when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.” She said, in her best Super Troopers voice.
I began laughing and immediately regretted it as my entire body began to erupt in pain as I did so.
“Please don’t make me laugh.” I wheezed.
“Gotcha, let’s get you inside.” She said, getting out and coming over to my side of the car.
What happened next was an exercise in pain and ridiculousness that I am mortified to share with you but will do so nonetheless in an attempt at historical accuracy. I was like a newborn fucking baby and it’s safe to say I embarrassed myself. Tiffany did pretty much one hundred percent of the carrying and walking while I did zero except for being dead weight.
“Jesus fucking H Christ Hiro! Did you always weigh a metric fuck ton! My god it’s like carrying a bag of bloody heavy ass bricks.” Tiffany teased, between breaths as she manhandled me to the door of my grandma’s house.
This caused me to laugh again and had the added side effect of another round of extreme physical pain.
“God, make it stop. No, we need to go down to the basement it’s that way.” I told her, through gritted teeth and motioning with a nod of my head in the direction of the outdoor basement entrance which was all I could muster.
After banging into the door, a few walls, and almost doing a couple headfirst trips down the stairs, we finally made it down and into my bastion, my den, my safe space. My vision was going black coming in and out. When I could see, everything was blurry as fuck. The pain was also reaching the point of being unbearable and I could only manage a mumble or grunt in response to Tiffany’s questions.
I vaguely remember opening my door and entering my room but then I saw my bed and was already passed out before my body even hit the mattress. Instead of the usual darkness and fevered dreams one usually has when they are beat to shit, I was immediately floating back in the blackness with Dangun.
“I see you’ve made it to your sanctuary. Good, that girl of yours has her head on her shoulders. She will be of help during your training.” Dangun said, with a nod of his head.
I reddened and mumbled something about her not being my woman and that we were just friends and stuff. He just looked at me, raised one eyebrow and scoffed, then started chuckling and shaking his head at me like I was an idiot. To his credit though I was an idiot so he may have had that right.
“Listen boy, I know women and that is your woman. She wouldn’t have dragged your bloody broken body back to your home if she weren’t. Not only that you haven’t seen the way she looks at you. Like I said she is your woman.” Dangun said, in the tone of one who is completely and utterly sure of their opinion.
I was flustered and I began to sputter so I shut my mouth and glared at the ancient Korean spirit asshole. A few minutes went by as my thoughts turned to what he had said. Did Tiffany like me? I mean if he was right that meant she was in my room with my physical body right this second.
Thoughts of many things that pretty much every teenaged boy would have ran through my mind in the most graphic of detail. Time seemed not to exist for me as the different scenarios played out like a Pornhub compilation. My face must’ve started showing my thoughts because Dangun cleared his throat loudly and gave me another look.
“Ok, now that all the lascivious thoughts have run through your mind it is time to start training.” Dangun said.
I was still embarrassed from his catching of me being a pervert, but the word training erased all those thoughts, well most of them, and I perked up listening intently. He saw I was attentive and nodded in satisfaction.
“First, let’s begin by talking about you. I have used the time since our bonding and relived your memories and have now learned all that you know.” Dangun said, nonchalantly.
“What the fuck dude? You raped my mind?” I asked, heatedly.
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“Oh, don’t be so dramatic you snowflake. That is a good term by the way.” Dangun replied, with a laugh.
“Snowflake? Me? Fuck you motherfucker.” I shot back.
“Yes, yes, I get it you can swear. Now, since I have studied your memories I have figured out a way to teach you Cultivation and the system of Elemental Affinity that you will understand best.” He explained.
“How’s that?” I asked, intrigued now but still pissed about snowflake and the mind rape. Although, it was a close call which of them made me angrier.
“You call them Role Playing Games.” Dangun replied.
“Seriously? RPG’s?” I asked, excitedly.
“Calm down and listen and I will show you. Do as I do and let us begin with the first position, Lotus.” He instructed, as he sat with his legs crossed then put his hand in the familiar position of the Om on each knee.
My grandma and I dabbled in yoga for a while hoping it would help us both fix our broken and tired bodies a bit. Hers from age and mine from getting my ass kicked. I mirrored his actions and sat in the Lotus position hands on knees right across from him.
“Straighten your back don’t hunch and raise your head high. You are going to be a warrior now start to present yourself like one.” Dangun said, voice like iron.
I did as he said and sat up straight and raised my head. I never really realized it before, but I subconsciously hunched down and made myself small. Just sitting up straight and tall made me feel bigger and stronger. Such a small thing but such a big effect. Dangun nodded at me in satisfaction and then his body began to slowly burn with that blue aura from the earlier battle.
“Um, yeah about that blue fire stuff...” I said, voice trailing off.
“Close your eyes and regulate your breathing.” He continued, as if I had never spoken.
I did as he said and slowed my breath and closed my eyes. A moment later an image appeared in the blackness.
“Oh shit!” I said, opening my eyes and looking at Dangun in wonder.
“Stupid boy! Close your eyes and pay attention. Time here is much different than that in the real world but it is limited, and we have much to do. Start taking things seriously or you, your woman, and your family will not survive this. Do you think the demon has forgotten you? Do you not realize that was not the demon master? He and stronger demons will come for you.” Dangun said, seriously.
