Yukiyo ran her fingers down her own hair, stopping a little past her chin. She frowned, remembering how badly she wanted the short haircut last year, and she missed those long tresses now. She got up, went to the bathroom, and flicked on the light, at once becoming her own critic. She definitely wanted her long hair back. She wanted it long and graceful, to drape down her back like an elegant cape. Just like Kuchisake-onna had. She pinched her index fingers on her nose, forcing a few blackheads out of hiding. Her skin could use some work too, but Yukiyo's was mostly flawless. Just like the rest of her. Asumi was not the prettiest girl in the class. She was. She was much prettier than Asumi, who wore too much makeup anyway. Yukiyo was more natural, and she even had a better smile. She had the best smile, even if she were the one with cut-up cheeks. If she asked people if she were still pretty, they would not hesitate to say she was. Of course she would be.
Yukiyo finally had the heart to snicker at that afternoon’s events. Asumi was so stupid. Had she actually thought Yukiyo would fall for that dumb trick? Well, she did at first, but only because Asumi jumped out to scare her. She never would have believed she was The Slit-Mouthed Woman if she happened to see her like that on the street. Her execution was all wrong, and using lipstick for blood was lame. Yukiyo snickered again, and the more she thought about it, the funnier it became. She would show Asumi how it was done.
Yukiyo raced up the stairs once she shut the door, making it all the way up and then stopping when her mother called for her.
“Yukiyo? What’s the rush?” Her mom appeared around the banister.
“Were you able to pick up those grocery items?”
Yukiyo turned, half-hiding her shopping bag. “No, sorry, I didn’t get the chance.”
Her mom shook her head. “What have you been doing?”
“Just school stuff, Mom. Sorry.”
Yukiyo’s mother shrugged and left. Yukiyo picked up her bag, went into her room, and tossed it on her bed, along with her backpack. She pulled out another bag from the backpack full of the kind of makeup that Asumi and her friends would never buy. She took the large shopping bag and pulled out her lucky find from a thrift shop, a beige trench coat that fit her perfectly. She put it on and stood before her mirror, doing a little spin. She took the other bag to the bathroom and stood before the mirror.
She pulled out all of her new supplies, spread them out on the counter in the order she was going to use them. She started by applying foundation a shade lighter than her skin all over her face and then drew thick lines along her cheeks with a deep red color. She picked out the small jug of liquid latex, stuff she used once for a zombie Halloween costume. She put some of the pale, flesh-colored stuff on a cotton ball. It had a strong odor, and she held her breath when she dabbed it from the corners of her mouth almost all the way up to her ears. This stuff settled and stuck while it dried, allowing her to form chunks of what looked like torn flesh. Yukiyo tore at her cheeks until the latex stretched, revealing the bloody self-made interior. Next, she made a bigger mess. The wet blood dripped a few drops on the bathroom counter, a red constellation Yukiyo found oddly satisfying. She stuck a brush in it and rough painted those rips in her cheeks. For fun, and for her transformation, she put in costume contacts the color of smoke. They surprised her at first, her dark eyes now bright and…ghostly. Just the way she wanted them to look. Lastly, Yukiyo threw on the long-haired wig. On the outside, she was the embodiment of the supernatural being; on the inside, she was as giddy as a fan girl imitating her hero. She stared at herself for a long time before finally putting on the last item, the surgical mask. She looped one end over her ear and left the other end dangling to swing like a door on a hinge.
“Do you think I am pretty?” she practiced. “Do you? How about now?”
As her mouth moved, the blood makeup moved with it, and the latex merged with her face. She already had a wide smile on her face, but she smiled all the same. She was just getting warmed up.
Yukiyo was giddy when she went into her bathroom and shut the door. Tonight would be a test, a trial, a practice run. She’d popped the contacts in already, no longer irritating her, now fitting comfortably. Her makeup application was a smoother job as well, like it was second nature or like someone else was guiding Yukiyo’s hand along. She almost couldn’t feel herself doing it, and when she was done, she had transformed into another person. Just like she wanted. The surgical mask covered most of her face. She put the wig on and took care to smooth it out. It was beautiful. She was beautiful.
As far as anyone knew, she was normal. A normal young woman walking along the street. Going to bus stops. She might have a cold, but how thoughtful and respectful of her to wear a mask so as to not spread her germs to others. Her eyes looked a bit funny, but not too many people looked her in the eye. She had some mystery to her, though she mostly blended in. She blended in especially well with the telephone poles, her jacket a light enough and dull enough color to disappear into the background. The people walked up and down the sidewalks and paid no attention to her, businessmen and businesswomen on their phones all rushing past one another. Yukiyo looked for people who were slower, more curious, those who seemed vulnerable. She finally spied a young preteen boy who looked like he was going on a bus trip for the first time alone. She watched him carefully as he fumbled with the bus ticket in his hand and checked his phone again for the hundredth time. She chose her moment and stepped out from the telephone pole, following him until he turned to look at her.
“Am I pretty?” she asked in a muffled voice from behind the mask.
The boy was taken aback. “Um, I guess so. Sure.”
Yukiyo seized the moment. She unhooked the mask and exposed her cut-up cheek lines and chunky, bloody flesh.
“How about now?” she cried with more demand. The boy instantly screamed and ran for his life.
Yukiyo ducked behind a building, where she could giggle uncontrollably.
All week long, Yukiyo waited, and when opportunity knocked, she tried not to let her glee show.
“Oh, tonight? I can’t,” Yukiyo said, shaking her head for effect. “Dinner at Grandma’s.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Asumi answered just as fakely. “We were going to see a movie later.”
“Oh,” Yukiyo said. “Well, it’s not safe over there anyway. Just thought I’d give you that warning. You’d better watch out.”
Asumi laughed and walked away from her, and when she was out of sight, Chiyo appeared behind Yukiyo.
“I’m not going, either,” she said. “So I don’t blame you.”
Yukiyo smiled, glad her friend wouldn’t be on that scene with that group. It was truly perfect then, for how the evening was going to play out.
She timed everything carefully, planning around when her parents were also going out. Friday nights made that convenient. Even at dinner when they asked her what her own plans were, she kept them vague.
“I am thinking of meeting up with friends later, going to see a movie.”
She hid the smile she would be wearing the rest of the evening, the one she couldn’t wait to show off.
Yukiyo and her parents finished dinner casually, with her mind on getting her makeup just right and better than before. This was it. This was go time. She waited until they took off before she got herself all dolled up, this time adding more blood than before. It got more and more satisfying running that makeup brush through the crevices in her cheeks.
Yukiyo set off in the evening, patting something in her coat pocket she didn’t have before with added glee and maybe a little bit of malice. She smiled behind her mask. She could not wait for Asumi and her friends to see her.
The darkness blended into the evening sky and made the streetlights look like oversized stars and Yukiyo herself as a thing to be concealed with everything else. She lingered by the streetlamps and watched the crowd, listened, waiting for the chorus of high school giggles she was anxious to turn into shrieks. People came and went, buses came and went, and she
braced herself patiently. She knew Asumi and her friends by their loud and proclaiming voices, the kind that wanted to be heard by everyone at all times. At last, those voices came and tingled Yukiyo’s ears. She let the long black strips of the hair she wore fall just over her eyes but stayed behind the lamppost. They could not see her yet…not just yet.
The three girls walked down Yukiyo’s sidewalk. Yes, it was her sidewalk…her path. They were almost there. They were going to wait for the bus, and they were going to have some unexpected company. Yukiyo chose her moment and stepped out, slipping amongst them as just another bus passenger. She edged toward Asumi and kept her chin down, waiting to be noticed. Looking up, she caught her classmate’s eye and saw her widen them in disturbance.
“Am I pretty?”
“Um…what?”
Yukiyo threw off the mask.
“Oh my God!” Asumi screamed, drawing the attention of the other people at the bus stop. They stared at her and backed away. Yukiyo played up the part and stalked them with slow, forceful footsteps.
“How about now?” she cried, making her voice sound scratchy and tormented. “Do you think I am pretty now?” Yukiyo reached in her pocket and pulled out long scissors, the blades dipped artistically in blood, opening and closing them in the red shining streetlight.
“Get away from me!”
“What are you doing?”
“This girl is mad!”
The crowd dispersed with heightened chaos and blocked Yukiyo from the girls, who were afraid of Yukiyo but also stricken with her, trying to get a better look, because she did seem familiar. Yukiyo kept up her character as she stalked, swiping the scissors left and right and rolling her head so the important areas of her face could be showcased. People were too busy running away to look at her anymore, and Asumi and her friends got lost in the crowd. Yukiyo forced herself away from the scene. No matter how much she was feeding into it, she had to disappear just as quickly. She put her scissors, and her face, away and ducked back into the night. As she stole away, she heard her own name chasing after her.
“Yukiyo…Yukiyo..?”
No. Not Yukiyo. Kuchisake–onna. Kuchisake–onna.
She repeated the name over and over in her head until she made it home, climbed the stairs to her bathroom, and shut the door. She peered in the mirror at the self she’d created, or recreated. Her white eyes were not hers, and they looked at her all on their own. They admired the work she did and how she acted that evening. They were good, smiling, and triumphant. The figure before her in the mirror was a different person, and Yukiyo knew who it was.
“Kuchisake-onna. Kuchisake-onna.”
It was like the other legend involving a ghost woman, the one where one would chant her name three times in front of a mirror and she would appear. Yukiyo chanted her name even though she was already standing in front of her. The more she said it, the more she appeared, making her latex makeup cuts look more like skin and her height expanding a little, her jawline dropping, natural age lines subtly appearing around her eyes, but those eyes looked fiercer. The contacts she wore lost their cosmetic appeal and melted into her pupils.
“Kuchisake-onna,” she said, her slit mouth opening up all the way, but instead of dripping blood, those jagged edges of flesh peeled back to an empty abyss.
Yukiyo twirled her hair around her ears casually, already believing it was getting longer. She was looking forward to when she could grow it out as long as the wig. She glanced at the classroom clock and waited impatiently. The other students trickled in with mixed chatter, and she listening for any serious, frightened, or high-pitched tones. Chiyo came in and sat down at her desk, turning slightly to give Yukiyo a funny look. Yukiyo smiled innocently at her and hid a bigger smile behind that one when Asumi walked into the room. Instead of a curious smile, she glared at Yukiyo. Yukiyo watched her whisper something to other students, and they took turns looking at her. Yukiyo opened a notebook and pretended to read notes, still playing with her hair on one finger.
Ms. Tanaka arrived and started class as usual, although for some reason, some students were constantly whispering and looking at Yukiyo.
“Girls, what is it?” the teacher asked.
Asumi looked away. “Nothing,” she muttered.
“If it is nothing, then stop whispering about nothing and disrupting class.”
Yukiyo snickered at her foe's reprimand but stopped once she heard her own name.
“What was that?” Ms. Tanaka asked. “Yukiyo did what?”
Yukiyo sat straight in her chair, facing the teacher and the class, keeping her face straight as well.
“Me?” Yukiyo asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
Asumi’s chair skidded across the floor as she stood up. “Yes you did, Yukiyo, and you know it, so stop lying!”
Yukiyo opened her mouth in a surprised O, trying to appear as innocent and delicate as Snow White. “What do you mean?”
“You know what you did! You’re such a freak!”
“Asumi!” the teacher warned. “Control yourself!”
Asumi folded her arms and tried to turn as far away from Yukiyo as possible. It took great effort for Yukiyo to keep her focus on the teacher, and throughout the rest of the day, she worked on watching her in her peripheral vision.
Yukiyo watched everyone, especially at lunch time. Chiyo found her at their usual table, calm and collected.
“What’s going on?”
“What?” Yukiyo answered her the same way. She was in fact burning to confide in her but knew she could not. It was the only way to make it work.
“What Asumi and her puppy followers are saying,” Chiyo said. “You pretended to be the slashy ghost lady and tried to scare them?”
“I didn’t even go out that night,” Yukiyo recited. “I had dinner with Grandma. I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
She kept her face straight while Chiyo scrutinized her. She rolled her eyes. “Well, whatever. Everyone knows she always wants attention.”
Two girls in two households, not quite alike in dignity, experienced the same night terrors but with different nature.
Yukiyo lay flat on her back, sprawled out with her feet out of the covers, once in a while moving them like she was walking. The corners of her mouth flattened in a line as far as they could go but curled up in a secret smile. In her dream, her hair was long enough to touch her back, and the scissors she carried had the pungent perfume of blood. She wasn't sure if she was watching the events happening or if she was making them happen herself. She could certainly feel it. She felt the adrenaline of stalking people, of drifting in and out of shadows, disappearing in them and reappearing in the light. She saw the flickering faces of the people shifting from wide-eyed to wide-mouthed and their bodies melting into puddles when they tried to run from her. Her heart chased after them. She chased after them. And then she cut them all into pieces.
Asumi squeezed her sheets as tightly as she could, tossing and turning as she ran in her dream. Or attempted to run, for no one ever remembers how to run in dreams. They only know how to stumble and attempt to run on all fours. Asumi pushed herself to get away from the thing that was chasing her. It had long, dark hair. She did not want to see its face, and she could not see it the way it flew in and out of shadows. She heard the screams. She made one or two of her own, and then the thing was upon her. She could not run. She could not move. In a flash, she saw the undead face of a woman, a face cut almost all the way around and barely held together. A shot of pain stabbed her stomach, and she jolted awake, sitting upright and lifting up her nightshirt. Her stomach wavered in and out in startled breathing, but it was untouched. She switched on her lamp to be sure and to look around her room to be sure nothing was there.
Yukiyo continued to dream, swiping a closed fist at the air to mimic stabbing, even though nothing was there.
Dreaming it was one thing, but living it was quite another. Yukiyo felt it leaving her house. Technically, it overpowered her the minute she was
in full dress, giving her the drive to go out, but she did not feel it in its full force until her feet hit the streets. She was invisible to everyone that did not want to see her and only became visible once someone did. And then she could remove the mask and show them her face.
But not yet. She was still in her own neighborhood. She needed to roam into more public territory, more mainstream and hidden territory.
Yukiyo blended in with the hustle and bustle of the Saturday crowd. She closed her fist around the scissors in her pocket, an overwhelming urge to use them and use them well. She walked with people, looked at people, waiting for them to look at her. She spotted young girls her age, the giggly and gossipy kind that only wore the latest fashions. Asumi clones. These girls had colored stripes through their hair and eyeshadow to match, like they were trying to make a statement. Well, what kind of statement? Did they think they were pretty? Did they think they were prettier than her? Of course they weren’t. It was time for her to make that clear.
She slid in between the crowds to get close to the girls, three of them spread out to cover the whole sidewalk. She aligned herself on the edge where the grass started, teetering on the edge of her reality and theirs. They noticed her but not as much as she wanted them to. She inched her face up to them and waited for that reaction to her ghostly eyes and hidden face. Especially when they stopped walking.
“Am I pretty?”
The girls turned up their noses.
“No,” one of them said. Yukiyo revealed herself.
“How about now?”
The girls gasped and backed away.
“What happened to your face?”
“Freak!”
“She's a freak!”
13 Night Terrors Page 32
