Sanzo and Hakkai had quietly crept from the inn to the open road, which only a few feet away from their line of vision was obscured from the now dark sky. The stars had dimmed, and they no longer shined as if their swirling gases were set aflame.
"That's odd..." remarked Hakkai, observing the sky, surveying it carefully to its fullest.
"Really?" said Sanzo sarcastically.
"The stars...they're not...as bright," muttered Hakkai, pointing at one small dot in the sky. "Even the planets are caliginous..."
Sanzo stopped to glare at the stuffed moon that hung low in the sky as if someone had tied it the stars, and it had fallen to close to the ground.
"Damn moon...someone should torch the friggin' thing. I can't see in front of me,"
"Maybe that's the city's doing."
"Don't make me shudder."
The two tired young men made their way painstakingly slow along the road, grasping on the buildings so not to trip on any corpse that possibly found its grave outside the structures. Overtime, they had hiked past seven buildings and were then working on crossing the bell tower that loomed above them threateningly, as if the bell could plummet and smash their heads in only a matter of seconds. Suddenly, like an arrow fired through fog, Sanzo and Hakkai heard a small sound that penetrated the still night. A quiet creaking, and slowly, they realized it originated from the alley across the road. A remote sound, barely recognizable. Sanzo couldn't place his finger on it.
"That sound...like a human walking..." croaked Hakkai. A sweat droplet lingered at his temple. Sanzo chuckled to himself.
"Corpses?"
"No...someone alive. Waiting."
"Right. Let's greet them, shall we?"
They stumbled across the road and carefully entered the thin alley.
"One at a time," whispered Hakkai, "They alley's to thin for both of us together,"
So they filed into the darkness, one by one, sluggishly. The creaking stopped.
"The movement...its disappeared," murmured Hakkai.
"No shit Sherlock."
"It senses us."
"Perhaps."
Impetuously, a sudden thump! was heard as Hakkai hastily turned around to face a corpse dangling in midair head on, suspended by a rope tightening its neck, its
pupil-less eyes bulging, mouth gaping(the jaw was broken fiercely), flies borrowing into its hair.
"Dear god..." gasped Hakkai as stepped back, knocking into Sanzo as they both tripped to the ground.
Sanzo was greeted by another corpse, this one frozen in a magnitude of terror. The corpse's arms were locked, clawing at it's own face in utter horror, hanging above him.
"Holy shit!" yelled Sanzo as Hakkai began to faint on top of him. Sanzo crumbled to the ground, dizzy from the rotting stench. He blacked out as Hakkai did the same.
"Cornsilk...oh Cornsilk...where have the children gone? Where have the precious beasts gone now?" sang the man sweetly, horridly, as Cornsilk sobbed into her hands. Her face was in a terrible mess, tears staining her pale cheeks. The man placed a tender hand on her face. Although a wretched, sadistic man, there seemed a hint of beauty in his taunting face.
"My poor Cornsilk! You weep...poor, poor, wretched, pathetic, worthless Cornsilk!" comforted the man, "Lift your head high, for you have done a wondrous act. You have pleased me, and it shall not be forgotten!"
He smiled happily as she screamed into her hands.
"I am the perfect Creator! My visions are perfect, and you have begun to fulfill my perfect dreams! Well done, my Cornsilk, little Cornsilk, my pet..."
Cornsilk slapped the hand away as the man's expression darkened.
"You're mad," she whispered, trembling in defiance,
"What did you say?" he whispered dangerously.
"You're...ma--"
"DO YOU DARE DEFY ME, YOU VIPER, YOU LURID CREATURE?!"
Cornsilk lost all breath as he grabbed her neck and squeezed. She made several attempts to wrench his hand away but failed. Cornsilk opened her mouth, tried with all the strength she muster to catch a single breath of air.
"Yes! Yes, that's it, a few more moments of utter pain and it will all be over..." he whispered as Cornsilk sagged, her face almost blue from lose of breath.
"But wait! I sense a greater punishment...other ways I can deal with you...Yes, of course, an act of rewarding obedience and punishing defiance fused into one!"
He howled with screeching laughter and let go of Cornsilk's neck. He pushed her violently to the floor and rolled Cornsilk onto her back. He grinned slyly, savoring the tasteful moment of when Cornsilk realized how much grief and pain would befall her. The man bent over her and roughly grabbed her legs, pushing them open (an easy task, she was weak) to a large "v" shape. The man rapidly, sloppily ripped open her shirt and caressed her naked torso.
"I will...subdue you..." he whispered and proceeded to take of her long and flowing skirt.
"Savor the sensation, Cornsilk! Let me capture you, open...open to me, allow me to give you what you have desired!" She screamed as the man laughed and laughed.
"I am, the Creator! The Creator visions a perfect world, for I am a perfect Architect! Perfection is mine, it belongs to me, I created it! Mine, for me to hold, to cherish, to Create!" The man gently kissed Cornsilk's tear washed lips.
"Mine! Perfection is mine! You are the dagger I wield, I the hand to slash the world with it! Mine!" His voice seemed to echo around the walls as the moon gave a dazzling performance of a vast aurora. The moon lit the room to its full content, as it reflected off the pale and naked bodies that crowded the carpeted floor...His voice echoed, echoing...like a never ending song...
The dawning of the sun came rapidly, to quickly for Sanzo's liking. He awoke, startled by Hakkai's still body that lay on top of him. He ripped Hakkai off his chest as Hakkai awoke too, vomiting on the perfect ground.
"Shit..." said Sanzo, massaging his forehead with his temples. Hakkai breathed heavily and wiped his dripping mouth on his sleeve.
"There were corpses...but...my god!--" said Hakkai, eyes widening as he looked around wildly and disturbed, "Where are they?!"
"The corpses. They've, just, gone!" growled Sanzo, "I hate moving dead things."
"Perhaps they were moved by someone, or something else."
"That's what I'd like to think," muttered Sanzo, standing up and stretching. The two men staggered out of the alley as the sun blinded their sleep deprived eyes.
In the distance, Sanzo and Hakkai heard the faint call of Gojyo and Goku calling their names.
Finally, Gojyo and Goku ran around the corner of the bell tower to embrace Sanzo and Hakkai.
"Shit, we thought the corpses got you!" gasped Goku has be wrapped his arms around Sanzo.
"GET OFF ME, MONKEY!" bellowed Sanzo, thwacking him with his fan. Goku rubbed his head as Gojyo explained their wild night.
"Well, we got up during the night because we couldn't sleep, right? So we go out walking, tripping over a few corpses here and there, when we here somebody walking also, around the bell tower--"
"You heard it to?" gasped Hakkai.
"Yeah!" shouted Goku, "It was like somebody pacing, you know, thump thump?"
"Shut up monkey. So we heard the pacing and looked up to the bell tower. The moon was all-weird; it only lit up the tower windows, oddly. So we look up there, and we see a figure of a human. Possibly a woman. We were just about to check it out, when these hanging corpses scared the shit out of us and we left the scene, back to the inn. But everywhere, it seemed like these corpses all hung from ropes. Sick and twisted!"
Everyone was silent, taking in Gojyo's tale.
"What do you think we should do, Sanzo?" asked Goku eagerly.
"What do you think, monkey?" he asked sarcastically, "We go up to the tower. We'll have a word with whoever is up there."
The man stood up and stretched from above Cornsilk's ruined body. She was panting. Cornsilk sat up and rubbed her naked shoulders, hiding her breasts from his view. She stared, struck with shock, at the floor and not the man. The man laughed and grinned horribly.
"I quite enjoyed that," he said, pulling his shirt over his head. Cornsilk grabbed her own clothing and did the same before collapsing on the floor from lack of sleep.
"Get up. You are so weak." the man muttered, and grabbed her underarms and heaved her onto the stool. He put a new canvas on the stand and clapped his hands together.
"Time to paint! My favorite part of this brilliant day..."he shouted gleefully.
"What...what do you want me to paint?" She stuttered, grabbing a brush, fully under his control, his wishes, to swept away, understanding now that she could no longer disobey.
"You shall only address me as the Creator. Understand?"
She nodded numbly.
"Creator...what do you wish me to paint today?"
"Excellent!" he shouted, raising his arms to the rafters below the large brass bell, "You're learning."
He rubbed his chin and thought to himself for a moment.
"You have my painted my perfect city, my childless city. But there is still dirt yet to clean. Humans to be destroyed. So to continue the work of work, let's pluck off the city's people. Make the population two. Two. You and me and no one else! And since I can sense a creative flame burning in your soul, I'll let you do the dirty part and you can think of how ghastly their deaths will be."
Cornsilk nodded, eyes glassy, as she dipped her brush into Cornsilk and orange paint and dashed a few strokes on the blank canvas before her. After a sluggish hour, she had completed the city. Every few minutes, the man would whisper something into her ear and she nod, transfixed. Cornsilk washed the tip and saturated the bulb in a rich black. A few more strokes, and every structure were occupied by mangled and bloody corpses. Every door was open, revealing the mind-boggling scene.
"You have taste," said the Creator, stroking her midnight sky colored hair.
Cornsilk said nothing and simply gazed at the painting, seduced by the feast and show of blood and misery. Silently, a small breeze floated into the tower room and blew the torches flames away. Cornsilk stood gracefully and walked, hand in hand with the man, to gaze at what the paints had turned the city into. She turned and looked into his murky gray eyes, as if possessed and in a heavy trance. Subdued and tame she had become.
Loudly, the Sanzo party stormed up the twisting and winding staircase of the tower.
"I wonder...maybe the murderer...rests here..." said Hakkai between breaths as they ran up the stairs. When the four men finally reached the top, they came across a large wooden door, bolted with iron and locked with malice.
"Everyone out of the way!" shouted Hakkai before he summoned a large substance of ki and blasted the doorway with the powerful and looming energy that resided in his soul.The door fell like shattered glass...and revealed a carpeted room, a canvas stand, and a young woman with midnight sky colored hair sitting on the stone sill of the window. She stared, unmoving, giving no reaction to the young men now staring equally unmoving at her. The girl's hands were stained with paint, or blood(it was so red). No one dared to breathe. Then, Goku broke the silence and gasped as he gazed at the paintings now hanging on the wall: Ones of corpses, some hanging from ropes, some dying, the lit stars, the sinking moon, the perfect city, a young girl like the one before him, with perfect skin, eyes, hair... Sanzo strided into the room and ripped a painting of the wall. The girl suddenly screamed shrilly, and ran to Sanzo. She made an attempt to grab the painting out of his hands but missed, almost intentionally, and clutched his robes instead. She held on as Sanzo just watched with cold eyes. Tears erupted from her eyes, pouring down her cheeks as she sank to the ground, holding his robes, dragging Sanzo with her. He was thoroughly shocked, genuinely disturbed. The girl gazed into his brilliant violet eyes, and whispered hoarsely, "I have seen and done what no one has seen or done...Horrors unimaginable...there is no turning back..."
She cried harder. Sanzo roughly grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands away from his robes in the fashion he would normally, but stopped. Sanzo stopped. He then sensed something in this crying girl, something that once took the heart of him at a young age. As if she too, suffered a loss so painful, it would forever seal her heart to the joys of the outside world. Like you could never smile again. Never love...
"What is this shit?!" shouted Gojyo, walking over angrily pulling Sanzo up to face him.
"Would you shut your mouth, kappa?" said Sanzo, as Hakkai put a soft hand on Gojyo's shoulder.
"Sanzo, this girl destroyed all these people and we have to do something about it. She's clearly mad," said Hakkai, summoning ki that spread around the girl's body, placing her on the stool. The ki swung around her limbs like ropes, holding her in place.
"I didn't kill anyone...I only made it possible." whispered the girl, clutching the ends of the stool, her knuckles white.
Sanzo placed a sympethetic hand on her shoulder, to his companions' bewilderment.
"What is with you Sanzo?!" shouted Goku, to which he was answered by Sanzo holding his shoureiju to Goku's forehead.
"Like it or not, I don't think she killed all these people willingly. Her eyes...they tell me something. I see something that once resided in my eyes," said Sanzo. He looked straight into Gojyo's, Hakkai's, and Goku's eyes.
"We've all suffered loses, some greater than others. But her eyes tell me she has suffered much more than any of us. We're not perfect. Neither is she,"
At the word "perfect", the girl became rigid and white, as she croaked,
"Never say that word...never say it..."
Sanzo frowned and said, "What--?"
"He wanted perfection. He took me, and I gave Him perfection...in this city, in the sky, in the people...in me."
Gojyo looked at Hakkai, at Goku, and at Sanzo.
"What happened...can you tell us?" he asked softly to the girl.
"I can...but I cannot. If He were to come, to find you here...he would do far more acts worse than killing me,"
Goku withdrew his bow staff, and jubilantly, he shouted, "We'll make sure you're safe!"
She sighed heavily as the ki slowly fell away from her body.
"It started only a week ago. I was sitting at the fountain in the middle of the city, trying to paint the birds, when a man with dark hair, almost cut in the fashion as yours," she said, pointing to Hakkai.
"He came to me, and asked me what I was painting. What I could paint. I said everything, and it is no lie. He glared, disgusted, and he said, could you paint perfection? I said this city was perfection. I could paint the city. And I did, to his satisfaction. And he took me away to this tower, forcing me to paint perfect things for him. First, I painted the city again to his visions. Second, he forced me to paint a city without children. Then..." she stopped, as more tears fell. Sanzo wiped them away with his sleeve, and nodded.
"He...he became hateful, and he..." she placed her head in her hands, "I now carry the bastard's child. After, he clouded my vision, he took complete control. I was his puppet, and I am still. His words are my actions. I painted the city without its people, killed them off, painted them battered and bloodstained, hanging from ropes, laying in their homes, dead! Gruesome and painful deaths greeted them all in turn, all in one night...I did not murder these people willingly. If I could, I would give my very life to bring them back,"
She stood from her stool and walked stagnantly to the bell tower window. She grasped the edge with a shaking and white hand. She turned to face the four men, gazing into Sanzo's eyes with a passion and attraction like no other.
"I wanted to jump out this window when that monster, the Creator he was called, left to search for more imperfect lands. But I couldn't, I can't, because with his tone, his sweet intoxicating poems, he could give me a perfect description and I could paint anything with him. Anything he desired. When he left, I tried many times to paint with my own hand but no art was born. Only with him, I could live the life I dreamt when I was young-- a perfect artist,"
Gojyo pulled out a cigarette and lit it quietly.
Hakkai put his hand on Gojyo's shoulder.
Goku put away his staff.
Sanzo did not breathe or move.
"What is your name?" asked Sanzo.
The girl sighed, "It is...Mitsuya. The monster calls me Cornsilk,"
Goku unexpectedly laughed, "Cornsilk? This guy's insane!"
Sanzo withdrew his harisen and smacked Goku upright the forehead.
"Bastard," muttered Goku, rubbing his forehead. Mitsuya smiled a shy smile.
"My god..."she whispered, giggling, "I haven't been able...to smile for so long."
Hakkai smiled as well, "It's fun, isn't it?"
Gojyo raised an eyebrow. "You. Are. Pathetic, Hakkai."
Hakkai chuckled and put his hand on his forehead.
"Mitsuya, we have to get you out of here. We can't bring back the people, but if the Creator comes back, we're all dead,"
Mitsuya's smile faded.
"I can't go back. Not with this child, not with their blood on my hands,"
Surprisingly, Hakkai's casual posture turned angry. "You have to come back! I once had...a lover like you. Raped, controlled, and with child. She slit her throat in front of me when I had killed 1,000 demons to save her. Get out of this city, this tower. Don't make her mistake. My mistake. We can help you survive," Hakkai's companions stared in awe at their friend.
"Hakkai...does this mean...?" asked Gojyo
"Yes. I've put her death behind me,"
Goku grinned. "This is great!" said Goku.
The group of suffering misfits left the tower with Mitsuya, back to the inn, when to Hakkai's discomfort, Hakuryuu's state had only grown worse.
"Oh my," said Hakkai, stroking Hakuryuu's back, "We're not leaving any time soon! Hakuryuu's not getting any better,"
Sanzo sat down on one of the dormitory beds.
"Wonderful. We're sitting ducks to the Creator in a city which he and Mitsuya created and have absolute control,"
"I'm sorry..." whispered Mitsuya, sitting next to Sanzo, hair sheltering her perfect eyes.
"It's not your fault. I'm not blaming you,"
Gojyo laughed.
"So the monk's warming up to the pretty painter. This is something I have to write down..." THWACK! "Oww...Sanzo that fucking hurt!"
Hakkai stopped stroking Hakuryuu and placed a thoughtful finger on his cheek.
"I have an idea. It will require Mitsuya's utter strength, but I think we can do it,"
"Yeah?" said Sanzo, gazing at Mitsuya with misty eyes. She blushed slightly, as a small smile was twitching on the corner of Hakkai's mouth.
"We return to the tower. Mitsuya will paint the city again, this time with people and children. We will give them weapons and wings, and give them good strength to destroy the Creator,"
"It won't work," said Mitsuya simply, "The Creator was the only one who could dictate me the perfect visions, because he sunk into my heart, my soul, and--" she stopped, and stared at Sanzo with a feeling of discovery and amazement and revelation, as he too, then understood.
"And he loved me."
