A Tale of Misfits: Part I
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His face collapsed in stages: mist came across his eyes, old under the rough patch of eyebrows; his features crumpled; and his aged mouth sagged down. A wreath of smoke rose up into the cold-laden air soaked in the rank odour of his last sake-suffused breaths. He painted that little village, and he had painted it good and red.
It was honour. A whistling air slapped against the stones by the large stone-lantern. From this perch, the house was black. Shadow and dark mingled, a decadent conjoining. The hearth had gone cold in the room. He could not see a thing, not even the glint of light on the swords; his wife had cleaned them well. Come morning, she would have to clean him, too—guts, blood, sweat in the snow. It would just freeze there the way meat did.
Snow fell and guts stained the ground. They would never remain there for winter's complete blessing—some things had to be washed away. Sweat and grime . . . hair matted in clumps to the neck and the side of a face that bore grooves of time. Snow hung in his eyelashes and fresh sweat poured into his eyes. He wore the visage of a new pain upon his face, sitting beneath the uncaring sky to emit the final breaths that dragged out more than protesting bits of himself; yet when it came—bearing a nameless countenance, gliding upon muted steps to his heart—it mattered little to his body: his spirit sought liberation in the deep cradle of its arms.
A serpent smile and a ripple of a delicious excitement that went to his mortal core . . . rent asunder, his soul shaking, dancing to the soundless tunes of its flute. Honour. Name. Face. Gone. And, quietly, he sat, his voice lost in the midst of sighs, slumped deep into the depths of stained snow. Hands trembling, heart calling, bemoaning, and as he made one last desperate attempt to catch a firefly, a desire, he fell forward. His face met the smooth sheet of snow, eyes staring at the grey whirls above his last home and a silent figure of a young man, with such red eyes, who stood by the stone-lantern. He had fulfilled his request, and then everything washed away and he was awash in desire. Quiet. Still. Free.
A shadow fell across a young mouth, reds still watching the evanescent chakra flee the body in waves—it had gone very cold!
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Running from the shinobi was not easy: he was foolish when he scrambled into dark's arms, muscles tense, one arm flexed as he held his pa's prized-sword high, aiming towards the sky as though it was his mortal enemy; and it had chased him, driven him out of the cradle of a fine city, a little pouch full of stones in his pocket, and a heart of gold in his breast. Stolen. Rascal. A bloody rascal.
Lightning was crooked and swift, violent flashes catching him beneath the leaning boughs; and thunder, a beast, hitting his bones and gripping his spine with a hand of a Kami's fury—catch him and make him pay. The Kami was loud, but merciful, too.
Earth shook, angry like his ma, and its vibrations went into his limbs, and a delicious current of haste sped through his body. So he ran, and he ran fast, and he ran with a reckless abandon, eyes searching in his crazed face—purple-like eyes, cold like steel, sharp like wolf's. Amidst the dark, amidst the mist, amidst the shadow that leapt at him like daemons, his path ran along the forest's edges.
Pebbles and stones lay cold and still, too heavy for the wind to move. Voices undulated through wind, and when he stopped and turned, to stare back from the edge of the faceless curtain, he saw a flash—their voices died as he ran through to salvation; and he was free!
When he came upon a cliff, his heart leapt in his breast. He would leave the fools so far behind. So he descended down the slick stones, rain beating against his old trousers, soaking through; he felt water glide down to his genitals, and he cursed Mother-Nature, Kami, and all his damned whores! Outwitting Itachi was hard, man!
He went skittering down the pebbled peak, feet sure and firm. When his sandals braced down upon the path, mist whirled about his feet. It was too cold, and from here, snow draped the dark humps that were valleys far off in the distance. Wind thinned the fog, and he could see a bit better. That was his destination.
He ran, pumping force into his rippling muscles, and they worked on command. Voices behind his back had died; they were still searching, like headless roosters, in the forest for his signs, but rain ploughed and racked the ground with colder hands. His muddy prints had diminished in his wake that, now, men searched for other signs of his great escape—broken twigs, threads from his clothes, turned stones amongst other things. They would be disappointed.
Rain stopped suddenly and moved away from his path; it was not well-trodden and hard to trace in the dark. Grass grew tall here, taller than his hips, and he was obscured well in its vast rotten shade. He slowed down, heartbeats easing up in the wake of his decision.
Wind turned nasty as he went, and sounds went into hiding, sucked up by night's nostrils. It had been hard to locate the big house of the greasy old man, but the young leader had managed it, somehow, though he never anticipated for him to go mad, dance, and murder in the light of his eyes—but things happened, and it was best to lock them away down secret's gullets.
Snow crunched beneath his sandals: a coating of frost lay over the earth. Nothing grew on trees, and crooked they stood in the full-moon's light. His breaths grew heavy—he needed water. Why had he picked a time like this to pillage the bastard? He exhaled a slow breath and watched wisps of it appear in front of his face.
Beyond the shadow, beyond the gravestones, which rose like stone-limbs from the lumps in the ground, stood a large house, looming. He was late and he was cold. The young leader would not be happy. He passed his pointy-teeth along the lips and proceeded forward.
Fog parted and let him in. He sheathed the blade he had taken—the stones remained tucked away in his pocket. He slapped his hand on them once, just to be sure, and went through the open gate. There, beyond the hazy structures of stone-lanterns, were a series of deep prints in the bed of snow. They ended near a recumbent figure that lay in a large red stain in the white: though the smell was bearable, his innards had flowed out on the snow.
Suigetsu raised his eyes and found him sitting on the highest step, with his feet on the third. A lantern glowed on his right, and light from it struck his cheek and made it glow more. His eyes had thawed, unlike the snow, black and sober in his face. His sword was sheathed. He had not touched that man—no, he had taken his own life, driven mad by his eyes and their latent love.
"You're late," he said, his voice frostier than snow, and one half of his face was cast in shadow.
"It ain't easy bein' the thief," Suigetsu said, showing teeth and a smile. He shoved his numb hand, which had been throttled by rain, into his pocket and pulled out the leather pouch. He shook it a bit and smooth stones jangled inside.
He threw it at the young man, and he caught it with a reflexive movement of his arm. He looked at it once, with an unreadable expression, and tucked it away inside his cloak. When he stood up, his cloak slackened over his shoulder, and he tugged it back in place. Then, as if out of habit to darken his countenance, he pulled the cowl over his head and wrapped a fold of the cloak over his mouth. Suigetsu could not see his face now . . .
Suigetsu scratched his thigh. (The coarse mixture of rain and sweat, and Kami knew what else, was really making his skin itch.) He watched the youth make his way to him, leaving grey prints of his presence behind in the snow—he had avoided treading through the visible stain.
He did not stop and Suigetsu followed behind him. The house had gone silent. Mist rose, rolling upwards from the mounds as though they were expelling spirits of the dead man's ancestors. Smells of decaying earth and incense permeated the graveyard, and shadows flickered about the trees as clouds shifted and allowed light to shine down upon them.
"Where's the place?" he asked, traversing through the dry fauna that crackled beneath their sandals.
"Close ta Mist," Suigetsu spoke from behind, his gaze upon his back. "Ya sure ya even want ta do this? I don't know, Sasuke—it could get messy."
Sasuke did not answer for several long seconds, his breaths a little heavy in the cold. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around and his eyes glowed, as if in answer. "We can't get a safe-passage into the village without him, and besides," he paused, drawing in a deep and long breath, which he let out in a slow sigh, "he promised me a scroll he stole from the Uchiha," and his voice vibrated at the end with a bit of amusement.
Sasuke truly had grown weary of his former team by now. Suigetsu could not blame him: one was an obsessed and bawling nutter, the other an enamoured and in-constant-state-of-heat nutter, and he had no clue who the porn-hoarding, masked-wearing nutter was—what kind of cunt hid half his face like that for the sake of Shōnen stoic-hero mystique? The dude was such a try-hard cock! Suigetsu could barely function with Karin and Jūgo around, along with the free wanker-pheromones they expelled into the air: three more of 'em and he might as well just buy himself a grave—Sasuke could only parry so many knickers his admirers tossed his way . . . sometimes, Suigetsu really pitied him for the wankers' woes life had thrust upon him were a great burden! Poor thing—He was only an adolescent . . .
Sasuke did not say any more, turned around, started walking with a steady gait towards the light dots that glimpsed in the valley. Suigetsu gazed over his shoulder at the manor one last time and followed him; the stain burnt brightly in his mind . . .
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A flock of birds darted out over the water and skimmed the lake. He stood there under the sky when the sun was brightest. A warm hue burnt its way down the side of his cheek. It was a warm day, and leaves had lost their lustre, yellowed on the ground.
Upon crunching leaves, autumn's signs came. Slithering lights, bright and yellow, descended on waves, their undersides a flower green as they fell with a muted cadence on the shore. Mist was rising from earth's exhaling pores, and soon, the ground would be a thrall to its presence.
A young girl came out from between the forest's maze that wore a weary bloom, her feet crushing the leaves, and he turned a little to look upon her countenance: she had arranged the red hair with a curious curl over the forehead today. She whiffed the air and wrinkled her small nose and pink freckles there came closer to appear as red dots on her cheeks.
"It's gettin' cold. We've got to make it back before the nightfall," she said in a chiming sort of voice and placed her hand on the tree behind her.
He turned his head away and gazed at the lake, its quietness was a song. Beyond its shores, trees stood with a sheen of moisture on their limbs. Soon, a dark would rise from their midst and spill over the lake to darken its shades. Then moon's lights would glide alongside the dark waters, sing in unspeaking tongues for the unheeding forest's ears.
This had been a strange mission: he was asked to deliver a message to a man at a small outpost. He went there with her when the sun was cold and the land's contours, dim. A drizzle hindered his vision, so he had drawn out his Sharingan to see better. The man was a fat one, and he looked at him strange. His frumpy apparel did not make him seem any more presentable.
Sasuke took the message from his pudgy hand—the man was a little eager to grasp his hand in his and stroke the skin in suggestive motions—and left before indifference drained from his face to be replaced by annoyance. The girl had been chirpy and matched his pace to make haste to the next meeting-point. The storm's anger only grew.
White sparks made the forest bright and bled dry the shades—colours in a scroll that diluted in rain. A wolf, lost and hungry in the forest, had stood in their path. It growled, unafraid of lightning's temper, and contracted its muzzle to snarl a challenge.
Then it lunged, feet propelling it forward to cover about five metres in a heartbeat, and she had hidden behind his back with a sudden whimper. He did not want to fell a hungry animal, so he pulled out his long Kunai and curled his fingers firmly around the hilt to use it to his advantage.
As soon as it came within an arm's reach, he slid out of the way and hit its head. The heavy hilt struck the wolf's snout. It whined and turned its head to the side and closed its eyes. Then it went skidding back across the muddy ground, unbalanced, its legs sliding and churning to find its footing.
The agility of its movements was surprising. In a beat, it righted itself and showed an angry countenance to him, its mouth a twisted curl around the teeth. It stalked to the left and then to the right, rumbling sounds coming from the throat's depth, but it dared not approach him in the red light that issued forth from his eyes.
Its skin trembled and rippled over the visible bumps of its ribcage, its fur muddy and matted. Seeing its pitiful condition, he knew it would never survive the storm; so he reached into his bag and threw a dried-up chunk of meat, which was wrapped in a cloth, at it. He had taken it with himself—just in the case the journey was prolonged.
Without any hesitation, the wolf approached the cloth, sniffed it, emitted a satisfied gruff. Then it picked it up delicately between its jaws and disappeared into the forest's arms.
"Sasuke! Why did you do that? We've got nothing to eat, and the next outpost is miles away!" she spoke, her voice ringing above the ululations of forest and wind.
"It's fine, Karin—we'll find something in the forest," he said, with an air of finality, his face dark in the night. Then he walked ahead, with her floundering in his wake against the wind, to the caves up in the mountains. They had to take refuge for the night . . .
The cave's refuge was a cold one: Sasuke and Karin placed a large rock before the mouth to keep the water from pouring inside. He lit a fire to illuminate the area. Thankfully, he had gathered dry branches from the forest in the morning: sun was a warm companion then.
Now, fire crackled and flickered in the stray wind that dumped rain droplets (from a gap above the stone) in their direction, but it was bearable. Karin had wrung her hair out till slow drops fell from the long dark tips. Her cheeks were decorated with a cold blush. She pouted her peach-pink mouth and crawled her way to him. It was night and he was tired, so he did not protest.
"I win!" she ejaculated and pressed into him.
Sasuke frowned; she had made a bet that if they did not reach the second meeting-place before nightfall, he would give her what she wanted.
Then she arched her neck and whispered: "put it in. You said you'd do it if you lost—don't you turn twelve tonight?"
He did not think a storm would stop his journey; but, yes, he made a promise to her, and, yes, it was his birthday tonight. His brother had sent in a missive that he would come tomorrow—he wished that Itachi had come today . . .
Karin curled her arms about Sasuke's neck and pressed her body against his. He was a boy of twelve now, yet he had never been embroiled in passions that involved blooming youths. At this moment, he felt a pleasure—the strangest sort—fill his centre, roll down to the idle flesh between his thighs, swell in his loins.
He had never thought of mating before. He read of it, saw it depictured in Shunga in passion-colours, but he never thought he would be asked to perform the act. He wanted to ask his brother, but the mere thought filled him with shame . . . surely, his brother would understand that he chose to lose his virtue at an age so young? He sighed . . .
It was a stormy night, and his body had lost the strength in the struggle to make it here. Sweat came from his skin in response to her little hands' touches. He wanted to push her away, but it would be a terrible idea in the storm. He had promised, and, if she ran out in frustration, he would have to search for her; he did not have the heart, nor the patience, for such an arduous task. So he sat in silence and felt his loins burning in his trousers with a delicious warmth. It was a new feeling . . .
Karin strained her neck and pressed a little kiss to Sasuke's throat, and the blood there smote the skin with a visible mark. His heart thudded and sent a sinister rhythm through his veins, and his body responded with a silent bloom and sweat. Seeing his expressionless face, she grew bolder and planted open-mouthed, wet kisses along his soft jaw—he was a just boy, after all.
Her hand proceeded lower and rested on the inside of his thigh. His beautiful face had a calm and sweet expression—something she had never seen before. In the dance of fire's light, she saw a glow deepen to red in his cheeks and nape. Curious of the anatomy between his legs, she stole a hesitant glance at his deep eyes and then cupped the thing, an innocent movement.
A sigh slipped from Sasuke's lips that caused his eyes to shut. His nape and brow were dotted with quivering sweat-drops; some crawled down his skin and drew a magnificent map over his changed countenance and flesh. Karin wore a curl of smile. She was an adolescent girl of one and six, not a woman—yet; and though she had lost her virtue for few coins, to claim him would be a dream come true!
She did not know how to . . . play with him, yet here he was, sitting with a calm disposition by her side, body sweat-riddled, flesh eager. She brushed her palm against that growing organ in rough strokes, and it pulsed and twitched in his trousers, demanding attention.
Sasuke's brow was strained, and in his countenance was the glimmer of boyish lust. Karin's own heart was a whipping fish. The place between her legs had grown moist, aching for . . . his flesh that grew in length and thickness. Impatient, she removed her clothes and stood with a body abloom with ruddiness—in the traversing shadow's shades cast by flames. When he heard the rustling, he watched her, confused, but did not stop her movements.
Karin's flesh was tender, coated with sweat, and trembling under his gaze. She had a nice flare to her thighs, but her breasts were like that of a child; between her tender-tinted thighs were two fleshes that hung beyond the soft clasp of swollen lips. Mucus hung from sparse hairs that adorned her genitals. A sudden thought breached his mind, and it was so primal that he felt himself grow thicker at the prospect of a thorough exploration of her channel.
Then Karin sat down and reached a hand towards Sasuke's idle one, grabbed hold of it, guided it to her genitals. He wanted to pull away, yet something in him prodded the baser-half to indulge his urges. His fingers glided a smooth path down towards the groove, and to his surprise, she grew more wet—more slick.
Swooning breaths came from her lips, her face lovely as it assumed the agony of a wild expression that he found most strange. Too curious, he plunged one finger inside, and the tightness made something dark thrum at the back of his head. A shade crossed his vision, Sharingan singing, a hushed falsetto, in the chorus that resounded and rebounded in his still-small body, which had yet to know of youth's heats.
Karin lay down on her stomach, and her curiously wet thighs came together to create a tender seam of her buttocks, to join the slick lips and hide the warm hole that awaited his response. Sasuke took off his shirt, which felt the heaviest it had ever felt, took out his escalating arousal, and broached, with the hard flesh, her cask of pleasures, slowly, slowly, and drew a string of arousal with a backstroke.
And again he pushed in, pumped fiercely, and drew out to enjoy the pull of her tight channel against his crown. He pressed his breast against her back, her hair abrading the skin, and his muscles collapsed into hers. Joined deeply, he rode her hard, his mind contracted to a single dot and everything collapsed away—vibrations running through this loam-house made of flesh and heated by spirit.
Her gasps were a music to his ears; her sheath, a dark place that had stripped him of his thoughts and of things back home. His hips rolled, pumping full into the depths of her, setting the skin of her back and buttocks to rippling—it was bliss, nothing but the sweetest bliss, and it had whittled a piece of his spirit down to a toy for his flesh's hands!
Karin's laboured breaths sent the dirt on the ground puffing up, her fingers trembling beneath his. From overhead, sharp tips of dried-up tree-roots let loose streamlets that fell down and hit against the skin burning—blood boiling in the venous web, muscle coils pulsing underneath the organic cover stretched to its limit. Bodies trembled, danced, writhed with a rhythm they knew by design.
The press of his breast and tingling skin against hers, and she felt that her world had just begun and changed, starting from inside that place from where the vibrations originated. They scaled her flesh and wormed deep into her bones and rattled them to make muted music notes. She . . . loved him. It was love. This was love! Her body sung, in love!
Colours swept through dust particles, pretty little fireflies, gliding and glimpsing right before her hazy eyes, illuminations to entice her in the flood of fire's light. His lips at her nape burnt raw, a cool fire that sizzled her flesh inside out.
He grew thicker, hotter, eager to expel inside her; his soul and flesh had come together in his breast to create delicate strings; and once plucked, they produced a wondrous tremolo; and it poured forth from the tip to flood her estuary . . . he was spent, and his body moulded into hers after the release . . .
Then, as the feeling of frenzy mellowed and drained from Sasuke's body, he backed away, breathing harsh and ragged, and watched a vulgar mixture of arousal and semen flow from the slit between her thighs. Left streaks of white across her buttocks he had, too. There were these little vibrations in the flesh that rose from his thighs again at the sight of his own primal artistry, and he gulped. She rolled onto her back, face red and mouth smiling, and opened her thighs wide to allow him to enter her again, and he was so charmed by tunes from his loins and lusts that he lay upon her and entered the dark loam—yet again.
When morning came, Sasuke's demeanour had changed, much to her dismay. The storm inside him had faded, too. Outside, a light was sent spilling from between the two peaks. Ground was covered in wet leaves, soggy. So they left off, Karin in Sasuke's wake, silent, their destination another meeting-place . . .
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He saw, through the cave's mouth, women bent double amidst the fields that swayed to breeze. In the wind-beaten fields, they toiled from dawn till dusk, their faces and hands dry from sun.
It was dark inside the cave and wind went whistling from the crevices. A noisome odour hung heavy, smoke-like, in the corners. He could not tell if it was because of the rotten gristles or something else . . . a rusty smell thrummed through air, like spirits.
He had travelled all this way to meet a holy man—no, a boy blooming into a man. Suigetsu had told him of his countenance and stature: he said that he was young, ungainly, and a lanky fellow, said that he could talk to Nature. He did not understand. It was the strangest thing, of which Suigetsu had spoken.
Outside the cave, women dug at the withered earth, with tired hands. It was a poor village. Itachi had gone to perform his Anbu duties again. After that last show of happy-killings, Sasuke did not think he had it in him to watch the intricacies of his brother's honest profession . . .
A flame broke out on his palm and shadows slithered further from light's questing hands. He heard faint prayer sounds come to him from the deep. He followed, with steps light, to their source, light radiating out to hit against all corners, illuminating slick walls. Water was coming in from the roof and collecting into the breaks in the ground.
Big prayer stones poked out from the earth that had not settled (moisture made it soft and muddy); their ends tapered off into fine claw-like tips. This was not done by nature—Men's hands had been at work here. He saw prayer ropes tied round them, with slips of paper pasted across the surfaces. They cast shadows of a beast's claws, reaching above ground, across walls.
He walked with a quiet determination towards the dark that came thickly from a large sanctum's mouth. A foetid odour pressed against his body like a gust of storm: he squeezed his nostrils together, closing them, opened his mouth to breathe, and turned away. The smell . . . it was unbearable!
Sasuke gasped in a few breaths, but the air had a stench that seared his lungs. The foul smell permeated air's pores and noxious seedlings erupted from them in answer, teasing the air till it went rippling, carrying the smell in all directions. This sanctum had become a grave of rotten men . . .
He turned around and saw spatters and stains on the cracked alter. They were black-ink in the shadow on a stone-scroll. Slack lines of red dripped from the stone in the light—the blood was still fresh. White light fell from the statue of a Kami propped up against the dark wall in the dirt.
From its stout arm, a severed head dangled, with half of the spine still attached to the neck; from this far, it appeared no different from a centipede: pieces of flesh and strings of slime still clung together in a manner of cobwebs between the bones; and when light passed through, the globules shone like eggs of moths between pliant boughs.
An image of a man, etched into a stone-tablet, was cradled by the other arm of the statue. The hand of this arm held a staff with rings, too. It was black, yet the statue was white as ash. He could not see the head: it was hidden behind the stone-tablet, into which the face of a young man was etched.
It was filled with colours most profound: white ash covered the face and red welled in and about the eyes, a Sharingan's imitation. The light made bright the white and his mien assumed a saintly semblance that was . . . sublime—a Kami before Kami. He did not understand, yet he heard the prayers that came from the man's heart, for this Kami's visage had goaded this worshipper into a hard submission.
Before light's waves, he sat in a deep bow, and his body was a dark and crooked tree-truck. He rose up, delirious, sweat-soaked, enamoured, and went into another deep bow; and he bowed prayer, bowed obeisance unto his Lord, his body shaking in abject servitude, tingling in the holy song's rapture!
A stream filled a natural stone basin and ash mantled in the basin, floating like more eggs. Kami's eyes, downcast, looked upon water in silence, as it went over the brim with a foamy froth and fell upon dirt in quiet splashes.
He had burnt human-flesh in the hearth and a caustic smell was released through the fatty secretions. The stench, most unholy, flooded Sasuke's lungs like clumps of hard charcoal. He coughed out the tar filling his lungs, and the prayers stopped. Sounds of autumn made him aware . . . of the place where he sat—a place that had its own songs. The man rose, a dark statue, in the light that still shone brightly behind him.
His red smeared hands bore witness to the sacrificed. His neck was adorned by a necklace of bleached bones—human? Sasuke could not say. The large man had, by his own hands, smoothed them down to little claws, fashioned in the shapes of the large prayer-stones.
When he turned a little, Sasuke beheld the affliction Nature had wrought upon him: a scourge coursed visibly under his skin; his arm bore ridges; his hands, claws. He was a very strange man; and he rose taller in Sasuke's vision, which turned red in danger, his crumpled garments trailing down to his feet, unfurling; and the man's visage that was a veneer of fury became a veneer of adoration—a vestige of Kami's songs bygone!
Then a sudden red took him to another peak, another state; and he fell down onto his knees, his outer shell receding into his skin. A song poured out from his lips, and he clasped his hands together, weeping. Autumn's wind and arms cradled his body and songs, cooling his fevers. In speech, he seemed most incapable; yet, between the ramblings and choruses, Sasuke caught his name: Jūgo . . .
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EN: Shunga (literal, spring pictures), a Japanese term for erotic art in woodblock prints.