Chapter 2
The first hour of travel, she does her best to pick out landmarks from the scenery as she's whisked away, hoping for any indication of their location. But her efforts are in vain, the sights and smells of the land are quickly lost in a blur, and no amount of struggling or protesting will bring her freedom; she can do nothing as she's carried away by the spirit called Koh.
Halfway through the trip Mai starts saying her goodbyes. She leaves a farewell for the boy with the scar, off on a political endeavor far from home, and another to the girl in pink. She sends a kiss to a little brother, and regards to a mother and father. A part of her scolds the sentimentality, the utter ridiculousness of her actions. How childish of her. Besides, it's an absurd notion that such thoughts —if it were possible for thoughts to travel, that is— could even make the journey back. But another part of her still hopes. And so she says them now, because she's certain that there's no chance that they'll be received if they're sent from the spirit world.
Instead, they arrive at a cave on the shore, the moon reflecting off the dark water.
Koh sets her down and Mai immediately turns away; she can feel his intent gaze on the back of her neck. She toys with a stiletto between her fingers.
She turns, and throws.
Koh dodges and the knife clatters harmlessly to the ground.
"If you keep trying that, I'm afraid that you'll bore me very quickly," he sighs.
She clenches her cheek to still her quivering lip, and remain composed. Her limbs are heavy with fatigue, and her eyelids threaten to droop shut, but instinct warns her that to do so now would be to sentence herself to death.
A hundred legs patter on the cave floor. A Noh mask stares back at her, lips curled into a blood-red smile. Her head hurts, and her vision shakes. None of it is real. None of it can be.
"Do you really steal faces?" she wonders aloud, inhaling deeply to keep her voice from wavering.
His laughter echoes off the cave walls, the Noh mask changes to the face of an owl, to a monkey, and then to a woman with dark hair and pale skin, sad eyes and sad lips. "My dear," the sad lips say, "do you really want to find out?"
She doesn't know what she's thinking —in fact, she isn't. All she can feel is her heart racing, sweat dripping down her brow, and the adrenaline coursing through her blood telling her to run. So she does.
Her feet carry her out through the mouth of the cave. And she has absolutely no idea where she's going, but she knows she can't stay here. She runs away from the shore, past rock formations that all look the same, tripping on the ashen ground. It's not until she's completely out of breath that she stops, doubled over, tears of exhaustion and fear running down her stoic face.
All she can hear is the sound of her pounding heart, and waves crashing along the shore in the distance. All she can see is black. Even if her surroundings were familiar, the night would make the land unrecognizable. She's not the least bit surprised when a familiar body wraps around her, and drags her away.
Koh laughs the entire way back.
He's so giddy with excitement, that when they arrive at the cave, he switches from face to face, from man to monkey, from monkey to woman. He screeches and jeers at her, hoping to elicit some emotion. His breath, foul and putrid, barely registers. All Mai feels is tired.
She sets herself down and curls to the side. There resides a fear that she'll slip up while she sleeps; she only rests her eyes, digging her fingers into the skin of her forearms each time she feels herself drifting. Sunlight breaks on the horizon when she finally nods off.
Mai jolts awake not three hours later to an empty cave. Four sea shells filled with water lay beside her, and she raises one to her lips and tests it with her tongue. It's fresh.
How considerate.
With one of her knives, she carves a notch for her first morning into the wall.
The cave stretches far back, and the walls are high, each sound a whisper as it echoes throughout the cavern. Her eyes shift nervously around the cave at every noise, and her knives stay at her fingers, more for comfort and less for self-defense.
She waits for his voice to ring in her ears, for his claws to trace her neck. She waits until the shadows outside the cave shrink away, until her stomach voices its discontent. He never comes.
Venturing out into the open, her eyes adjust to the light, the feeling of being hunted never leaving the pit of her stomach. At the water's edge, she waits for a reflection to ripple in beside her own. One never does.
She shuffles her feet in the sand, her fingers twitch as she backs away from the shore. She tells herself that it's only going to be a walk along the beach. And then she runs.
It's not a calculation. There is no strategy. There is no plan. But to stay is to die. To fight is to welcome the inevitable. Her mind drowns in fear. The only option is to run.
It's not like last night. She doesn't stop when her lungs burn, or when her sides ache. The sun shines —she's no longer blind— though in many respects it hinders her as well.
The sand turns to rock, hints of green begin to sprout from nowhere, the sounds of the waves upon the sand and the cry of the gulls have long disappeared. Smoke billows a ways away, where a rickety house sits between two rock pillars. Three tiny figures chase one another through a small little garden in the front. Mai breaks into a sprint.
The rickety house grows larger and larger, and her feet move faster and faster. She can faintly hear the cries of laughter coming from the garden, and her fatigue vanishes. Her mask begins to chip away, and she opens her mouth to cry out.
"It's been a while since I've added a child to my collection."
When she drops to the ground the slate of her face is wiped clean.
Koh doesn't laugh this time.
"My darling," he says when they arrive back at the cave, "it's not as amusing the second time around."
Defeated, she sinks down to the cave floor and rests her eyes. Her heart doesn't pound, her limbs don't shake, fear is replaced with despair, and despair with emptiness.
And for the first time since being abducted, Mai can think clearly.
To stay is to die. To fight is to welcome the inevitable. To run? There is no point.
Mai opens her eyes.
"Can't the same be said for faces?" she speaks, and her voice is unwavering —tired but clear. "Doesn't it get boring after a while?"
The Noh face beams and draws close to her.
"No, it never does," his breath reeks. Like rotting corpses. "That's precisely why I take them. I see an enticing face. I take it. And a thousand years later I am still struck by the beauty which captivated me the moment I first saw it. "
She juts out her jaw. If she could, she'd be wearing a look of defiance.
He laughs.
"And how could I ever grow bored," a claw runs down the side of her face, "of a pretty face like yours?"
. . .
He's always prided himself in his ability to preserve beauty, but he'll admit that there's something quite satisfying in watching it shattered. It's like broken glass or a fire as it consumes a forest. Koh decides that they are, in fact, one in the same: the destruction of beauty is a beautiful sight in itself.
This one is no exception.
She'll be his seashell, lying pieces in the sand. His bouquet of flowers, dull and withered. A weathered house at the edge of the sea. Bright crimson in the snow.
He had his doubts at first, after she ran away the second time –though attempts of escape were precisely the reason he'd chosen to keep her in the mortal world. He hadn't anticipated the chase to grow old so fast. It was such a human thing to do. He expected her to break after that, to take her in a fit of tears, or a terrified scream: a boring end to what he had thought was an interesting girl. Instead, she became even harder to read. No more trembling hands juxtaposed to a stone face.
Good. He enjoys a challenge.
Now it's only a matter of time. One can only find entertainment in screaming into the face of a statue for so long. She'd shatter, and he'd be there to watch. But if he grows bored before that time comes, he has no objection to snapping her himself.
It's a wonderful game they have -him, igniting the flame, stamping it out when it gets too hot. Setting her free, just to reel her back, feeding her just enough. He hasn't had this much fun in years.
"There's only one way to kill me, you know," he winds around her, hugging her lovely, slender curves. His head rests in the nape of her neck, and he inhales, his eyes roll back and he shudders in delight. There goes that frantic little heartbeat. "Only in sleep is my true face revealed. To kill me, one would simply have to steal my true face."
She hides her interest in the matter very well.
"I'll assume that you haven't taken a nap in a couple of centuries."
He grins.
"In a few millenniums, actually,"
He tightens around her, squeezing the air from her lungs. It's an amusing sight to watch as she closes her eyes in an attempt to remain composed.
She almost gasps for breath when he releases her.
"Why are you telling me this?" she manages.
"Because, my dear, it's impossible for you to succeed in completing such a task."
He sees understanding glint in her eyes, followed by sweet realization.
He builds her up to watch her fall, each time in the most beautiful of ways.
. . .
Mai lays sprawled on the ground, dry lips parted and the remains of two fish, both the size of her delicate ring finger, are off to the side. Her stomach groans.
A hundred claws patter on the cave floor and she ignores him, concealing her surprise on her face, though still jumping when he slams a claw into the sand near her head, avoiding the fish as it violently thrashes about.
She hesitates only for a moment, watching how the impaled fish desperately wriggles. With a flash of a knife, it goes limp, and it takes two hands to tug it off. She eagerly dives in, tearing at the meat and cleaning off the bones, crimson juice dribbling down her chin. Mai ignores the taste, focusing instead on how it fills her empty stomach.
Out of the corner of her eye she catches him staring, his tongue tracing painted red lips.
She spits a bone in his direction, and wipes her chin.
The mask was beginning to chip. It happened today. She woke up to an empty cave and carved a seventh notch into the wall. Stepping back, a shell dug into the heel of her foot and she grimaced. And then she froze. And then she waited. Koh never came.
She sunk into the sand, nursing her cut, while desperately trying to stay expressionless as tears ran down her cheeks and sobs racked her body.
When Koh returned, she greeted him with a short remark, her tears long dried and her composure regained.
She knows that she's beginning to shatter. She can't keep this up.
It was never a question of if she'd break. It was always a question of when.
And it'd be so easy -a slip of the knife, a plunge into dark blue water, a final smirk to end it all.
What is there to fight for?
She wakes each day to be tortured, reliant on her captor for food and water, alive only for his enjoyment as she is harassed, a toy to be disposed of once he's had his fun. There is no hope of rescue. There is no hope of escape. There is no reason to endure, and every reason to choose how and when she breaks. There is nothing.
No.
She doesn't know what, but something keeps her from jumping into the inviting sea, something stays her blade. It's the reason she didn't give up yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that one.
Maybe she lives for the boy with the scar, whose face lights up in the most ridiculous of ways when they meet, or for the girl in pink, who likes to give her hugs, or for the parents, whose years of scolding and pointed looks are the very reason she's still here. Maybe she's endured for the little brother who still stumbles when he walks, who says her name with such unconcealed joy and adoration each time.
Maybe she hopes that in the end she'll get the last laugh.
Maybe the idea of death sounds utterly monotonous.
She's not entirely sure why she hasn't surrendered just yet, but she resents whatever keeps her from doing so. She wants so desperately to choose her own demise, but knows that she's miserably incapable of ever carrying it out. It's a nightmare she's living, but she won't surrender now, or tomorrow, or the day after that. She'll fight for her life. She'll fight for whatever it is that keeps her from sinking, only to drown at the hands of the spirit with the ever-changing face.
Surviving suddenly means everything.
It was never like this before.
She never gave a damn about anything. And if she did, she hid it. She was never plagued by the fear of death, never gave her life a second thought.
She's never cared —not like this.
And now she scrounges for food and water, and puts on a face of stone. She endures. She hopes. She puts off her inevitable demise.
Death is unavoidable, and care is all she can seem to do.
Ten notches carved in the cave wall.
Her strength is waning. The fish doesn't always settle well, the cut on her foot is infected. She only dares sleep for a couple of hours a night. Mai spends her days lying in wait for her predictable fate to arrive.
She knows it's coming.
He doesn't try to startle her anymore. He doesn't tease her —in fact, he rarely talks to her.
All he does is stare.
They look at one another across the cave, neither one breaking eye contact. He looks at her, eyes hungry and mouth watering. She returns him with an unwavering glare of defiance.
He runs a tongue over a yellowing row of teeth. Mai turns away in disgust
She fights the urge to struggle as his body coils around hers. It's a sensation she's never gotten used to. It sends shivers down her spine, making her hair stand on end and her skin crawl.
"I'm just getting one last look at you," he tells her, lifting up her chin with a sharp claw. "This is the end, I'm afraid."
"Please," she scoffs, and her heart pounds, "I don't plan on flashing you a grin any time soon."
He flashes one for her.
"Darling, what gave you the notion that you had any control over when you met your demise?" he laughs and his decaying breath hits her in the face. She nearly sputters.
Instead, she looks at him to continue.
"In their last moments, which I do my best to make delightfully painful, humans have a tendency to become quite expressive."
"Then why haven't you killed me yet?"
"Because, my darling, you intrigued me," he muses. "And, quite frankly, to ask such a thing is an insult to your own intelligence."
She knew it would come to this. It'd hung in the back of her mind, veiled by hope and wishful thinking. All along, she'd known. As if he'd wait for her to surrender.
"Have you grown tired of me so soon?"
"It's been a delightfully entertaining game —really, my dear, the best I've had the pleasure of playing in centuries— but I'm afraid that every game must come to an end-"
"Yes, but who says the game has to end now?" her voice betrays her.
Koh laughs.
"A pretty face like yours is so above begging," he smirks, "but I guess you're right. This game doesn't have to end just yet. But how about we make things a bit more interesting?"
Pensive, he shifts from face to face. Claws tap out a rhythm on the cave floor. He settles on the face with the pale skin and sad eyes.
"I must admit that I'm quite fond of riddles," he finally says, "Perhaps you know a few?"
She bats away the claw at her face.
"I might."
He grins.
"Well, how does this sound: entertain me with your riddles, and that pretty little face can stay on that pretty little neck of yours. And to give some incentive to keep these riddles of yours interesting, I will sleep for however long it takes me to provide the correct answer."
She hesitates.
"How do I know that you'll keep your word?"
"My dear, spirits are seldom tethered by death, rather, we are bound by our word. And quite frankly, what other option do you have?"
None. She has none.
"I'll do it."
His smile only grows larger.
"Excellent."
A/N: Insidious Nights is planned to be three chapters long —four at the longest. I'll probably update at the same rate. Thanks again for reading.