Beneath the Mask
The sweat cooled on his body, the light pouring in through the window, early summer dawn, the heat already stifling. In amongst the sheets, he sat up, breathing deeply, feeling the movement of his chest as it rose and fell. All that work they did on him, all the terrible things they did to his body, and he still woke up sweating when in the thrall of nightmares.
It had been a month since he had escaped Shocker's grasp, three months, maybe four since he had attempted to claw back some semblance of a normal life and found it impossible. In that time, he had faced countless others like himself, their bodies misshapen and abnormal, men and women transformed into the likenesses of bats, spiders, ugly things that hid in the shadow.
They had been people once, he told himself to begin with; they should be afforded the same choice Midorikawa had given him.
The thing in his nightmares disagreed, its restless shape unforgiving of anything not cast in its image.
In a hotel in the loneliest city in Eastern Europe, a dotted phone number beneath the curled shape of its name above the door—Hotel Palat—he spent endless days, staring out at the bright mornings, the pale dusks, the late evenings.
He had tried to bribe his way into East Berlin, and, from there, the Soviet Union, falsified papers, a mention of the war. He had hoped that, by doing so, he might grow closer to where he had heard Shocker were holed up, a faction of their cult nestled close to the heart of the old enemies that had driven them out from Berlin.
At every turn, he had been refused, the guards on the wall making it very clear that no one got in, and no one got out.
Three months, four months. He heard from Tachibana sporadically, the letters sluggish in their delivery, the Deutsche Bundespost unwilling to deliver to Yugoslavia for fear that it was a step too close to the thing on its doorstep, the thing behind the wall.
He had read that Pynchon novel whilst waiting in the hotel, drinking expensive American Coca-Cola, looking out at the grey buildings of the city. His head had been filled with stupid ideas about the German postal system, the muted post horn. He had let things get out of hand, suspicious of all correspondence he received, convinced each letter had been tampered with, rewritten by agents of Shocker.
He had been with Midorikawa's daughter when he had first arrived in Europe, but she had left soon after, leaving for London, she had said. Unhappy at looking at the face of the man her father had given his life for, he imagined, staring down at the rise and fall of his chest in the heat of the dawn.
They had been close briefly, a momentary lapse in judgement for them both, grief giving way to the need for intimacy. It had happened again whilst they had been travelling. Afterwards, she had turned away from him and told him she did not like men.
In the absence of news from Japan, the nightmares had begun to eat away at him, every night the shape of something huge in the dark, a grasshopper, an ancient grasshopper, its mouth whispering secrets to him.
He had screamed at it, denounced it. He had screamed at himself, told himself he was dreaming, that he needed to awaken, and all the while, the ancient creature had continued whispering, imparting knowledge of a world shaped by diurnal deities, a world governed by beings that bask in the light and listened to the stories of men through the shape of their abdomen.
There were people in the world who worshipped such creatures, he knew that just from the glimpse of that shape in the dark. Others would also have had such dreams, and they would have devoted their lives to the whispering they had in those dreams. Maybe they too had donned masks, maybe they too had called themselves Kamen Rider.
Each nightmare was garbled and jumbled, a signal that was not meant for him, something that his transformation had brought him into contact with.
Servants of the grasshopper, totems of its power, the shape of it laying squat in the dark, whispering its secrets, waiting for the dawn.
What would these other Kamen Riders be like, he wondered. Would they chuse righteousness, or would they follow Shocker into evil?
In the dream, the question had been on his lips over and over again, yet over and over again, he had been ignored by the thing in the dark, the dreaming god content to whisper its secrets to him—an eternal host beyond the stars, beyond the shape of the universe, grasshoppers who shaped the fate of men.
It was madness to try to communicate with such a being, he thought each time on waking, and yet whenever the dream gripped him, communicate he did try, affording it the same choice Midorikawa had given him.
His breathing slowed, the adrenaline of the nightmare, of finding himself in the shadow of that colossal being, slowly wearing off.
To argue with such a creature was arrogance. What could he say that would ever sway a god?
Still, perhaps there were others who served such a being, he thought once more; perhaps there were others who called themselves Kamen Rider.
Again, he wondered what was happening in Japan, and for the next few days, he waited, looking out at the grey buildings of the city, drinking expensive American Coca-Cola, hoping that to-day would be the day a letter from Tachibana arrived.