Demon Stories

Cheol: The Little Flower, 1611, Japan

Cheol

The Little Flower

1611, Japan

"Cheol! Cheol! Cheollll!!!"

The slight body was jumping on my body. And for what?

"Cheol-ah!!!"

With a storm I was up. With my suddenness, the small form tumbled off me about the floor at my feet. 

"And I am up, what-- hey!"

She was bouncing my hat up and down in her hands in excitement, perhaps fraying edges. With a frustrated look, I snatched my hat away. But she had been right to bring it, for I did like to wear it most times. The creature I had taken it from had been a rare find indeed. A strange white creature with blond hair and light blue eyes, with unusually coarse skin also. And I had thought my skin white! Other than the hat, I would not touch the strange creature, but give him a fright I had! So for this the hat was dear to me.

"Cheol! Cheol! Who is in your bed this morning?!"

With no memory, I peered down at the large bump in the covers beside me. Gently, I peeled the white covers away from the top. We both stood and looked down at what had surely been my prize the night before, but with all these I had but swimming memories together, so I could not remember it.

At my feet was a fair woman, naked, tied in white ropes and gagged thus. Surely these ropes had come from a fishing yard, for fish net ropes were these. And why would she have come from such a place where women are bad luck? Anyhow, I had no need for her anymore. 

"She is your's. Play with her as you will." I waved my hand carelessly and walked out of the room with gliding steps. As I slid the screen closed, I heard the girl scream behind the gag as an excited Little Flower descended on her seconds as like a too young bird of prey.

And so it had became. With the old one gone, I had become the little one's new Mistress and I did not enjoy it. I had been enjoying my solitude these last fifty years or so gone, but surely as we all did, I had felt it when the old one had left. Like a smoke in our hearts, so vaporized any type of security we had falsely become comfortable with. I had felt it, too, and it had ruined my night. I could not enjoy my fill, and as the fine boned woman of the night massaged my shoulders, looking at me with a piteous womanly stare, I had been able to do nothing. Still angered I was about that.

But this I had not thought would happen, yet it had been so obvious. 

Crawling to me, passing borders as no human could, she had come, begging at my feet, her head bowed the lowest it was possible. "For I have no Mistress now to serve, for you I will serve!" she had cried. This little creature. Older than me, yet she had known no other life. What options were there to be had? And I had been closest. I had been foolishly nearby her, but how was I to know the old one would vanish? This little one...she could not be alone. All of her life, she had been under another. There was only pity in my heart, but gratitude in my bones, for this life she had saved some sixty or seventy years ago. But who cares for numbers when one's life is this? And so it was to be so. For nearly a year, the young one had toddled along some ten steps behind me, and for this company I provided her with seconds. 

Ah, but these seconds I gave her. Never in all of my years had I even been able to do the last deed. So this girl was useful to me in that way also. Out into the night I would go, perhaps once every two or three nights, and I would find a pretty maid compared to all. One with the smoothest skin, with skin tight on her bones and with very little meat on them. One with the longest, silkiest, shining black hair. And most important to me, at least, one with naturally plump lips as if stung by some insect but soft as feathers and with eyes so large and as like a sun rising on a horizon in shape. This girl I would find, and I would eat of my lust. But, whether by some strange human vestige of sympathy or something else, I could not finish and take of her life as easily as the little one in the room just behind me, and never could. 

But these girls, whom I had taken thus in the past, had been set free again and healed by doctor or family. These girls were the ones who had spread my name and set me to fame. The strange creature, a dragon they thought, had come in the night and taken them. A white dragon. And in their bloodless state, they had blurred the idea of real or not real, so thus I was an unreal dream. For this I was happy. And then the little flower had come back into my life.

As the little flower pulled my arm, she pulled me to her native land. And here I was no one. None had heard of my tales, and so I was a stranger again. I was unhappy, and unhappy grew to bitterness. Bitterness towards this little one who had bowed at my feet and begged. 

A cracking noise rose me to consciousness once more. This cracking. I knew what she had done.

Sliding the door back to the room, I watched from the doorway her crunching and cracking the bones of the woman as one would for a crab's shell. She was taking of the marrow, enjoying her treat. Sensing me, she did not turn her head. But I could sense her wide, satisfied smile all the same.

"Please, Mistress, capture one with thicker bones next time."

But she was nothing to me. A slave perhaps. And no slave shall order their mistress to do one thing. 

"You dare ask," I told her with harsh tongue, striding towards her and throwing her down thus harshly onto the scattered bed covers as like yesterday's rubbish, an unwanted toy. I pointed sharply outside the opened door, my hand thrust above her face so she could not playfully misread my intent. 

She had done her purpose, and now it was my turn to have my fill of this woman. This soft, fair woman. This woman who looked like that woman from so long ago.