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⚠️ Warning ⚠️

Gore/Graphic images

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The burnished sky heralded nightfall. What awaited the mortal world was a graveyard of extinguished stars and a scorching demon moon paler than their bleached celestial bones.

The horizon shone a crimson duller than the dried blood streaks on the girl's bound wrists. The ropes bit into her flesh with each twitch of her tiring muscles and her sunken eyes watched the demon sun descend into the cloud cover. This had become a world one would glimpse in a shattered mirror stowed away in the shadows of some forgotten attic. A world where the earth smelled of oblivion, decay, and broken promises.

The girl peered ahead through the curtain of her brittle, unkempt hair. The gash on her father's bowed back gaped at her through his ripped, threadbare yukata, spewing pus from its swollen pink lips. Flies buzzed around it, sponging off the red fluid oozing from the wound. The daughter wondered if her father could feel the maggots gnawing through his rotting flesh. She sighed. The maggots only consumed for sustenance. To them, there was no pleasure to be savored here, save for that of having a full gut.

The girl could barely feel her hands now, she barely flinched when the stones sank their sharp edges into her calloused soles. The rope binding them all stretched and fell as the humans staggered forward through the ruins of the ravaged village.

Far behind her, a whip cracked and a yowl tore through the grim silence each time the leather ripped into flesh. The cries were high-pitched, erupting from a throat too young to process what was happening to them. The girl's body wilted further as the wails grew gargled.

Mercy was a concept foreign to demon minds.

The mortals were mere reeds caught in an infernal storm that had uprooted even the sturdiest of heavenly oaks. They were bound to be blown away sooner or later.

It seemed to the girl that their remote village had been the last to fall in their region. Strewn across the gravel and the dirt were the mangled bodies of livestock and pets— a chimeric mayhem of half-eaten limbs and heads detached and cast far away from the torsos they had once belonged to. Houses propped themselves upon frames torn asunder, upon roofs that had collapsed in a cascade of broken clay tiles upon the heads of screaming tenants, upon burnt walls painted with blood and drying viscera.

The trees that had once held swings and laughing children in their branches had their empty boughs snapped like broken limbs, hanging on by strips of leathery bark.

The girl thought she glimpsed a ghostly face in one of their trunks, one contracted in agony. She thought of praying for the departed tree spirit but then stopped herself. She chuckled. What good was praying supposed to do in a world stained by god-blood?

The gods had fled, the ones that had survived the massacre in the heavens that is. Most of them were felled by demon hands. The skies had rained blood that spring, dying the white cherry and plum blossoms a deep carmine.

A lone mansion stood at a higher elevation than the rest of the houses, surrounded by stubs of what had once been an impressive stone compound wall. A human skull mounted upon the dilapidated wooden arch regarded the girl with the clouded eyeball rotting in its left eye socket.

The demons had cultivated a macabre garden during their conquest. The girl tried not to look at the heads mounted on bamboo pikes, whose blackened lips had shriveled over their mottled teeth in an eternal grimace. Their intestines coiled around the wooden poles like pink pythons— her gaze dropped as acrid bile peeked at the back of her throat, burning it. The stench clouding her mind was ghastly; the girl was sure she would never smell anything again.  

The herd came to a halt in the courtyard of the house. Weeds sprouted in the untended gardens where the shrubs had strangled themselves with their gnarled roots. Plants refused to grow under the lifeless, dim rays of the demon sun. Was it their outright rebellion against demon-kind, no one knew.

The footsteps that stopped beside her were heavy. The girl did not dare to lift her head. Near her dust-covered toes danced a withered dandelion, a bare head waving in an empty wind.

A giant hand that could have easily crushed her head like an overripe berry extended its fingers and stroked her jaw. The girl kept her gaze down. The black ants on the ground marched on, carrying bits of carrion with them to their nests. They looked tired.

The fingers brushed the hair out of her eyes with an unforeseen gentleness and lifted her chin. The calloused grooves on their fingerpads dug into her skin, coarse like sharkskin.

The girl had forgotten how to retch, just as she had forgotten how to scream.

The oni with the whip hanging on his belt regarded her with his red eyes, his skin a rich dark viridian, pockmarked with scars and welts. A mane of thick, matted fur curled upon his shoulders and two jagged black horns rose from his temples, arching backward, their tips polished to points. Yellowed canines jutted from their gums, glistening with the saliva his tongue had coated them with.

In the oni's breath, the girl could smell the cries of a dozen humans who were torn limb-to-limb and eaten while their hearts still throbbed. The kanabō club resting upon his shoulders still had bits of flesh caught upon its spikes.

The corners of the oni's eyes crinkled when the creature grinned.

"Quite a vision you are underneath all that grime," he said, his deep voice reverberating within her bones. The girl stared at him with a placid face and blank eyes. She felt the taut ropes growing slack as her father turned around, his breaths falling in short, haggard wheezes. The girl reached for his trembling hands, and the old man grabbed them and held on.

Such uncertain, empty promises.

The oni laughed and latched onto her wrists. The girl gasped as she felt the force displace her wrist bones in directions that they weren't intended to move in. Her legs moved against her volition in a kick that caught the oni in his shin. When he let go, the blood rushed to her pallid hands. She scowled and spat on the demon, rubbing her wrists.

The oni shook the spittle off his left hand. "We have a spirited one here. Oh, I do hope to be the one to break you."

"What do we have here?" boomed a voice, dripping with displeasure. Terror burned the girl's cheeks as she realized what she had done.

A larger red-skinned oni clad in battered armor lumbered towards his whip-wielding minion. Plumes of smoke rose from the pipe held between his protruding fangs and thick, rubbery lips. The smells of tobacco and spoilt sake made the stench rising from the garden a little more bearable. The girl squirmed in the shadows of the two towering demons.

The whip-wielder placed a hand over his heart and bowed to his lord. The oni lord acknowledged the gesture with a grunt of approval and a pat on the demon's back. 

The demon lord exhaled. He looked at the girl caught in the cloud of smoke that had exited his mouth. There was a certain glint in her watering eyes that pierced through her lashes.

His attention shifted towards the girl's father, much to her horror. The old man held his gaze with every bit of defiance he could muster in his condition, but the girl could sense his wounds slowly draining his resolve.

The demon lord ran a slimy black tongue over his dry lips to wet them and began, "Judging from that crop of white hair growing on you, you must be the village elder. I suppose you must be the one in charge of your herd."

He leaned in. "Would you and your herd like to live a little longer, human?"

The old man's eyes went wide.

The oni lord clicked his tongue and waved his free hand in the air. "My soldiers and I have had our fill with the last two villages we had taken over earlier this evening. Your merry band of twenty would be our equivalent of a snack, which we would like to forego for today. Eating too much of your kind is not healthy for us with all the parasites you carry. Well, aren't you a lucky bunch?"

The demon clapped his hands and bared his fangs in a smile. Something wasn't adding up in the girl's mind.

The lord extended a raised forefinger before them. "All you have to do is cater to a single demand of mine. Fulfill it and you have my word that I will ensure your survival. Human pets are quite popular in the Northern Dragon Demon's court you see— we could sell you off to willing, compassionate owners capable of caring for you the way you had bred your pedigree dogs and rabbits. You can live long, healthy lives on their estates and so will your child—"

"State your demand," the old man said, his coarse voice barely audible. His eyes had the same glint as the girl's— the oni lord could see where the daughter had received her mettle from.

The demon's smile transformed into a smirk behind his folded palms.

"We desire to take your daughters as our brides for the night."

Horror erected the hairs on the girl's nape and chilled her blood. Her father was too stunned to speak. There has been a firmness with which he had gripped the ropes around his wrists, not once had she seen it faltering through their journey despite his wounds. The very same ropes slipped from his hands.

Twenty pairs of ears awaited the elder's decision. Twenty pairs of keen eyes watched the man's bowed head, hoping to sway the decisions forming within his mind with their intense stares.

"Father...if I may."

The man looked at his daughter. After weeks of silence, her voice sounded strange and alien.

The girl inhaled sharply. "I shall be your bride for the—"

The hand that gripped her injured wrist made her wince. She didn't have to look to recognize that it belonged to her father. Instead, she stared at the demon lord.

"No," said the father. "My answer is no."

Restlessness entered the limbs of the humans, filling them with newfound energy. A gust of whispers, brimming with agitation and dissent drifted through the herd of twenty. The oni had offered them a one-in-a-million chance to survive and the senile elder was simply throwing it away.

Survival however came at the cost of dignity and even lives. A small sacrifice for a peaceful life.

The demon lord laughed and tapped the ashes off his pipe, holding the girl's gaze.

"I believe I said bride, old man, not concubine or bed-warmer."

A female voice, faltering at first spoke up from behind, "Do you promise to protect them if we agree?"

The demon and the old man turned to look at the girl. The faces behind her looked all the same, stoic masks behind which were eyes hungering for freedom. Murmurs of approval rose from the herd.

"I do not like repeating myself," said the demon. "But yes, that is my offer."

The girl sighed and clutched her father's hands. Her father had watched over her since her birth, guided her, and loved her beyond reason. This was all she could do in this world to repay his love. He would never play with his grandchildren but he would live to see many more sunrises.

The old man did not have it in him to protest any further as she and the other girls were led away by the demon guards into the mansion. His daughter did not even turn to bid him goodbye.

If the tears streaming down his cheeks could speak, they would have been heard screaming at the demon moon.

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Chapter Word Count: 2033

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Glossary

Oni:

An oni is a malevolent yōkai found in Japanese folklore and is similar to a demon, an ogre or a troll. They're usually depicted as giant, horned, terrifying monsters who kill and eat humans. They are usually seen wearing tiger pelts and wielding giant iron clubs called Kanabō clubs.

Kanabō clubs:

Heavy, iron spiked clubs that are commonly attributed to onis.