The Girl from the Well

Still in their high school uniforms, they watch television. They laugh and tell tall tales and trade stories as the night wears on. They pass around bottles of beer (twenty-seven) that they pour and drink from small glasses (six), and empty instant noodle packages (seven) litter the floor. The room is none too clean, a small and rundown Tokyo apartment no bigger than an average American walk-in closet, but the boys feel comfortable here.

Every now and then, one will excuse himself and leave to use the bathroom at the end of the narrow corridor leading out the room. While the boisterous laughter from his companions continues, he enters the washroom, pushes the dead girl’s body away from the entrance with a foot, and uses the urinal, too drunk for the moment to care about the rancid smell and the stink of burnt flesh beginning to permeate through the air, or about the blood splashed against the walls, the red liquid circling the drain, dripping, dripping down the girl’s naked body. He zips up, washes his hands like the good boy he’s supposed to be, and slides out, rejoining his fellows and leaving her alone in the darkness.

The corpse’s arms and legs are severely burnt in several places, her breasts and genitals mutilated. One lifeless eye stares up at the door. The other is swollen shut.

The sixteen-year-old girl is their first kill and still freshly dead. To the boys, she was nothing more than an experiment, a small price to pay for the thrill of taking a life.

The night wears on, and I bide my time. My experiences with Tarquin and Callie do not

crush them take them break them

still the hungers, the malice that bubbles within.

I am who I am.

“What are we going to do with her, Hiroshi?” One of the boys, an emaciated-looking teen with acne scars, asks after some time has passed, when they can no longer pretend that the smell does not bother them. “The stench’s making me lose my appetite, and she’s gonna stink up the house for days.”

A tall boy with a shaved head shrugs. “Well, we gotta get rid of her soon, anyway. Get your old man to clean up the mess once we’re done, Jo, but we gotta figure out a way to dispose of the body without anyone else noticing.”

“There’s a small concrete factory just down the block, right?” Another one of the boys speak ups, this time a silver-haired youth with a tiger tattoo on his neck. “We could dump her into one of those cement barrels.”

“Get some garbage bags, Shinji,” says the Shaved Head, who is in charge. “Tetsuo, Koichi—you guys help him. Jo, go to the kitchen and get some sharp knives. A saw, if you got one. Ya-chan, help him look.”

The boys disperse. The acne-scarred teenager and his companion, a boy with a bright purple Mohawk, head downstairs, where an old man and a frail woman sit quietly before a small table, their tea lying untouched before them and slowly growing cold.

“Hey, you,” Acne Scars tells his father. “Go find us a saw or something. We need to get rid of the girl.”

“Jo-chan. You can’t…” his mother begins, pleading, but she is interrupted by the Mohawk. He slams a hand down onto the table, causing the cups to rattle, tea slopping out onto the wood.

“Didn’t I say you are not to disagree with us?” he spits out. “Do I have to keep reminding you old fags who I am every fucking time? I’m good friends with people from the yakuza, bitch. One word from me, and they’ll slit your throats. Hey, maybe the next time you speak up I might just kill you myself! Fucking old crone!”

Shaking, the father leaves the room and returns with a large circular saw. The mother begins to cry. Their son says nothing.

The boys return to the second-floor landing, where the others are waiting. “Better lend me some old clothes to wear while I cut her up, Jo,” Shaved Head says. “I don’t want to wash no fucking blood off my shirt.”

Acne Scars flips the light switch as they enter the bathroom. The bulb overhead sputters and dies out.

Shaved Head swears. “What the fuck is wrong with the light? Jo, go get a new one.”

“Mom only changed it yesterday,” Acne Scars whines, but he obediently trots off to look for a replacement. One of the other boys, with unkempt hair and a scraggly beard, turns on a penlight, splaying the beam across the bathroom walls.