The world is full of monsters. This is a fact I’ve know as long as I can remember. Not because of the stories parents tell their children as a warning, no I’ve seen them. They are everywhere, in the water, in the forests, in the streets, not even the bathrooms are safe.
Most people don’t believe in them. Some will say that they do but those same people laugh and call you crazy.
“Just ignore him, he’s not right in the head.”
“Stop lying! You’re making us look bad! What will people think?”
Despite what everyone else says the yokai are very real, and they are tormenting me. I look behind me at the terrifying monster that’s chasing me. The monster that has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a huge horrifying spider. The monster that no one else seems to notice.
A shrine. I have to get to a shrine. I’ll be safe there.
I kept running down the street occasionally steeling glances at the yokai that was getting closer and closer and judgmental stares of strangers who couldn’t see what I saw. Almost there! Just keep running! She stretched out her long spider legs trying to grab me and pull me close to her.
“Leave me alone!” I yelled as I crossed the border to the shrine. I collapsed onto the shrine’s floor glancing back at the yokai stopped at the boundary. As I sat there trying to catch my breath, I could see her hissing and showing her large fangs. She knew she couldn’t come any further.
“I am sick of these yokai chasing me!” I screamed as I slammed my fist against the shrine’s floor. “I just want to be normal!”
I laid down against the shrine’s cold stone floor. “Please,” I say to myself my voice shaky. “Please make them go away. I just want to be normal…like everyone else.”
After a long moment of silence, I slowly sat up. I wasn’t sure what I thought would happen.
“Do you really mean that,” spoke a voice from behind me.
I jumped and spun around to look at the source of the voice. I could have sworn there was no one else here. Behind me stood a man with short red hair and the ears and tails of a fox. Was he a yokai? I thought yokai couldn’t enter shrines?
“Do you really want it that badly,” he asks again.
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation, “more than anything”.
“You would really give up your gift for the sake of normalcy,” he asks again,
“I would hardly call constantly seeing monsters a ‘gift’,” I snap clinching my fists.
He steps closer to me. “But it is a gift, you are not blind to the truths of this world. You would really give that up?”
“Yes,” I answer quickly.
“Very well then,” he says. “I will take away your sight of the true world. Your world will turn black and white losing all the color it once had. You will know only what it wants you to. If this is truly what you wish, give me your hand.”
I confidently hold out my hand. He takes my hand as a blinding light erupts from the shrine. I slowly open my eyes and find myself standing in my own room, but something was different. It was quiet. Not quiet, silent.
I went to lay down on my bed and for the first time there were no shadowy figures running across the ceiling. There were no mischievous foxes laughing in the distance.
I awoke the next morning to silence. It wasn’t a dream. They were really gone. I’m finally normal. I quickly got ready for school and for the first time I walked down the streets without fear of monsters.
I continued my walk but found myself stopping in front of tree. I had walked past this tree hundreds of times, there was an old yokai that lived there. She never bothered anyone but her presence was always there…until now.
She wasn’t there. This is what I wanted wasn’t it? To be free of the yokai? Seeing this tree so silent and unmoving felt…wrong.
“Are you there,” I called out. Nothing. I searched the tree for something, anything that could be a sign she was still there, that they were still there. Nothing.
As the days quickly turned to weeks, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. Everywhere I looked I felt a piece of my world was missing. Where there should have been dancing, there was stillness. Where there should have been laughter, there was silence. Where there should have been friends, there was loneliness.
I messed up. I gave up everything to be normal. To fit in. I thought this was what I really wanted. Maybe it was in the beginning. Around me everyone continued with their daily lives completely oblivious to the emptiness that surrounded them.
I have to fix this.
I need to go back to the shrine. I have to find the man with fox ears. I followed the familiar route down the street and through the back to the shrine where I first met him.
“Hello,” I call out desperately, “hello, are you there”. I am met with silence.
“Please,” I call out again, turning my gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry! You were right! My sight was a gift! A gift I should have never given up!”
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