Against Life: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The characters of InuYasha are not mine, they are property of Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Yomiuri TV, Sunrise, and Viz. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

“Against Life”

By RD Rivero

October 31, 2006

Chapter One

There are many different kinds of deformities. People, in their infinite wisdom, only acknowledge those that can be seen. Oh, the horror of it! Just watch them draw back and run away when confronted by demons or the ill formed among their own. True, their ghastly proportions are unmistakable - undeniable - but does that alone make them as inhuman as feared?

In these times of war and famine people want normality and sameness and anything that verges into the unusual is to be feared. Fools - let their madness lead them into the grave, the world would be a better place indeed without the excesses of the ignorant. If only they comprehended those monsters that dwell among them that their prejudice render invisible. A gentle voice, a smiling face, even with the thinnest veneer a demon may lurk within the human-world undetected.

And I? What of I? If you saw me from a distance, if you passed me by the road, if you sat by me at the tavern? Would you know - by looking - would you suspect? Admit it, as you surely must, it would not occur to you that this man is not what he appears to be. And were I not to confess it you would not know to fear me more than a hoard of a hundred demons.

I am the monster. I dwell within this world though I am not part of it. I linger about the realm of man like a disease, festering, aiming to rot the universe out from within. I intend to destroy you by destroying the illusions you cling onto. Love of family and friends, the hope of the future, these things are balanced by the flimsiest threads that are my pleasure to sever. My mission - my work, my art - is to taint the pure wherever it is whatever it may be.

I ask: am I not infinitely more monstrous than the vilest demon imaginable? A demon, after all, is an honest enemy. One that does not mask its meaning, its wanting to be destructive. But my methods are very different.

I was not always like this. Once I was human. My name was Kohaku and I used to be part of a family. But my father, my sister, I killed them. And my friends, I butchered them. True, I was possessed by Naraku and I was forced to act against my will, yet when fate gave me the chance to avenge them I sided with the enemy of their existence. I became - by my own free will - the apprentice of the master so the blood will not be, ever, washed cleaned off of my hands.

I was young and confused but I knew - even then, I knew - humanity would not accept me back into its realm. If you knew of the crimes, I committed by the age of ten, just by the age of ten, you would be understanding of my plight. Whom else could I turn to for solace and reassurance? Who else could accept me as I was without judgment and condition? Only my own corruptor.

Evil is tolerant.

Naraku was the father of my spirit. And like a fly caught in a web, at first, I struggled against him and then I accepted him into my soul. And when I acquiesced, I became happy again, I became whole again. I realized I was free - though it was not the typical sort of freedom that could be understood - I was free simply because I did not have to fight. I did not have to lie or pretend. And the reward? As the void of the abyss withdrew out of the depths there emerged dimensions of expression heretofore unimaginable.

I said I was young and confused. And though I dread to admit it, it cannot be denied, I was also afraid. Of my early, formative years under Naraku's cloak, I do not remember sunlight. I do not possess recollections of day only of night. Night within that castle. It was not a place for humans - let alone ten-year-olds - yet, there I was, alone, surrounded by miasmas and demons, the offspring of my master.

There was Kanna, a void more dead than alive, she did not have a real, independent existence. It did not have to be told to me, I knew by instinct that she was to be avoided. Only something so innocent looking could be so terrifying. There was Kagura, perhaps the greatest of my master's creations, she rebelled against him yet could not escape him. She was beautiful and in ways known only to me, loving and tender, although doubtless the world would have frowned upon the affection she showed me.

And there was Naraku. I spare you my feelings toward him. Those will be clear soon if they are not already. As for physical description, what reflects of my mirror is an eerily similar replica. Often I wonder if my impression of the past clouds my perception of the present so much so that I see traces of him within my features, where the resemblances do not belong. That in succumbing to his designs I recreated him in my image. Or it could be - and perchance may be true - that from the beginning, no, from before the beginning, he chose a form what would be an equal of my own, future visage. I cannot say. But he was beautiful, more beautiful than Kagura, and his manner was like a noble's, delicate and effeminate. Beneath that mask of civility lay a fury of evil.

Just to be around him was enough to be poisoned forever.

Yes, I feared Naraku. I feared the power - his power - that could create and destroy me at whim. It could not be helped. But know that I was determined, those who are destined to survive do not give up, and children, especially children, are sly, crafty things easily malleable to conform to fit the situation. I recognized through Kagura's defiance that if I could be useful it would be my leverage to survive. So it was that I became my master's ever-loyal servant.

Though eroded by time and distance, there lingers within my mind memories of events that shaped the character of my destiny. These were key points along the line of development that transformed me from a boy to a man. These were also the initial, tentative steps into Naraku's private inner world. It started while I was at the height of my fear.

Coming out of a trance, I thought I would be lying on my back but, instead, I was sitting on the floor. Flesh, warm and supple, pressed against my face for it was that my body rested against another's. Lifting myself out of the crease of those firm and swollen breasts, I felt the touch of fingers and the fabric of sleeves brush against my cheeks, I understood by the asymmetry of my skin and the kimono that I was cold and naked. Yet it did not bother me that I, a boy, was naked with a demoness, it was routine for me to be with Kagura like that while we slept within my master's lair.

I yawned, the taste of milk fresh upon my lips; I blinked, sensing with my eyes the deep and dark dimensions of the bedroom. Moonlight filtered through the blinds of far distant windows. The flux of the starlight was bright and I saw Kagura, her kimono opened and rumpled to expose her breasts, and my hands upon them cupping their forms. I must have been nursing and somehow, someway, was lulled into a dream.

Kagura grasped me and held me still. At the time, I thought it was the strangest thing to be restrained like that. It was very much unusual for her to be that violent with me. I resisted, though, and she relented. She did not completely release me from her hand's tight and intimate hold.

“It was just a dream, boy, don't be foolish!” she chided, reaching between my legs and yanking me as if the trauma would be enough to stop me.

I had been asleep and now through her statement she confirmed the intuition. Something roused me from dream. Something - a disturbance, an echo - whatever it was, it was external to the chamber. And it scared her and she wanted me to dismiss it as if it were nightmare.

“Boy!” She leapt atop me, pinning me onto the floor with the weight of her body. “If you leave you will be destroyed!” she warned.

Crawling, limping, stumbling, I fought off Kagura's smothering and emerged onto my own, two feet like a baby of sorts birthing itself.

Within the hallway, I was met by impenetrable, bottomless void for the light of the stars did not penetrate into the bowels of the castle. That, however, did not faze me. Rather it was the silence that affected me. Imagine the quiet of a tomb falling like a fog enveloping the world. It was that kind of silence, that suggestion of doom, that more than the blackness of the abyss terrified me almost into retreat. Almost. It was not enough - I tread deeper into the lair as though driven by the urge to uncover the great, hidden secrets of the universe.

I tread, no, I ran and despite those random twists and turns a blinded boy in a darkened fortress would be prone to take - as if guided by forces beyond mortal comprehension - I reached the source of whatever it was that alarmed me and Kagura.

For then and there the sound returned.

It was the cry of an animal. A wail of pain, sudden and unexpected, echoed through the darkness. The bark was followed by the suggestion of flesh tearing and bone snapping. If the disturbance contained more, finer ingredients then my memory spared me the shock. I swear it to be true - how it pains me to be blunt - but I do not know why I did not faint.

I remained at the doorway, it was the entrance into a chamber that I stumbled onto, all the while behind its iron and wood frame echoed what must have been torture. I sat and waited. I struggled but I succumbed to sleep. I did not dream. And when I awoke, it was not yet day though twilight of an unnatural, eerie variety washed the interior of that wing of the castle.

I was afraid but I was driven to know what lay beyond the gates. I was frustrated because I knew I would not get answers that day. Worse, my position was insecure and ridiculous as it was too late to retreat and too late to advance. If only I fought off the urge to rest, if only I had been stronger, I could have accelerated into Naraku's world. But of this I was certain: who or what lurked behind the gates was very well aware of my presence. I did not doubt that. I impressed the master with my persistence and after the thought formed within my brain the hypothesis was confirmed.

My senses were set ablaze as the doorway opened and Naraku emerged: the spider gazed at me and smiled and I smiled.

The ritual repeated through the period of a season. Always I awoke - startled by scream - always I crawled out of Kagura's bed into the castle's labyrinth. I reached the doorway that was not to Naraku's bedchamber but to part of the fortress I was not aware existed. Sometimes he was there and I was haunted by the symphony of those sounds of pain. Sometimes he was not there except through the miasma of the miasma.

During those empty, quiet nights, Kagura was bold enough to follow me though her aim was to lure me back into bed.

“Do you know what's inside?” I asked but she did not answer.

She insisted I kept away from Naraku's dreadful nighttime sport. It seemed she was aware of what took place behind those gates. It scared her that I wanted to know. To lure me away she bribed me with promises of pleasure and affection, promises a woman would not offer a boy, yet I could not be deterred by her words. She and I were stubborn alike.

Damn it, I could be impatient and obstinate, though what drove those feelings I did not know. Perhaps it was rebellion against the monotony of my life, perhaps not, one way or another I was impelled to force Naraku to act. With luck, my triumph might just impel Naraku to let me into his world not just into his chamber. While he was away, as he prone to be during those battles with Inuyasha, and while Kagura was preoccupied with her own plans of escape, I pried the locks and passed through the gates.

Access! Can you fathom my excitement? The sensations filling my body were intense and unlike anything, I felt before or since. Aroused by my rapid heartbeat and my heavy breathing, a hardness formed between my legs as feelings deep within me ached to break free. My hands assumed a motion that I struggled and succeeded to stop, as I was too excited to be distracted by that call of Nature.

Verging into real discovery, exploring about realm I had not seen, I was prepared for disaster at every turn. I was ready for fear beyond imagination. But what I found, superficially, proved to be disappointment and I should have realized what awaited simply by the ease through which entered - for, you see, the room seemed to be empty.

The chamber was large, among the largest within the castle. It resembled a dungeon but was too well kept and neat to be such a place. Along the walls were locked doorways and opened passages that suggested the possibilities of deeper, darker realms. I avoided those locations fearing the room and its periphery was not as vacant as it appeared. I concentrated my efforts onto the center, where there were placed an oblong, ceramic basin, several, metal implements and a box containing needles and thread.

It was wrong to say the room was empty - clearly, it was not - rather it was unused. And in its slumber did it not appear as innocent as a common study or drawing room? The activities that stirred and stoked my imagination had been extinguished as a candle blown-out by the air and it left not a single solitary trace behind tantalize my senses about what it could have been. Except - yes, there, there at the corner of the basin, upon the floor itself was a spot Naraku's careful eye missed.

Or - I wondered as I gasped - or was it planted to whet my curiosity?

It was a bone, like that of the legs, small, like that of a rat. It had been sliced cleanly into two, asymmetric portions. I noted the tools. Among the implements were knives one of which I judged to be sharp enough to cut the bone without destroying it.

Realizing the important connections between the tools and the animal-sounds, I took the time to inspect the tables minutely. Scrapers, knives and shears of all size and shape were ordered upon the tabletops using a clear and definite methodology. Each tool was clustered by type, each cluster arranged by importance. The needles were grouped by metal or bone then by use. And the thread - it was the thread that set me aback - it was not thread but Naraku's hair.

Before I was the master's servant, I was apprentice to my father, a demon-slayer. I knew all about weapons, which is why I was attracted to the implements, and I knew about demonology too. I understood the mechanism through which he controlled his puppet-doubles: they were given live and manipulated through the use of his hair. Nothing I knew about the subject explained what lay atop the tables, nothing I understood revealed the aim of the method or technique - if, indeed, it was a pursuit with an aim.

Then, at the moment I was about to leave I heard a sound - not that sound - it was new and different and I jumped. I almost screamed aloud but a fragment of better judgment prevented the slip. The sound - which by comparison to that sound was commonplace and normal - seemed to be emanating from a doorway I avoided.

Now I approached it. And it came again and again. It was a rocking, a jostling type of sound mixed with a chirp or yelp that was not caused by an animal. To be sure, I suspected it was a creature within the antechamber that produced the noise yet the sound I heard was not characteristic to it like a bark or a meow would be to a dog or a cat. I believed it was scratching - scratching coming from the other side of the doorway - and as I inspected the panels, I saw that its substance bulged and that its bulge moved. It was scratching and it echoed about the chamber like lightning, sharp and high-pitched enough to overwhelm my already-heightened senses.

I advanced and it - the creature - withdrew. I heard it scuffle and drag itself away. I took the chance. I opened the gate. Beyond it, the antechamber revealed cages. Bamboo and metal cages stacked one atop the next from floor to ceiling. Within the cages were - animals - what used to be animals. Tiny dogs and cats, reptiles, and other, unusual zoology whose origins I could not grasp. I say again, I cannot over-emphasize the point - what I found within those cages were things that used to be animals. I only guessed at the dogs and cats because I judged them to be of that origin by their sizes and colors. Beyond that, their shapes were not at all what they should have been as representatives of those species.

Some appeared to be headless - headless yet alive - with cauterized stumps from which protruded eyes and lips. Some were adorned with one leg, usually about the centers of their bodies. Some were endowed with two to four legs, but arranged in ways that were not to be found in Nature. Of course, seeing that menagerie of nightmares my impression was that they were animals that had been born deformed and that - through demonology or normal, human care - Naraku was keeping alive. But upon a detailed inspection I understood something very different was happening within Naraku's hidden, secret chambers.

The evidence was unmistakable about the regions of the limbs - there I saw the scars and the stitches, there the aim of the implements could not be denied as I revealed the cutting and sewing of flesh and bone - the creatures had been manufactured.

Crawling away, out of the antechamber, into the world of Naraku, my foot struck the remains of a cage. I did not hear it fall - it must have fallen long, long before I entered the room - and I did not see its remnants until that moment, that instant. No doubt, the case had been tipped-over and tumbled. Hitting the ground, it shattered and released its prisoner. I knelt atop it, I reached into its broken, mangled parts - and the creature that escaped the cage, the creature that scratched against the doorway, erupted out of the shadows and bit into my hand.

I screamed and fainted.

I awoke and I knew I had been moved into Kagura's bedroom. Naked beneath the covers of the tatami, I noted that both my hand and my head were equally cloaked by linen bandages. I sighed - and choked - I kept myself still as the slightest movement produced extreme pain. The creature's bite was poison. I did not die because the demonic power that resurrected me would not let me.

Alone I cried, not because of the discomfort but because of the failure. I had been defeated by my own recklessness. Yet I won, too, Naraku would be forced to deal with me. And I knew what to do to be helpful.

Out of the shadows, Kagura entered into view and sat by me.

“I told you, boy, I told you! Do not enter that room, humans were not meant to be inside. Now look at you, you're a mess and I don't know why you're alive. Humans do not snoop about places like that and live.”

All the while she scowled and chided she pulled aside the covers and raised my head and shoulders from that cold, hard floor to her warm, soft body. Weakly, with twisted hands shaking and flailing, I reached through the color of her kimono and exposed her breasts. I brushed my face against her skin; she eased my head into her cleavage. Together we held each other tight, locked through an embrace we did not resist. I suckled the milk of the demoness and it brought me back into strength.

I stirred, growing into firmness more vigorous and potent than it had been before. Instantly I became aware of a connection between Kagura's body and carnal pleasure. It felt so natural - what a thing to be speaking of Nature within Naraku's castle - but it felt as natural as life and I did not fight against it. I did not resist when she touched and explored it. She fondled it, repeating the rhythm that I, myself, discovered, and whatever sorcery she employed with her hands and their motion it worked and I was calm, again, my pain was relieved.

I withdrew away from her breasts and her touch. I looked at her and she looked at me. She did not smile, she did not frown either. Neither was it within her character to be so calm and serene. I could not read the expression, I could not fathom it, it was a new and different gaze all together.

“Stay with me. Kohaku. We will be nothing if we do not work together. But can't you see? We're trapped. He keeps us alive as long as we're useful and we're a burden he casts us away like garbage. If you go back into that room, if you help him do what he does - even if you survive - you will be destroyed.”

“And if I stay with you?”

“You can give me what I need to defeat Naraku.”

At that age, I did not understand. It was a mystery, that desire to touch and be touched. Where did it come from? Where did it intent to lead? It seemed to be part of what she needed of me but I failed to see how anything coming from me could be used to defeat Naraku.

It appeared I was caught between two urges. One, spurred by Kagura's seduction, was the desire to be intimate. The other, driven by Naraku's secrecy, was the impulse to know and be useful and - if possible - to be if not loved then appreciated. I did not fathom Kagura's aim, I doubted it could be successful, whatever the nature of her plans for me were. So, so I chose to live, and if that meant becoming the demon's accomplice I was willing and able to take that chance.

After I healed, while Kagura did not watch, I slipped out of the castle and into the far, distant fields unaffected by the miasma. There, amid the forests, I lay traps. Over the course of a week I trapped several small animals and a bird. The worst I set free, the best I kept and presented as my sacrifice. I placed the offerings before the doorway and waited - and when Naraku saw my tribute, he let me inside.