I sit up slowly, feeling my spine open like a bellow. Everything hurts but nothing’s broken. “So this is the bottom, huh?” I ask, then hawk gritty spit on the ground. “I have to say, I’m not impressed.”

He grunts. “That is because hatred has blinded you.”

“Well, as they say in Missouri—”

I stand defiant in the face of his threat.

“—show me.”

Fire whizzes down—the flare, tossed down to the cave floor at my feet like dragon’s breath. White phosphorus light explodes across the cavern, revealing secrets that were better left forgotten. The floor crawls into definition. Basalt smoothed by ancient magma flows, pocked with fissures that exhale steam in ghostly columns.

And scattered across the rock like an anatomy class jigsaw puzzle—bones.

Some are scattered across the floor but most are cradled inside shrouds stained with dried human slurry. All stripped by time and stained black by the cave’s minerals. Skulls stare with hollow sockets. Jaws dislocated in silent screams. Rib cages collapsed like discarded piano keys. Bags of remains, arranged near the steam vents, likely to aid decomposition. What a job for an orderly. Take the express lane to purgatory to play crypt keeper. Can’t imagine the stench.

I whistle low, surveying the pit. “Well, isn’t this cozy. You know, Shō-gee, when Yaponchik said you were ‘drinking tea with the dead,’ I thought it was the ketamine making her poetic.”

His voice booms from above, “Ah, so that is how you found me. Yaponchik betrayed me, hm? I am surprised. I never thought she was capable of such treachery. Tell me, is she dead? Or do I have more vermin to exterminate?”

“Not sure,” I say, my eyes wandering in search of an exit strategy. Even with the pyrotechnics, much of the pit is a mystery, concealed behind shadows dancing like crackheads. I look up at him. “Last time I saw her, she was in a medical bed—or what was left of her anyway.”

Fukuyama chucks another flare, this one directly at my feet. The smoke, the light, it blinds my senses. I step back quickly to escape the heat but my boot lands on something that isn’t rock—a femur, maybe, or a section of spine. The crunch is hollow, brittle—a cocooned skeleton collapsing under two hundred pounds of stupid. The disturbance triggers movement inside the cavity.

A threat hisses from the wreckage—louder this time, angrier. I snap my gaze down.

There, tucked inside the cradle of a desiccated skeleton's ribs, a viper uncoils. The flare catches its scales, each one a polished obsidian tile. Its head rises, tongue flicking, tasting my heat signature in the cold air. Eyes lock onto mine. The Mamushi.

Predator recognizes predator.

The world compresses. My breath stops. The snake's body tightens into an S-curve, coiling the spring, fangs unfolding from the roof of its mouth.

It strikes.

I react faster than thought. Boot pivots, angling the Vibram sole into the strike's path. Fangs connect beneath the toe, nose slams into the tread. The snake falls confused, stunned for a heartbeat. I deny it a second.

My leg drives down like a piston. All my weight crashes down into the viper’s skull, flattening it with a wet crunch. The body thrashes, whipping side to side. I twist, grinding the life out of it until the thrashing stops.

Fukuyama grunts with disapproval. “The Mamushi venom is quite potent. Very painful. Unfortunate that you were able to avoid the strike.”

I lift my boot. Snake goo sticks like chewed bubblegum. Thick. Slightly orange. Odd.

“Potent? Check. Painful? Check. But deadly?” I scrape my boot against the rock. “Sure, if untreated, but not minutes. Not hours. Days. Miserable way to go, but it won’t stop me from climbing out of here and killing you.”

I step forward and kick the flare away. It twists like a bottle, skating across the basalt into another body bag. The linen erupts in flame. A bright, bursting inferno.

It doesn’t make sense. Old cotton is flammable, but this went up like the Hindenburg.

My eyes shoot down to the body bag behind me. The fire does what the magnesium couldn’t—bathe the pit in unblinking revelation. Details that hid in the chaos are now bared for discovery. There is more than bones cradled in the linen. Smooth, round beads of amber-colored stone. I crouch down and pick one up between my finger and thumb. I raise it to my face. That mossy scent is overwhelming but it's masking a more disturbing odor. Sharp and pungent, like paint stripper.

The bead melts between my fingers, becoming tacky. Next to the body, a destroyed crate lies in pieces. Not softened by decay, but hacked into chunks. A piece of the lid is near my boot. I tilt my head to read the flaking ink stamped into the plank.

松脂. Matu-yani.

Pine resin. Industrial grade firestarter.

Another roar and the pit brightens. I wheel around to see another shroud dissolve into a seething mass of flame. The light unfurls with a constant, unblinking glare, mapping the vastness of the chamber. The roof vaults into the gloom, its inexorable weight of stone spikes hanging like a row of dark, sonorous bells in a ruined cathedral.

I jump to my feet, hand wiping the resin on my pants as I look around, searching for another way out. The pit is a sunken hollow between two ledges. Fukuyama guards the front. Low enough to climb but not before he cleaves my head off with the sword. The back is a six meter climb up a brittle, jagged rockface. Next? There are some columns of solidified magma twisting paths to the floor. Perfect for a small slithering creature to scale but not two hundred pounds of Yelena.

Fukuyama shouts, “Beginning to see the futility of your situation?” He laughs as another body explodes. I move away from the back ledge, towards the front where he stands. He swipes the katana like a pendulum, blocking my escape.

Another whoosh, another blast of heat. The fires produce an oily, black smoke. The billows rise in slow, ominous rolls, but the smoke will descend eventually. The resin is too heavy. I don’t want to be here when it does.

I look up at Fukuyama. “Not enough bodies down here, Baskethead. I can avoid the fire and the smoke is going to kill you up on that ledge long before it gets me. Why don’t you come down here and we can sort this out, once and for all?”

“Stupid gaijin bitch,” he says, voice dripping with disdain. “You have not figured it out already?” He clicks his teeth, like a disappointed parent. “Fire is not meant to kill you.”

A dry, rhythmic scritch echoes through the vault, mirroring the click of his teeth. It sounds like the stone is expanding, a thousand tiny fractures webbed across the floor. It is a shifting, gritty noise, like parched earth settling under a heavy weight.

I know what it is without looking. I am a stupid gaijin bitch.

He says, grinning, “It’s to wake up the others.”

The scritch curdles into a viscous, heavy rustle. It isn't the stone cracking; it is a collective whispers of weight sliding over weight. Below the constant hiss of the burning pine, a million dry scales begin to shirr against the rock, a sound like parched parchment being dragged through the dark. The shadows at the edge of the glare begin to ripple, a sibilant tide of cold-blooded life uncoiling in the heat. It rises into a wet, slithering roar that reverberates off the cavern walls, the sound of a thousand hungry mouths tasting the warmed air.

He laughs proudly, five rapid ha-ha-ha-ha-ha’s that echo over the crackling blaze. Then he swipes the katana, as if slicing the final chuckle like a limb. “You were correct, of course, Gorgo-kun. One strike… not enough. But the one you killed? He has friends.”

I look back to see the cave floor is alive.

Every black pile I dismissed as shadow or stone or discarded clothing is moving. Dozens of shapes uncoil, disturbed by the light, the heat, the vibration of my violence. The mamushi found a haven to escape the frozen mountain, burrow inside the corpse bags next to the steam vents, stacking on top of one another in hibernating clusters.

And Fukuyama just rang the dinner bell.

A fourth body bag detonates but there are twenty, maybe more, in a line against the rock, circling the back of the pit. At the moment, the fire is still contained in a corner. The heat, however, has turned the cavern into a convection oven. The mild, humid warmth of the steam vents that made this a cool, damp refuge for all things that slither and crawl has been obliterated, replaced by a suffocating, physical weight that presses against the lungs.

The unburnt shrouds vomit their contents onto the basalt—not individual snakes, but writhing, glistening knots of black and brown scales that tumble over the bones like spilled entrails. Dozens becomes hundreds in seconds, a wet, living landslide of muscle driven into a frenzy by the thermal shockwave of the resin fire.

They flow like oil, a black tide washing over the white bones of the dead, fleeing the scorching perimeter for the only cool ground remaining: the center of the pit. The sound is nauseating—a heavy, fluid friction of thousands of bellies dragging over stone, punctuated by the angry, dry rattle of tails vibrating against ribs. The circle of fire is shrinking, but the circle of vipers is closing in faster, a tightening noose of fangs and venom converging on my boots.

I begin to move back, steps crunching into rock. My eyes move up at the ledge. Fukuyama lords over his work, the hot air rippling between us. For the first time, I see beneath his takuhatsugasa. His face a death mask of parchment-thin skin stretched over sharp, aristocratic bone. The underlighting casts deep, skeletal shadows into the hollows of his cheeks and eye sockets, turning him into a living Oni.

He looks mummified, a dried husk of the warrior he once was. His parchment mask is disfigured by a jagged scar that cleaves the left side of his face from eyebrow to cheek, the track of it cutting through a shrunken, sightless pit. That eye is a dead, shriveled knot, collapsed deep into the socket. His remaining eye gleams with a wet, animalistic shine, reflecting the inferno below with the cold detachment of a god watching a sacrifice.

"Do you see now, Gorgo-kun?" His voice rolls through the cavern like distant thunder. "I have had an entire year to prepare for your arrival. An entire year to craft your tomb."

I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. “You really went all out. I'm touched. Most guys just send flowers and ask for anal.” A hoarse chuckle is interrupted by a sap-flavored cough.

“You disgusting whore,” he snaps with a flick of the katana. “You should be grateful. I could have collapsed the tunnel. Buried you alive. But that lacked... poetry. This is an end worthy of a warrior. Behold, the totality of your failure, and the pyre I built in your honor.”

He strikes another flare across the blade of the katana. Magnesium ignites. He raises the stick high, like a conductor preparing the downbeat.

"And so, Gorgo-kun, I shall light your funeral pyre—and watch as you dance."

His arm whips forward. The flare arcs through the air, spinning end over end, trailing white sparks like a comet. It doesn't fly toward me. It curves left, sailing over the field of bones and snakes, and lands directly on a pile of resin-packed rags.

The air detonates.

It isn't a fire; it’s a flash-over. The matu-yani catches with a concussive thump that sucks the oxygen right out of the room, triggering a wave of orange flame that spreads outward in a hungry surge.

“I shall remain here and observe. A front-row seat to your demise." He pauses, savoring the moment. "Tell me, Gorgo-kun—what do you believe will claim you first? The serpents? Or the flame?”

He laughs, a slow, satisfied rumble that fills the cave.

“Either way, I have all the time in the world to find out.”

Teeth gnash. Jaws clamp. Grind molars into dust. Fingers hook. Curl. Squeeze. Knuckles crack like kindling. Then… Growl. So loud my throat splits and I taste metal. Builds into a scream that tears like broken glass.

“YOU THINK THIS IS FUCKING FUNNY?” I roar at him, spit flying as sweat beads from my pores. “You sit up there like some discount Buddha, talking about POETRY… and HONOR… while you hide behind SNAKES and FIRE like a COWARD?”

I start laughing. Hands on hips. Doubled over even as the sea of scales and venom draws closer. The only thing protecting me is the first flare near the foot of the ledge, forcing them to curl around to the back.

“You sit up there and watch like this is fucking THEATER?” I bend down, grab a charcoal skull, and lob it at him. “GIMMICK INFRINGEMENT,” I yell as it flies past his side step.

I hee and I haw, a serrated blade chewing through what little sanity I have. Hey! I was saving that for the next corporate event! Fuck. I really should be in a padded room. Hoo-hoo… heh… Look at this stupid fucking situation. I walked into an obvious trap like an amateur with a vengeance boner.

His voice calls down to me, “Your weak mind is cracking beneath the weight of your pride. You cannot believe that I won, can you? It is driving you insane.”

“That ship has sailed,” I say, bending down to pick up the first flare. Still sizzling with fire, I use it to begin searching the pit, waiting to see light glint off metal.

The snakes I see are going full Black Friday. Most are mashed into the back wall, bellies trying to climb the vertical sheer in desperation. Instinct reminds others of the lava tubes, stairways out of hell, but panic jams the route, makes them climb over one another in a rush. Mamushi lose contact with rock and spill off the side, hitting wet smacks on the floor, followed by angry hisses as they quickly try again. One lands close to me. I stomp its head into mush before its anger directs at me.

“I’m tired…”

Don’t say it!

“…of these mother fucking snakes…”

DON’T YOU DARE.

“…in this MOTHER—FUCKING—”

Breath hitches. A sharp ping of light on the far side of the pit. No fire there. I drop my flare dead center in the pit, scaring back the encroaching viper horde. I run left, leaving behind the safety of light for the rags of bone and resin—and the koshi-nata at their edge of the mound.

I hear Fukuyama. “Huh? What are you…”

Then a scratch, like a match being struck, and light brightens against my back. I see the handle. Hand shoots down, takes it in my palm. The weight feels right as fingers close around the grip.

“No!” Fukuyama yells, dismayed. Then the light begins to oscillate, spinning against the wall over my head. I start to move back, but motion to my right catches my eye—fast, purposeful. A mamushi uncoils from beneath a shattered rib cave, body snapping into strike position. Head cocked. Fangs exposed. The triangle-shaped skull targets my face.

It lunges.

The koshi-nata whips through the air in a horizontal slash. The machete catches the viper mid-strike, three inches behind the skull. Steel shears through vertebrae and scale. The head tumbles away, jaws still snapping reflexively. The body squirms, painting the basalt with red before going still.

No time to admire the work, no time to think at all. Muscles wrench in a corkscrew. Head and neck, shoulders and chest—abdominals contract and turn, dragging hips and thighs in their wake. One hand plants, boots dig into rough, then I launch forward, leaping away as the flare sails overhead.

The body bags erupt in a concussive blast that slams into my spine like a physical blow. As I crash into the floor, a volcanic wash of orange and violet light that collides with the initial inferno, creating a crossfire of illumination.

I lurch upward, parting the thick, torrid atmosphere like a phantom smeared in black, salty grime that catches the unwavering light. Behind me, the cavern heaves with a confluence of competing light—a volcanic wall of orange and violet radiance.

The nata rises, moving through pungent air, until the blade is an iron-forged sight trained on Fukuyama’s face. His face whitens with terror.

My lips split apart.

“Ugoku na. Kimi no kubi wo tori ni iku.”

(Remain still. I am to claim your head.)

“Bakana!” he shouts, clutching the katana with both fists, the blade shaking with fear. “Sonna masaka... Arienai! Kuru na! Chikayoru na!”

(No way! That can't be... Impossible! Don't come near me! Stay away!)

I back up five paces, eyes locked on the ledge where Fukuyama stands. Seven feet up. Maybe eight. The basalt is smooth—no handholds, no footholds, nothing to climb.

So I run.

Boots pound the stone. Three strides. Four. Legs coil, then explode upward. I leave the ground, arms stretched overhead, fingers clawing for purchase.

My left arm hooks the edge.

The impact jars through my shoulders, elbow grinds across the rock, tearing skin in strips. My boots kick against the rock face, searching for friction. The machete dangles from my right hand, still clutched in a white-knuckle grip.

Above me, Fukuyama reacts.

Too slow—just a fraction too slow. His eyes peel open beneath the woven takuhatsugasa, the realization hitting him a heartbeat late. He thought I'd burn. He thought the snakes would finish me.

He was wrong.

His body pivots. The katana rises, gripped in both hands, blade angled for a downward strike. His arms extend overhead, then drop.

The sword screams toward my head.

I let go. Boots thud on the rock. The blade slams into volcanic rock centimeters above my scalp with a metallic CLANG that rings through the cavern like a temple bell. Sparks shower down, hot embers kissing my face. The sword bites deep—folded steel sinking into porous basalt, wedged tight by the force of his strike.

My right hand moves. The koshi-nata swings upward, angling the blade's spine into the gap between tsuba and stone. I jam it in hard, twisting the handle. The machete's edge catches the sword's ornate brass hand guard, pinning it further.

Fukuyama yanks on the katana. The blade doesn't budge.

He yanks again, harder. Tendons pop in his wrists. "Kusottare!" he snarls, spittle flying.

I leap, arm reaching up, stretching beyond the length of my sleeve, until fingers clamp around his forearm, sinking into weathered skin over brittle bone, barely any muscle left. Ruthless gravity pulls me back down—and him with me.

His body comes forward, hips tipping over the fulcrum of the ledge. He releases the katana to catch himself but it's too late. His projected outline flips across the cave wall in a graceless cartwheel, limbs flailing, silk kimono billowing like a parachute that forgot to open.

His back hits the floor with a hollow thud—the sound of meat dropped on a cutting board. The impact shatters the takuhatsugasa. Woven bamboo explodes into splinters, the conical hat disintegrating on contact.

He can no longer hide.

Shōgun Fukuyama. An old man with skin the color of papyrus, stretched drum-tight over a skull that seems too large for the withered meat clinging to it. Deep furrows carve through his forehead and cheeks like dry riverbeds. His hair is thin, streaked with silver, pulled back into a topknot that's come loose in the fall.

But his one eye, the one not folded over by a loose eyelid—that one is still young. Still hungry. Burning with the kind of rage that doesn't die just because the body does.

“So now the tide has turned, you think?” he says with a hmm.

I look him up and down. His right shoulder hangs limp—the first point of contact from the fall. Now it’s dislocated, probably broken. The hip was second. When he came down, his shoulder cracked first, then physics carried his lower body over until bony cradle smashed into the floor. The pain must be excruciating. Impressive, to see him on his feet, his frame hitched at a grotesque, jagged lean over the injury, balanced like a splintered kickstand.

“Yes,” I answer flatly.

Around us, the pit transforms into a vision of hell. The matu-yani fires have merged into molten rivers of flame that crawl across the basalt like lava flows. Resin beads melt and pool, feeding the advance, turning scattered fuel into liquid fire that seeks the lowest channels in the rock. The heat is a physical wall, pressing against exposed skin, baking the air until each breath scorches the lungs.

The vipers lose what little composure panic allowed them. The organized exodus becomes a stampede. Hundreds of mamushi surge toward the center—the only ground not yet consumed by flame. They flow over bones and body bags, a shifting carpet of black scales converging on the exact spot where Fukuyama stands.

He sees them coming. His good eye tracks the tide, but he doesn't move. Can't move. The dislocated shoulder, the shattered hip—his body is a broken machine held together by spite and adrenaline.

“Do you believe this changes anything?" His voice cuts through the chaos, steady despite the agony carved into every line of his face. "I have faced death before, Gorgo-kun. I have stared into the abyss and emerged stronger. You think fire frightens me? Serpents?" He straightens slightly, grimacing as bone grinds against bone. "I am Shōgun Fukuyama. I am descended from the bloodline of warriors who served the Emperor for six hundred years. I do not fall to gaijin filth who dishonor their father's memory by—”

"Okay, wow." I laugh, a full-throated laugh, because this is too good. "You're doing the speech. The full 'I am inevitable' speech. In a pit. Surrounded by snakes. On fire."

I take two steps toward him, waving the machete like a baton.

“You want to talk about Daddy-S? Fine. You blackmailed him into doing your dirty work, and when it was done? You ruined his career anyway. That’s all you are, Fuck-u-yama. You aren’t a killer. You’re a politician playing gangster. You couldn’t even kill me yourself. You had to send henchmen. The piano teacher with a gun. E. Honda in a suit.”

The vipers spill from the back wall to escape the crawling flames. A frenzied mound of scales folds and unfolds, spilling towards the center of the pit. His head turns when he hears them. 

He stumbles forward, right into my chest. He almost falls but I catch him by the kimono, silk twisted around my fist. His one eye darts down, then up at my face. Spit quivers on his lip.

“Death by venom. Death by fire. Anything to keep you from getting your hands dirty. Face it, bucko, you’re a coward who thinks he’s the villain but truth is—”

I lean in close enough to smell that he pissed himself.

“—you’re just a name on a list. ”

“Yelena—no!”

He uses that name like it has meaning, as if reminding me of my humanity will conjure some level of pity.

But I am not human.

I am the monster.

I am the Spiral.

I step back, cock my leg—

“Please, don’t!”

He pleads. I kick.

My boot thrusts forward—dead center mass.

The impact slams into his sternum. Bone compresses tissue. Air rushes from his chest, howling like a crushed accordion. The force launches him backward. Arms pinwheeling, silk rippling. His body arcs through smoke and heat, over stampeding snakes and burning shrouds, until his spine crashes into the jagged back wall with a crack.

He collapses.

Lands in a heap at the base of the rock. Right in the center of a writhing knot of vipers.

For a heartbeat, nothing happens. The snakes freeze. Fukuyama groans, trying to push himself upright with his good arm.

Then the first one strikes.

Fangs sink into his thigh. He gasps—a sharp, startled inhale—and his hand flies down to grab the snake. Before he can tear it free, another strikes his shoulder. Then his forearm. Then his neck.

Fukuyama screams.

Another viper hits his left hand. The palm splits open where fangs pierce through, blood welling instantly. He tries to pull away but a third snake is already coiled around his ankle, head rising for the strike.

Strike.

Calf muscle. Through the tabi sock. Deep.

Strike-strike.

Forearm. Shoulder. The vipers don't stop. Can't stop. He's in their path, blocking the escape route from the advancing fire. More snakes pile onto him, climbing over each other in panic, fangs finding flesh with mechanical efficiency.

His neck. His face. His remaining good eye.

The screams rise higher, breaking into something barely human—wet, ragged gasps punctuated by animal howls.

I look up. The tar-rich smoke, heavier than oxygen, has begun its death march down to the pit. That’s my cue—and I’m already moving.

My boots find purchase on the rough basalt. Hands reach up, fingers hooking into micro-fractures in the rock face. I pull, legs driving, and haul myself up onto the ledge in three hard movements. My elbows scrape. My ribs complain. I don't care.

I roll onto the platform, coughing—deep, hacking coughs that taste like smoke and pine resin. My lungs feel coated in tar. I push to my knees, then stand, legs shaking.

Below, Fukuyama is still screaming.

I walk to the edge and look down.

He's on his back now, arms flailing weakly. His face is swollen, grotesque—eyes puffed shut, lips split and bleeding. The venom is working fast. At least a dozen vipers are still attached, hanging from his body like obscene ornaments. More are coiling around him, drawn by the heat of his thrashing.

Then the fire reaches him.

The resin river finds his feet first. Tabi socks ignite instantly, synthetic fibers melting into skin. The flames crawl up his legs, consuming silk and flesh with equal hunger. His hair catches—what's left of the topknot flaring like a torch.

The snakes recoil, dropping away, fleeing the heat. But the damage is done. His body writhes in the fire—one final, involuntary dance—before going still.

The screaming stops.

I stand there, breathing hard, watching him burn.

Thirty seconds.

That's how long it takes for Shōgun Fukuyama to stop being a person and start being ash.

I take a step toward the chute then stop. I look back at the ledge. The katana is still there, wedged into the volcanic rock, the koshi-nata jamming it in place. Both blades glint in the firelight—steel and stone locked in an embrace neither wanted.

How to Get Away With Murder by Daddy S.

First rule: No souvenirs, no trophies.

That’s how you get caught. It’s a good rule. I’ve killed people. Some who were on The List. Some who weren’t. There is nothing to tie me to their deaths. No stolen keepsakes. No evidence.

I stare at the katana. His katana.

Fuck it. Rules are made to be broken.

I walk over and kick the handle of the nata. The machete breaks free from the rock and spirals down into oily sludge, disappearing into flames below. As it sinks into the flames I grip the katana's tsuka with both hands. My boots plant against the wall for leverage. Legs drive. Arms pull. The blade resists—steel grinding against porous stone in a tooth-aching screech that vibrates up through my forearms. I adjust the angle, twisting the handle left while pulling back with everything I have.

The blade shifts. Moves. Comes free with a metallic shing that rings through the cavern.

I hold it up in the firelight, examining the sword. The blade is… flawless. Not a single nick or notch, only unblemished, folded steel. This is the kind of sword samurai passed down for generations—and Fukuyama never deserved to hold it.

"You know what they say," I say with a smirk. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law."

I set the sword down, grab my turtleneck hem, and rip. The cashmere tears with a sharp textile scream—two feet of fabric, frayed but strong. I thread it through the tsuba twice, knot it tight, then loop the other end around my belt and cinch it at my hip.

The katana hangs at an angle, blade down. It swings when I move but it holds.

The rope is waiting for me, lying at the bottom of the chute like another dead snake. I walk over, yanking sleeves past the elbows, and bend down snatch the braided hemp. A mix of blood, basalt and pine tar strengthens my grip.

Pull, bitch.

Arms flex, thick cords of muscle and vein. I start climbing as smoke sinks, black death that smothers the ledge behind me. Hand over hand. Mountaineering boots wedge against volcanic walls, finding purchase in irregularities. The angle requires all my upper body strength to stay vertical—a tug of war between muscle and gravity. If I lose, I’m dead. No second chance.

Five meters. Ten. Smoke follows me up the chute, hot and toxic.

Fifteen meters.

My right hand reaches the anchor point—the bolt hammered into basalt at the chute's mouth. Fingers wrap around cold metal. I pull myself up the final meter until my head clears the opening, emerging back into the ruined corpse disposal room.

The maw yawns behind me. I brace my forearms, boots still wedged in the chute, and haul my torso through. My hips clear. Then my legs. I walk forward onto the debris-scattered floor and bend forward.

I stand there, hands on my knees, chest heaving, and I laugh—a dry, throat-shredding peal of copper-laced hacks separated by long, straw-thin breaths. I laugh so hard I spit up black phlegm on the sloughing floor.

The laughter trails behind me like a shadow as I stagger back to the zashiki, where flickering oil lamps still hold court over the carnage. The saya lies between them, on the dais where Fukuyama abandoned it, glossy black catching the dying amber light. By the time I pick it up, the laughs have degraded into breathless hiccups.

I sheathe the katana. The blade slides home with a quiet shk—steel kissing wood—then the soft click of the habaki locking into place.

I walk past Konda's corpse, stepping over the mess. His eyes are still open, staring at nothing. His mouth hangs slack. Around him, a pool of blood has seeped into the moisture-starved tatami, turning the mats slick and dark, ridged where his intestines coil across the floor.

My assault pack waits where I left it, a step past the gore on a clean patch of tatami. I kneel beside it, sit the sword down next to my leg, and reach for the side pocket. The zipper pulls loud in the silence, opening wide enough for my hand to reach inside and take out a worn spiral notebook. Dad’s handwriting on the first page: To my daughter, Yelena. The one choice I would never undo. Love, Dad.

The Hunger fights the sentiment. Daddy-S sure did know how to tug on this girl’s heartstrings. I flip through the pages of chaotic scribbles. Rants and ravings. Philosophic ramblings. One page is a section of family recipes, the next a detailed anatomical sketch noting specific pressure points that, when struck, render a man helpless. I stop at a marked page. The one marked with a black ribbon.

Ten names. Four are crossed out.

The Big Bad Wolf. Gretel. The Sandman. The Stepmother.

I uncap the pen from the spine.

Still half-chuckling—can’t help it, the situation is hiss-terical—I draw a line through the fifth name. The Golden King.

There are other names. Unmarked names. Rumpelstiltskin, The Pied Piper, the Juniper Tree, and of course the Erlking. I’m saving him for last. Then there's Bluebeard with an asterisk. The only name whose sentence is life. Daddy-S was very clear on that.

I flip the page to another list. Intentionally left blank by the old man, I have started my own list. There’s Mumbles (Ari Katz), Pruneface (Estaban Farre), Shoulders (Those fucks in Canada who drugged me), Piano Man (Fukuyama’s assassin), and The Blank (Yaponchik, uncrossed). Dad had his method of code talking but I fucking love Dick Tracy. I remember sitting in the living room back in Moldova, watching that acid trip of a movie with my brother and sister on state television.

I glance back to see the tar-laden smoke oozing from the fucking hallway like the blob.

So fucking what.

Words explode out of me. “All right, that’s enough! I want 'em dead! Both of 'em!”

I throw my arms around like Big Boy at the dinner table. “What's the matter, you bums forgot how to kill people?”

I scream at Konda. “Doesn't your work mean anything to you anymore? Have you no sense of pride in what you do? NO SENSE OF DUTY?! NO SENSE OF DESTINY? I'M LOOKING FOR GENERALS! WHAT DO I GOT? FOOT SOLDIERS!”

The notebook smashes on my thigh to each word.

“I—WANT—DICK—TRACY—DEAD!”

Something flutters free from between the pages—a slip of paper catching air, drifting down to the blood-soaked floor like a feather caught in a draft. I recognize it immediately. Let it fall. Just a fading reminder of who I used to be.

I go back into Pacino mode. “All's fair in love and business—Benjamin Franklin.”

But the eyes tick down. The paper dips, one last sway, one last hurrah before it soaks up all that goody-goody red juice.

My teeth clamp down on my lip hard enough to draw blood. I breathe—and pluck the paper from the air, a hair away from destruction. I look back. The smoke is slow but relentless. I don’t have time to fuck around and reminisce about the yester-years. I go to shove it back in the notebook.

A hand falls on my wrist. My hand but even dirtier, with broken nails caked with resin and smelling of turpentine. I look up to see the Other Me, on the floor beside me, her blue eyes locked on mine.

If she is out here…

Pain. Total, undeniable, pain. From dull aches to piercing stabs. I am overcome by it, as this room will soon be by choking smoke. Yaponchik, the mountain, Konda, the pit—every fight, every fall. The Hunger has clambered into the backseat, leaving me with the consequences for the last four days. Injured. Fatigued. Done.

My shoulders sag and I ask her why.

“Look,” she wheezes.

Her eyes roll down and mine follow to the paper.

“I know what it is,” I say as my fingers begin to unfold it. “I should be on my way back down to the truck. I’ll be lucky if I get there before dawn.”

She’s gone, retreated back to the basement of my mind. I can feel the heavy door slam shut and now I truly am alone.

I open the paper.

The crayon wax cracks along the fold lines but even here, the colors are still bright. Still vivid. It’s a child’s masterpiece.

A technicolor spiral sky. Yellow sun in the corner shooting rays in every direction. Three stick figures holding hands in a green field with flowers.

The tallest one has a Y on her chest.

The two smaller figures have Ms.

Mira and Matei.

The twins. My siblings.

At the bottom of the page, in a child's careful handwriting:

"Te iubim, Tati."

We love you, Daddy.

My jaw clenches. I bite down hard, molars grinding, trying to fight it.

I can't stop it.

The sob comes up from somewhere deep—somewhere I thought I'd buried years ago. It's raw and shaking, dragging my shoulders forward. Tears stream down my face, cutting clean tracks through the soot and ash coating my skin. I clutch the paper in both hands, knuckles white, like it might dissolve if I don't hold tight enough.

Thirty seconds of pure, brutal grief.

He was the monster and we loved him.

Now I am the monster. Will I be loved?

A groan cuts through the silence.

I snap my head up.

Across the room, Konda's hand drags across the floor. Fingers clawing toward me. His mouth works, bubbling blood, lips forming words that won't come.

The katana clears the saya in one motion—SHRIICK!

I'm on my feet. Three strides. The blade arcs down in a clean, vertical cut.

His head separates cleanly at the neck. Rolls across the tatami, bumping over uneven mats, coming to rest against the wall.

The hand stops moving.

I stand there, katana dripping, staring down at the body.

Emotionless.

My Appetite has returned.

All that pain? All that ache? I wipe it off, just like I’m wiping the blade on my turtleneck—one stroke per edge, slow and methodical. Steel hisses against cashmere.

My eyes, catching movement, dart to Konda’s feet. The smoke. A cloud—void black and oily—drifts towards me. I walk back to my bag. Drawing and notepad get shoved in the bag. Zipper gets yanked.

Then I pick the saya up and insert the blade. My very Spiral-like smile warps across folded steel as the blade slides down, bit by bit, until the arriving hilt slices it off.

Click.

Five down.

Five to go.

And then some.