Sunako Megumi clenches her fists tightly as she peers behind her at the village that has kept her from her life.
Sunako always is a small-town girl with big-city dreams. She romanticizes daily of life in a penthouse in downtown New York or, at the very least, Tokyo. She dreams of fame, wealth, and happiness. It’s her parents’ fault that she’s still stuck here. For the sixteen years, she’s been alive, her mother and father just do the same thing day in and day out, working the rice fields that surround their village. They’ve tried to have their daughter join them, just as her older brother had, but eventually gave up, realizing she dreamed too much.
She turns back towards the road before her and smiles, thinking about all her family missing her and crying over her when they realized she had run away. By the time this happened, however, she planned to be hours away. She continued forward, adjusting her backpack filled with clothes, food, and various beauty products.
About ten minutes later, she had reached the terraced rice fields where her parents worked day after day. She stopped a moment to catch her breath and take a sip from the canteen of water she had slung over her shoulder.
“This is it.” She whispered to herself as she stared out over the fields.
She screwed the cap back onto her canteen and let it fall to her side as she began cutting through the field. Instead of taking an hour just to go around the fields via the road, she figured she could, at least, cut her time in half cutting through. She stepped off the road and into an ankle-deep pool of water. She shrieked, feeling the chill rush up to her spine. She had forgotten the paddy fields were practically lakes at this point.
“No point in turning back now. I’m already wet.” She mutters, trudging through the water.
The deeper she went in the fields, the further away she got from any regrets of leaving her family in the middle of the night. The rice was the reason for her captivity in the first place, is it not? Her parents worked the fields day after day and yet they could hardly make ends meet, at least, that’s what her parents told her. At that rate, she’d never go to college and never get to New York, she’d be trapped at the village like everyone else stupid enough to stay there. She’d rather die.
She suddenly heard the splashing of water behind her. She froze and she bent over, wondering who else could be out in the fields. Was it her brother? Did he follow her out here to try and convince her to come back home? She looked around but saw nothing.
She eased forward, trying to avoid any sight of whoever else was out in the fields with her. She smacked a palm to her head, realizing that if it was, indeed, her brother then he would have said something by now. It’s probably just an animal of some kind. She took a deep breath and straightened her posture and continued forward.
Still, on edge, she decided to try and calm herself with some music, removing her MP3 player and headphones from her bag. She jams the audio jack into the port on the side of the device and turns it on. She wished she had a phone, but her parents always said that phones were a waste of money and time. Probably wouldn’t get service out in the middle of nowhere anyway, she thought.
Once the screen flashes on, she presses the play button and it begins playing her favorite pop song, singing about clubs, dancing, drinking, and, most importantly, boys. She always wanted a boyfriend, but all the boys in the village were nobodies, left to live in their father’s shadow and die in the fields.
The plopping of water sounds out again, she only hears it slightly this time and pins it up to her nerves once more, trying to drown it out by humming the lyrics to the song. Then the water splashed rapidly and louder, almost deliberately. She removed her headphones and turned around. She scanned the darkness for any sign of movement but found none.
“Hello?” she called out nervously.
In response, something besides her caused a massive burst of water to explode from the rice plants. She yelped and ran straight. The water splashing all around her made her believe that whatever was toying with her was right behind her.
Her head filled with panic and the thought of some pervert chasing after her. He was going to rape her and then kill her– with a knife– the one thing she’s paranoid about. Her brain ran faster than she could ever hope to and her legs locked up and she fell face-first into the water. Her MP3 slipped from her hand and drowned right in front of her. She sobbed and sat on her knees rubbing her eyes. She wanted to go home now, she didn’t care about going to Tokyo or New York, she just wanted to go home where it was warm and safe.
She peered through her hands at the darkness surrounding her. She felt incredibly vulnerable and exposed; Sunako was at the mercy of her pursuer. Still, she saw nothing, she heard nothing.
“I want to go home.” She quietly sobbed.
Something leaped from the darkness behind her and tackled her, pinning her face in the water. She fought as it tore at her clothes and she managed to escape and shoot straight up to begin running the direction from which she came. She peered behind her and saw her pursuer. It wasn’t a man, although its body had the shape of one. The jaw was elongated and snapping at her as it chased. Its eyes were black and it had no hair, just a large collection of dark veins trailing all over its scalp. The muscles covering the body were red, as though there was no flesh keeping them covered. It had claws on its hands and feet and was charging after her on all four limbs. She was flooded with terror and ran even harder.
She hadn’t got more than a few paces away when another creature leaped out of the rice stalks to her right and tackled her. This one was a mirror image to its fellow beast and carried the same overwhelming bloodthirst that clung to its twin.
The one on top of her stretched its jaw wide, exposing a large set of fangs and bit down on Sunako’s neck, driving its teeth into her jugular. It ripped its head up and the girl’s head nearly came off of the small strand of flesh that remained of her neck. The other was now upon her as well and had taken to her arm, using its claws to rip it from her torso, it swallowed the small thing in almost a single bite, then it moved onto her right leg. The one on top of Sunako had moved down and quickly ripped open her chest with its giant mandible and began feasting on her internal organs.
The young girl with dreams of romance and big city life died quickly. By the time the sun came up, her body was almost completely devoured save for a few strands of meat and bone the two creatures deemed unpleasing. She was discovered by two workers who came to the fields that day. Only a part of her face had remained following the attack and that was used to identify her. The police told her parents and they wept to mourn their daughter, blaming themselves for what had happened, just the way she wanted them to when she set out on her adventure.
KYLE ATWOOD 