YSJ Anthology 2015

fibre of the fabric that passed through her fingers. It was sure to be
a matchless piece.
As the set muttered on in the background, suddenly the exhaustion
of the day set in. I decided to save inspection of the obi for the
morning light, abandoned the magazine to the side table and flopped
back on to my pillow. Even as I drew the sheets up to my chin, I
could feel my eyelids lowering.
I was standing in the temple, a headdress balanced above and silk
below. The light was bright and I struggled to focus. My mother and
grandfather stood behind me, their faces a strange combination of
clarity and transience. I blinked, but they became more vague. I
pushed my eyes wide in the hope of drinking in their faded
idiosyncrasies but they seemed to recede, until it was hard to make
out their expressions at all.
The day was warm, the temple stuffy and I became acutely aware of
more and more people around me; colours of clothing, chatter rising
like a wave. The sweet scent of sake caught in my breath as my
hands felt a cup between them. A figure clothed in black stood
alongside. He turned and I squinted to recognise him as he gently
pushed the sake to my lips with one hand and stroked my hair with
the other. As I drank, his hand slipped down and came to rest on the
nape of my neck. The vessel drained, his second hand came up to
mirror the first. I relaxed a little as his fingers manipulated my neck:
I allowed my eyes to close.
Before I realised, the pressure began to irritate. I opened my eyes to
find the light had become blinding and I battled with the glare. His
thumbs moved to the front of my throat and I felt an intolerable pain
closing across it as he moved closer, pressing me against a wall. I
dropped the cup and grabbed at the hands encircling me only to find
myself clawing at hard, smooth scales; my neck, and now chest, in a
serpent’s grasp. I scrambled for somewhere to force in my fingertips.
Light-headed, I could feel my chest shrinking, the pockets of air
draining as I used every ounce of strength to drag every floating
molecule in around me. As he moved I felt his every muscle tighten,
I felt the moments lengthening; the echoing, fading sounds grow
more and more distant. I kicked, scratched, gasped.
Pitch darkness.
117