Junji’s Ax (Short Story)

Junji’s Ax

by Nicholas DeNardi

A small bed, rocking and warm, listening to an omniscient and comforting womanly voice. A blanket of security, and a sound that defines existence.

“Many are good,” she said, “many are bad. And some, just like us, are merely lost.” The voice began to echo and a light formed at the center of blackness.

“Osoreru koto, wa arimasen.” A whooshing silence. Then, a waterfall.

Spraying mist from its jagged peak and falling heavy and thunderous into the stream below. Junji looked over the stream as his father chopped wood deep in the wilderness behind him. Something in the waterfall called to him. Smoke drifted into the sky.

Junji stared deep into the aggressive falling water. Its picture expanded in his mind. He could see a cavern behind its wavering curtain, where the billows of smoke seeped through and a bright orange light hovered. The chopping continued.

“Junji, are you there?” his father called to him from the trees. The sound of his voice was pale, the end result of a game of echoing telephone across acres of land.

The orange light called harder, and Junji stepped into the stream.

“Hello?” he said into the pillar of water crashing before him.

The orange light glowed like a miniature sun.

He stepped through the liquid wall and inhaled a cloud of black tar smoke.

The orange light grew brighter, engraved in the marbled rock, sizzling, white hot. A strange man stood in the corner of the cave looking deeply afraid. “I can find it for you,” he said.

The boy reached out to the light, but felt something below. He looked down and his body left him. The flash of a face seared in pain and dissolved into ashes as it clung to his pant leg and whispered into nothing.

“Junji!”

He woke up to the sound of pebbles hitting his window and soft rain pattering the roof.

#

Junji opened the window and saw Justine below.

“Finally!” she whisper-yelled. “Are you coming?”

“Uh,” he started, dazed.

“Just get down here,” she interjected before he could speak. Dean is waiting for us.”

“It’s raining,” he said.

“Come on, I’ll be waiting at your door.”

“I don’t know if I should,” he replied. He could hear the sound of Gene Shalit’s voice booming through the walls from his mother’s bedroom TV.

“Junji, he’s counting on us. It took him forever to set up the room, and his dad is only gone for this weekend.” She paused, seeing the dilemma in his eyes. “Is she asleep?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Then, come on. Dean won’t say this because he’s an asshole, but he misses you. And I miss you. And most importantly, I refuse to hang out with Dean alone,” she said with a grin. She was happy to see him smile and shake his head.

“Fine,” he said. “Give me two minutes.”

“It’s a perfect night,” she said into the cool and damp October air as he closed his window.

He threw on better clothes and a rain jacket and tip-toed down the hallway, pausing only to see the blue light flickering from underneath his mother’s door and to hear Gene Shalit say something about Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. It used to be a guest bedroom, and he supposed it still was. An isolation chamber meant for comforting a stranger, yet lately abused to numb its full-time resident. Junji hated that this was his mother who he had seen smile and who had loved him.

When he turned to go down the stairs he felt a wall of ice stop him. Looking down, he saw thin wisps of black smoke wafting from the living room. A whispering grew louder as he descended until a surround-sound whirlwind of voices consumed him. Breathing heavy with his heart in his chest he finally bolted into the kitchen, grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprinted into the living room.

An overweight, sweaty middle aged man stood panicked in front of the beige couch. Junji dropped the fire extinguisher in a stunned silence. A pale white light shone through the back window and enveloped the scene in a wet haze, causing the furniture to cast shadows across the floor like Art Deco sky scrapers struggling to break through two-dimensional space.

“You’re from my dreams,” Junji said, feeling his body dissociate from his mind. An old woman and her small daughter crouched in the corner behind the grandfather clock, dressed in rags and shivering with electric jolts. The ax, his father’s handcrafted fireman’s ax, stood in its frame on the wall, and zoomed optically across Junji’s corneas until he was standing below it.

“Take it,” the man said with a catch in his voice. His eyes reflected a strange jaundiced orange. “Please, take it.”

Junji reached up to the ax, hesitated. “I don’t want it,” he choked out. A sharpness pierced his forearm.

The old woman screamed, “please, take it!” and Junji saw that his mother’s aloe plant had stabbed him. It had stretched to an unnatural form and now lay limp, retracting into itself.

“I need to get out of here,” the man said. “I can’t, take this anymore.” He shook rapidly.

Junji, also trembling, took the ax from within its frame. He held it out in a blank stare, thinking of last spring and his father chopping wood, then thinking of fire and blunt darkness. The little girl in the corner cried. Tiny worms writhed in the potted soil of the baby cactus next to the aloe.

“For you, and for me” the man whispered. “The factory. You must go there, tonight.”

“Just don’t hurt my mother,” Junji replied.

“Oh, I am losing who I am,” the man said desperately. “You, must go. Don’t let her stop you.”

“Junji?” Justine whispered to him from his front door. “What are you doing?”

The man, woman and child were gone.

“I’m taking this with me,” he said, and Justine nodded in a way that even if she didn’t understand, she understood anyway.

#

They rode their bikes on the empty reflective streets of small town Canterbury, Rhode Island. The asphalt glistened under their treading tires and the black of the night stood as chiaroscuro backdrop to the blood orange leaves of dying trees. Chilled air blew crisply through Mr. Fernmeyer’s unfinished house on the corner of Chestnut and Magnolia as they cruised by, and street lamps ignited small corners of forgotten roads like spotlights from a miniature play. As the rain thinned to a floating drizzle Junji saw Justine’s long, auburn hair cast a waving comet trail behind them, as if to say this was always their trajectory, their destined path through space and time. The ax laid across Junji’s handlebars pulled him, towing him deeper into the heart of that idyllic and dark community.

Dean lived on the outskirts of Canterbury, next to the river and old cement factory. At Warwick and Pine Justine stopped and thought for a moment. Junji waited, knowing what she would do. She made a left onto Warwick but Junji did not follow.

“Justine,” he said, “it’s okay. We don’t need to go this way.”

“I don’t mind,” she responded. “Wickford is kind of nice this time of night. Might catch a junkie passed out in the tube slide.”

“It’s okay,” he said again, smiling. “Like you said, Dean’s waiting. Let’s just go the usual way.”

She eyed the ax across his handlebars. He stood dark and alone in the middle of the road, between one house white and another beige. A strange old man sat in his rocking chair on the front porch, smoking a cigar. He reminded her of one of those old men you see in movies where someone takes a wrong turn and has to talk to him, only to learn much later, and often too late, what his true nature contained.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s go.”

They continued toward the river until residential turned industrial, then made a left on Mayflower. Up ahead was the old cement factory, and not much further, a dead end that was really a dirt trail cutting through to an old development and Dean’s house around the corner.

The whispering started again. As the factory drew nearer, the voices became louder, and eventually converged until Junji heard them in perfect clarity.

“Osoreru koto, wa arimasen,” they said together, at once. The middle aged man stood at the chain-locked gate in front of the factory, staring at him with despair in his eyes.

#

Junji yelled, “what do you want?” He slid his bike to a stop and let it hit the ground with the back tire still spinning in the air. He approached the man, holding the ax in a vice grip. Justine heard the bike hit the pavement and turned to see Junji walking to the gate. She stopped riding and brought her phone to her ear.

“Hi, we’re… I know, I know. We’re… would you shut the fuck up? We’re at the factory, okay? Junji brought an ax and is walking toward the gate. Yeah, just hurry. Please.” She hung up and rode toward Junji.

“What do you want?” he repeated. The man clenched his jaw and pressed his palms into his balding head.

“You, must know,” he said.

Junji lifted the ax.

“Junji! You don’t need to do this,” exclaimed Justine as she pulled up next to him. “You don’t need to go in there.”

Pressure built in his head. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said desperately. He swung the ax into the man, who dissolved before him and left the chain to absorb the blow. It cracked open and fell to the ground. The man now stood at the boarded up entrance of the main building with a nervous frown. Smoke drifted up from the building and crackles of muted flames popped from behind its graffiti’d walls.

Junji wiped his eyes and walked to the door and swung the ax repeatedly at the man. Compulsively. Justine tried calling out to him but he was taken over. Swinging again and again, his body frenzied in its movements. She wiped a tear from her face and looked to the dead end where she hoped Dean would soon emerge.

The man stood over Junji, watching the ax pierce through his liminal space and make contact with the plywood underneath. Junji heard the flames roaring inside and did not stop chopping. A large figure sprinted from behind him. Junji turned as a gray form approached him rapidly and busted through the door, disappearing as it ran into the charred ruins and old industrial machines. The moonlight beamed through the unboarded windows up high, creating a mazed catacomb of jagged shapes and shadows across numerous assembly lines and burnt columns. A small glint of orange from a pile of rubble reflected back to Junji’s eyes.

“Junji, Dean is here. We can go, we don’t… you don’t need to prove anything to yourself or anyone else.”

Dean rolled up.

“It’s a full moon tonight. That’s when all the weirdos are out!” he said loudly. Justine looked at him scornfully and Junji did not move at all. “Who put a flying broomstick up your ass? It’s Hocus Pocus. Marcy was watching it.” He ignored Justine’s hateful looks and walked to Junji. “Jun, are we going in there?”

“No you fucking idiot!” Justine replied. “I don’t think that’s what any of us need right now.”

The middle aged man stood at the pile of rubble in the back of the building.

“Yes,” Junji answered. “I am going to kill him.”

#

Justine and Dean looked at each other and Junji walked into the factory.

“Kill who?” Dean asked as he and Justine followed. “That fucking arsonist? Jun, you know he’s in jail.”

They walked through dark blue dust, their silhouettes painting them as teenage ghosts creeping through a mural of tangled machinery, ashes, and shadowy minutiae. Junji stopped at the pile of devastated brick, rock and concrete at the back wall, much of it reduced to powder. The man stood between him and the rubble.

Justine nudged Dean and tilted her head to Junji’s ax. “Do something,” she mouthed.

Flabbergasted, he mouthed, “what?” and held his arms in the air.

“Anything,” she responded, emphatically.

The man in front of Junji spoke.

“For you, and for me,” he said. “It, is found.”

Junji saw a wave of memories and images he thought he had forgotten. Of his mother and father holding hands, carefree, on vacation, his mother speaking Japanese, his father English. He felt a deeper image. A rocking bed of infinite depth and his mother standing over it, talking to his soul. A phrase she repeated. “Osoreru koto, wa arimasen.” Then his father joined her over the bed.

“Do not be afraid?” he asked.

“That’s right,” she responded with a kiss. She reached down and tightened Junji’s blanket burrito. “Do not be afraid.”

He thought of her alone in her bedroom with the TV so loud it shook the house. He tightened his grip on the ax. Another hand joined his on the wooden handle and Dean stood next to him.

“Whatever we’re doing here, you don’t need this right now, Jun. Let me and Teenie hold onto it for you.”

Junji yanked the ax away with surprising force.

“He is my creator, and I will honor him. This, is where I must stay,” the man said, solemnly.

Junji bellowed as loud as he could and raised the ax into the air. Dean backed up to Justine and Junji swung with full force into the man’s head, which dissolved again and let the ax strike a block of concrete and embed itself within. Something small jumped from under the pile of debris.

The ax stood still with its handle in the air, and Junji looked down to see what had fallen loose. A shiny, orange shaded trinket lay on the ground.

“Oh, my god,” Justine exclaimed. “Is that the locket?”

“What locket?” Dean asked.

Junji reached down and picked it up. Hands shaking, he wiped the soot from its exterior and revealed a deep gold. He felt around its circular face for the indentation to open it. Finally, it clicked and unlocked.

Junji covered his face with his left arm and Justine went over and hugged him. Through sniffles and a pressurized ocean in his eyes, he showed her the inside. A faded picture of him, his father and his mother at the beach.

“I can’t believe it’s here,” Junji said, through tears.

Dean patted him on the shoulder.

“Junji, Hinata, and Chris,” he said. “I always told your dad he was the odd one out in that equation.”

They all laughed and Junji closed the locket and held it to his head.

“Should we break your ax free?” Dean asked.

“It’s not mine,” Junji responded. “This is where it belongs.”

Special Thanks to:

My Bae Victoria S. for the Hocus Pocus quote.

Chris R. for Gene Shalit.

Dan S. for the ax left by a father.

Emma G. for the waterfall and “aggressive falling water”.

Maike S. for the vicious house plant.

Anant K. for the flying broomstick.

Keith C. for the isolation chamber and writhing worms.

Erik C. for “one of those super old people in a rocking chair that you see in movies where the people take a wrong turn and the guy seems a little off and it’s not until later on that you learn their true nature. And if you do a thank you section do that full quote and also this one ending right now but also include the word now.”