InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Good Twin, Evil Twin ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter Three

The lights were bright within the Omega Squad's office. Perhaps too bright, blinding, for that time of night. The air was hot, stale although not completely, utterly displeasing; there was the smell of disinfectant but it was not too strong to be bothersome. The place was quiet, too, except for the sounds of people filling past as they went from department to department within Tokyo's 12th precinct. Every now and then there would be a young man in handcuffs paraded by the two, remaining detectives - the rest retired earlier that evening. And just as often as that a set of distressed and shame-faced parents shuffled through the maze of desks.

But it was the light that got to Kev. There was just something about fluorescent light, and its dead, lifeless light, that did not agree with him and inspired more than a little bit of melancholy in the detective. He tapped his pen and let it fall onto the cover of the folder the contents of which he had been sifting through for almost an hour - it was that damned, detestable light with its eerie, otherworldly humming, echoing like heavy metal within his skull - he could not take it anymore.

Detective Kev, holding a cup of cold, soggy Ramen, swiveled over to Detective Ken, who was busy studying another folder, and spoke in a staggering, haggard accent: “You know, um, I must say, um, I'm shocked. Er, I was led to believe, um, from TV, that sushi was what people ate, um, in this country.”

Detective Ken allowed himself to smile - after being certain no body saw it. “Detective Kev-san,” now it was his turn to speak in broken and accented English. “Did not you parents teach manner? You no eat Ramen like that; you sip on, sip off.”

Kev stifled the laugh while Ken put the folder aside.

“You know, Ken, they told me these sorts of things were rare in Japan.” The younger brother looked up at the older brother as both sat back along their chairs.

“It has been known to happen, from time to time, but it is rare.” He continued, putting the folder away into the desk. “Tell me, if this were New York, after a fourth murder like this, what would be happening?”

“Well, privately, we'd have psychiatrists write up profiles. And we'd be on the local news, telling as many people as possible about it.”

“That makes sense,” Detective Ken conceded. “And that's what would be happening here.”

“Should be happening.” Detective Kev added. “At least the boss is getting us more help. I can understand not alerting the public right away to prevent, chaos, but I cannot understand why we were denied even a psychotherapist until now. It's weird, big bro, there are so many things about this case that just doesn't add up.”

Ken grunted, nodding. Kev concurred.

Between themselves the brothers - half-brothers to be exact - possessed a way to communicate that cut perfectly across the language barriers. Ken, who was half-Japanese, understood English but could not speak it too well. Kev, who was all-American, understood Japanese and could, at times, speak it without difficulty. Together, though, they spoke to each other in their native languages which made it easy for them but outsiders found their conversations difficult to follow.

“Tell me about it,” Ken asked, leaning across his desk and looking at that bowl of Ramen - despite its condition it still seemed very appetizing. “There's no one about, we should be free to discuss.”

“I'm no shrink,” Kev said, tapping his temple, “but it doesn't strike me that we're looking for a normal, everyday serial killer - a man, I mean. Most serial killers are men, and even if they're straight and their victims include other men, there's always evidence of sex. But, who's ever killing these kids, if it's a man, isn't getting off on it. And the way a few of the girls were torn up, it seemed like jealousy .”

“You mean you think the killer could be a woman?”

But Kev did not answer as much as he nodded.

“That's crazy; who's ever killing them must be strong, physically, too strong to be a woman.”

Kev shook his head and sighed - it was a late, long night.

“Don't go Dirty Harry on me, Kev-san,” Ken said, again with that accent.

The American stood and unbuttoned his collar. The Japanese leaned back again and crossed his legs. At that moment Medic Kaede, a sleek, slender woman with violet eyes filed past the detectives.

“Medic Kaede, have you seen Medic Kano?” Kev asked, just lightly touching the woman's shoulder.

With a sly smile and eyes that undressed men - sometimes secretly, sometimes not-secretly - she angled her head and said: “Medic Kano was called to a crime scene a half-hour ago, Detective Markus.”

With a nod of his head she continued - a slight, momentary smirk came to his lips. For reasons he did not fully understand Medic Kaede always gloved her right hand. He had once asked Medic Kano about it - since he knew their families were close - and he said something about accidents with acids while at college. But Kev was a cop and his mind was keen, too keen, and when things did not add up -

“Kev? Kev? Earth to Kev?”

“Huh? What is it?”

Ken: “Work is not a place to be day dreaming about you know who! You know, if they ever find out - “

Kev: “I know, I know, big bro, I'm dead. Anyway, what's got you all worked up?”

“Like I was saying,” he answered while he stood to fetch their coats. “While you were day dreaming about your favorite medic, the boss called.”

“The - the phone rang? I wasn't that out of it,” he stammered yet in near-perfect Japanese while he caught the coat his brother flung aside. “I wasn't that out it,” he said almost to no body as his brother all but fled the squad room.

“Quickly, boss said it might be another one.”

“I'll be right there, wait, wait,” he said, suddenly fully getting back to reality. He fled past another one of those sets of sickened-looking parents. “Ken - Detective Ken - wait. I swear, I wasn't that out of it. She's not even my type.”

The older, sad-looking parents looked at themselves for a moment, hesitated, and continued.

Zenku did not head straight back home out of fear he might have been followed. That eyes - not those eyes but other eyes as keen and mortal as his own - might have been watching. Rather than the brash and irrational, he chose to be calm and logical. He wandered about the city, a whole world away from the park and from what awaited there, he roamed through the streets with the crowds that gathered here and there because melting into the world made it safe Otherwise, if he had turned home with single-minded determination, if he stood out in anyway, someone would have noticed and - when the news of his sister's latest crime was leaked - someone would have remembered. The police would have been led by his footprints onto his front door destroying forever, eternally what mattered in his life.

Such as it was, after trekking through Tokyo for four hours, he found himself back at the edifice of the building. He sighed - but it was not the right time and place to be complacent for it was raining and standing outside for too long might prove to be suspicious. Without further ado, he opened the door and bolted into the lobby. The foyer was about fifteen by fifteen feet square, clean and well lit. There was a canister for trash and another for umbrellas. On one wall was a board posting notices by neighbors and residents of the building. On the other wall were the mailboxes. He did not bother to check his - he never got any mail anyway - but just the same he ran his fingers across it, its letter, its tag with his mangled name, it felt empty as the sound of its front plate jingling echoed within its hollowness.

He thought about pressing the buzzer and balked; his sister was too upset to be disturbed by the buzzer. He produced a keychain, a very simple ring with numerous keys, only four of which could be used at home Beyond the unlocked, front door was the inner chamber with the stairs before and the elevators behind, deep into the start of hallways that led into the laundry room and the super's apartment. Only three flights of stairs awaited, an easy, brisk climb, but the steps creaked and he did not want to make a sound. His sister, with that temper, no doubt alerted his fellow residents with that gait and there was no need to be adding to the drama.

Zenku reached the elevator, pressed the button and waited. A moment later he boarded; a moment after he landed. His apartment was down the way at the part of the hall that was unlit. Perpetually. It was not always like that - only since Kuzen returned - but somehow, someway, the lights installed about that area of the building would not live for long. Almost as if they were sabotaged.

Standing in the dark, at his right was the door of his apartment, as his left was the door of the facing apartment. And he could tell by looking at its crevice that his neighbor's lights were on inside and that his neighbor was standing behind it, looking at him through its peephole. His heart skipped a beat at the shock of the realization he was being watched but he was careful not to be visibly alerted or alarmed. He wanted to be as innocent as possible. If it were, even, possible.

It seemed his sister must have made a scene when she came back that afternoon.

And despite everything, his careful planning, his clear-headed action, suspicion tainted into his very soul. Was there nothing he could do? Nothing he could say? Was he fated to be outcast from the world to the crack of doom?

It was then and there that he wondered if the blood had been washed away by the storm It was strange how the lobby was not wet and neither the stairs nor the hallways showed the telltale evidence of leftover water dragged by shoes a step at a time. And at his door, its sides, its knob, its welcome-mat, there was not a glimmer of moisture natural or unnatural.

Yet all the while he stood amid thought deep within the building it could be heard, that splattering of rain hitting the skylights fifteen stories up the shafts of the stairwells.

Kuzen was good at covering her tracks, as if she had had centuries to perfect the art.

At the door he touched the letter that marked it. Under its bronze-hued shape, seared into the wood, was the echo of its earlier, kanji designation. After the war, that sector of Tokyo sheltered American soldiers; much of the Japanese of that area had been Romanized for the foreigners and into that day most of it had not bee converted back. He tapped the key, turned the knob. He opened the door a tiny, little bit until he noticed the chain had not been set and then he opened it the rest of the way, enough to let him enter.

Inside the lights were off and he kept them off. The apartment was dark and shadowy yet aglow with a weird, eerie light whose source could not be discerned. He put the keys into his pants and placed his hands into his pockets, his jacket's pockets. Again he felt that thing and reacted - swiftly, shockingly - ejecting it out of his garment onto the cold, hard floor. At the same, exact time coins he did not notice earlier fell along with it and landed upon the tile work, circling about as they came to rest under the furniture. He cursed; he hated messes, all messes, especially messes he caused without thinking.

But what was he to do? He was too tired to search for loose change, anyway, wherever it came from.

Resigned, he flung off his jacket, letting it fall away from that thing that remained crumpled and moist where it lay against the floor.

The window - it was as he left it - indeed, the apartment did not suffer any material change since that afternoon. And it was quiet, too. As silent as a tomb.

“Where are you, Kuzen?” he whispered recalling one of his last mantras, about not seeing Kuzen.

But there was not the slightest, subtlest suggestion of an answer and he sighed. Could it be that he was alone?

He approached the window.

It was a view of the skyline, of the buildings with their grid work of tiny, multicolored windows that appeared to be more like stars than like windows. And at the center stood the building. From base to crown, it was long and straight. At the tip its rectangular shaft terminated through a series of shorter, thinner blocks until everything, every part of it, evolved into an art deco-like spiral antenna. That night the structure of its crown was awash by deep, red light. The whole effect of it, of it so remote and so isolated from the rest of the skyscrapers, suggested a macabre, gothic lighthouse, beckoning the demonic forces of the dead of night and guiding it through the maze of the city, guiding and prodding it into itself like a spider amid a web streets and avenues. It was not exactly Tokyo's or even Japan's tallest building but it was at once its most beautiful and terrifying.

One night it appeared, it just appeared, no one ever talked about it, said they saw it. Could it be that the whole, entire city was oblivious to that one, singular building? Could it be that no one saw it but him?

Zenku was taken aback into that office. Upon the desk his arms and legs were spread wide apart. He arose, arching and slumping away from the light to the void until he stared into those eyes. His own focused and adjusted, revealing the face and the body, the naked body, that seemed to be attached to the eyes. But there was more; and there was more unseen for only fragments of that figure retained the proportions of a man and the rest was either by the lack of light or by the self-preserving nature of the mind obscured forever from memory.

Suddenly there was the feeling of something striking and digging into his neck - an icy, sharp touch penetrated into his body and cascaded throughout his blood.

With a gasp he returned to the here and now.

“What? What's this, Kuzen?”

His face was hot and wet but it was not from sweat oozing out of his pores. The windows showed the effect, too, as steam dumped layers of mist upon its cold, icy panes completely obscuring the view. Rubbing at the glasswork, the wetness remained making it impossible to see through the window again. There was so much moisture it trickled down from the sill to the floor like a kind of indoor rain.

In the short time he had been trapped by his mind the apartment suffered a material change that only gradually came into focus.

There was light behind Zenku. Was it always there? Was it unnoticed until that moment, that instant? He turned to see: it was the bathroom. Its door was open, its light was on and steam poured into the living room.

“You startled me, Kuzen,” he stammered, his heartbeat returning to normal.

It would only be natural that his sister would have wanted to bathe after what happened. He, too, needed to be cleansed in many, many ways.

He approached the bathroom and noticed that he was naked. But he did not recall taking off his clothes - and he did not recall his sister collecting the spilt, loose change and stacking it into regular, sorted piles upon the television set. He did not remember anybody placing his jacket upon the stand or moving out of sight, out of mind, that damned, detestable thing that he flung off in horror. Yet, there it was, all of it, the evidence of his senses could not be denied.

Within and the door shut behind him - before him was the bathroom, small and cramped, no larger than a walk-in closet. Yet the shower fitted two `comfortably' if they were close. The curtain was ajar and through its semi-transparent fabric he saw the body of his twin although most of her form was disfigured and distorted by the rapid turbulence of the steamy vapors. Yet in that shape and form she seemed to be the reflection of his very own soul.

He sidestepped the curtain and instantly stood face to face with his sister - they were as naked as the day they were born.

“Zenku, I missed you,” she whispered, lovingly, while she wrapped her arms about his waist and tugged his skin onto her body.

“Kuzen.” He let her chin rest upon his shoulder. She let his hand wander about her long, black locks. “Why do we do these things, Kuzen?”

She chuckled at her brother's question and deepened her already-tight hug such that their flesh was intimately touching.

He reacted with a jerk at the feel of his smooth, hairless genitals rubbing against the sharp, short stubble about her vagina. He was struck, too, by the difference between the body and his sister - Kuzen was alive, warm and inviting, begging to be penetrated and filled with his semen. His heart skipped a beat and the stirring returned but it was different, though, it did not bring ill feelings of awkwardness. Rather, it was as if there was nothing wrong with the reaction.

Again she giggled reaching down, between his legs - but just the thought of such overt contact drew him away.

“No, Kuzen, this can't be right.”

“My sweetest, my dearest, if this isn't right, nothing's right.” She held and squeezed his hands. “We were like this, closer, longer than any two people could be. Watching each other growing out of nothing. What can be more intimate than that? Realer than that? If this isn't right, nothing's right in this world.” She lay her face against his chest, her small, rounded breasts teasing his flesh as she breathed bringing her nipples into and out of contact.

“There must be another way to stop the urges I have. Kuzen. Do you know what it's like to see all of those girls - virgins - that I couldn't have.”

She did not speak, only held him.

His erection throbbed against the lips of her vagina, her sexual organ feeling more like fingers than anything else.

“Zenku, this is how it should be. Don't you see how much you love me? How much I love you? Don't waste your time looking for this inside other girls, even if they have that paradise they would not give it to you. They would not give it to you then, why would they give it to you now? Oh, Zenku, Zenku, when you were younger they hate you. Older they fear you. Those girls live in a different world. Another world. You are not allowed there anymore - if you ever were - and it's too late for you.”

She pressed him against the wall of the shower, the spray from the head falling directly between them.

“But what you do is dangerous!” he struggled to speak it sternly. “And if you get caught, what then? I'll kill myself, I cannot exist without you.”

“It's too late for you - don't you get it? You are doomed to be alone with me! If you just stayed away from those girls, I wouldn't have to do what I do.” She slapped his face, hard, leaving a mark and making a sound that resonated through his skin. And it seemed that not only had her demeanor changed but her physical form mutated from something that looked so fragile - identical with the very same girl she killed earlier - to something that resembled a demon complete with the flash of deep, blood-red eyes. “If you were a real man and not this weakling, I would be a normal woman and not this monster!”

At times like that she could be so awful he was frozen by the terror of it. And there he remained, naked and helpless, as his older twin sister dominated him. She clutched his genitals like she clutched a rag-doll and taunted his size, his inadequacy.

“Zatoichi's favorite color is Kuzen,” he thought at the shock, repeating the mantra.

All the while, despite the pain and the horror of that violent, raging temper, he grew bigger and harder. She began to masturbate him with the most violent, penetrative motions. He did not resist her treatment - for he was transfixed like a paralyzed man - out of the fear of the real, bitter pain he knew she could be inflicting. She jerked violently, as if working herself into climax, as she ravaged him with her hands.

“Kuzen does not blink, ever.” He did not know if he was saying it in his head or out loud.

And he could have sworn that he did not feel anything from the ejaculation. Instead it was semen-splattered Kuzen who was enrapt by orgasm. His orgasm.

When it was over, after another moment of exhaustion and discontinuity, he found himself walking from the bathroom, across the living room, to the bedroom. The chamber was large enough to fit one, thin bed, which they shared. Although to be sure - as he thought about it - they did not share it, she let him use it. Everything else, from the books to the artwork, was his but the bed and what went beneath the bed was hers. And just as he entered he caught her hunched over the box - the neon-pink, Hello Kitty Box - the box he was not ever, ever, allowed to touch. He averted his eyes while he saw her drop a wet-looking, crumpled piece of cloth into it. In the dim, dark light, in the night, the item remained unknown, formless, but it seemed to be a frilly, silky thing that a girl might have owned.

Shutting the box, she slid it under the bed and turned to face Zenku.

“Did you like the gift I left you?” She planted a kiss on his lips and rested her chin on his shoulder. She seemed to be at peace, calm -

“Gift.”

Kuzen always left him bizarre little trinkets. And he recalled the object inside his jacket's pocket. It was not just wet but wet with blood. He looked at his hands - its trace was gone - yet was it ever there?

“My cat,” he whispered, petting her mane about her ears.

It was the queerest thing, so strange, so unexpected. But it seemed for a moment that there was something different about Kuzen's ears. Something rough, imperfect.

At last the monster was asleep and he sighed. Truthfully he did not fear for his safety, it was the rest of the world that ought to be afraid.

“I'll try to be stronger, if you'll try to be nicer. Please, please,” he half-whispered, half-whimpered. “Nicer. You just can't go around killing people.”

She looked at him, through him, and it did not seem her lips moved as she said: “Kuzen does not give death -“