#author: junji ito | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chelleluneauthor · 2 months ago

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The Conversation Room Novelization

Hey there everyone! As a writing practice I tried novelizing one of my favorite stories from Alley's. Since I feel like it, kind of, counts as fan art I thought I would drop it here as well. Hopefully I did Mr. Ito justice.

xoxo, Chelle

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By: Junji Ito

Novelization By: Chelle Lune

Life can change in an instant.

Isn’t that what my mother had always told me? A warning that had fell on deaf ears until that ill-fated October day, after it was already too late.

I had just moved from my small town of Takayama to an even smaller town by the name of Kuroshita. When graduating from Nagoya University, only a handful of months earlier, I could have never imagined myself living in a town more remote than the one I had spent my entire adolescence trying to escape.

Kuroshita was a rural, secluded mountain top community that only saw sparks of life during the winter months. Being the hidden holiday vacation spot that it was, tourists would only come to the mountain town from December to March to ski, ice skate, and attend special festivals put on by the local government.

Once spring arrived, however, the town would become desolate yet again. The seasonal visitors would journey back down the mountain, leaving the locals to close up the inns and shops not supported during the off season. Not many year-round businesses remained that would draw in outsiders, like me, except for the one that stood, newly built, on the outskirts of town.

Kuroshita Observatory had been one of the only organizations to give me an interview post-graduation. The engineering field I studied from was extremely competitive. On some days, it felt as though my fellow graduates were snapping potential career opportunities from me left and right. I think my willingness to move to the middle of nowhere, brought on by desperation, is what secured me the eventual job offer.

Surprisingly, I fell into my new life and routine easily. I had begun to wonder if I had started to develop a type of Stockholm Syndrome with the exact type of life I thought I couldn’t stand. I found a small apartment in the heart of town and during the week commuted to the craggy overlook where the observatory stood. It was a relief to discover that I actually loved my job and even enjoyed the rural commute to get there.

In spite of that, it was on this commute that my life, no, my entire perception of reality, changed forever.

XXX

Moootoh? Hashhhhhemottttttttoh?

Mehhss Hashemmmooohtoh?

The first thing that broke through the haze were the words, if you could call them that. The second thing was the pain. My head was so heavy and full it felt as if someone had sewn a cinder block onto my neck. The rest of my body was incredibly sore. Muscles I didn’t even know I had screamed out in protest with each small movement. Hesitantly, I moved the only part of me that didn’t weigh a thousand pounds. My eyelids.

“Ms. Hashimoto?” The world was blurry, but the voice came from right above me. “Are you awake, Ms. Hashimoto?”

Slowly, the world began to take shape around me. Fluorescent lighting hung overhead which created a halo effect around the older nurse leaning over me. She was a stern looking woman with flinty eyes and a no-nonsense set to her mouth. Terribly confused, I watched as her capable hands fiddled with the IV that was, apparently, hooked up to my forearm.

“Where am I?” The words came out much weaker than I had intended.

“This is a hospital ward.” She responded, placing a gentle hand speckled with age spots onto my arm. “You were in a car accident and sent to the hospital.”

My eyes darted around the room to confirm that, yes, she was right. As to be expected from a town like Kuroshita, the hospital ward I was in looked as if it had not been updated in over a decade. The room had one door leading out to a dimly lit hallway, the walls were plain with no decoration, and the only thing to fill the space were five other hospital beds with accompanying side tables.

Five hospital beds, I realized, that were all occupied.

“Your head and arms were injured.” The nurse, whose nametag I could now read said “Watanabe”, continued. “Although the injuries aren’t terribly serious, we are keeping you for observation overnight. Just to be sure.”

Nurse Watanabe looked at my IV one last time before giving a firm nod, pleased with her handiwork. She began to make her way around the small room to check on my newly acquired roommates. I furrowed my brow as I looked at the pockmarked ceiling tiles above me. Now that the fog of whatever drug they had given me had begun to wear off the event that landed me here was starting to come back.

It must have been around seven in the morning on my usual route to work. I remembered groggily bobbing along to the radio as I came upon the intersection next to the local market and gas station. My old, beat-up car chugged along into the empty intersection when a loud scraping roar overtook everything. My head slammed against the driver’s side window. Confusion. Then nothing.

“Ms. Sugie, how are you feeling?”

The question brought me back to the present where Nurse Watanabe was checking in on the girl laying in the bed directly to my left.

“Well, awful obviously,” The woman, Sugie, whined in an exaggerated nasal tone. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and twisted her mouth into an ugly grimace. “Why did this have to happen to me? I’m so unlucky!”

I immediately disliked her.

XXX

With no radio or television, the hours passed slowly in the old hospital room. I napped on and off until a stinging sensation began on my cheeks. It was as if a centipede was crawling across my face, stabbing me repeatedly with needle point legs the whole way. Prodding my face didn’t reveal any scratches or injuries. I worried something neurological had been altered during the crash. It became so uncomfortable it was all I could think about.

“Ms. Hashimoto? Ms. Hashimoto?”

The sound of my last name snapped me out of my worried thought spiral. I turned to the bed next to me in confusion and met the eyes of the whiny girl from earlier.

“I’m sorry?” I managed.

“My name is Sugie,” she said with more haughtiness than an introduction could possibly warrant. “The driver of the car you hit.”

My head physically recoiled in indignation.

“How fast were you driving?” She continued without waiting for a response. “You’re definitely going to be at fault with how you were speeding.”

“Wait a minute, I was not speeding!” My voice was loud and shrill. “I had the right of way. YOU were the one that came charging through the intersection without stopping.”

“I did stop! You barely got hurt but there’s, like, a crack in my leg.” She gestured wildly to the cast on her right leg. “It might be broken!”

The other ward patients sat silently and watched our heated interaction.

It was strange, the other four girls sharing the ward with Sugi and I looked nothing alike. Yet, they all seemed as if they were related somehow. There was an identical dull vacancy in their eyes and the same odd expression settled among their features that made them seem indistinguishable.

“I have to take time off of work now which is going to make my bills pile up. You’re going to do something about it!”

“Hold up!” I protested. “Don’t blame this entire thing on m-“

I was cut off by an angry Nurse Watanabe bursting in through the single ward door.

“Ladies, what on earth is going on?” Her stern voice immediately shut us both up. “You will not yell in this hospital. Am I understood?”

With an annoyed sigh Sugi laid her head down on her pillow and closed her eyes.

“Yes ma’am,” I replied.

I stared angrily ahead and that was that.

XXX

As the night stretched on a crippling anxiety fell over me. The hospital stay was beginning to get to me. The annoying and strange roommates, the fluorescents, the constant smell of bleach and cleaning chemicals, the pain in my body and the non-stop sticking sensation on my face. It was all becoming too much to handle, and I found myself desperately reaching for the nurse call button.

“Ms. Hashimoto? What’s the matter?” The new nurse, Hayashi, asked me once she was at my bedside.

“My neck hurts,” I said pathetically, burying my face into my pillow.

“Oh, it’s probably whiplash. That’s a new symptom, isn’t it?” She asked. “We’ll put a compress on it for now. Wait just a second.”

She went to get the compress, but I lifted myself up off of the bed to stop her.

“Nurse?” I waited until she turned my way to continue. “My cheeks and lips have been stinging since I woke up.’

“Stinging?” She sounded confused.

“Yes.” All afternoon the stinging sensation that had begun on my cheeks had crept its way down to my lips.

“It might be due to the whiplash,” she sounded unsure. “We’ll have the doctor take a look in the morning.”

I nodded in silent agreement before settling back into my bed and waited for her to return.

XXX

I awoke to the soft sound of laughter coming from the far side of the room.

A low whisper, almost indiscernible, followed the laughter. For a second, I wondered if I was still dreaming.

The room had been enclosed in darkness. There was no light, minus the orange streetlamp glow that filtered in from outside. A quick glance around showed that I was the only one awake.

Had someone been talking in their sleep?

“They really are…so pretty…” This whisper came from directly beside me and I jumped, fear spiking in my chest.

The room filled with the hushed murmurs of the other patients punctuated by sporadic laughter. I realized it was the four other girls, the odd ones that had shared the same expression, muttering among themselves.

“There’s a bunch blooming over here too.”

“Where? Oh, wait for me!”

“Hurry up!”

“Haha, slowpoke!”

The cacophony of whispers in the dark made the hair on my arms stand up.

Making as little noise as possible, I lifted myself up into a sitting position and surveyed the room. The room plunged into silence. There was no movement and everyone’s eyes were closed as far as I could tell.

They were sleeping, right? Had I been dreaming? It had sounded so real.

A quick glance at the analog clock hung over the door told me that it was currently three in the morning. The uneasiness gnawing at my gut coupled with the prickling sensation on my face suggested getting back to sleep would be difficult.

Sugie slept soundly in the bed next to me, much to my annoyance.

Must be nice.

I started to lower myself back down to my pillow when the four sleep talking girls sat up suddenly, staring ahead blankly. For a minute everything in the room stayed completely still. My breath caught in my throat, and I froze. They were looming shadows in the night. Outlined dimly by the light from outside.

Another minute passed. Another eternity.

Swiftly, perfectly synchronized, they stood from their beds and walked towards the hallway door. Their slippers slapped the ground in time with one another. Involuntarily, I gasped. They turned as one towards me.

“O-oh, uh,” I stammered nervously under their unwavering gazes. My armpits were suddenly slick with sweat “Where are you guys going?”

A heavy silence hung between us as they stared. Finally, they all turned away and continued their journey to the hallway.

“Bathroom…” Was the reply. I couldn’t tell if it was one voice responding, or all of them.

I watched them go as goosebumps crept up my arms. Going back to sleep would be difficult, indeed.

XXX

“Well, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” Dr. Sato told me the next morning as he examined my neck and face. “But we’ll get some X-Rays later. At any rate you should stay one more night so we can monitor it and be sure.”

He turned away towards the four other girls and his demeanor visibly changed. When speaking with me he had a friendly smile and a kind crinkle to his eyes but when he faced them, the corners of his mouth immediately turned down and his eyes narrowed.

“You four,” he began, shoving his hands into his white coat. “How do you all feel today?”

I leaned forward with interest, curious about why these strange girls were admitted in the first place. A disgruntled grunt came from my left.

“So, suddenly it’s whiplash?” Sugie’s irritating voice asked. “You’re totally faking, right? If you’re trying to use this to get a favorable settlement, you can forget it. I’ll never let that happen.”

I pointedly ignored her to focus on the doctor’s conversation with the girls.

“The four of you still refuse to eat?” He put his hands down on the metal rail at the foot of a bed and leaned forward. “You did go to counseling at the clinic I recommended, right?”

There was a beat of silence before they all answered together.

“No.”

“Why not?” I could see that Dr. Sato was fighting to keep his tone professional. “This seems to me like a mental health issue. Physically, there’s nothing wrong with any of you.”

“The doctor from that hospital wanted to talk to us separately.” The girl with the blonde ponytail responded.

“And we want to be together.” The girl on my other side added.

“We’re always together,” The youngest looking of the four insisted. “We don’t want to be apart.”

“Maybe that’s the issue then.” Dr. Sato told them. “You’re all influencing one another, for better or worse.”

“We can’t influence each other,” The youngest responded. “Our minds are one.”

I could feel a collective shiver come over the medical staff and I. What the hell did that mean? Something really strange was going on with these girls and I agreed with the doctor. It wasn’t physical.

“We even had the same dream yesterday!” She continued with a vague smile that was mirrored on the other girls’ faces.

“Yeah, we dreamed of a lovely field,” Blonde ponytail said, more to the other girls than to the doctor.

“You were running so slow!” The girl with short hair laughed.

The doctor stepped back from their beds with a huff.

“Regardless,” he told them. “This isn’t healthy. You need to take in more calories. I think it’s best if we transfer you to a larger hospital down the mountain.”

“We’re happy here if we can get our I.V. drip,” Short hair said.

“Yes,” Blonde ponytail agreed. “The I.V. drip is plenty enough.”

“You don’t have many patients, anyway.” The girl with bangs countered smugly. “The rooms are always empty. If we left, your hospital would go out of business.”

This touched a nerve and Dr. Sato turned on his heel abruptly before storming out.

“That’s enough for today!” He called back angrily.

The nurse, obviously uncomfortable, hovered in the doorway. Her eyes darted between the Weird Sisters, as I had dubbed them in my head. They ignored her and laughed behind their hands, as if they were all in on some big joke that the rest of us were not privy to.

“Hey, nurse?” Sugie called out before she could leave the room. “Could you move me to a different room?”

The nurse looked at her startled and went to reply before Sugie cut her off.

“Honestly, it’s pretty inconsiderate to put the victim of an accident in the same room as the person who caused the accident!”

“O-oh,” Nurse Hayashi was obviously flustered by Sugie’s blunt outburst. “That’s because this is the only available room right now. You should have been taken to a larger hospital, but since the accident happened nearby and neither of you were seriously injured, we- “

“I looked a little bit ago and there’s no name plate on Room One.” Sugie cut her off.

“Room One is for storage,” The nurse told her. “Since we’ve had fewer patients these days, we stopped using it.”

Sugie let out a loud exhale as if Nurse Hayashi was purposefully trying to frustrate her.

“Fine, I don’t care.” She snapped. “Just move me there!’

Since Sugie had a cast, Nurse Hayashi helped her up and onto some crutches. The nurse led her out of the room and down the hallway towards Room One. It didn’t take long for Sugie’s shriek of displeasure to travel back to our room.

“You’re kidding me! This isn't a room; this is a dump!”

Without speaking the Weird Sisters all rose from their beds and headed out into the hallway. Curious, I got out of my bed and leaned against the doorway watching. They approached Sugie and Nurse Hayashi before the girl with the long hair stepped forward and spoke up.

“Sugie,” she said, “come back to our room. A room by yourself is too lonely.”

“She’s right!” Blonde ponytail agreed. “It’s not good to be alone. Come back to our room!”

Sugie looked the girls up and down, sizing them up. For possibly the first time in her life, she was speechless. The Weird Sisters placed their hands gently on her back and began to lead her back to our room. Before I returned to my bed, I locked eyes with Nurse Hayashi and watched her slowly shake her head.

XXX

Sugie didn’t stay speechless for long, however. It was only an hour later that she was back to her regular complaining. The Weird Sisters had all been hooked up to their precious I.V. drips and laid back in their beds staring up at the ceiling silently. Thoroughly creeped out I laid down and closed my eyes hoping to hurry sleep so that I could make it to my discharge time tomorrow.

Sugie, of course, had other ideas.

“Hey, Hashimoto,” she started, as always. “I had an important deal at work the day of the accident. The whole thing is probably ruined now. How are you going to fix that, huh? Not to mention my car! It was brand new and cost way more than yours, I’m sure. Hey, are you listening to me?”

Sugie’s whining had me wishing the airbag had ruptured my eardrum, leaving me blissfully deaf. Since I hadn’t had such luck, I kept my eyes closed and feigned sleep.

“I know you’re awake,” I could practically hear the sneer in her tone. “You’re disgusting.”

There were a few blissful moments of quiet before she spoke again. This time her voice wavered, a hint of anxiety creeping in.

“Ah, why are my cheeks stinging, it feels awful.” I almost opened my eyes to this as my cheeks and lips were also still stinging. “Maybe your thing is infectious. Ugh, don’t come near me. If anything, you should go to Room One!”

I couldn’t take it anymore. My eyes flew open and I all but leapt out of my bed.

“You know what Sugie,” My voice dripped in exasperation. “That may be the first intelligent thing I’ve heard you say since we got here.”

Her jaw dropped in outrage, but I didn’t stay to hear her rebuttal. I charged down the hallway and straight to the nurse’s station and frantically tapped on the sliding glass.

“Please move me to Room One!” I begged her as soon as we made eye contact. “As long as I’m stuck next to that woman, I am never going to get better! I don’t care if it’s a mess. It will be leagues better than Room Three.”

Nurse Watanabe stood from her chair and waved her hands at me in a calm down motion.

“I understand,” she said with a knowing look. “I’ll talk to the Director. Please give me a moment.”

She walked out of my line of sight and returned quickly, nodding her head in confirmation. My body sagged in relief. Finally, I could be away from Sugie and the Weird Sisters. Nurse Watanabe slid my name plate out from the holder under Room Three and I followed her towards Room One.

“Go ahead and switch rooms, Hashimoto.” Sugie called from the doorway of Room Three where she was lurking. “Don’t try to sneak away in the middle of the night. I have your license plate number copied. You can’t run from me!”

That wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

XXX

Besides the overwhelming mess, Room One was, in fact, much more relaxing than Room Three. The awful stinging sensation on my face had even gone away. Maybe it had been a side effect of being in Sugie’s Presence.

Around 9pm, Nurse Watanabe informed me that it was lights out and plunged the tiny room into darkness. The only light source came from the moonlight filtering in through the gossamer curtains. The quiet was a welcome comfort but now that Sugie’s voice was not hovering in my ear my mind began to wander and digest the absolute strangeness that was the last twenty-four or so hours.

Sugie aside, I wondered what exactly was going on with the other four girls in Room Three. They were honestly very creepy. With no form of real entertainment, I had watched them during our time together. Everything they did was perfectly synched. They would all wake up and go to sleep at the exact same time. Not to mention going to the bathroom together. Unless they were lying, which I guessed was possible, they could also share dreams and talk to one another subconsciously. The whole thing was so weird.

Krrrrrrrrrrrkkk…

A slow scraping noise interrupted my thoughts. The room was so cluttered it was hard to tell what anything was in the darkness, but I strained my eyes trying to find the source of the sound. There, against the wall, was the slightest of movements. A small bookcase that rested on the far side of the room was moving ever so slightly, the corner of it swinging out into the room like a door.

Leathery, gnarled fingers curled around the edge of the wood and pushed outwards. A second hand extended from that dark space followed by a bald head and a torso. I fumbled with the small lamp on my bedside table and illuminated the room.

A withered old man in a hospital gown crawled out from what I could now see was a hole in the wall the bookcase had concealed. He stood slowly and swayed slightly, obviously unsteady on his feet. I was frozen as his gaze swept around the room before settling on me. Fear shot down my spine.

“Wh-who are you?!” I asked, scrambling backwards on my bed until I hit the wall.

“I’m from the men’s ward, next door,” he croaked. His voice seemed unused to speaking. A maniacal smile lacking teeth stretched across his face. “I’m so lonely so I dug a hole to make friends.”

His tongue darted out to lick his chapped, flaking lips. Stepping toward me with outreached hands, he immediately reminding me of a zombie. He lurched erratically forward and grabbed my forearms, eliciting a squeal.

“Do you want to be my friend?”

“S-stay away from me!” I shrieked.

“Ms. Hashimoto, what’s wrong?” I heard the door to my room be thrown open as Nurse Watanabe rushed in.

She took in the old man grabbing my forearms and gasped.

“Mr. Furuta!” She chided which caused him to release me. “You can’t just barge into people’s rooms. When did you come in here.”

She turned her head to the overturned bookshelf with the gaping hole behind it and exclaimed in surprise.

“What is a hole doing here? Is this how you got in? Shame on you!”

She put her hand on Mr. Furuta’s arm and led him towards the doorway, scolding him the entire way.

“You are going back to your own room,” she said once she had escorted him into the hallway. “Do not come into this room again.”

She threw an apologetic look my way before shutting the door with a click. I stayed pressed up against the wall for a second urging my heart to slow down. This hospital was way too weird for me. Minor injuries, or no, I was leaving in the morning.

I went to settle down again when a giant bang and commotion came from the hallway. I went to the doorway, opening it just a sliver. It wouldn’t be obvious I was spying but I still had a good view of the hallway. Sugie was on the floor, tangled in her crutches and screaming bloody murder.

“Help!” She shrieked, desperately trying to get up with her cast foot. “There’s something wrong with those women. There were snakes in their mouths, and they tried to get into my mouth! It was like a needle repeatedly stabbing me in the face!”

My own hand unconsciously floated up to touch my cheek. The stinging sensation had gone away once I had left the room the four girls were staying in. My stomach dropped. No, Sugie was having some kind of nervous breakdown. She had to be.

Nurse Watanabe tried to help Sugie up, but she knocked her hand away and pointed wildly at the Weird Sisters who now crowded the door of Room Three.

“Look!” She cried. “Don’t you see? Their mouths. Look at their mouths!”

There was a tense standoff as the Weird Sisters and the nurse held each other’s gazes.

“What are you talking about?” Nurse Watanabe finally asked Sugie, concern coloring her voice. “There’s nothing there. You must have been dreaming. Now, please, return to your room this minute. You’re causing a scene.”

This sent Sugie into a full-fledged meltdown. Sweat was pouring profusely down her face causing her skin to shine and her bangs to mat down in a greasy slick across her forehead. She clawed frantically at her mouth, drawing blood and leaving deep gauges in her otherwise unblemished skin. She released a terrified howl.

“NO! STOP!” Everyone else stood fixed in place at her outburst. “IT’S GOING INTO MY MOUTH.”

Nurse Watanabe grabbed her wrist and pulled Sugie’s hands away from her face while calling for help. A male janitor ran to her aid and together they were able to pick up Sugie, still screaming and clawing, off the ground. The janitor and the nurse disappeared with her into Room Three and after a while Sugie's screams quieted into silence.

XXX

I couldn’t move from my hiding spot behind the doorway. Another nurse had made an emergency call to Dr. Sato, and he had come down right away. He quickly made the corner into view and was greeted by Nurse Watanabe.

“You gave her a mild sedative?” he asked in lieu of a greeting.

“Yes, she’s sleeping now,” she responded.

They both moved down the hallway to put distance between themselves and Room Three. Luckily this brought them closer to my room so that I was still able to hear when they dropped their voices to little more than a whisper.

“Doctor,” Nurse Watanabe twisted her hands together. “Is it all right to just leave Ms. Sugie in there? This isn’t the first time a patient has been afraid of the girls in Room Three.”

I had to press a hand to my mouth to stifle my gasp. I leaned even further into the door to make sure I didn’t miss any part of this conversation.

“Those women…” her voice trailed off. “There’s four of them now, but in the beginning, it was only two, right? They were admitted because they weren’t eating. The other two patients in the ward complained of the same symptoms and ended up joining them but they were so afraid at first.”

She stopped talking but Dr. Sato said nothing, so she continued.

“Is the same thing happening to Ms. Sugie? That would make her the fifth…It’s disturbing. We only started to lose patients after those four were admitted. If we don’t get them to leave somehow, this hospital will get shut down.”

“You’re right,” The doctor finally said. “We’ll stop their treatment tomorrow.”

They walked away back to the nurse’s station and disappeared around the corner leaving me staring at an empty hallway. My heart beat hard in my throat, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the door of Room Three. It was slightly ajar, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was someone standing behind that door watching me back.

Shakily, I shut my door and pushed the bookshelf back into the wall effectively sealing the hole to the gross old man’s room. I paced the small room nervously, sweating. The doctors and nurses had told Sugie that there was nothing coming out of the Weird Sisters mouths but I…I had seen it too.

Cylindrical things with sharp pointed ends had stretched out from all four girls’ mouths, twisting together to try to get into Sugie’s. The nurse didn’t see it, but then again, I hadn’t seen it originally either. My stomach lurched as I realized this had been going on from the very beginning. I couldn’t see them, but those needle things tried to get into my mouth while I was in Room Three. Stabbing at my cheeks and lips while trying to find a way in, the same way they were now doing to Sugie.

Thinking of Sugie laying in the dark surrounded by the Weird Sisters while those sharp tentacle things tried to pry into her mouth made me nauseous. The hospital had descended into complete and utter silence. I wondered if Sugie was okay and what was happening to her. Selfishly I worried if they were going to come for me next.

Kreeeee…

A long creak echoed down the hospital hallway causing me to jump and creep back to the door. My heart raced as the sound of multiple slippers slapping the linoleum echoed down the corridor. I cracked my door open just enough to see the Weird Sisters walking in unison towards the nurse’s station. With a jolt of horror, I realized Sugie walked among them.

The tentacles with stingers poured out of their mouths like vomit, all intertwined with one another. Connecting them. From my vantage point, they looked like one entity unable to be separated. Hurried footsteps came from around the corner and Nurse Watanabe and Dr. Sato appeared. They pulled up short and Nurse Watanabe screamed. They could see the tentacles now. They had to.

“W-what are you- “Dr. Sato began but was cut off.

The tentacles shot out in a flurry of motion, stabbing Dr. Sato and Nurse Watanabe in the chest and face. It pierced them over and over again as they screamed. When the tentacles retracted, they both hit the ground with a thud. Where the sharpened points had struck, only bloody, gaping holes remained. The Weird Sisters erupted into giggles as they loomed over the gasping, groaning bodies of the nurse and doctor.

“Poor things…” One of the weird sisters, or perhaps all of them, said.

An involuntary noise slipped from my lips. The Weird Sisters whipped their heads towards me, and I made eye contact with each of them. With a scream I slammed my bedroom door shut and ran to the bookshelf. I pulled it away from the wall and dove through the hole into the old man’s room, reaching back to pull the bookcase back against the wall behind me. I slapped my hand over my mouth and desperately tried to calm my breathing. Mr. Furuta laid, thankfully, asleep in his hospital bed. The only thing that would make this situation worse would be that crazy old man waking up.

“You saw.” One of the girl’s voices came from my room next door. A chorus of the other girl’s voices followed with their own questions.

“Hashimoto, where are you hiding?”

“She didn’t go outside, the window’s locked.”

“Damnit, where is that bitch hiding?!”

“She saw us. She either joins or dies.”

I could hear boxes being flipped, the clatter of my bedside lamp hitting the ground, as the girls tore the room apart looking for me. My mind raced as I tried to make sense of what was happening.

Were the tentacles coming out of their mouth’s nerves or something? Maybe their minds were connected by the tentacles and that’s what connected them to one another. If that was the truth, then maybe it wasn’t five different people with one mind but one person with five different bodies.

No, not a person.

A creature.

If that was the case, this thing was trying to collect more bodies. I had to get out of there. If I didn’t it was only a matter of time before those sharp needles forced my mouth open and burrowed down into my throat, making me become a part of that damned hivemind.

I snuck as quickly and quietly as I could and pushed Room Two’s door open a sliver. Room One’s door was thrown open and if I made a dash for it, I risked being seen by whatever the hell was looking for me.

“She’s not here!” An annoyed screech came from the open door. “There has to be a way out of this room somehow.”

There was a heavy thud, and my heart stopped as I realized it was the bookshelf coming free of the wall. A crazed cackle filled the air as the thing discovered the hole connecting the rooms.

“Room Two! She escaped to Room Two!”

Before I could react, the girl with the bangs pushed Room Two’s door open, throwing me back against the wall.

“Ah!” She exclaimed through a mouth full of tentacles. “Found her!”

She lunged towards me, roughly grabbing my shoulders. The majority of her tentacles streamed out into the hallway keeping her connected to the other girls, but one reared back like a snake and struck at me. I ducked and dove forward with all of my strength, pushing her back as far as I could. She stumbled and before she could regain her balance, I threw my weight against the door slamming it shut.

This action severed all of the tentacles, and she let out an anguished howl. She clawed desperately at the severed ends, and I watched as her features crumpled inward. Her skin seemed to age decades in the span of seconds, wrinkling and pocketing, as her eyes rolled back up into her head, turning yellow. She crumpled to the floor, and I heard a chorus of four other screams coming through the wall. Since they were all connected maybe it hurt them too.

I sprinted out of the door and passed Room One faster than I thought I could in slippers.

“How dare you?” Came the voices of all of the girls in unison. It sounded rougher now. Distorted. “How dare you kill one of my bodies?! Run, run. If you can escape, then run!”

I looked back once at the mangled body on the floor before beelining for the exit. I averted my eyes from the bodies of Nurse Watanabe and Dr. Sato where they laid sprawled out on the floor. Making it to the exit door I flung it open, hurdling into the frigid night air. The distorted voice called out to me from the open hospital door as I ducked into the woods.

“I know your license plate number,” It said. “I will find you.”

Four voices erupted into perfectly synchronized laughter.

#Junj Ito #Horror Story #Short Horror Story #Junji Ito Short Story #Japanese Horror #The Ward #The Conversation Room #Writing Practice #Horror Author

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