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I am by birth a Japanese; and my family is one of the most infamous of that empire. My name is, or was, Miyano Shiho, yet I have chafed under the pseudonym of Sherry for most of my life. An appellation cursed by many and feared by most who ever heard it.
As I reflect upon my deeds now that I feel the end of my days approaching, lying here in the dark confines of this earth, I cannot but find them entirely misguided.
When I was a small child I may have felt hope for the future. I found joy in learning, that I know. Biochemistry was my subject of choice once I had learnt my letters. Bones, treading muscles, nervous systems, RNA and DNA, virology reports, sickle cells and life’s primeval chemical broth were my closest companions as I passed through the natural stations of human growth.
My family quickly noticed my unusual inclinations. Instead of encouraging me to turn my attention to other, more childish, pursuits, they fanned the flames of my obsession with a passion. I was elated, at first, to be presented with challenging theories and complicated mathematical formulae. I felt trusted.
Then, everything changed. Even though I never was the most social of creatures, my isolation during my early formative years, being passed around between strict tutors as their sole pupil, led to a growing discontent towards my education. Upon realising so, my family revealed their true nature to me: what had been presented to me as a group of individuals interested in nurturing my interests was anything of the sort. I had the potential to be of use in furthering their objectives, and they were loath to let what they considered a valuable asset be wasted. From then on, the gentle hands that had guided my life up until that point became iron shackles that forcibly kept me in the path I had first started walking freely.
It was then that the training began. I had learnt how to analyse death before: to distinguish rigor mortis and to be able to tell when an individual’s soul had departed their body. I was now being forced to learn how to inflict this state of being upon entirely healthy individuals. It made me nauseous. It was even worse than the beatings I received when I prioritised other lives before my own. My efforts were futile, for their lives were to be cut short either by my hand or someone else’s. As far as small mercies go, I suppose I must be thankful now that it was always the latter.
Something ugly began to fester inside my chest during this time. Minding the foreboding possibility of showing them my feelings, even if negative, I developed a mask of professional indifference which, after donning for so long, became fused with my very core. In the end, they judged me worthy and it was then that I was baptised as Sherry. It was then that I became one of them.
My only source of affection during this period was a sister barred from me except on extraordinary occasions. Her visits, so clearly cherished by myself, became a way to ensure my good behaviour. They knew her as my only weakness, and were not shy of exploiting her to control me.
So it was with Damocles’ sword over my head that I started working on their most prized project. Those who came before me, a group which included my birth parents, had wanted to discover a Philosopher’s stone, a fountain of eternal youth, made through chemical processes instead of out of mineral and water.
My sister’s continued wellbeing was motivation enough. I put my all into their work.
My parents’ research was incomplete, but I quickly closed the gaps. I greeted the first prototype with both pride and apprehension. I knew that if it worked I may very well have signed both our fates, my sister’s and mine, in blood. We may have been made redundant and there was no room for severance pay in my family. But there was no point in hiding a potential success, for a failure could also carry the harshest of punishments.
It didn’t work. But instead of being punished as I feared we would be, I was praised. I had unwittingly created my first monster, an untraceable poison that broke down cellular apoptosis, leading to inescapable death. I was the Alfred Nobel of my time and, like him, I quickly became affronted by the use my creation was put to. Only I could not publicly express it. There would be no redemption for me.
I learned to live beside the monster I gave birth to. My assistants changed frequently and I never could remove the feeling that they were there to watch my movements as much as they were there to help me. I could not afford to form any attachments with them, nor could I try and do so for anyone except my dear sister. Events continued unfolding like this until the day they took her from me.
Was I so starved for companionship afterwards that I unwittingly created the very monster that would haunt me in the final hours of my life? It may very well have been the point I abandoned any reason and self-preservation instincts.
My first monster helped me cut short his life. I took him forcibly from the sweet embrace of death, gaining her enmity in the process, and did unspeakable things to his body. I tore his muscles and rearranged them, I broke his bones and replaced them, I took his heart and kept it. I made him unwhole and unholy. Electricity coursed through his veins as he rose from the dead, made anew.
He was scared, like a newborn child. Understandably so, and he ran away and hid himself.
At first he did not know me, and he had to relearn how to live all by himself. Then I found him and I guided him as best as I could. There was nothing monstrous in his appearance, but the fact that his very existence was crafted by my work made him my unnatural creation nonetheless. An affront to everything that was sacred and holy. An abomination against the very essence of life true for all beings, our eventual crossing of the Styx, that should never have been. In doing so, I had cheated Death from her well deserved prize and a soul from ever having bliss in eternal rest, as well as condemning my own in the process.
Eventually it was too much to wear and I had to leave him behind. I had condemned him, but I couldn’t bear to look at him and see the way he was shaped by the monstrosity of my actions. I was a coward. I needed to wallow in self-pity in peace, without the reminder of his visage.
He must have been so lost when I was gone. I hoped he could find his own happiness.
It was not to be.
I did not count on him following me.
No matter where I went, he was close on my heels. He never let me be truly alone, I had to always be wary of his approach and keep him in the back of my mind. In doing so, I was driven to the confines of the earth in my search for peace from him, believing he would give up his chase if I went far enough.
I was truly mad, for it was then that I began entertaining bringing further doom to myself. Even then I could feel the idea of another monster dangerously growing inside me. As if I was not shaken enough by the one I had already created.
Such thoughts wouldn't haunt me for long.
He was close now. I could feel it. The door of my chamber, my last refuge from him, slowly creaked open. There was no hiding from him now. He had found me and now everything would finally come to a close. I shut my eyes, bracing for what was to come when he addressed me in his deceivingly angelic voice.
“Shiho!” He shouted my name with force. God have mercy upon my soul.
“Shiho!” He exclaimed now. Murderously happy he had spotted me who to my shame was hiding from my fate behind my chair.
“I can see your hair, Shiho.” I could feel my legs begin to tremble as he approached. In my defense, I was not in the most comfortable of positions. His gaze was now as inescapable as his intentions towards myself were. I felt the constraints his presence always imposed on me tightening their grip. This was the moment that would finally put an end to my season of discontent. There was naught to do now but accept whatever he, in his crooked mind, had dastardly planned for me. I deserved every ounce of it.
“Here you are. Come on, I’ll help you up.” He must have wanted to see the light in my eyes as he finally ended it all.
“I noticed you were in a bit of a mood this morning. As you usually prefer to be alone and indulge in a bit of self-isolation when you’re like this I decided to leave you be for a while, but you’ve been here for half the day! So I had to resort to drastic measures to drag you out.”
Here it came.
“I made hot chocolate! Do you want to come to the kitchen with me? We can drink it in silence or you can tell me what’s on your mind. I promise I won’t pry. Much.”
I may have exaggerated just a tiny bit about his monstrosity.
He looked happy, but I knew it was just a front to lure me out. I let him lead me upstairs nonetheless.
“How’s the baby, by the way, are you uncomfortable?”
“It’s fine.” I murmured. It could get very uncomfortable indeed. It was all his fault. I refrained myself from telling him, though.
As we walked out of my basement lab together, side by side, with his hand resting lovingly in the small of my back, I couldn't help but leave Sherry downstairs in the lab, the only remaining place where I allowed her to resurface. She would never see the sun again, condemned to live in the darkness between the shadows of her traumatic past and her deep regrets.
I, on the other hand, would enjoy basking in the light that was Kudo Shiho’s life.