Kaku Rata

This very day last year was the day my father died. He was put in an asylum because people thought he was mad. He would tell stories about a creature called the Kaku Rata which would make the children cry and bring stillness to the air... a cold, fearful stillness where you could feel your heart almost bursting through your chest.

According to his story, the Kaku Rata came every three years on the first day of Autumn. He would go round villages and find the most well-behaved, beloved and caring child and kidnap them and take them to his lair in the Kakurai Peaks. He would skin them and slowly break each of their fingers and toes. After a few days of starving the child, he would pour a mixture of salt and boiling hot water on them and stick a screw in each eye and once he would finish that... he would tear out the organs of the child and stuff them with stones and sand.

I didn't believe him until there was that horrible moment. The moment that turned my pure soul into a soul of hate and pain.

I was sat in my bed, casually reading some tails about all sorts of strange creatures. One of them was a mare which rode the sun and stole as many stars as the eye could see. I snuggled into my warm bed and closed my eyes. I relaxed my muscles and thought of Kaku Rata. Was my father really a mad liar or did he speak truth?

My plant fell off my bedside table and I sat up with a fright. My door began to slowly open and my muscles grew so tense that they became sore in a matter of seconds. Those bony clawed hands clutched the edge of the door and it peaked its skull face inside. Those eyes... those empty, cold eyes could tear a person's hope and spirit like scissors through silk. My body froze, unable to move or even try to escape. Everything morphed into darkness as I collapsed on my bed.

***

I woke up in a dark chamber tied to the wall by burning hot chains. I

could smell the stench of my burning flesh as well as I could see piles of mangled skin in front of my bleeding broken feet. The Kaku Rata was real. My father wasn't mad at all... he really did speak the truth from his soft heart. A shining tear waded down my cheek and my hope expired from that moment. I remembered his scared face and his warm hand reaching out to me for help and I had stood there, like everyone else, and watched my papa be locked away. That was my father who had kept me safe from this creature and had once filled my heart with joy.

Just then, the Kaku Rata basically waltzed in from the the emptiness with a bucket in his hand. I let myself fall into a sob and he froze with his empty sockets staring through me. He dropped the bucket of sludge and came over to me. I forgot about my wrists being burnt and flakes of my skin churning into nothingness. He tilted my head up and my sore angry eyes stared at his patterned face. I almost began to feel my hope rekindle...

That was until my mother came and sliced my face open with a dagger. As she did so she said, "I am the Kaku Rata."