Chapter One

Chapter One

The same voice as always from beyond the sliding screen doors. “C’mon, honey. It’s been a rough one. Look, I haven’t had a drop all day!”

“No, Kanauchi-san. You always say that, and then when the time comes—I said no!”

Followed by the sound of one mouth wetly covering the other, the creaking of the bed as two bodies fell upon it.

Her lover of late was the sixtyish owner of a woodworking shop. He didn’t have a hair on his head. But from the neck down his body was covered by a thick coat of fur. Boasting of his animal spirits, he claimed that every wife and widow in the neighborhood was his for the taking.

Rumors said he had access to drugs that were hard to come by even in Demon City.

“Ah—” Her mother’s voice. And she was surely already buck naked, shedding her clothes the second she hit the bed.

The screen doors were open. Not merely an inch, but revealing a thick gap of darkness. Perhaps the carpenter had left it like that, but equally likely her mother had. When it came to the persuasive power of money, she was one to let the ends justify the means.

Mayumi stared through the darkness filling that gap. A history book about Shinjuku from the library sat open on the desk behind her, patiently waiting for her attention to once again be directed its way.

Light spilled into the next room. She could begin to make out the bodies squirming like tangled leeches in the midst of the blackness. Everything else could easily be imagined.

Her mother pinned to the bed, him lapping at her cheeks and nose and forehead, continuously licking her eyelids, because he knew that was her most sensitive spot. Her mother gasped uncontrollably and pleaded for him to stop—

While she waited for him to press his lips against hers and force his tongue into her mouth. Her throat hummed as she drank him down.

His caresses attuned to her age, his fingers and tongue exhibited an intimate knowledge of her senses as they played across her skin, drawing out the exquisite pleasures until her entire body was soaking with sweat and saliva.

“Louder,” the carpenter ordered her.

“No, Mayumi will hear,” the mother protested, her voice shaking with arousal and expectation.

“What’s the problem? She’s your daughter. She’s gotta be getting it on with the customers too?”

“That girl is different.”

“What’s different? She’s your daughter. Another nympho just like you. A little bird told me the boss bought it ’cause he did it with her. Quite the girl, offing her old man like that.”

“Quit it—ahhh—”

The carpenter dove in between her legs while thrusting his taut member between her lips. He was a big man, the word was. Mayumi’s mother wrapped both hands around his impressive girth and sucked him in a trance.

And so the old man and the cougar went down on each other in a burning phantasm of oral sex.

The carpenter flipped her around and grabbed her thighs, his fat fingers sinking deep into the flesh, and buried his engorged cock inside her. She made a cooing sound, chirping like a bird. She raised her hips, the pleasure mounting as he plunged down deeper. An act of pure copulation, sex in its rawest form.

She climaxed with a gasp and a long moan.

The next sound was that of the sliding doors rattling open. Mayumi took in the strange scene—his entire frame covered with fur. Only his head was hairless. On the carpenter’s face was clear evidence of the drugs.

The shape-shifting drug accelerant was originally the byproduct of a metabolic amplifier developed by a pharmaceutical company outside the ward.

With its emphasis on restoring the endurance and appetite of a wild animal, because of the primordial violence and brutal animal natures aroused by these compounds, they were banned outside Shinjuku. Just as they were celebrated in Demon City.

Ignoring the risk of being unable to return to normal, a mixing and matching of drugs could result in a beast of unrivaled capabilities. A man merely stronger than average could take on the strength of a gorilla and the speed of a leopard and the man-eating appetites of a lion. A combination that was quickly preferred among bank robbers.

As was to be expected, the authorities stepped up the severity of the countermeasures and prohibited the use of ninety-eight varieties that boosted power and resilience. But they continued to sell well on the black market, a hundred milligrams for only a hundred thousand yen, well within a middle-class budget.

The carpenter may have taken the drugs for their original purposes, but the accumulation of side-effects eventually took on the drastic forms that Mayumi now witnessed.

A ragged red strip hung limply from the carpenter’s mouth, one side white, the other side crimson. Meat. Her mother’s flesh, Mayumi thought. The man had sunk his teeth in a woman, hardly an unexpected act for a carnivorous beast.

Mayumi heard the carpenter chewing and crunching, and couldn’t help thinking he sounded like a man chomping down on a juicy steak.

“It’s delicious, Mayumi-chan,” he said with a satisfied boast. “Your mom tastes good. Just the right amount of fat. But Mayumi-chan, you look lip-smacking.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mayumi said, without a twitch of an eyebrow.

The carpenter transformed like this every time he fucked her mother. There were devotees of the drug among the establishment’s customers as well, including the ones who made a drinking game out of showing off how far they could mutate.

“Take a look at this,” said the carpenter. He reached down to his crotch and held up its hot, dripping, brutish shape, a match for nothing in Mayumi’s knowledge. The tawny flesh, like rough leather, was crisscrossed with veins. His own hand wasn’t enough to fully encircle its girth, an organ guaranteed to render any woman breathless with ecstasy.

“You want a taste too, Mayumi-chan? No need to beg. Cop a feel and see for yourself. Your father’s dead. I’m your daddy now. We’re all okay with that, right? There’s plenty in my reservoirs left to share. I’ll fill you up to the brim.”

His face flushed, his voice climbing in pitch, turning himself on with the lewdness of his own propositions. Mayumi didn’t move. The transformations of the carpenter didn’t frighten her. She couldn’t have cared less either way.

The carpenter stood in front of her and thrust the spout of his thick hose in her face. “Take a good, long look, baby.”

Mayumi’s eyes didn’t budge, only fixed on an empty point in space. The carpenter grabbed her hair and pulled her mouth in front of his cock. Mayumi turned her face to the side. He held her firmly with both hands. She shook her head. The carpenter wasn’t giving up on his goal so easily.

He pinched her nose. A long second later, she opened her mouth. He plunged into her with a triumphal cry, burying his whole length inside the seventeen-year-old girl. She felt a sharp stinging across the bridge of her nose from the feral bristles of his pubes.

When she struggled for breath, he released the hold on her nose. “No biting, see, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

His hips rocked forward and back. Mayumi had no choice but to go along, as if her dainty lips had swallowed a python coiled around the carpenter’s waist. The king of the apes had kicked out Tarzan and was having at it with Jane.

“Hey, but if you want to bite, go ahead, and I’ll do the same to you, and then your mother. C’mon, put your tongue into it. I bet you’ve packed a lot of experience into those seventeen years.”

The hairs of the man-beast stood on end. “Oh, fuck—yeah, baby—knew it wasn’t the first time for you—just like your mama—she knows how to go down on a man too—”

Stroked by Mayumi’s warm, wet tongue, excited by his own perverse pillow talk, the carpenter grew hotter and harder, exposing, in a sense, his true essence.

“Man, I’d take you down there too, but don’t rightly want to end up like your daddy. Put on that virginal face and then get me off like that, shit, that’s a Shinjuku girl for you—whoa—whoa—holy—”

His voice rose to a hoarse cry as he came in Mayumi’s mouth. He pulled out and delivered the next shot an inch away from her nose. A creamy sensation and the musky odor coated her face and dripped from her cheeks.

“That’s a good girl,” the carpenter panted, half-crazed by the thrill of having his way with a teenager the age of his own grandchild. “Show daddy the nice present he gave you. No throwing it away, now. Let’s see.”

Mayumi shook her head.

“I haven’t got all day,” said the carpenter, his voice tinged with menace. His hand tightened around her chin. Her cheekbones creaked beneath the brutish strength. When he relaxed his hold, the viscous bodily fluids welled up at the corners of her mouth.

“Good, good,” he growled, his eyes glazed in ecstasy, oblivious that he’d started jerking his own self off. He’d had the girl in his sights for a while, had fantasized about doing her like this. His dream had come true. He’d never gotten turned on so fast, so easy, or come to such a satisfying conclusion.

The carpenter scooped up a bit of his handiwork dribbling down her chin and stuck it into Mayumi’s mouth.

“Now we’re going to finish off with a bang and you’re going to drink it all down. I wanna see that cute throat of yours throb. Down there in your stomach, my boys are gonna invade your whole body. Dirty sons a bitches. ’Cause I ain’t human, see. I’m a beast. Once the beast is in you, it never lets go. That’s daddy’s special cock sauce for you. Hurry up. Do your thing.”

She didn’t have a choice and she didn’t give a damn. He poured himself into her and she swallowed down the beastly seed.

“Fucking-A!” the carpenter moaned.

A maddening desire burned inside him. The feeling of an itch that could not be scratched crawled down his shaft.

“Once more, baby. Once more. Get a little hand action in there this time.”

“Oh, give it a break,” Mayumi said in a weary voice. Her face was covered with come and her lips coated with milky cream. She was disgusted with her own disgusting state.

The carpenter grabbed her hand and curled it around his member and pumped it back and forth. Two ragged breaths later, he threw his head back beneath the overhead fluorescent light. Followed by the strangled sound of trying to force air down his throat.

Mayumi fixed her indifferent gaze upon him as his face darkened and turned purple. She watched the same thing happen a week ago. That time, it was her father, his cock growing big and hard inside her mouth. Then grabbing it, glistening with her saliva as he gasped for air, his back arched in the last moments before suffocation.

The carpenter was whacking himself off. On the verge of his heart stopping, all he wanted to do was come.

A sound like the report of a machine gun exploded from his throat. His back bent to the breaking point. With his last breath, the thick, white thread flew through the air and splashed across Mayumi’s mouth and chin.

He had completed his conquest, just like her father.

Mayumi lay back and listened to the carpenter crumbling onto the tatami mats like a rotted out tree. The strange aroma stuck to her face and coated the inside of her mouth.

She got up and went to the kitchen and ran the water in the sink, filled a glass, and rinsed out her mouth. Ten times. She washed her face. The hand soap was out so she used dishwashing liquid instead, and scrubbed herself until she smelled of disinfectant.

“Ma—Mayumi—”

A voice like that of a disembodied ghost rose up behind her. She didn’t turn around. It was her mother.

“What did you do—to poor Kanauchi-san—what—what happened—?”

Mayumi didn’t answer. Hardly a question her mother needed to ask. Once she had passed out, the carpenter’s intentions toward her daughter should hardly have been a mystery to her. And what would become of him then.

“Just like my father,” Mayumi intoned.

“What are you saying?”

“Just like my father. He just fucked me different. The results are the same. Mom, why do you bring such dirt bags home with you?”

“Why—” She hesitated. Her daughter’s words stung. In the moment of silence, darker thoughts welled up. “Kanauchi-san cares about us. How were we going to keep this place going after your father died? Half of our customers came here just to see him. With him gone, we didn’t have a choice but to keep somebody like Kanauchi-san around!”

“Bullshit!” said Mayumi, whirling around, her body and voice trembling.

She stopped and stared. The pink negligee her mother was wearing was stained red from the chest down. In the faint light, the outlines of her body stood out clearly against the wet fabric.

All the buttons were undone, exposing her ample thirty-six inch bust and damp thighs and the dark triangle between her legs.

“Mom—your breast—”

Her mother’s right hand rose to her chest and touched the torn flesh. “This? Kanauchi-san took a bite out of me. It’s nothing. A little artificial skin and it patches up fine. You should know by now, a man likes to eat a woman in more ways than one. Yeah, normally they settle for licking and sucking, but they really want to sink their teeth into us. Kanauchi-san says I taste real good.”

“But—like that—and more than once—”

“It’s no big deal. I shoot myself up before going to bed. It stings a bit but a little acting takes care of the rest. You get it, don’t you? After this, I’ll do what I have to do to raise you. That’s why Kanauchi-san was so important. And you couldn’t put up with a little roughhousing—”

A little roughhousing—? The cool fluorescent light glimmered off Mayumi’s cheeks. She could almost believe she was crying.

“You killed your father the same way.” Sensing weakness in her daughter, her mother’s voice took on a high-handed tone. “You kept mum to that doctor, but you’ve killed four. Your father and three after that.”

Mayumi shook her head, but without conviction. There was no use denying it. Before she knew it, her mother had silently crossed the threshold. She loomed over her. Mayumi retreated until her back was against the sink.

“Mom—stop it—”

“Relax.” Her mother smiled. A strange light sparked in her eyes. “I’m not going to do anything to you. Only I’m going to have you fixed by this doctor I know. We’re not going back to that quack, Mephisto. A real underworld doctor. The sooner we see him the better, no?”

She seized Mayumi by the wrist. For the first time in her life, Mayumi felt the full force of her mother’s strength. She tried to shake herself loose. Her mother yanked her closer, her countenance like hot coals, her breath licking at Mayumi’s cheeks like a blowtorch.

Mayumi felt a cold shock of fear run through her veins. This was the face of a she-devil. Mayumi pushed back, her hand digging into the raw wound in her breast.

Her mother reeled backwards, crashing into the table and then falling to the floor. Mayumi whirled around. The kitchen door and the fire escape were only a few feet away. She took a step—

A claw-like hand clamped around her ankle. She was only lucky enough to keep from falling on her face.

“Little bitch—do you think you can just run away?” her mother hissed, her fingers curled around her leg.

These weren’t the words of a mother to a daughter, but those of a demon guarding the gates of hell.