It's Still Life

At an Intersection Named After an English King and a Saint
Six Sentence Story: Part 20: Samurai Oni no Hanzō Arrives

last week: “… surely, the last syllables uttered at the end of time, Brigid … *Memento Mori.”

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“… yes, but if one lives with the knowledge that the body’s ultimate aim is to be dead, then its goal is certain to succeed … (Drake’s mimicry of Connor’s voice is excruciatingly precise) … so why mourn when the body’s aim, to be dead, is achieved; this achievement is indisputable success.”

Drake is in quasi rhetoric mode; it makes emptying a bottle of vodka into one’s open veins seem genius, and it’s twenty three minutes past two in the morning, I can’t sleep, Drake never sleeps, and this banter between us is picking the scabs off my wounds, “Keep Pierre and Connor out of your iffy philosophy – where do you get this stuff?”

I grab a blanket, swirl it around my shoulders – my bare feet pressing creaks into each wooden step – and I push my way into the night air.

And to prove that night’s black on black is not a shade blacker, I see a flash of long steel honed on moonlight’s whetstone …. and a man, sitting cross-legged, his back against the oak tree, one hand hidden in the fold of his shitagi, the other hand on the hilt of his katana whose blade threatens the belly of the sky and wanting to dice infinity into small digestible bits.

And this man slowly rises to his feet as if he’s a whole molten kingdom, and says, “I am Hattori Hanzō, the second Hanzō of future’s five, I am the samurai Oni no Hanzō, I am called Demon Hanzō by some – I am Drake’s loyal retainer, here to protect and serve you, because truly, Lady Brigid, there is nothing that one should suppose cannot be done … or undone.”

I fill my lungs with swirling night air, look up at the amber light filling the window of my flat, and shout, “DRAKE! What the fucking fuck have you fucking done, you fucked-up fucker?”

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Previous Instalments: To access all of the instalments on one page, please use this link

The last paragraph is inspired by a Spotify podcast “The Gray Area with Sean Illing” interviewing Rebecca Roache, who wrote the book For F*ck’s Sake: FoWhy Swearing is Shocking, Rude, and Fun. Rebecca Roache is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. This paragraph had me in uncontrollable laughter as I find it difficult to use the “f-bomb” in any circumstance. 

Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “swirl”. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to be used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2024.