Ok finally paid to have the first chapter edited, this is just a cheeky re-release of chapter one, gonna be posting a lot more chapters this coming week from sheer laziness and my inevitable complete immersion in Fallout 4.

The wind blew through the cherry blossoms in the Sakuragoaka gardens. Musashi knelt and cleared his mind, letting his cares drift on the wind. He saw without seeing as he closed his eyes, his mind clacking in the dark of his dreams, igniting a small flame of consciousness. His thoughts wandered silently as he smelled the fires burning in the distance, food cooking in the next town over. Dogs’ barks travelled over the mountains as whispers in the cool evening air were ushered in by the coming night.

The ground he knelt on was soft, and grass stained his dark brown robes. He hadn’t washed for days or combed his hair. Cleanliness had become a pretence he didn’t much care for.

Suddenly the air became tighter and sharper as pinpricks brushed his skin. His eyes cracked open and let in some light as his mind came soaring back, like a demon hurtling into this world. A foot touched down on the grassy earth and sent shockwaves through the ground and then another and another and another and another and another.

Three sets of two … his eyes closed again as he listened. Three men or one six-legged demon. He’d only know when he cut it. They’d only exist when his blade touched them and then only for a moment after.

He took a deep, slow breath as they approached. Steel breathed out sharply as their swords loosened from their ramshackle sheathes. The air took on the smell of iron and copper. They approached from behind as Musashi meditated; their steel quivered as the light hit the blades.

His heart beat like the leather drum of a mighty ship approaching a certain destination. He fancied his attackers could feel it in the very ground they stood upon. The vibrations through their feet made them feel numb and light-headed, losing the tips of their swords to a strange feeling of giddiness as they got close to the kneeling man.

He took one deep breath, taking in the last of the sweet smells of the cherry blossom tree, its pink petals falling as it swayed in the wind.  Musashi brought his sword forward in his waist wrap and turned the blade in its scabbard, pushing out his bottom lip as he did. His grizzled lower jaw cocked to the side as he felt the greasy stubble on his face with his other hand. He sighed a little as he slowly pushed up the hilt, gently popping the blade from the sheath with a slight jerking motion from his thumb.

The blank figures flapped slightly like the sails of a ship in a changing wind. They sprang to life, having come too close to turn back. Their fear pushed them onto this mortal stage to face blood and sweat and bone and will.

The vagabonds tensed their legs and took their stances, trying to gain strength from the earth. They swallowed and took their pride up like an iron flag and they bounded towards the old man resting his eyes in the cool afternoon. He listened to the gears of the world slowly turn, smelling the sweet and tart smells of the grass and the blossoms mixing in the dying evening.

Their swords were heavier than his and they bolted forward, shaking like they were held together with string. His sword was a dancing feather and cut through the air like a blossom from the cherry tree. His hand had barely touched it; his grip was light and nourished the blade with his will; it stayed straight and did not falter in the wind; it moved with it, flowed on it and cut it like a ship parting the waves. He felt a natural exhilaration for what was meant to be: men travelling towards their destinies, whatever they may amount to.

They set on him, their movements those of men underwater. His great eye saw all their movements but recognised them only as insignificant shapes in the dark depths of a boundless ocean. His mind only thought of cutting, his blade sharpened by his burning will, a searing desire to be seen by the ambivalent god of the moon and stars.

They scattered like leaves, their bodies wanted to be cut; they were made complete by his blade, a cut for each and each in place; not a drop of blood fell until it was ready to fall and Musashi sheathed his sword once more.

Suddenly, as if from the sky itself, a crack appeared and Musashi felt a foot on his shadow, a tightness in his chest, as if his guard had been penetrated by some unholy force; he quickly drew his sword again; it was already halfway out when he heard a scream tear through the heavens, a star falling with the force of the earth itself. It eclipsed him, like an insect in the wake of a great mountain.

“TJ STOP SCREWING AROUND IN THE YARD AND TAKE OUT THE TRASH!”

“MOOOM, I’M FILMING FOR YOUTUBE!”

“-AND YOU BETTER NOT BE PUTTING HOLES IN MY FENCE WITH THAT SWORD!”

“NO, MOM”.

TJ sighed heavily as he looked at the jagged cut in the water cooler bottle he had picked up on his way home from the local movie theatre it bled out over the unevenly cut grass as his fantasy faded into the corners of his mind. He scratched his neckbeard as he looked at his crappy mall katana sticking out of the fence, still twitching from the force of the swing. He must have let go when his mom called him.

He looked into his digital camera and sighed audibly into the vacant lens.

“Hey fat ass!” A nasal voice rang out from over the fence and TJ turned like Michael Jackson in ‘Thriller’. “Yeah you, neck beard, over here!” His neighbour leant on the fence like a crow, with a superior sneer sitting atop his pointy douche bag goatee. He looked like a hipster Ming the Merciless with a pair of poser shades dangling from his fingers.

“You better watch it, man. You almost put another hole in my ass with that pig sticker of yours. Hommie doesn’t play that. My exit hole remains an exit hole. Feel me?” His neighbour flailed his sunglasses in his fingers and tried to sound like a black guy.

“Err, wut?”

“What are you doing, man? No one wants to see some fat re-re in his mommy’s yard, cutting up bottles with a butter knife, when they can see handsome motherfuckers like me and my associates chopping on some real meat with some big… mmm weapons!” He smiled and motioned with his sunglasses at TJ’s camera and his bottle massacre. “We’ve got over sixty thousand billion subscribers, nigga. Wut chu got, like one-two thousand maybe? Some tight-fisted jackers fapping their flaccid nubby dicks over fat retards getting sweaty in extra-large tees.”

TJ averted his gaze as he attempted to jostle his sword free of the fence. His pits were wet and stinging, shame and anger swelling. He said nothing and shook his head from side to side trying to get his emo black bangs out of his sweaty face; he just took it.

“Stay off my fucking YouTube, asshat, and keep that mall sword crap in your pants.” His neighbour hopped off the fence, laughing. “Now where the fuck were we? Oh yeah.” He turned to the camera as it focused on his goateed, smug face, and put his sunglasses back on. He slicked his floppy black hair back on his head.

For the full chapter and to vote for Green Sunday in the Inkitt Vendetta thriller contest you can go to http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507?utm_source=contest_share #vendetta #amwriting

Thanks for reading and peace out.