I’ve been trying my hand at writing prose recently and I thought I’d use this place as a bit of a sound board maybe, up my content at least, I’ll be posting it on Inkitt too, so these posts aren’t too long, and it keeps the chapters in order the link is at the bottom. Thanks for checking it out, I’ll post chapters intermittently throughout the month. Cheers.
The wind blew through the cherry blossoms in the Sakuragoaka gardens. Musashi knelt and cleared his mind, letting his cares drift on with that wind that blew the trees. He saw without seeing as he closed his eyes, his mind clacking in the dark of his dreams, sparking silently as he smelled the fires burning in the distance, food cooking in the town over, dogs’ barks travelling over the mountains, whispers in the cool afternoon air carried by the silence of 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 and pin pricks of air hit his skin. His eyes cracked and let in some light as his mind came soaring back like a demon raking up the pits of hell, as it hurtled 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 know only 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 inhalation of 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 blade; he could see it in his mind’s eye, feel them slowly oxidising.
With each step their hearts beat faster and lost more ground to his own steady beat; his heart beat like a leather drum of a mighty ship approaching a certain destination.
His attackers could feel it in the ground as they got closer to him; the vibrations through their feet made them feel numb and light headed, they lost the tip of their swords to a strange feeling of giddiness as they got close to the kneeling man.
His breathing remained steady and smooth; he breathed in deeply, taking in the last of the sweet smells of the cherry blossom tree; the pink petals fell and swayed on 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 turned the blade up in his belt and slowly pushed the hilt, gently popping the blade from the sheathe with a slight jerking motion from his thumb, the blade sticking with the coming cold of the autumn months.
The blank figures flapped slightly as the sails of a ship in a changing wind and their nerves were caught on a wire, cutting deeply as they sprang into 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 in an afternoon showing only the sky would be far away enough to enjoy.
They tense their legs and took stances each similar and dissimilar from each other, trying to gain strength from the earth that bore them vagabonds. They swallowed and took their pride up like an iron flag and bound towards the old man resting his eyes in the cool breeze, listening 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 over the hushed voices of careless people.
Their swords were heavier than his and they bolted unsteadily forward shaking like they were held together with string, his sword was that of a dancing feather and cut through the air like a blossom from the cherry tree. His hand had barely touched the sword; 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 parts waves. A natural exhilaration of what was meant to be; men travelling towards their destinies, whatever that may amount to.
The men set up on him, their movements that of men underwater encountering a great eye seeing all their movements but recognising them only as insignificant shapes in the dark depth 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 his guard had been penetrated by some unholy force; he quickly drew his sword again; it was already halfway out when he heard it’s scream tear through the heavens, a star falling with the force of the earth itself, 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 picked up on his way home from school; it bled out on 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 fence that ran around the back of his back garden, 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 nasally 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 that parted their gardens like a crow with a superior sneer sitting atop his pointy douche bag goatee looking like a hipster Ming the merciless with a pair of poser shades dangling from his fingers over the fence.
“You better watch it son, 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 for some reason.
“Err Wut?”
“What are you doing man? No one wants to see some fat re-re in his mommies 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 set up and his bottle massacre, sneering and preening in one self satisfied breathe.
“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 black extra large tees.”
TJ averted his gaze as he attempted to jossle his sword free from the fence, his pits were wet and stinging, shame and anger swelling as 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.” He hopped off the fence laughing.
“Now where the fuck were we? Oh yeah” He said as he turned to the camera as it focused on his goateed smug face, putting his sunglasses back on; He slicked his floppy black hair back on his head.
Thanks for checking it out.
You can read the rest of the chapter on inkitt.
http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507
Darkly Dreaming Demographic. 
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