The Hundredth Demon Craves Its Portrait

Goro stumbled home, dreading his wife’s reception, when a paper lantern licked his face.

It had been a long day at the art studio. The publisher had requested landscape prints of the post stations of the Central Mountain Route. With no budget for an excursion outside Edo, studio apprentices including Goro spent the day scouring the studio’s archive for illustrations of the specified locations. Where these could not be found, they adapted or invented as necessary, aware that gentle figmentation was smiled on by their masters.

A long work day shifted into a quick meal and drink at an inn with the other apprentices. Confident that this would be a brief detour, Goro had wrapped paper, brushes and inkstone in a cloth, to continue his work at home.

And it would have been a brief detour, if the waitress had not suggested adulterating the leftover sauce for the dipping noodles with a mischievous pour of sake.

As it was, Goro lurched down familiar streets, the shop lanterns extinguished, and the streets bare of other stragglers. To Goro’s bleary eyes, the moonlit world seemed flatter, windows and signs and fences converted into neatly interlocked geometric blocks.

Then he heard the snickering.

Down the lane, distant at first, he heard this amused braying, and thought perhaps that he was about to cross paths with another party of revellers.

Goro was correct in that first judgement.

But then he saw the horns, and the gnarled feet, and the lashing, saliva-scattering tongues.

He fell onto his backside, and then in one movement scrambled onto his legs and turned to run.

But it was no help, for the demon horde had already surrounded him, distance no obstacle for supernatural beings. A floating paper lantern licked his face, a long-nosed bird demon pulled on his kimono, and a sentient teacup nibbled his toes.

Of course, Goro knew the legends. He had seen other artists’ drawings of this, the parade of one hundred demons. A nocturnal ramble by an encyclopaedia of fiends, known to rend the flesh of anyone that stumbled across them.

The legends spoke of remedies. A yin yang priest of sufficient experience could dispatch the monsters with an incantation or a paper talisman. He did not know where to hire one, and knew with resignation that he could not afford one. Alternately, certain special charms were said to be effective. Never having encountered demons before, Goro did not have these on his person.

With no other options, he was forced to beg.

“Please, sirs! I am but an artist, an apprentice in the woodblock print trade, making my way home! Oh please, have mercy on me, good sirs, oh please!”

A woman’s voice cooed in response.

“Oh, an artist! What fun. Would you draw me? Do you not find me beautiful?”

And she would have been beautiful, had her head not been upside down, with mouth on the forehead and eyes just above the chin.

Gulping down his fear, Goro agreed. The demons released him. He unwrapped his bundle, spat on the ink stone to wet it, and began to draw with his brush.

When he was finished, he presented the sketch to the demon company. They howled with laughter, saying it was the perfect likeness. Only the demon woman was not impressed, saying it was a cruel satire, that her eyebrows were neater, and her brow was higher. So great was her displeasure, that the edges of the mouth on her forehead pointed upwards.

Another demon stepped forward, a hairy green giant with a sharp horn jutting from his skull. “Me now, do me now!”

And so once again Goro spat on the inkstone, sketching as best he could, the tremor of his hand reflected in the line of his brush.

And once again, the demon assembly chortled and clapped, with only the subject of the illustration dissatisfied, feeling that the face was unfairly ferocious, and not reflective of its tender heart.

The demons all clamoured for drawings, and Goro worked frantically to satisfy their requests. As much as the congregation loved the illustrations of other demons, each demon despised their own, complaining that the artist had failed to capture some subtle nuance.

Finally, Goro’s mouth was too dry to spit on the inkstone, and he had exhausted his supply of paper. But there was still one demon left.

This one was short, but with an enormous head shaped like an eggplant. He wore a monk’s robe, and scrutinised Goro with canny eyes. This one had waited, with purpose and malice, for the right moment to make its attack.

“My boy, what a splendid artist you are! The potency with which you limned the one-legged blacksmith! And the puddle of water on the pate of your water monster depiction positively shimmers! You would hardly deny this old man his own portrait? That would be… ahahah… Ill-mannered…”

The demons crowded in, their amusement transforming into a savage glee, ready to tear and chew the helpless artist. 

Then Goro, inspired, plunged his hand into the dirt road, and began to drag it down the lane.

“Of course, sir, one portrait, coming up! But your head, it’s so large, so full of learning and wisdom, I could not hope to fit it on a single sheet of paper.”

And so Goro drew a line down the street, the demon company skipping after him in love of this new game. Only the demon in the monk’s robe was not amused. Goro led the horde for many blocks of houses, chattering all the while about his subject’s fine skull, and how wonderful the portrait would be when it was completed.

And so Goro reached his house. At this point, even the demons of less acumen realised this had been a trick, but at that moment the rooster crowed, and in the east the sun peered over the top of buildings.

With dawn, the horrors dissolved, and the world seemed real again, a place of depth and substance, where hangovers and deadlines were welcome, for there was predictable safety in the mundane.

Walking inside his home, exhausted, he was ecstatic to see his wife had waited up for him. She sat at a squat table in the kitchen, her back to him. He fell on her, wrapping his arms around her body, kissing the nape of her neck.

At this moment, he saw that she had no head.

Instead her neck drooped down onto the table, wrapped around one of the legs, and then reached into the rafters, where it coiled around a beam, and then disappeared deeper into the darkness of the house.

He felt breath behind him, gentle and cold on his hair.

“Welcome home, my love. Won’t you draw my portrait as well?”