It's long past my bedtime...

"I said it was time for bed," Mom scolded, but I still wasn’t tired.

"Tell me a story!" I begged to try and get her to let me stay up. I had just turned twelve today! That’s practically an adult now. And all the cake and presents had left me too wound up to sleep.

Mom knew I was just trying to ignore her order to bed, but maybe it was that it was my birthday that swayed her. "Alright," she said sitting down on my bed. "Which one would you like tonight?"

"The story of how Daddy killed the oni!" I almost yelled. "I’m older now, and you said you’d tell me the rest of it when I was older, so I want to hear the rest of it!"

She rolled her eyes. "You’re still not old enough…"

"Awwww…" I groaned and begged, "Please?"

She almost held up her resolve, but I won her over. "Fine, but if you have nightmares don’t say I didn’t warn you!"

"I won’t!" I said excitedly. I never knew my father, so other than sparse facts that the monster killed my grandmother and almost killed my mother before my father saved us all by sacrificing his own life somehow, I knew next to nothing of the real details. She wouldn’t even tell me what it looked like! Said it was too scary.

"It was the night of the blood moon," mother said purposefully trying to be menacing, but I loved it. "The full moon rose, only to become shadowed by the oni as it descended from heavens almost thirteen years ago." I was entranced by her words and clung to them with bated breath. "It was only a shadowy spirit, yet it yearned for blood; the blood of the innocent. It sniffed and found a man, alone..."

"Was that Daddy?" I gasped.

"Yes, but he was in love with a beautiful young woman," she answered.

"You’re still beautiful, Mommy," I said meaning it. Everyone in town said so. They all wondered why she never married, but I knew it was because no one could replace my Daddy in her heart.

"Thank you," she smirked before continuing. "But the evil spirit didn’t care for love. It was hungry for ****. It grabbed the young man, **** itself into his body, **** him on its evil essence before his eyes glowed red."

"No!" I screamed.

"Yes!" she growled back, impersonating the monster. "Then, now in control, it went to the young woman’s house and found her mother baking a cake for her upcoming wedding. She was happily singing to herself, so never saw the monster behind her until it was too late. He grabbed a kitchen knife and plunged it into her back!"

"Eeeek!" I shouted terrified and tried to pull up the covers to hide, but Mommy grabbed them and continued.

"Then the young woman ran in, hearing the cries as her mother lay dying. ‘What have you done my love?' she cried out," Mom really sold the performance, her eyes looked so sad, then went malevolent. "The man just cackled evilly, ‘Muhahaha! You are next, sweet thing!' He raised the knife up, about to send the innocent young girl to her doom, but instead of being scared she looked up and told the man she loved, just seconds before he slaughtered her, saying only," Mom paused for just a second, her arm rose up in the air with an imaginary knife as her voice changed from menacing to sweet, "‘I love you.' Those simple words stayed his hand and the oni lost its control on the man, though he must surely have known it would only be for a moment. But with that brief moment, he took that bloody knife and plunged it right into his own heart!"

I was now too wrapped up with my heartbeat filling my ears to react anymore. I was hanging on her every word.

"The oni, being nothing but pure evil howled and died at her lover’s pure self-sacrifice, but it was too late to save him. 'I’m sorry my love,' he gasped as his blood ran red across the kitchen floor with the mothers. Then he fell into my arms and I kissed him one last time."

I wasn’t crying I tried to tell myself through the wetness of my eyes. "Daddy was a hero," I sobbed.

"Yes, he was," Mommy sighed and held me tight to hug me in her warm embrace. "But that last kiss gave me you. And nothing will make me regret that Hitoshizuku. Nothing ever will because I love you."

"I love you too, Mommy!" I said into her warm embrace. I still wish I could have known my dad, but my mother was definitely the best mother in the whole universe!