48 - Seventh Tale of the Japanese Cemetery - The Pimp of the Dead

Miu rose to find the next candle. She selected one that was slender and listing badly. The light was reflected in her eyes.

"Times change, but the cemetery remains. So, customs must be adapted to deal with new laws, new ideas. In such moments, there lies opportunities. So was it with...

THE PIMP OF THE DEAD

The first Japanese funeral service was founded in the 1920s. There were state and country regulations on the handling of human remains, and the installation of a gas-powered crematorium offered easier and more cost-effective options compared to the burials that had marked the first few decades of the community.

Goro had come from Okuma in Fukushima prefecture. A rotund, strong man with a shaven head and neat mustache. Goro worked for years in the American-style funeral home run by Jeffrey Morgan on the Eastside, before he opened his own establishment catering mainly to the Japanese community. This was, at first, welcomed. It was a clean, hygienic facility; the crematorium was modern and efficient. Goro had good relations with the stonecutters and the priestesses of the shrine.

For a while, all seemed well.

Until Goro took an assistant.

Tomiko was the third surviving daughter of a poor family. Any money was welcome, and her parents were happy at any prospect of employment. She was not particularly tall, or lovely; her face was too long, teeth crooked, acne and measles had scarred her face; but she was full-hipped and with a prominent bosom. A body that attracted men, even if the face did not.

It was soon after Tomiko began that Goro's fortunes began to rise. He had a certain way of knowing the right time to make an investment, what properties were worth snatching up. One cabin he purchased proved to have hundreds of silver dollars hidden in the chimney. A fallow field bought the month before the railroad decided that was where they would build the local expansion to the loading bay.

The thing was, Goro had cremated the man who owned that cabin. The only man in Dagon's Hollow who knew the railroad was going to build that expansion had also passed through his funeral home. If anyone put the pieces together, they would have seen that Goro's growing fortune was built on information he should not have had, secrets that should have been impossible for him to know.

It was a shrine priestess who discovered the truth. She invited Tomiko out for tea. The homely young woman with the beautiful body came to the cemetery, wearing her best kimono, her hair done up. The priestess greeted her warmly, in that simply room that looks north, across the railroad track, to the small copse of trees.

The tale came out.

"There is a mask, he has me wear. An old carven mask from Japan painted with a beautiful face. I wear my robe, but nothing underneath it. In the hour before cremation, Goro will come in and light incense, and address the body. Asking if Sir would like a final taste of the world's pleasures before moving on. It is like—like a salesman making a pitch. He tells them of my beautiful body, my round, full breasts; my heavy buttocks; the tightness of my cunt. And all he asks in return are the answers to a few questions, just one or two, swiftly accomplished, the answering of which means nothing to the deceased but everything to Goro."

"The first time I saw the penis rise on the body, I was scared. The corpse did not move, it was only their prick, which had been flaccid and still, that suddenly swelled with life. I did not want to mount it then, to have that cold, hard length inside of me, but those were the terms of my employment. My father, my mother, they had been intimated that some sort of sexual service would accompany my employment, and they were willing—we needed the money so badly—"

"So I steeled myself. I stood up, and shed my robe. All except the mask. I climbed onto the table and lowered myself down. It was so stiff. So cold. A cold, dead thing. I have occasionally used my hairbrush handle, when I needed relief, but it was colder than that. The feel of something that should have been alive, but wasn't. And I rose and fell, rose and fell, my hips pounding. And I—you have to understand, I touch myself so rarely, the stimulation—I began to rub my pussy as I rode the body. I could feel the excitement and heat build inside of me, despite the cold touch of **** that seemed to chill me to the core. And at last the wave of pleasure came over me. Goro always leaned close to the dead man's face, his ear catching words I could not hear."

"Goro was pleased. And for a while all I did was sweep and dust. He never tried to touch me, that way. Always made sure I was paid on time, that I had enough to eat. Then, another body would come in, and we would do it again. Sometimes the bodies were not good to look upon. Old men who had died wasted and shriveled, to see their members rise stiffly like a young man's was obscene. One man had been caught in a combine, his penis torn nearly in half, and I had to rise and lower myself on the stub of a shaft. Yet whenever there was enough to work with, Goro ordered me to do as I was told."

It was a tale that was bursting to be told. Parts of it, though, the priestess guessed. There was a fascination in her eyes that could be read. A yearning. Perhaps, too, it was the way she sat at the tea table, some subtle sign from her body language.

"I will speak with Goro," the priestess said at last.

Not everything that happens on the Westside is communicated to the Eastside. The Japanese community is not insular, but some matters are best handled internally. Goro took a train back west. The paperwork for his marriage to Tomiko was discovered; the Japanese clerk who worked in the town office assured that everything about the document was correct. She took ownership of the funeral home, and received much help and support for the community—in no small part because of her delicate condition.

"But you said," Asenath butted in. "That Goro never touched her."

"He did not," Miu confirmed. "But do you have any idea how long sperm might survive? Some of the corpses, you see, were quite fresh."

So saying, she doused the candle.