Long Dream

[cyberghostface]

Here's a story courtesy of Japan's master of horror Junji Ito. Remember to read from right to left. Also, this is 1/3 of a 34 page story.





It turns out the patient that was walking through the halls is Tetsuro Mukodo, who's been suffering from "long dreams".



He goes on to say that the dreams have increased in length, now lasting years at a time. The doctor thinks he's lying or is suffering from a mental disorder that makes him believe the lie. He decides to observe the man's sleeping patterns.



The man's dreams grow increasingly longer--now he's dreaming for ten years at a time. One dream is him spending years studying for an exam, the other is ten years in the jungle fighting a war.




Soon his body begins to physically change as if he is evolving over an extended period of time:




He believes that he's been married to Mami (the girl from the opening scene) for thousands of years. When she sees him, she screams, thinking that it's death come back to claim her.




Later:




Soon his body begins to crystallize and break down.




From the crumbled remains of his brain, they discover small crystals of unknown properties. They attempt to analyze them to discover the link between the long dreams but to no avail.

Soon the girl, Mami, tells the doctors that she is experiencing long dreams of her own--dreams that last months at a time.

Comments

[espanolbot]

Main Doctor: Sure, I've been injecting a terrified young woman with an unknown chemical that slowly mutates her in body, mind and soul, but really, is that so wrong?

Other Doctor: ...YES! YES IT IS!

MD: *Sigh* Fine! I'll just back to my other projects, like the cure for death thing I was working on with Dr Herbert West from America, the cooking course with Dr Lector, or help Dr Channard with his puzzle box.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

I like to imagine that there's some kind of Evil Scientist Club where Channard, Lector, this guy, and West just chill, have some beers, play cards, and talk about whatever weird shit they're planning on doing.

[atom_punk]

"Oh Lector!"

"Channard, how are you?"

"I'm well. Say, will I be seeing you at the monthly poker game tonight?"

"Why of course. And I'm bringing my famous fava bean dip and a nice-"

"Chianti? Splendid! I'll see you there."

[icon_uk]

Isn't that was DC had with their mad scientist collective on the island during "52"?

[velshtein]

I love Junji Ito's stuff so fucking much. ♥♥♥

[fungo_squiggly]

All things considered, she seems pretty happy at the end there, though.

Tetsuro Mukodo once had that dream where he went to work and realized he had forgotten to put on his pants. Only in his dream, he continued forgetting to wear his pants to work every day, for the next fifty years, until he eventually retired.

[icon_uk]

The design for Tetsuro Mukodo as he appears at the start reminds me of perhaps the most famous sleepwalker in film - Cesare from "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari"

[crinos]

The concept also reminds me of the Poe story "The facts in the case of Mr. Valdemar," Where a dying man is placed in a hypnotic trance, dies while in the trance but remains preserved and semi active, and instantly decomposes when he is awoken.

[sindra]

In a sick, disturbing way....it's kind of romantic. Here's the poor guy who's been in the dreams so long, he believes he's her husband of thousands of years and loves her. When he "dies" (I don't even know if that's what happened here), his remains are put into her in order to give her the long dreams and (by her perception) prolong her life indefinitely. He basically "saves" her life.

Romance, Junji Ito style. o_O

[deleonjh]

Junji Ito's stuff always has a male-female relationship playing an important part in the narrative but they're always asexual. It's like he sees heterosexual relationships as the neutral or default space from which to experience the inherent horror of existence. It does make me wonder if he's married.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

At the very least, he has a fiance.

He wrote a comedy comic about living with her and her cats.

No, really.

http://manga.animea.net/itou-junji-no-neko-nikki-yon-amp-mu.html

[darkblade]

Well that's something alright...

[leikomgwtfbbq]

It's like when I found out that Lovecraft wrote a romantic comedy parody.

HOW DOES THIS EXIST

IT'S AWESOME

BUT WHY AND HOW

[espanolbot]

Lovecraft did write an essay about how cats are so much more awesome than dogs, if that qualifies. ^^

[leikomgwtfbbq]

I've seen that, too.

It weirds me out that apparently this massive racist creeper had a soft spot for cats and could write an actually hilarious comedy (I fuckin' love Sweet Ermengarde). Guess everyone's human to some degree, hahaha XD

[espanolbot]

I thought that it was funny how he'd apparently go on rants about Jewis people, only for his wife to remind him who he was sleeping with.

Lovecraft was a pretty ridiculous human being in a lot of ways, but a lot of the Pulp crowd were interesting in one way or another. The bloke that invented the Shadow, for example, was a stage magician, while the man who created Conan the Barbarian was a kind of sheltered man who lived with his mother.

There's actually a really good book, the Chinatown Deathcloud Peril, which basically takes all these people like the creators of the Shadow and Doc Savage, and puts them in a story that has a lot of parallels with the plots of their stories. While they're assisted by a young Ron Hubbard, whoamongst other things, tells two teenagers called Siegel and Schuster that their idea of a man in a bodybuilding outfit with superpowers will never sell.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

My boyfriend's probably got that book somewhere--he's a huge huge huge fan of the pulp stories, and he's been getting me into 'em lately, too. :D We even went to a pulp show at the Toronto library last year. There's another one coming up this weekend, but sadly, I won't be there this time.

[shadowpsykie]

It's like when I found out that Lovecraft wrote a romantic comedy parody.

WAIT WHAT? WHAT?!?!?

[cyberghostface]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Ermengarde

[crinos]

Yeah, I've seen that.

It kind of says something that Ito has the same reaction to cosmic horrors and humanoid abominations as he does to a cat doing weird cat shit.