Blackbird

[cyberghostface]

I probably won't be posting much in the way of the usual EC or Junji Ito this month (unless there any specific requests) due to other plans. To make up for it I decided to share this one again as I think it's one of Ito's creepier underrated stories.

Kume is bird-watching in the woods when a badly injured man calls out to him for help. Kume calls the emergency services, who take the man to hospital. The man confirms that he is Shiro Moriguchi from Tokyo. He submitted a mountaineering log one month ago before setting out to climb the Shirogane-dake mountain, but was then injured in a fall down the mountainside. Moriguchi claims that he survived the month through living off the rations in his backpack, and that he is unemployed with no family or friends to contact.

Moriguchi is scheduled for corrective surgery. Kume comes to visit and announces that Moriguchi's story is all over the news. However, Moriguchi seems frightened and begs Kume to stay in the hospital room with him overnight. Kume agrees. They chat and Moriguchi repeats his assertion that he is an orphan who has no family or friends.





Kume tries to ask Moriguchi what's happening, but sees a pile of shredded flesh on Moriguchi's pillow. Under pressure from Kume, Moriguchi confesses the truth. After falling off the mountain, he was too badly wounded to move, and was starving to death.





The woman appears the next day this time feeding Moriguchi with blood from her mouth. It goes on like this for the rest of the month with the woman 'feeding' Moriguchi and keeping him alive.

Kume stays with Moriguchi again the following night. The woman returns to feed him again.





Moriguchi is terrified of the woman. He believes that she is a demon, and has been feeding him because she believes he is one of her own kind. As a baby, he had been found abandoned under a tree and left there for more than a week before he was found. No one knew how he had survived, and he wonders if the woman might have been keeping him alive at that time. Just as he's telling Kume this story, police arrive to interview the men. The flesh and eyeball have been proven to be human. Moriguchi and Kume tell the police everything they know; but it isn't much, and the police cannot find who the body parts came from.

The woman isn't seen again. Moriguchi eventually recovers and announces his intention to return to Tokyo to look for a job. Kume goes to the station with him to say goodbye. As Moriguchi's train leaves, Kume looks up at the sky and sees a gigantic blackbird flapping after the train.



DNA tests prove that the flesh and eyeball that had been fed to Moriguchi had actually come from his own body. A diary found in Moriguchi's backpack describes that the woman had returned to him; somehow able to enter his home even though it was locked.



He tried to flee abroad, but she imprisoned him in the crater and ate him alive as he slowly froze to death. Kume believes the woman had travelled through time to feed Moriguchi his own flesh.

Kume later goes birdwatching.



The shock causes him to fall down the mountainside and break his leg.

Comments

[thenicochan]

Ick.

I love this time of month! You always post the best stuff. I can't wait to see what you've got planned for us this time!

[cyberghostface]

Thanks. :)

[ioplokon]

Huh. It's funny but to me it being your own flesh is less creepy than it being someone else's? Like, it's pretty much the same fate they would have had if she just ate them initially only... some time later?

[nyadnar17]

This is awesome. Super creepy