Episode 43: Control
Time slipped by without answers or mercy for Ren. His body and mind were ready to be ferried to the afterlife, but death wouldn’t come for him, no matter how much he begged. Instead, he languished in bed, a shell of his former self...weak, wounded, and with an insatiable desire for, of all things, blood.
Trapped in a sort of purgatory on Earth. Stuck in the blurry expanse, neither human, nor a vampire, but a ghoul, who’s strength would be contingent on consuming blood. But Ren’s resolve, his strength as a warrior and a samurai, wouldn’t let him think that way. To him, his hunger was a delusion of his sickness. What he really wanted above all else, was to simply die...but that seemed beyond his control.
Ren struck with a curse - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
But to Kouta, charged with Ren’s care, answers to the perplexing case of his patient were needed. Being a man of science and medicine, he’d exhausted every avenue to heal Ren...But also, as a man of reason, Kouta suspected something supernatural had claimed the samurai’s body.
When Ichiro discovered Ren, wounded in the woods, he was whispering of trying to save a young girl...Kouta thought, at the very least, if she could be found, maybe the mystery to Ren’s condition could be explained.
Ren wasn’t much help in the matter. He hadn’t eaten in weeks, unable to keep anything down. Running a temperature that wasn’t humanly possible. What incoherence he did utter, was jumbled and repetitive. The only discernible fragment that could be extracted was, a name, Aya.
So Ichiro went from village to village, inquiring about the whereabouts of a girl, with no luck. What information he did obtain were mostly warnings about the forests on the outskirts of Nagasaki. People spoke of an Oni that prowled the woods. A demon made of memory, wearing stolen faces, feeding on the lost.
Little did Ichiro know, his quest to locate Aya would lead him straight to the very “evil” spirits everyone warned him of. He found her one evening outside a small izakaya, watching drunks spill from its paper-lit doorway, she was hunting.
Ichiro locates Aya - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Weary of Ichiro at first, Aya thought about taking him around the back of the establishment and ripping him to shreds. As she was the bait, dangled to snare men for her and Keiko to feed on, she was suspicious of certain tells. Men who asked too many questions, those who expected her to follow them elsewhere, and those who used her name.
Prowling for prey was a win-some, lose-some strategy. There were times it worked flawlessly. And others, where their food got away. Which meant some had seen her face, were on to her ploy, and maybe even knew she was one of the malevolent spirits haunting the woods...so Ichiro, coming through the small village, explicitly asking for her by name, roused her defenses. But the mention of Ren the samurai, grabbed her attention.
Following the attack in the woods, as Keiko saved Ren from dying with a drop of her blood, the sun was coming. Ren, too weak to go anywhere on his own, wouldn’t heal properly without drinking human blood. So they left him with the intent to collect their property after the next sundown. The thing about ghouls, they’re not yet Vampires, but stuck between the two extremes of living and being undying.
While Keiko had a strong ability of “sight”, she couldn’t “tune” Ren, as the state of being a Ghoul is wholly different from being a vampire -- so a mental bond couldn’t be completed. So when they returned at nightfall, and Ren was nowhere to be found, they had no Earthly idea where he went...but upon hearing Ichiro knew where Ren was, Aya told him she would fetch her “mother” and the two would make their way to see the ailing samurai, having answers for his condition.
Ren’s dreams, the man in the field blood raining from the sky - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Meanwhile, Ren slept. Long hours on end, suffering greatly. His mind filled with terrible dreams, a demon haunting him...and seeing disturbing visions of a man in a field, blood raining from the sky. An unending fever clouded his thoughts. Chills and aches his constant companion. He wanted to die, was ready for it, but life persisted. With his prolonged state of torture, deep down, Ren could feel something dark and nefarious was at work.
Late that night, Ren would awaken to harsh voices, arguing, echoes of a fight. Though weak, he’d force himself out of bed, following the sounds.
In the irori, Ren would stumble onto a nightmare made real…Keiko and Aya had come to collect their rightful property -- him. A fight over the fate of the samurai had ensued. Keiko killed Kouta and mortally wounded Ichiro as he was trying to defend his father. When Ren made himself known, he recognized Keiko as the demon from his dreams. She revealed to him what she really was –- a vampire. She told him about the attack being a mistake, and using a drop of her blood to keep him from dying...trapping him in the agonizing stasis as a ghoul. He was enslaved to her.
Keiko and Aya, come to collect their rightful property - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
REN: You’re the reason I can’t die?
KEIKO: My blood is a serum that keeps you immune to death. Aya likes you. She wants you to join us.
REN: And if I refuse?
KEIKO: You have no choice. My blood owns you. A single drop more, and you’d become as we are. But no mortal, especially a man, should hold that power. Instead, you’ll serve us in the daylight, our protector, our chained hound.
REN: I’ll run from this place. You’ll never find me.
KEIKO: I control you now. I’m the darkness you can’t escape.
Aya flinched as dawn began to bleed through the lattice doors. Neither she or Keiko noticed Ichiro, still barely alive, crawling toward it. With a trembling hand, he slid it open.
The sunlight slashed the room, separating Ren from his captors. Keiko hissed in pain, smoke curled from her skin. She and Aya were forced to flee without him, once again.
At Ichiro’s side, Ren could see he was slowly dying, a deep gash in his stomach from his tussle with Keiko.
REN: I’m sorry Ichiro, I brought this curse upon you and your father.
ICHIRO: He told the woman he would die to protect you. She attacked him, and I stabbed her with this.
Ichiro would hold out a blade stained with red.
REN: Her blood...she said if I had more...
Ren didn’t finish the thought. He acted. Knowing the only way to defeat the monster was to become one himself. He licked her blood from the blade.
ICHIRO: Ren, no--
Agony consumed him. Fire tore through his veins as the change overtook him.
As the pain subsided. Ren’s wounds, that had persisted for weeks, faded. His vitality had returned. His eyes would go black, two empty voids. Fangs bared through his trembling lips.
Ren reborn - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
ICHIRO: You...you’re like her.
And so he was...as more sunlight crept across the floor, Ren recoiled. His new nature repelling him from it. He backed away into the shelter of the hallway. In the half-dark he whispered, almost to himself...
REN: Tonight, I free myself from that monster’s bonds. Or I’ll die trying.
TO BE CONTINUED…