The Black Gate 2

The next evening, Gen got home earlier, the sun had barely fallen from the sky by the time he had reached his stop at the train station. The crowd wasn’t quite so thick, but a considerable amount of people still passed through. 

The smells were dreadful, stinging Gen’s nose with coal, rot, and that same gutter oil. He decided to partake in it this evening, stopping for some greasy fried egg burgers and even having made it early enough to pick up some fruit. 

He stood at a fruit stand, debating what he was in the mood for with his small bag of food looped around the fingers of his large worker’s hand. He’d heard nothing else of his incident the night before, but one constant remained: he was tired. 

As he finally reached for a pear, he noticed shifting, practically jumping back as the shadows moved to form hands, rolling over one another in waves and grabbing for each of the fruits. They turned darker and darker, pulling the fruits into the deepening shadows one by one. 

What had jarred him this time, the only thing pulling him from his trance of being horrified, was the piddling sound of a mannerless toddler, pulling his pants down to piss right on the old man’s shoe. From one horror to another more tangible one, he scolded the child. The mother, busily making sales at one of the biggest fruit stalls at this train stop, was too busy to attend him. She scolded the child, too, handing him a mop and letting him push it back and forth with great effort. 

Gen decided not to buy fruit. 

He set foot towards home, and upon stepping into the east gate of the slum, he heard the clearing of a throat right next to his ear. He peeked over to see Goh again. The lights of a barbecue stall and a particularly cheerful wok-fried chestnut vendor hardly visible through his face. 

“Goodness, I’ve been waiting all day for you to get back!” he said in a sigh of relief. Gen ignored him initially, unsure if he was alone in being able to see him. 

“”Oh yeah?” Gen grumbled, seeming to Goh to be constantly discontent. 

“Those pears were really weird, huh?” Goh asked, making conversation without a hint of anything but cheer in his voice. All of his words seemed to be in good spirits. 

Taking pause, Gen took a bite of his oily burger. 

“You saw that, too? I thought I was just tired. Stressed out.” Gen engaged Goh for the first real time. Goh was excited by being given any recognition. He had spent his evening and much of the day being disappointed by the fact that the only person who could see him was dismissive and unyielding. 

“You really have a strange way of reacting to things. Like seeing a ghost, for instance.” 

“I’ve seen a lot.” Gen shrugged, looking over the few visible features of the guy, the ghost, the apparition. 

“Even a ghost?” Whatever he was, he appeared quite young judging by the bridge of his nose and one remaining eye covered in messy makeup. It gave the opportunity for Goh to look him over in return.

“Never a ghost.”

 He had dark skin from working long days in the sun, deep wrinkles, likely for the same reason, Goh surmised, all over a wide face. He had dense muscles on a lanky but small frame and gnarled, swollen hands. He got the sense that Gen appeared much older than he was. Most people who lived in the slum did. 

 Goh also figured that he should try to see the positives. He should be grateful. The person who’d stepped in him was useful and perhaps even fearless. He was much braver than himself. He’d found a lot of his own fear in having recently been murdered. 

“That’s good,” Goh finally said, “So you’ll help me then?” 

Tactless or not, he was insistent on knowing. 

Gen thought it over as he walked the long distance to his minuscule apartment. He took in the sights, everyone bundled up to protect from the biting cold, men completely covered in soot riding in junky trucks filled with bags of coal, and cart after cart of food being sold by the poor souls who slaved over them all night, following where the people were. 

He stopped in front of a fish monger’s shop. Instead of a counter, it had a large fish tank, so murky you could barely see anything inside. The fish man would reach in with his bare hands to pull out a fish, throwing it with a wet splat onto the ground to kill it. It may or may not have worked. He’d then gut it and scale it on top of a soggy piece of cardboard covered in guts, sending flakes of hard, shiny fish scales flying everywhere for the sake of efficient work. 

 Gen watched this process while he considered things. He wondered if those long rubber boots that the fishmonger wore had any ghosts of fish on them for all the guts they slid across in a day. 

“What happens if I don’t?” he asked, raising a brow without his gaze leaving the work of the fish man. Until the very moment he tossed the rest of it into the same type of thin plastic bag, Gen waited for a response. 

“Then I guess I’ll stay!” Oh. He remembered then.

“So where is it? The rest of you.” 

“I can’t get to it.” 

Goh illustrated by reaching out and pushing his hand right through Gen’s chest. He felt a chilly buzz where his hand was inside of him. He didn’t like that but felt like a fool to have tried to push his hand away. He kept walking home before anyone would notice his strange behavior. Gen was grateful for the mask of thousands of people around him, making things often difficult to notice. Goh followed along. 

“Have you ever seen anything like those pears before?” Goh asked. 

“Nah, never.” 

“Don’t you think helping me find my body will like- get rid of seeing weird stuff like me? Maybe?” He had no idea either, only trying to make a convincing argument. “It’s kind of lonely being stuck here. I mean, no one can see me but you, and no offense but you aren’t the best company.” 

Gen shrugged. He knew Goh wasn’t wrong, after all. He hadn’t been good company in a long while. He scraped by, all of his resources pushed towards making it in a big city. All that scraping left no time for fun and no mood for jest. It was hard to be a person who was nice to be around when one’s baseline was that of light misery.  

“Alright.” Gen gave a long rumble of a deciding sigh. “It’s worth a shot.” 

“Great! I can tell you what I remember. Follow me.” 

Goh sped along, his textured brown hair bounced atop his head just as any real person’s would have. Gen followed obediently. Goh led past the dumpsters at the edge of the village and past the second-floor pool hall that inexplicably stated “Michael Jackson Michael Jackson” on the window as proof that pop culture existed outside of these streets. He led past the towering stone epitaph brandishing gilded letters that read, “Keep working and live humbly.” Everywhere within the gates was densely packed, all leading to the center of the slum, near where Gen lived. The cracked pavement turned to compacted dirt as Goh finally led him off of his typical route, past more garbage bins and public restrooms that had been long abandoned, lost to disrepair and a heavy layer of indiscernible filth. Their trip was silent. Gen started to find fine grit making its way into his mouth, a result of stepping through the dirt roads that weren’t so worn. Goh led him to the opposite end of the village to a lone dusty dumpster, only a ten-minute walk from where he had been, but on the outskirts where only dust and crumbled buildings remained. It was punctuated by a couple of stubborn restaurants, likely run by stubborn northern people like Gen. One of them advertised one of his favorite hometown squid dishes and blared upbeat traditional music. 

 Goh wiggled his body before the lone, dusty dumpster, his brows furrowed in concentration as if trying to feel his abandoned limbs. He was trying to remember how his body felt before he became conscious again. Goh wasn’t sure how these things worked, as he’d made no secret of. Gen surely was no better. As far as Goh knew, he was alive and then he wasn’t. He went from painting in his cheap studio on the other side of the train station to being hacked to pieces and dragged past the most abandoned roads to be hauled away in plastic bags. 

From struggling artist to compost was not exactly something he could put on his resume. A portfolio of the inside of dumpsters didn’t do him much good, something he lamented more than being dead in the first place. The gravity of his death hadn’t quite settled in when he was still walking and talking. 

Goh’s gratefulness to having found Gen grew. No matter how resistant he was, in order to get rid of Goh he seemed to be able to do anything. This was evidenced by the fact that he was currently waist-deep in garbage and tipped over the edge to dig for the black plastic bag. There was no small amount of guilt in Goh’s uselessness. 

That guilt was washed away by Gen’s triumphant toss of the hefty bag that he’d deduced was correct over his shoulders and onto the ground. His carelessness disturbed a heavy bloom of dust which stuck to the wet underbelly of the bag and created a cocoon of mud which became the chrysalis of destruction and syrupy cosmic schism. 

Gen hopped down upon his success. He didn’t want to check to be sure and looked to Goh for some sort of confirmation that would exempt him from it. 

Goh couldn’t find anything to say, nervous himself about confronting his own demise. As much as he tried, he couldn’t manage to remember everything. 

Gen’s fruitless answer-seeking left him with nothing left to do but to open the bag just to check. There was no use in hauling a bag of mundane garbage. Ghosts were one thing, leaving him relatively unbothered. Connecting the ghost of this mostly-normal guy with a sack of body parts was something that finally challenged him. He frowned as he untied the top of the bag. The unmistakable smell of death wafted out, causing him to wince. It wasn’t the same as the sweet-smelling rot of fruits and vegetables. It was foul, moving something deep within Gen. His instincts at the core of his being wanted to remove himself from the situation. He didn’t. Instead, he peeked inside. 

“How long have you been dead?” Gen managed to ask, the purple-spotted flesh inside turning his stomach while he identified tapered fingertips. Goh shook his head in response. He wasn’t sure. At least a day, since he’d waited around as long as Gen was at work. Gen knew it had been at least two. At least it was still winter. 

Gen looked at Goh’s fingers to briefly compare before further inspecting. Goh showed discomfort, not daring to take a peek for himself and drawing his shoulders in as Gen looked at the most vulnerable his body had ever been: rotting among garbage. It might have been different if he had shown a hint of compassion, but Goh was learning that he shouldn’t expect it from him. 

“It’s about a quarter of your torso,” Gen concluded, “and an arm, I guess.” The heft explained, he closed the bag back up, tying it far tighter than he’d found it in an attempt to seal the smell within. 

The reality of what had happened to Goh juxtaposed against his strange but cheerful demeanor was something Gen didn’t want to explore. 

Gen was disgusted by the act that had led Goh here and that had produced a dead body in their village, as well as a ghost with nowhere to go. He was disgusted with the contents of the bag, and certainly wanted to join the search to find who had done this. He’d finally been convinced to help. Sure, it was an inconvenience, and he should really mind his own business, but he was certain that nobody else would want to step up, nor had a ghost on their heels to aid in solving this crime. Somewhere, in a place in his heart he’d never admit to having, he was sympathetic to the younger man. As monotonous as his own life was, so often dreaming of escaping it never meant death. 

“So where’s the rest?” he grunted, determined to do the job he’d set out for, especially as they lost light. 

Goh shied away from answering that question, but after a brief breath, he started, “I don’t remember.” 

Gen shot him a dirty look, which was answered with a hurried explanation, “I remember I was taken to the Black Gate, and then I remember…” Goh shivered. When he closed his eyes, he saw his murderer. He saw the webs and dust that had gathered in the corners of the walls as his eyes rolled around lifelessly. He saw the black, traditional style gate outside of the door and the black outlines of young trees swaying peacefully from the windows, unaware of what was happening to him alone in this building. When his head rolled forward, he saw himself flayed open, visceral and careless as the fish monger who sent scales flying, who milked guts from bodies to slap in plastic bags. 

Goh’s eyes opened. 

Gen started off toward the gate where he convinced himself he’d heard the day before that a body had been found. Goh hesitantly followed, eventually leading the way again, the pair of them choosing to stay on the outskirts of the village. Prying eyes were unavoidable, but they could limit them when transporting pieces of a corpse. 

“So what’s your name?” Goh asked. He realized he had never gotten in before from the stubborn man. 

“Gen.” 

Goh laughed. 

“What kind of name is that?” 

“What kind of name is Goh?” he retorted, “Keep on with that and I’ll slap you with your own hand.” 

The threat fell flat. Goh was happy for the banter. It broke up the solitude of leading through chilly dirt back roads with such a morbid parcel. More than that, it was the first time he’d seen Gen do anything but frown and complain. He was laughing. For only a brief moment, they were both able to forget the contents of the bag. Instead, Gen’s natural way of joking, through insults, had been roused. 

“It’s an adopted name,” Goh chuckled, “My family isn’t from here.” 

“Mine’s a nickname. Stuck since I was a kid.” 

“So, we’re just two guys with weird names,” Goh snickered, pleased by that link between them. 

As uncomfortable as their task was, the journey became almost a pleasant one, and the pair made it to the opposite side of the village. The buildings they passed from the previous dumpster had turned from crumbled debris piles to multi-story apartments and shops, and then back to crumbling single story brick shops built half into the ground. The apartment buildings here were barren concrete shells, though still inhabited. Only the center of the village, the deepest parts, had roads and multi-story buildings. 

Rather than the gaudy gate that lit up on the way from the train station, this one was simple: a wrought iron black gate attached to wrought iron fence, which led all the way around to the brick walls on the other sides of the village. 

As the pair of them stepped through the gate, there was nothing to see on the other side of it but a sparse forest and another loose dirt road. 

“I’ve never been here before,” Gen admitted. 

He didn’t see anyone else around, either. There was only a lot of garbage that had fallen off of trucks on their way to a distant processing facility. He supposed of all the places nearby, this one was the best place for the atrocity committed. There weren’t any lights, either, to guide them once they left. The body of a quarter of a human was proving cumbersome. 

Goh led him down the road. The walk was long and he grew more weary of the bag in his hand. He walked and walked and the scenery never changed, not one bit. Sparse young trees were planted in rows on either side of them. By the time they neared their destination, only a single building had been passed on the way. 

Finally, they came upon a traditional gate. It was not red, like most traditional gates, but black, as promised. A sign so worn hung from it that it couldn’t be read anymore, and the shape of a building could be seen down the road behind it. Gen could barely make out the hard lines of something solid within the shadows in the dark. 

“In there,” Goh urged, his voice a fearful whisper. 

This time, Gen led the way. He blindly followed the dirt path. There wasn’t any fear in him. What he’d come upon, taking his phone out to shine its light to see, was an abandoned school. There was nothing scary about that alone to him. Even if it was currently housing a body, it was a body he was familiar with. No one dead could hurt him.

Gen tossed the bag down in the floor unceremoniously, which stung Goh’s emotions a bit. He was too flighty to complain about it now. Gen then pulled his trusty phone out, more commonly used as a flashlight. There was no service here anyway. Using it to look around, he spotted the rest of his torso against a table covered in cobweb. It had furthered in decomposition on the spot judging by the stain that surrounded it. 

“Is this where it happened?” Gen asked frankly.

“I think so,” Goh replied, realizing his simple nod in response might not so easily be seen. 

“Well, off to find the rest. No use waiting. The cold can only slow things down so much.” 

Gen’s callous explanation made Goh sigh in agreement, and he turned on his heels, happy to spend as little time as possible in that place. 

They looked for him in a different corner of a village. It was outside of a cubby that housed a vending machine for sex toys, the doorway concealed by a pink bead curtain that Goh noted it as particularly trashy and expressed his adoration for it. It was another attempt to bring some distraction to their task.

 “The rest of my head…” Goh trailing off as they headed back once again, wondering how far he could part with the man whose boot he was tethered to. Gen was ready to make more progress. The sun was long gone now. This still counted as work and he wasn’t keen on keeping up for any longer than he had to. 

“Is in front of that auntie’s place. Where I stepped on you,” Gen finished the thought. 

The trips back and forth had given Gen a lay of the land greater than ever before. He had found that between the west gate and the auntie’s store was practically a straight shot, the alley that included his own apartment in between. 

They finally arrived at the last destination for the evening, the same place that this journey had begun the day before. Gen began his last search even knowing it would be fruitless when he’d been able to step on him somewhere. 

“You that desperate for money now?” The landlady cackled, standing with her hands on her hips in the entryway between the two window chefs preparing for the next rush. 

Gen realized she was referring to the old people who dug through garbage for something salvageable, but Goh continued to stare at her in confusion. 

“That’s not it,” Gen sighed, standing straight again, defeated by the contents of the more heavily-used dumpster. Of course, what he had stepped in was never inside of it in the first place. He smelled like trash and rot and didn’t dare step closer to explain himself. He weighed the options of telling the truth in his head. On one hand, she might just think he’s losing it. He didn’t mind that. On the other, she might think he’d lost his way right into inciting this mess. 

“I thought I’d try to find that guys body. See if I could get some clues.” He decided to keep it vague, and even still, he knew it sounded ridiculous. 

She crossed her arms and looked him over. 

“You alright there, buddy?” She continued to inspect him. 

“I’m alright. Remember yesterday I said I stepped in something? Wouldn’t want anyone else to experience that.” 

“Why would you care? Not feeling guilty, are you?” 

He shot her a glare. “You aren’t really entertaining that idea, are you?” 

Nobody would like being implied to be a murderer. 

She spent what seemed like an eternity thinking it over as the flow of people continued between them. She kind of liked the idea, though doubtful it was real. 

“Nah,” she finally shrugged, “You have hair. I told you. The picture was brought to me by trusted sources!” She’d rather presume him innocent than herself wrong, to his relief. 

She let out another dry smoker’s cackle and stepped back into her shop dismissively to escape the cold. 

She might have believed him, but once the auntie knew something, everyone knew it. For the first time, he wondered if people would think that he was the murderer, and if that were the case, he only had a matter of time to clear his name. 

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