Part 1 || 7 | Emma

A Tale of a Truck Driver

After the three muse officers left, Taiso Takagi revealed the real reason for his errand, confiding in Nathaniel his suspicions about Judy’s case. As far as Taiso could remember or tell, it started with a semi-trailer truck and an accidental death during one of his traveling vacations on foot in the American West in the 1980s. Anyway, based on a cursory investigation of the incident at the time, he said that the driver of that semi-trailer truck was a gloomy specimen of a man drinking a soda and eating a hamburger while he drove. For all he knew, this truck driver was an average Joe, but he had a peculiar taste in music. In fact, he had been listening to the lead singer of his favorite thrash metal band rip out his vocal cords on his stereo—

When something jolted his seat beneath him.

The jolt rattled the cabin and splashed some of the contents of his soda carton over the carpeting from his cup holder, soaking it in foaming suds.

“Fuck!” the driver said, who had bitten his tongue on the jolt and was now tasting blood mixed in with a mouth full of hamburger. He pressed the brake pedal, slowing his truck to a halt on the side of the road, and parked it on the shoulder. He checked the ruined carpet beneath the cupholder, where a good portion of it had been turned into a dark brown stain, and now faced the prospect of explaining to his boss why there was a stain there. “Ah, Christ! Fucking animals keep running across the fucking road. Why does this keep . . .”

This man went on cursing like that as he opened the cabin door and walked in the direction where the jolt happened. At first, he walked on without an idea where the roadkill was, but after a few more paces along the shoulder, he spotted a dark fluffy mass of bloody skin and meat and felt sorry for the creature. He crouched down and inspected it, feeling so sorry for the dead creature that he went back to the semi-trailer truck and got out a pair of dog tags and came back to it. He took off one tag with the name of Vasari on it, the name of a dearly departed dog he had bought for his daughter ten years ago, and placed it next to the corpse. He kept the other one and put it in his pocket.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said. “Didn’t mean to run you over. Say hello to Vasari for me. Emma would appreciate it.”

The man then left, got back into his semi-trailer truck, and drove his way out of this story.

But for the dead creature the man had run over, death was the start of something wonderful, starting with the passage of the daytime into that of the nighttime that inscribed its new name into its astral soul. From the daughter of the truck driver’s name and the dearly departed pet that he had bought for his daughter, the fox’s name became Emma Vasari, though the fox wouldn’t know for a while at the time.

A Tale of a Good Samaritan

The hours elapsed into nightfall. During that eternal passage, repeated since the God of Creation split the night from the day, the spirit of the dead fox got up from the edge of the road where its mangled corpse lay next to a dog tag. This fox had no idea it had been run over, nor had it any idea who that poor bloodied thing was on the roadside. All it knew was that the corpse was an unfortunate statistic, so it sniffed at the poor thing, wrinkled up its nose at the stretch of death fluttering up its nostrils, and stalked off into the night.

Yet unlike the previous nights of its existence on the living side of creation, this particular night stretched on and on for the poor creature. For the first few weeks, the nature of its afterlife was an endless loop of wandering and skittering about the long highway of the living world. Along the way, the fox dispersed itself into nothing during the day, a kind of involuntary sleep for the newly dead wandering the astral plane of limbo, and manifested itself again at night in a different location along the highway where it had been run over. As such, it became nocturnal and learned to love the coolness of the night wind fluttering its astral fur along its body. Nor was it really hungry for anything, though it tried picking at stray dead birds along the highway with its mouth, only to discover that their corpses passed through its gaping maws.

“No matter, though,” it said to itself after several failed attempts at munching on various dead morsels along the highway. “I don’t feel that hungry, anyway.”

And at each of these times, the fox then walked away and refrained from eating night after night. Down the road, though, after about a month without eating anything, it had grown weary of its astral stomach growling in its ears for something it couldn’t eat with its astral mouth. Its eyes had become wild and feral, darting this way and that way for any movement of anything that it could eat, and it darted after all the jackrabbits and roadrunners that crossed its path and spooked them away. After a time in this state, it had become fed up with the growling in its ears and curled into a fox ball along the road, waiting to die without knowing it was already dead.

It had now become a hungry ghost, and its afterlife was a hell of constant hunger and thirst. So there it stayed beside the road, dispersing into sweet oblivion during the day and manifesting again at night only to experience more hunger pains. Thus, days and nights elapsed into a succession of suffering for the poor fox that knew not its own name, nor why it was here in the first place. For all it knew, this was its punishment for an unknown sin it couldn’t understand anymore than it could eat.

Then, on the sixteenth night of staying inert on the road, it said for the umpteenth time, “Why is this happening to me?”

About a half hour later, a voice said from above its head, “What’s wrong, little one?”

“I’m so hungry and thirsty,” the fox said, refraining from looking up at the speaker in its misery. “I just want something to fill my belly!”

“Ah, I see,” the voice said.

“Wait a minute,” the fox said and looked up at its companion. What met its gaze was a small fist-sized specimen of a chubby bunny in a sack suit with a trilby atop its head and a big handlebar mustache hanging from his face down to the middle of his waistcoat. “Who are you?”

The little bunny man’s smile reached his eyes. He said, “The name is Taiso Takagi, Muse Bureau Chief of the Muse Bureau and a well-traveled vacationer. What’s your name, little one?”

“I don’t know,” the fox said, “but why are you calling me ‘little one?’ You’re smaller than I am.”

“I’m much bigger than I look,” he said, “though I tend to be travel-sized, so as not to bother anyone during my travels. By the way, how did you end up here?”

“I don’t know,” it said, “and I’m too hungry to care. I just want something in my belly! Do you have anything for me to eat?”

“I do,” Taiso Takagi said, then took off his trilby, revealing a squat pair of bunny ears, and shook it, till it grew to a size large enough to fit on a large head. He reached into it like a magic bag and pulled out a big juicy peach, then placed it before the fox on the ground. “Eat up, little one.”

The fox opened its jaws and attempted to eat it, but the peach passed through its maws. The fox began crying a puddle of tears, saying, “Why is this happening to me?”

Taiso Takagi then stepped towards the fox and attempted to pet its head, but his hand passed through. He said, “You must still be in limbo, little one. How long have you been in limbo?”

“I don’t know,” the fox said again like a broken record.

“Do you remember your name,” he said.

“I don’t know,” the fox said. “I’m pathetic, aren’t I?”

“Even ‘pathetic’ beings have names,” he said. He reached into his trilby again and pulled out a mirror, then set it before the fox’s eyes. “This is a special mirror that reveals names. Look into it and tell me what you see.”

So the fox peered into the mirror and saw the combined name of the truck driver’s daughter and the name of the daughter’s deceased pet glowing against the reflection above its head.

“Emma Vasari,” the fox said. And the name, breathed for the first time through its owner’s words, filled the fox with a warm feeling collecting inside her growling belly, easing her bottomless pit of a stomach from the gnawing pain.

“Emma Vasari,” Taiso Takagi said, putting this mirror back into his trilby, and attempted to pet the newly christened fox. This time, the fox felt the touch of another living being acknowledging her existence. “That’s a beautiful name,” he said and picked up the peach from the ground and gave it to the fox to eat. “It should be fine to eat now.”

So Emma Vasari opened her mouth and attempted another attack at the giant juicy peach, yet the peach passed through its maws yet again. She said, “Why can’t I eat anything?”

Taiso Takagi then put the peach back in his trilby and reached into it again and pulled out a thermos. He undid the big cap and poured the water into the cap and said, “Drink this for now. It’ll help settle that stomach of yours for a bit.”

Emma took a sip and felt the cool touch of water quench her parched mouth, then took up the cap in her paws and gulped down its contents before giving it back to her helper. Taiso Takagi then took a big gulp from his thermos, and after quenching his thirst, he gave it to Emma to drink more. Emma took it up in her little paws and gulped down the rest of the contents of the thermos, gulping down more and more of the water inside and growing bigger and bigger, till Emma had grown to around three feet tall from her shoulders and six feet long from the tip of her snout to the tip of her tail, dwarfing the size of the chibi-fied Taiso Takagi.

“Ah, you’re a bit of a glutton, I see?” Taiso Takagi said. “As expected of a hungry ghost.”

The fox stopped what she was doing and looked down at herself, then looked over at her smiling companion, smiling from his eyes to the bottom of his twitching handlebar mustache and the tips of his twitching squat bunny ears.

“Sorry,” Emma Vasari said and gave the thermos back to him.

“It’s all right,” Taiso said, taking up the thermos and putting the cap back onto it and putting it back into his trilby. “Your case is quite interesting, Emma Vasari. I’ve never seen a case of a spirit that can partake of water but not of anything else. By the way, are you headed anywhere?”

“Nowhere in particular,” the fox said, “but I want to get away from this highway.”

“Yes. I understand,” Taiso said, and before Emma’s eyes, he grew bigger and bigger and bigger, till he was around ten feet tall, dwarfing Emma by thrice the volume and five times the weight. He then picked Emma’s fluffy form in his big furry bunny hands and hauled her over his shoulders around the back of his big furry neck. “I know a place where you can rest for a time, if you want.”

“Where is it?” Emma said.

“The Nine Shards,” Taiso said. “Wanna come?”

Once the fox agreed with a nod of her head, she accompanied Taiso for the rest of the night’s journey along the highway. The two talked on and on about their experiences, with Emma listening to Taiso’s travels throughout the world during his vacations off of work and the many cases he’d undertaken in the Muse Bureau as the Muse Bureau Chief.

A Tale of a Letter

But not once, Taiso said to Nathaniel Coleman back at the Muse Bureau, did Emma Vasari tell anything about herself during the whole time she spent with him along that dreary tract of highway past joshua trees and barrel cacti, nor did she remember anything when they entered the Nine Shards a week later.

“That’s strange,” Nathaniel said.

“I know,” Taiso said. “Usually spirits gain memories of their past life after entering the Nine Shards, but Emma’s one of the exceptions. I tried hypnotism, talk therapy, and even referred her to one of our friends for a psychic reading, but we couldn’t find anything about her beyond the truck driver that ran her over and the time she spent in limbo along the highway.”

This left Nathaniel silent for a time, till he said, “Can we contact her?”

“No,” Taiso said. “After a month living at my residence in the Nine Shards, Emma disappeared. She left a note, though,” he added and reached into his trilby and took out a piece of paper folded into quarters. He handed it to Nathaniel and said, “Read it for yourself and tell me what you think.”

So Nathaniel took it, unfolded it, and read it. This is what he read:

I’m sorry, Taiso, but I must leave you for another place I’ve found for myself that can help me relieve my constant hunger. Don’t try to contact me, because I cannot afford to involve you in my troubles. Just know that my time with you was the most fulfilling time I’ve had during my stay, and it repents me to say that I must part from you. Again, don’t try to follow me or find out where I am. Just know that you are always in my thoughts,

Your friend,

Emma

“I see what you mean,” Nathaniel said after reading it, “but I’m not so sure if this has anything to do with Judy Windermere’s case. Unless . . .”

“Go on,” Taiso said, urging his colleague to see his way of thinking. “You know what it is.”

“Good God!” Nathaniel said, standing up from his chair and eyeing that note Emma had left. “You think she—”

“—became a dream eater?” Taiso said.

“You think so?” he said.

“I’m not completely certain she has,” Taiso said and sighed a long sigh that seemed to exhale his own soul out of him, “but there’s always a possibility when it comes to hungry ghosts. I’ll take my leave now.”

And he leaped off of Nathaniel’s desk and landed with a soft thump on the carpet of his office. He then grew and grew and grew to around ten feet tall, dwarfing Nathaniel like a big chubby Goliath of a bunny man next to a young David. He then took up his trilby from Nathaniel’s desk, placed it atop his head, where it fit him like a glove, took up the preliminary reports from the witnesses of last night’s incident at The Cake Fairy, and placed them in his bag. “I’ll read through these before I follow them up myself.”

“You think that’s connected?” Nathaniel said.

“I don’t,” Taiso said, “but I have to start somewhere. Keep that letter with you,” he added, “and keep me informed on Judy’s case while I’m out. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Nathaniel said, giving a salute.

The enormous Taiso just nodded his hat and summoned an enormous eight-pointed seal of daffodils beneath his feet. He faced his subordinate once more and caught Nathaniel’s gaze with a hard look, saying, “And don’t tell Momo, Sakura, or Ryder about this discussion, till I find out what’s happened to Emma. Till then, keep this between you and me,” and without waiting for a nod from Nathaniel, he disappeared in a flutter of glowing yellow daffodils.

TBC