The Tale of Waneko Wine

The Tale of Waneko Wine

For a hundred years, Waneko lived in an old basement cellar under a local winery. It was fairly unvisited, likely due to Japan’s limited interest in the art and science of winemaking, and the dozens of wooden barrels were seemingly abandoned to ferment and to be sold to white-haired rich people at a price indecent. The lonely life of Waneko was depressing and somber. His only friend was a fluffy mouse who lived in the walls and visited infrequently, but that mouse didn’t like him that much. No one really liked him, actually. Few people ever came into contact with Waneko, but each either ignored his presence completely or screamed at the first sight of him. Waneko’s earliest memory of his family is so faint and misconstrued over the decades that all he recalls is his mother’s abandonment in the rainy streets of Tokyo shortly after he learned to walk. Even she didn’t like him.

Waneko loved the basement cellar despite the cold. It was filthy from the seeping moisture that condensed on the dirt walls, and the floor consisted of mud after years of cracking concrete breaking down. Waneko never saw his reflection but always thought he was hideous. Every face he’s seen is much smaller than his own and even far smoother than the untouched mud in the corner. His tongue for some reason dangled past his pointy chin, and he had bodily hair in abnormal places that usually crust together.

Young Waneko doesn’t know it yet, but he is not like the humans. He is what the Japanese call an akaname: a creature of the supernatural, feared in folklore tales that are told to the misbehaved children who don’t complete their bath house cleaning duties. His long snake-like tongue is what distinguishes him the most. His grotesque diet comes second. He lives off filth and filth only. The Japanese rigorously clean their bathtubs to keep this “filth licker” away.

A furry gray head with big peach-fuzz soft ears peeps out from the crack in the wall near the wood-rotted stairs leading out of the cellar. The crack serves as a tiny entryway for the building’s mice family. Alone, Otsu cautiously scans the room before conducting his nightly sneaky routine of indulgence in red wine from one of the various barrels. He struggles with insomnia if this routine isn’t fulfilled, and although his wife hates his drinking problem, he does what he wants anyway. When deciding the coast is clear, he places his tiny, furry foot on the cold mud to position himself like a runner in a track meet race and scurries at a beeline without effort to hide his wide eyes and yellow bucktooth smile. Out of complete thin air, Waneko jumps out and clamps his slimy, scaly hands over Otsu, just barely squishing him against the cold floor. By the tip of his pink tail, Waneko holds the mouse close to his head, some seven feet up into the air. With loud squeaks and squirms conceived from fear, Otsu begs to be released.

“Can we play a game?” Waneko asks with a sharp, four-dozen toothy grin. Otsu fears those teeth every day of his life. There’s nothing down here for him to be eating, or so he thought; so what’s to stop him from eating a cute, little mouse like him?

“I actually can’t play tonight,” Otsu’s voice shakes. “I have to get back to my kids.”

“Why don’t they ever come over?” Waneko dropped the mouse by his seated side, folded his webbed arms across his chest, and began to pout. Otsu slowly glanced up and noticed Waneko’s attention was no longer directly on him but on the idea of no play. Otsu quickly glanced at his barrel and then quickly glanced back to Waneko. He began taking cautious steps to the side.

“Well Waneko, my kids are hard workers in the rice fields, and two of them just began school,” he lied, hoping the excuse was sufficient. Waneko did that thing with his tongue that Otsu hates: flicks it up and down to taste the surrounding air while coin-sized drops of never sterilized saliva fell from the sky around him. The mouse jumps around as if doing a choreographed dance to dodge the giant spit globs. Of course, Waneko fails to notice his friend, and he lets out a deep sigh loud enough to make the barrels rumble. Otsu scurries to the barrel without hesitation this time. He climbs to the top where he regularly returns to the hole he created with his teeth and steals some slurps. Waneko begins to let out a large wail of desperation.

“I just want to play!” He said throwing a temper tantrum. Otsu drinks his wine and intoxicates his tiny mind while Waneko preoccupies himself with disposition. The two of them stop what they’re doing when they hear a sound from above.

The cellar door creaks open at the top of the molding stairs, and light footprints touch the wood. A one-inch black heel nearly misses the second step, but she catches herself with an intricately ornate carved bamboo cane in her right hand. Several minutes go by until she’s finally at the bottom of the 13 steps. Crouched from behind one of the rows of white wine barrels, Waneko peeks at her and notices her gray thin eyes matching her hair. Her wrinkles blanketed the ridges of her cheeks and the tops of her slender hands. He’s never seen a creature quite like her, but then again he doesn’t see much of anyone down here.

She freezes at the bottom of the steps, and slowly yet rhythmically breathes the cool air. Walking to the barrels without the ability of sight, she reaches out her left hand covered in golden rings with onyx stones blacker than the absence of color. Instead of palm down, the back of her hand reaches directly in front of her to feel the barrels as if testing a hot door. She whispers something in Japanese that Waneko fails to understand. She walks to another row of barrels where the reds are stored. Otsu doesn’t dare make a drunken peep. She does the hand movement again; peculiar, Waneko thought. He creeps closer to observe her, knowing that not only is she blind but no one of a kind can ever see him anyway. Snacking on the filth on the side of the metal rack, he stares at her longer.

The old lady makes her way to all six barrel racks, feeling them all with the back of her hand and whispering the same inaudible something under her breath while Waneko stays at one rack’s distance. In the corner of the cellar when the rounds were completed, she turns directly around, rather swiftly compared to her other methodical movements. Her ankle-length, amber-printed skirt circles her short legs. Again, she pauses as if in deep thought. Waneko couldn’t help but move closer. I’ve never seen a sightless person before, he thought. Curious, Waneko inspects and towers into her personal space.

“Can I help you with something?” the woman asks, emotionless and blank-faced. Waneko jumped back against a barrel, bumping it, causing a hollow drum beat. Otsu falls off the edge and runs for his life back into the hole in the wall. Waneko’s slimy head spins back and forth, his long black crusty hairs whipping in each direction, to check his surroundings as if there were someone new in the room. “Yes, I’m talking to you,” she snapped. “You can’t spy on a woman and be surprised when she addresses your behavior.”

A woman… Waneko thought. That’s what this creature is. Unable to articulate further thought, startled Waneko disappears completely. The lady nods once and makes her gentle way out of the cellar.

It took two and a half weeks after the interaction with the woman for Waneko to go about his usual routine. The space was his again, and after being spoken to by a human he was scared there was a change in the natural order. He had never had such an experience and certainly not with someone who lacks sight. Maybe it’s the blindness that let her see him. Maybe it was her old age. After a couple of weeks of hiding and hunger, the filth in the cellar coagulated enough for Waneko to feast. He begins at the stairs where mold grows out of the wooden steps. This sweet treat is usually saved for last, but his prolonged wait meant he deserved dessert first. He made his way around the edges of the cellar where he licked all of the seeping wall liquid until dry. The barrel racks were next as the rust added some alkaline flavor to his diet. After the filth had all been licked clean, he lay in the middle of the cellar, bloated and content.

The cellar door flung open and quick shoe step stomps startled the food coma Waneko but certainly not enough to make him move. It was a new face at the bottom of the now mold-free stairs. The young face belonged to an Asian boy with pink cheeks and a poorly trimmed haircut. The boy looked around quickly with a firm stance and arms out. Squatting low, he examined underneath the barrels and found nothing, not even luck. “Granny Mizuki was wrong!” he stomped up the stairs and yelled after a sibling at the top of the cellar. They exchange intense phrases, and the boy decided to leave the cellar altogether with a final door slam.

It wasn’t until the next evening when another boy opens the cellar door, a gentler nature than the previous. His narrow, wide-set eyes inspected the underground room. With prudence, he descended the staircase, one hand sweeping the railing. Loud creaks beneath his feet cause a second thought about his journey.

A couple of nights ago, Great-grandma Mizuki told him and his brother, Ryuu, an old family tale over cups of tea by the fireplace. Over a hundred years ago, as Mizuki described, her mother gave birth to her firstborn child out of wedlock. The family of course swore against this, but she wanted to bear the child anyway. She gave birth in isolation of men on the floor of a room in her own house. It was a horrendous birth: sharp shrieks of pain broke glass windows and nearly every woman helping with the birth lost their hearing. When the baby was born, everyone was silent. Even the baby. When the mother saw what her body created, she turned away, refusing to hold it. The monster she produced wasn’t of human descent. Its skin wasn’t skin at all but instead was comprised of iridescent verdant scales that secreted a thick mucus. The hands had blades for fingernails. Instead of round pupils, it had golden vertical slivers. Not once did the mom look into her baby’s eyes. After a few days postpartum, she left in the middle of a stormy night and left the baby in the streets of the city. No one in the family ever asked what happened to the creature. Mizuki told the brothers that her mom gave birth to an evil spirit whose essence will linger forever, latched onto the souls of the living relatives. Zokari had glanced at his brother and whispered the cellar. Ryuu didn’t believe this story one bit. Nothing can scare him, anyway.

Zokari decided to go down to the cellar anyway curiosity being his motivator; after all, his little brother said nothing was down there. The eerie yellow lighting cast long shadows behind the barrels. His jaw, loose and chattering, gave away his fear as if the increased perspiration didn’t also. He sat down on the last step with a flashlight protecting him from anything hidden in the shadows. He waited about ten minutes before asking, “Hello?”

Waneko, bored in his world, heard the tiny voice and grew in curiosity. Is a tiny human lost? he wondered. Slithering out from his preferred filthy corner, he spotted the teenager hunched over on the damp step.

“Is anyone down here?” Zokari asked, hoping for no response.

“Are you looking for someone,” Waneko asks, assuming he will be unheard and unnoticed per usual. Zokari jumped up five feet into the air, hair sticking up like a spooked black cat, and charged up the steps and slammed the cellar door. Could he… hear me...? Waneko wondered. Lonely, he crouched by the stairs hoping for the boy’s return. A few minutes go by until the door cracks open. With a bright light behind the door, tiny eyes peek into the crack between the door and its frame. Waneko moves out of sight, under the stairs. The visible tiny eyes grow into a whole tiny body, and Zokari reluctantly takes a step back into the cellar.

“Who’s there? Are you going to hurt me if I come down?” He inquired.

“I don’t know how to hurt anyone,” Waneko says innocently and softly. Somehow, this honesty pulls Zokari down back into the cellar, flashlight still in hand. “If you come down, I want you to turn off your light. I don’t want to scare you. I’m a rather ugly sight.”

“O-o-o-kay…,” He naively clicks off the light and stays close to the wall as he takes gentle strides down. “W-where… are you?” Waneko slithers towards the safety of the barrel rows. With one slimy hand on the rounded wood, nails unintentionally clicking the surface, he peeks over the edge to the innocent yet frightened face.

“I’m over here.” The boy’s attention redirects to the other corner. Paused, he wonders if he should advance.

“W-what are you?” Zokari asks, moving his head around to try to spot the creature.

“I could ask the same of you,” Waneko replies with a lisp.

“What are you doing down here? It’s cold and kinda creepy…” Zokari looks around at the mud floors and moist walls. Drip… drip… comes off the ceiling by the only light in the cellar.

“I live here. But what are you doing down here?”

“I guess I came to see you. My great-granny told me about you, but my brother said you weren’t real.”

“Is your brother the creature with the bad hair?” Waneko asks. The two of them, burst into a simultaneous chuckle.

“Yeah, he got gum in his hair at school so Granny had to cut it out… She’s blind so she didn’t do a very good job,” Zokari laughs. There was a moment of silence between the two of them. “So, can I meet you?”

“I don’t want to scare you away,” Waneko confesses. “I only have one friend here, and even he doesn’t visit. I don’t want you to run away.”

“I promise I won’t,” Zokari begged. “I want to see your face.”

“Okay… but you can’t run away,” he insisted. Zokari nodded his head while wringing his sweaty hands on the flashlight. Waneko stepped away from the barrel that protected his appearance and stepped forward, one slimy limb at a time. He fully emerged into the yellow light. His resting grin face showed his rows of jagged teeth and half of his split tongue subtly dangled in front of his angled chin. All seven feet of him hunched over with a humiliated stance, arms out wide dangling before him, scared to lose a new friend once again. There were several minutes of silence while the boy remained at the bottom step scanning the beast.

“You know… Granny Mizuki made you out to be a lot scarier than you seem.” The boy eased up, deciding Waneko to be hideous yet pathetic. Waneko smiled his ugly smile and sat down in place, long legs crossed on top of the other.

The two of them stayed down there for hours, talking and chatting about all things human and all things not. They shared laughs and cries and even came up with code names for each other. They created imagination games, and Zokari acted out his favorite films since his new friend never even heard of “films.” They shared secrets, though Waneko didn’t have very many as his life is as mundane as the space he occupies. He did disclose his nasty diet which explained why the cellar wasn’t as dirty as it could be for rarely being visited by Zokari’s grandparents. By the end of the night, they decided they were best of friends. Zokari knew he could never tell Ryuu and certainly not Granny who forbade them to never speak of the monster her mother created with her own body. Zokari yawned about twenty-seven times before even thinking about going up to bed.

“Waneko, I’m so glad I met you,” he said, sleepy-eyed. By this time, they were both sharing a blue Japanese quilt comprised of scrap cloths with floral prints, argyle textures, and secrets from generations prior sewn in zig-zag formations.

“Isn’t your family concerned about where you are? Isn’t late for someone your size,” Waneko asked, hesitant to let him go.

“Forget about them,” he said, eyes getting heavy. “I never want to leave your side.” The two of them remained on the blanket the rest of the night, unconsciously smiling and dreaming of the fun that was yet to come. Waneko is finally pleased in life for this friendship. A friendship.

At seven in the morning, the cellar door flung open, the metal knob clanking against the concrete wall. It was Ryuu looking for his brother. “Zokari, I swear if you’re down there! You’re going to be late for gakkō!” Jolting vertically at the shriek of his sibling, Zokari rubbed his eyes and remembered he was in the wine cellar. Instantly smiling, looking frantically all around. Waneko wasn’t next to him anymore. In fact, he wasn’t in the cellar at all. He didn’t have the time to look for his new friend, but as he ran up the stairs, leaving the old quilt behind, he yelled “Bye, Waneko! I’ll be back later!”

“Who are you talking to?” Ryuu judged his brother.

Instead of answering directly, Zokari ran past him, reminding him, “It’s none of your business.”

The two of them rode their bikes as fast as they could to school, muddy water spraying the trails as they zipped by. The day was long but only to Zokari. The only thing on his mind was nothing on the chalkboard and everything in the basement cellar. He thought so hard about his new friend that he began forgetting his nasty features like the way his nails… or claws curved a few inches past his fingertips. Were they black? Who knows. He stopped caring, anyway.

And just as quickly as they rode to school, they sped home, mud caking onto their uniform pant legs. Races weren’t unusual, but Zokari never won. This time, he took the victory but didn’t even care to rub it in the face of sore-loser Ryuu. He ran inside the house, past old granny folding the freshly washed quilt, through the disorderly kitchen, and down the wine cellar stairs.

“Waneko?” He hollered jumping around searching high and low. “Waneko, I’m back.” He didn’t see him but heard a deep-bellied sigh from what sounded like everywhere around him. “Uh, where are you?”

“I’m here, but I don’t think we can play again.” Waneko’s slow winy voice threw Zokari off.

“Why what happened? I thought we were friends?”

“That woman creature doesn’t like me talking to you,” Waneko said, still in the midst of anywhere.

“Who Granny Mizuki? She’s harmless, she can’t even see.”

“She said she’d wash the place with bleach if she caught us talking again. I would starve to death down here.” Waneko’s deep voice echoed despite the shake and lack of confidence within it.

“Can you please come out? I just want to talk. She doesn’t have to know I’m here. We can come up with a plan?” Zokari said, desperate for friendship, searching for any solution. Waneko slowly faded visibly into the dimension, squatting hunched over with his head resting on a knee. He never looked up, and Zokari noticed big tears pooling by his giant feet. Spirit tears, he noted. “Waneko, we can make this work. I can talk to Granny.”

“She won’t understand. She doesn’t like me. I’m an ugly monster to her. A disgrace,” Waneko wept.

“Okay, then we can come up with meeting times. She goes to bed early every night. I can come down right when her light turns off,” Zokari had a hand on his chin and his other arm supporting his thought-making pose. Waneko nodded and was about to say something when he was cut off by an upstairs interruption.

“Zokari, you come up here now. Listen to Granny, come here,” Mizuki’s old lady voice from the top of the stairs brought both of an immense amount of sorrow. Zokari whispered goodbye and said he would return one hour after her light went off.

“Until next time, Zokari,” slowly rolled off of Waneko’s slithery tongue. But there would be no next time.

That same night, sirens went off throughout the entire city. The loud ones that screeched and echoed down alleyways, the ones you hear in even deep underground bomb shell rooms or even wine cellar basements. A town lockdown warning—an emergency.

A devastating earthquake, followed by two of the biggest tsunamis the country had ever faced, ripped apart life in Japan. Hundreds of thousands of lives ended, buildings were completely left to ruins, and chaos flooded every crevice imaginable. The aftershock a day later felt like a slap in the face to any survivors.

Zokari did survive the Tōhoku tsunami and earthquake, but no one else in his family did. He was displaced to the other side of the country to a family friend’s shelter. A decade passed until he was able to make his way back to his hometown. His goal since the tsunami was to get his family’s winery back up and running; after all, his grandparents and great-grandparents all lived there before him. The place was the only thing he had left of his roots. He had finished most of his education and saved up enough money from selling his batches of wine.

He got out of a taxi, leather footstep to the cobblestone pathway to the building. Much worse than he thought, it was entirely abolished from the disaster. and with a loan as well as some money left from Granny, he was able to remodel the building and salvage its structure. On opening day, he went down to the cellar—nothing like his childhood memory of it. There are no longer mud floors and the walls aren’t seeping wet. The lighting is sufficient and bright, not at all a creepy place to talk to spirits. The cellar is clean, and Zokari has never, nor will ever, see Waneko again. There must have been nothing for him to eat after the remodel.

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