To Split Rock Lighthouse-09

(From an entry dated March 4th, 2013)

The problem with being the only man on a boat is that you have to sleep some time, and I’m not that good at doing this boat stuff. I didn’t want someone climbing aboard and eating me, so I stayed way offshore and used the anchor to keep the boat in place, after I found the owner’s manual—I did not expect to find it, but there it was so I read it—and carefully read up on how to do it right. I ate, I drank, I slept and woke up not eaten by a grue so I figured that I did something right.

I also woke up to see Ken waiting for me in the galley. This didn’t set right with me, so I walked in warily. He put down a bowl full of corn flakes, and that was enough for me to stick around. He told me of his encounter with Yuki.

She’s dead. Let’s get that out of the way. All of the endless winter stuff will soon abate and the natural cycle will reassert itself, I assume. Ken told me that he surprised Yuki, making her think that he was me just long enough to get the deciding blow: a knife in the throat. That didn’t stop Yuki from a long fight in an attempt to take him with her. Even with a blade stuck in her neck, and her powers over weather nullified, the full physical prowess she displayed—which I already saw glimpses of before I fled—made her out to be truly monstrous. Ken walked away bleeding and injured, but Yuki died.

Ken said nothing about the child, other than Yuki didn’t have it when he made his move, so I don’t live with any concern over the slaughter of a pregnant woman, however inhuman she was. No, what hurt was what he said next. “Yuki Onna? Yuki no Onna, the Snow Maiden? You had a bona-fide Japanese monster in your bed and you couldn’t figure it out?” He didn’t let up. “No wonder she flipped out over the zombies and me running around out there. She planned on setting herself up here, Queen of an Eternal Winter Wonderland, with you as her captive man-candy and eventually extort survivors for relief from the ice and cold- just enough to stay alive and pay her tribute.”

Sucker. He called me a sucker, and he was right. Played on my sympathy, timed things to make her move most effective, quickly turned on me and pulled classic abusive girlfriend maneuvers on me to mess with my head. Sneaking out, quite frankly, was the smartest move I did in this whole affair. But I’m not sure that it’s quite over yet. Ken’s sticking around me, and he’s not the idle type; I have every reason to believe that something yet unfinished is coming for me as a loose end, and Ken is using me as bait to get at it- and both of us know it.