A really terrible novelette
1/10/09 21:38![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI am not sure what 100 pages of a Japanese paperback is, but I'm going to say novelette.
Okay, so as I posted earlier, this is about Akane. Akane is in second grade and her home life is terrible: her mother and father live in a cheap little apartment, her father gets drunk and plays pachinko and beats her, her mother gets drunk and cries and beats her. And her classmates ignore her.
She likes to go down to the zombie ghetto, because all the zombies are friendly (in their own brainless way) and they get along with each other. She imagines that if she were a zombie, and if she could turn her mother and father into zombies, they would be happy again--
--Like that one day when they went for a drive together, and Akane went to the dog petting theme park, and ate a huge strawberry parfait. They were happy then.
So she makes an ouija-board-like fortunetelling thing, and she asks it how she can become a zombie, and it tells her to bring mama and papa's secret to the zombies. So she has to find out what their secret is.
She goes through their sex drawer and their drug stash and brings the zombies some heroin and a leather bra, but they don't make her into a zombie. So she asks the ouija board again, and it tells her to write a letter.
So she writes a letter to mama and papa apologizing for taking their drugs and their sex stuff, and asking for their secret. Papa gets mad and beats her. She writes more letters, and eventually papa just starts burning them.
Then one day Akane writes a letter that says she already knows their secret, and papa gets really mad and drives off in the car. Akane hides in the back seat. He drives into the woods, and he gets out and walks along a trail, and when he gets to a rock he starts digging with a shovel. Akane watches as he digs up --
A body. With a knapsack just like hers. And a little felt doggie just like hers.
And she remembers what happened: she took some food out of the fridge to make a lunch to bring to school, and papa beat her to death. And that happy drive...was what she saw as papa was driving (I don't know if she was still barely alive at this point) to bury her in the woods.
This was published several years after The Sixth Sense came out. By the way.
Anyway, Akane takes her body back to the car, and papa freaks out. She tells him to drive to the zombie ghetto, and he does. Because now she has papa and mama's secret, so she can turn into a zombie. At the zombie ghetto, some dudes come with flamethrowers and torch all the zombies, and papa. The zombies survive even though they're scorched. Papa gets turned into a zombie. Akane remains a ghost. The police find her body and arrest mama for child neglect.
As the story ends, Akane is a happy 9th-grader, and her mother is about to get out of jail, so they're going to be one big happy zombie family.
I have to say the end was pretty well done. I like the juxtaposition of how Akane thinks it's a happy ending, and it feels like a happy ending to her, but at the same time there's the horror and tragedy of how she can't break out of this very limited way of thinking where her happiness is completely defined by having a mommy and daddy who don't fight and don't beat her. Even if they are brainless zombies.
But it's just not good enough to overcome the bathos of the abuse plus the way-too-oldness of the twist. (Yes, by the way, it was old when The Sixth Sense came out.)
Okay, so as I posted earlier, this is about Akane. Akane is in second grade and her home life is terrible: her mother and father live in a cheap little apartment, her father gets drunk and plays pachinko and beats her, her mother gets drunk and cries and beats her. And her classmates ignore her.
She likes to go down to the zombie ghetto, because all the zombies are friendly (in their own brainless way) and they get along with each other. She imagines that if she were a zombie, and if she could turn her mother and father into zombies, they would be happy again--
--Like that one day when they went for a drive together, and Akane went to the dog petting theme park, and ate a huge strawberry parfait. They were happy then.
So she makes an ouija-board-like fortunetelling thing, and she asks it how she can become a zombie, and it tells her to bring mama and papa's secret to the zombies. So she has to find out what their secret is.
She goes through their sex drawer and their drug stash and brings the zombies some heroin and a leather bra, but they don't make her into a zombie. So she asks the ouija board again, and it tells her to write a letter.
So she writes a letter to mama and papa apologizing for taking their drugs and their sex stuff, and asking for their secret. Papa gets mad and beats her. She writes more letters, and eventually papa just starts burning them.
Then one day Akane writes a letter that says she already knows their secret, and papa gets really mad and drives off in the car. Akane hides in the back seat. He drives into the woods, and he gets out and walks along a trail, and when he gets to a rock he starts digging with a shovel. Akane watches as he digs up --
A body. With a knapsack just like hers. And a little felt doggie just like hers.
And she remembers what happened: she took some food out of the fridge to make a lunch to bring to school, and papa beat her to death. And that happy drive...was what she saw as papa was driving (I don't know if she was still barely alive at this point) to bury her in the woods.
This was published several years after The Sixth Sense came out. By the way.
Anyway, Akane takes her body back to the car, and papa freaks out. She tells him to drive to the zombie ghetto, and he does. Because now she has papa and mama's secret, so she can turn into a zombie. At the zombie ghetto, some dudes come with flamethrowers and torch all the zombies, and papa. The zombies survive even though they're scorched. Papa gets turned into a zombie. Akane remains a ghost. The police find her body and arrest mama for child neglect.
As the story ends, Akane is a happy 9th-grader, and her mother is about to get out of jail, so they're going to be one big happy zombie family.
I have to say the end was pretty well done. I like the juxtaposition of how Akane thinks it's a happy ending, and it feels like a happy ending to her, but at the same time there's the horror and tragedy of how she can't break out of this very limited way of thinking where her happiness is completely defined by having a mommy and daddy who don't fight and don't beat her. Even if they are brainless zombies.
But it's just not good enough to overcome the bathos of the abuse plus the way-too-oldness of the twist. (Yes, by the way, it was old when The Sixth Sense came out.)