Susto

My grandmother called it “susto.” She spoke of it first being felt as a gentle rustling in the leaves of the mountain maple - a calm, soothing feel as the evil spirit descended off the mountaintop. So peaceful in fact that it makes you let your guard down a bit. That’s the moment that susto preys on to slip away your soul and leave your body like an empty husk unable to move. When you have become soulless, the world becomes very still, quiet in fact. It’s that quiet that sobo could always remember the most, not even a thump in her heart. My mother called it superstition and a plain panic attack.

I’ve felt it myself once when I climbed the granite steps leading up to sobo’s house in the mountains. There was a narrow winding path carved like a canyon into the cliff face with giant steps over knee high that made me breathe hard. When I finally had made it to the flattop, my skin would be lathered with sweat. The air was so oxygen-rich up there, the trees were ancient, and the variety of animals like out of a children’s book. I always felt like I had stepped into a magical fairytale land.

That moment, I felt fur brushing against the back of my elbow. I still vividly remember the imprint: soft as a feather, about 1.25 inches long, a gentle warmth panting onto my skin. For some reason, even though I didn’t see, I knew that it was white. The word “wolf” painted across my mind. They had been extinct, but rumors were spreading of sightings of a lone wolf hiking in from a far distance. Wolf! It’s a wolf! I pictured the ebony teeth with my red blood leaking beneath them.

Exactly, as my sobo had said. There had been a gentle rustling like a cloud floating down onto the trees, at first only in the treetops, then lowering down until all the leaves right around me were ringing like gentle bells. By the time my mind recalled these details, I was frozen, unable to move. My limbs felt solid like a concrete statue. Tremendous panic filled me. I was sure that the wolf behind me would sink his teeth into my neck any moment. I felt so close that I braced for the feeling of the hot, stinking breath to hit my neck skin first before I’d hear the dry cracking sound of it snapping my neck. I knew that I had to move, to run! But the more I panicked and tried to move, the more concrete like my whole body became.

The terror was overwhelming. I pictured the wolf pacing side to side behind me. What could he possibly be thinking about? There I was, a tasty, young morsel, too small to put up any real fight. My mind reset. The wolf might not have been as close as I thought he was, but he must be making the last steps and bite me right now!!! It never happened. I simply stood there scared myself into a frozen statue for half an hour.

Eventually, doubt and boredom set in. It would be unusual for a wolf to spend so much time staring at its food. When the thought trickled in that there might be no wolf at all, the spell lifted. I felt my arms and legs again. I could wiggle them slightly, and then I could force a step before I rubbed my arms all over my body to check. I was simply alone in the most peaceful forest scene of butterflies flying around, squirrels jumping around, and beautiful trees, grass, and flowers.

I hiked on through the little patch of pine trees with black bark. When I arrived at sobo’s mountain house, black smoke was curling out of the chimney. She was baking some mochi balls. When I told her about my meeting with the susto spirit, she immediately put the bowl down and went to the little garden in her backyard. She made smacking sounds with her lip to call her cat. When the cat came out of a boxwood bush, sobo checked her fur all over for injuries.

Now, she explained to me that she had heard her cat darting away earlier and making a huge ruckus, banging around leaves and twigs. Little Tomoko had been fighting the susto spirit for my soul, she explained. She was glad that Little Tomoko hadn’t been injured. When I told her about the fur touching my elbow, sobo explained to me the point of touch was where the susto spirit had pulled my soul out. She nodded knowingly and chided me for always wearing such skimpy clothing. I would leave myself open to attacks.

My mother calls it superstition. But that evening, the news reported the rumors about the wolf being true. A neighbor of sobo had a chicken eaten by the wolf. I can’t shake that perhaps the wolf was actually watching me. My sobo so precisely knew all the little things that I had felt and had such a compelling story for each thing.

A couple years later, I had another meeting with susto that was a lot more dangerous. I was on the way home from Shibuya. After the lecture at college, I was already drowsy-tired but had promised to meet a friend for tea. Not wanting to disappoint her, I pulled myself together, put a smile on my face, and tried to be chirpy. I touched up my makeup to make my cheeks more rosy. I had picked an extra cute skirt in the morning to make a good impression. My white blouse had a sateen feel to it, which gave it a nice refined touch. That’s the kind of girl I wanted to be.

When I hugged her goodbye after half an hour and turned around, my face fell instantly down from having held it up. The drowsiness made the world a bit blurry, but I knew that I had to only get on the subway and then walk five minutes. The streets had already emptied a bit because the dinner after-work crowd had left. The remaining mix of people were extra late workers, people going home from dinner, and a few night owls on their way out.

I didn’t pay much attention. My mind was repeating the pleasant images of stepping off the subway, walking into my home, and the embrace of my sleeping tatami under me. But there had been a middle-aged man in a business suit sitting down next to me. I should have noticed it as odd that he sat down next to me even though half the train car was empty, but I was too busy figuring out what he was doing with his fingers. He had his arms crossed over his chest. I don’t know how he managed to contort his fingers to touch my bra from the side.

Every train bump, I felt him caressing my bra from the side. I wanted to tell him to stop, but I was embarrassed to make a scene. I played through in my head what I’d say, “Hey, stop touching me, mister!” And he’d say that it was simply a bump. Then I’d tell him that it wasn’t an innocent touch. I could feel his fingers precisely caressing along my bra. He’d probably tell me that I was imagining it. Was I? I had to wait for another train bump and carefully check what his fingers were doing. The train bumped. He glided his fingers this time across the front of my bra as if to search for where my nipple was hiding. Then the fingers were gone again.

I would tell him that he had crossed a line! He definitely crossed a line. He was chikan! But he would dispute it. He would say that it never happened or that it was an unintentional accident. I had to have proof. I’d wait for it to happen again and call him out right as his hand would be caught in flagrante. Then he wouldn’t be able to deny it. So I waited for another bump. I primed myself to be ready. My awareness made my left breast ultra sensitive to detect the lightest and earliest touch of his fingers.

My attention was so fixated that I counted my breaths: One breath, still no bump - two breaths, still no bump… A bump happened, the fingers were back right that moment. This time, they landed at the bottom left of my bra. Right away, they tried to slide under the bra, taking the blouse fabric with them. I felt so violated. I gasped. The fingers were only one knuckle deep under my bra, yet I felt so invaded. My heart was pounding like mad. My mouth was suddenly full of spit and air. I couldn’t talk.

A stray detail distracted my mind - the train car door opening. A subtle breeze of the wind outside came in. I could see the woman’s long hair at the door sway from it a little bit. Someone’s wide open newspaper rustled a bit. It was exactly like when the susto spirit had descended on me that day in the mountains. Recalling the feeling of being frozen, concrete-like statue vividly, I felt the same. My limbs were solid like concrete. I could no longer move. My rapidly beating heart was still as well. I couldn’t feel a heartbeat in me at all anymore. I thought about my sobo explaining that my soul was gone.

This time the fingers hadn’t moved away after the bump. They were still resting a knuckle deep under my bra. I remembered the pink underwire bra that I picked that morning with a cute little black bow in the center. It was as if he was testing me to see what I was doing. I couldn’t do anything but pay hyper attention to those fingers. The train continued to move. As the first sound of steel wheels singing on the track sounded, he seemed to have waited long enough for a response. His fingers went deeper under my bra. He was two knuckles deep in. The blouse fabric had started pushing up the bra. The fingers were tantalizingly close to my nipples. The nipples felt like a final red line that was watching with terror getting approached, but he rested there. He seemed to have realized the impracticality of the bra in the way.

He also must have been sitting super awkwardly pretending to still cross his arms but getting his fingers so far over to me, but I didn’t dare to look. I couldn’t move. I was a concrete statue.

When his fingers slipped back out, I noticed the rest of my body again. I was covered in cold sweat. I hadn’t noticed sweating at the first susto experience. The feeling of cold slickness was all over my body.

Then his fingers appeared at the center of my blouse. He undid the blouse button right at the bottom of my bra. He waited. I was a frozen concrete statue. I couldn’t move. I could only observe what was happening to me. He seemed to take my pause as permission. Those pointy, gingerly fingers returned and snapped the blouse button one higher open. Because I had wanted to look pretty, I had opened my blouse more for my friend to show my decollete. So now all the buttons to below my bra were open. My bra must have been visible.

His hands moved faster without pauses. One hand slipped into my right bra side and cradled my boob. The hand gently rubbed my bra and then slipped away so that his index finger and thumb would slide to pinch my nipple very gently like picking a blackberry off a bush with care to avoid damaging it. That’s when I noticed that the sweat wasn’t only all over my skin but also between my legs. Fear, excitement, and arousal started blending together.

He got shamelessly busy with both his hands. He lifted my boobs out of the bra. I felt embarrassment stinging my cheeks for being exposed, but I couldn’t help the growing slickness between my thighs. The only people in the half-empty subway car were behind us. They couldn’t see my nakedness, which didn’t make the sensation of being exposed any less - that startling feeling. I always had so much anxiety to check myself to be dressed properly. That anxiety of checking surfaced intensely.

Like a cavalier, he put his right arm around me. Like a scumbag, he fondled my right boob with his right hand - squeezing, lifting, circling, pressing, twisting it. His left hand started at the inside of my knees and crawled up every so slowly under my skirt - quarter inch by quarter inch - as if he was waiting for my permission and my stillness gave him permission, even though I was a frozen concrete statue unable to move.

Tingles and shivers were touched off by his slow advance past line of privacy after line of privacy. Not even my boyfriends had spent time to so sensually touch my body. They were pretty inexperienced and quick, straight to the point, five-minutes-and-it's-over kind of guys. As much as I didn’t want him touching me, I had no control over my feelings of lust - feelings that I had stuffed away all my life in order to be cute and a good girl. I think part of what froze me was my reticence about my own lust that I reflexively forced away any time a lusty feeling or thought surfaced in me.

When his left fingertips were a quarter inch away from my panties, I was aware of the heat that was trapped between my thighs. My mind capitulated that his fingers would be in my pussy soon. A feeling of surrender broke over my heart like a sensation of ease, a comforting predictability of what was going to happen next. I didn’t open or close my legs. I was frozen like a statue. So, his fingers were in a tight spot. And the five little soldiers did the final crossing the rubicon step: Gently caressing up and down on my moist panties.

I don’t think he realized at first how wet my panties were because my thigh muscles, skirt cover, and pussy really being under me on the seat had made everything so tight. However, when his fingers side slipped under the panty band to caress my bare lips, he let out a surprise sound. That surprise sound made me feel that I was marked to be damned. It implied that he believed that I wanted him to fondle me, that I wasn’t simply reluctant to say know, but that I desired him to fondle me. That sense of foreboding resonated in my body with fear for a moment.

Then his head dove forward and his mouth sunk onto my right boob without any shame of visible display to the world. His tongue swirled around my nipples. I couldn’t help but feel the hardwired nerve impulse traveling from my nipple to my clit, firing sparks between the two. His left fingers riffled through my labia until his index finger found the button of my clitoris, which he slowly started circling. I was so wet and slick down there. The combination of clit circles and tongue on nipples circles elicited a soft moan to break through my concrete frozen statue. I don’t know where that moan came from. It felt like it didn’t come from my body, but it sounded like my moan. No, it didn’t sound like any moan I had given a lover before. It sounded a lot more unguarded and real.

Gently, he worked me over, sucking my breasts, swirling his tongue on my nipple, gently biting - increasing the bite pain until my body stiffened and then letting go to gently rub the teeth marks on my breasts. The index finger on my clit ever so gently circling, pulling the clit hood back to reveal the sensitive knob to its fullest. An exquisitely soft touch on the clit that made the clit swell to what I swear felt like the size of a basketball because it was so yearning for that touch to reach that finger. Sharp, uncontrollable moans broke out of me, helplessly and otherworldly.

Strangely, the pain is what turned me on the most. He seemed to realize it. He pulled my hair. Every piece of pain only intensified the feeling on my clit. It was like the pain turned the clit sensation to another level. He pinched my nipples with so much force that surely all the blood must have gone out of them in a cruel torment, but it only caused the nerve wires to directly carry more sparks to my clit. He must have been rubbing my clit for at least ten minutes to make me transcend any arousal that I had had before.

I was still sitting like a frozen concrete statue. He was still awkwardly struggling under my skirt to the tight space between my thighs and having to curve around my panties. Yet he was getting restless. With his free hand, he had freed his penis and stroked it a bit. But he was clearly dissatisfied and wanted to get his penis on me. We had a silent understanding that I couldn’t move and he couldn’t move me, but with his arousal, he got impatient. He grabbed my thigh to try to get me onto his lap. That’s when the susto spirit snapped free of me.

Thus disturbed out of my frozen pose, my limbs were mine again. I could move. I jumped up onto my high heels, pushed past him, and ran. The door just happened to open that moment for a random station way past my stop, somewhere already rural. I ran rising my knees high to manage the heels. I darted into the pitch-black darkness. The train was at the surface. The station was so rural that except for the street light right at the train, there was no light. The station was a mere short strip. I was right away on cobblestone of a village and ran into an alley.

The alley was one of those ancient narrow alleys that didn’t even fit a horse carriage through it. My steps slowed down because the cobblestone was so uneven and the gaps between the stones about the size of my heel. I felt my way through the alley with my hand in front of me because it was so dark.

Like a freight train hitting me, I felt his two arms grabbing my biceps from behind. He lifted me off the ground. My heels were dangling in the air. I couldn’t see anything in the black, but feel a soft night breeze on my skin. My boobs were still hanging out of my bra with the blouse mostly open, and my black leather purse across my torso. From the occasional bumps of my butt against his belly and the sound of his leather shoes, I could tell that he was carrying me somewhere through the night.

I felt myself falling somewhat roughly, landing somewhat softly on poky straw. There must have been a straw pile at the side of the alley. I heard the snap of his belt as he pulled out of the loops of his bands. He snapped the leather once to make the sound echo in the narrow village and instill the sense of his power in my bones. He grabbed my wrists roughly and wrapped the belt around it. I tried to struggle them free, but the belt only tightened more snuck around my wrists. So I gave up.

Lying on my back over my bound wrist, I could now barely see his silhouette over me against the backdrop of faint stars in the night sky. He made quick business to pull my panties down to my ankles. Unabashed in the privacy of the alley corner, he dared to speak for the first time. He said that he liked me with my heels on and panties wrapped around.

Then he searched through my purse. He asked if I had any condoms. When I shook my head silently, he couldn’t see it and took it as a no. He must have found my crotch rocket, a small lipstick-sized vibrator that I carried in my purse. He snapped it on to entertain himself with the sound of it. He told me that I was a real slut. Then he apologetically shrugged that he didn’t need a condom because I seemed clean enough to him.

He laid down next to me with an attitude like he had plenty of time and would own me until sunrise. Like a lover, he let his fingertips glide over my belly, my face, and of course generously on my breasts. He seemed inexperienced with a woman’s body. He seemed to explore and almost like with eyes of wonder discover my body. He seemed to cherish every detail, the grain of the hair in my armpit, each grove of my rib on my slender body, and the serpentine turns of my ear shell. He was mesmerized by which touches would cause my nipples to erect, grow, ease, and tighten up. He was playing me like an instrument in the soft air of the warm late spring night. I became calmed by his touches, almost trusting him.

We both heard the door opening at the same time. He panicked. I panicked. He put his hand across my mouth to make sure that I would stay quiet. His thumb and index finger knuckle cozied around my nostrils so that he could keep me from breathing and screaming. But I was as afraid as he was to be discovered. Strangely, I was more afraid to be discovered naked in the alley than I was afraid of the stranger. It was like what we did had become normalized, but I was still terribly afraid of being caught being improper.

The footsteps swelled. They were so close that I felt like I could have reached out and tripped the man with my hand if my hands weren’t tied behind my back. Then the footsteps started softening and disappeared behind a turn.

I think the almost getting caught experience made the man hasten. He snapped my rocket pocket on and inserted it into my pussy. The gently humming sound was muffled by my womb. My pussy wasn’t as ravenously wet anymore as on the train, but it was still gently moistened from his sensual touches. He pulled my panties over my heels, struggling a bit, getting them stuck on the actual heel. Then I felt him pushing my panties into my mouth. I could taste myself - the thick goo that had dried. He was trying to make sure to keep me quiet.