How I Became a Japanese Urban Legend

Teketeketeketeketeketeke.
That is the sound of what is probably the creepiest of Japanese urban myths. Teke Teke is her name. It’s typical that the Japanese would give the scariest of horror story creatures such a misleadingly stupid sounding name. I would understand the horror of the creature as well as anyone on account of the fact that I ran into her.
Like a typical American skeptic I didn’t take to the Japanese folklore with much heed. After all… every story seemed to have the same moral: don’t go out after dark alone. Therefore, it was only natural to believe that the stories were only a system of keeping kids from wandering off. When one story was proved wrong or ignored, another and more exotic story was made up to keep the children enveloped in pants-wetting fear of wandering off. The stories ranged from that of the slit mouth woman to the impossibility of the fifty story skeleton that would gladly tear off your head and drink the blood from your system like you were a juice box.
But there were always holes in the story, such as HOW in the world a fifty story skeleton hasn’t been spotted by more than one person at a time, or even how something that massive could ever sneak up on anyone. And even the story of the slit mouth woman has its problems.
The story supposedly features a beautiful Japanese woman who angered her husband, who in turn sliced her mouth in his rage. Now she goes around with a scarf over her mouth asking people if she's beautiful or not. If you say no she takes a giant pair of shears to you. If you say yes, she takes off her scarf and asks the same question again. At that point you’re pretty much screwed no matter WHAT you say unless you tell her she’s so-so, and then make a run for it while she’s contemplating what to do with that statement. However, it is never mentioned what happens if you see the giant pair of scissors on her back and just make a run for it before she asks you anything, or if you happen to be armed and just shoot the girl in the head at point blank range the moment she takes off the scarf.
The story of Teke Teke is similar in ways of plot holes. The story is about a girl who jumps/falls into a subway and gets split in half (how she didn’t get pulverized completely is anyone’s guess.) Afterward her spirit gets royally ticked off at the world and chases down any poor sap she sees and cuts them in half. Her name is based off the noise she makes as she runs, as her long-nailed hands clack against the ground rapidly.
Teketeketeketeketeketeke.
Even if dead spirits were able to interact with the real world, my question is why Teke’s so angry. I’ve seen plenty of people who had lost their legs on reality shows or whatever and they seem pretty happy! And her tripping and falling onto a railway wasn’t anyone's fault besides her own. Therefore, that myth seemed to contradict a rational human mindset.
At least, that’s what I thought. Until I saw her torso sitting on a wall late one Friday evening.
In a classic horror story fashion, it was incredibly dark and I was walking home alone. Like I mentioned earlier, I did not take much of the surrounding folklore seriously. I actually thought it was a full sized girl for the longest time. If I had known that she was the ultimate concentration of horrific mutilating nightmare fuel I probably wouldn’t have approached her so carelessly to ask if she was alright. However, my good intentions changed to a furious rush of terror when she jerked violently at the sound of my voice and hopped off of the wall. Before she even hit the ground I clearly saw that most of the bottom portion of her was missing. She scurried toward me like an angered spider, making indistinguishable groaning and shrieking sounds as she raced toward me. That’s when I took off like a scared puppy. Who wouldn’t?
I am a very fast runner, that undeniable fact has been mentioned several times to me by my peers ever since middle school. I would have stopped running after the first few minutes if I had managed to leave whatever was chasing me behind. But the noise did not subside. In fact, as I ran, it grew steadily louder.
Teketeketeketeketeketeketeketeke.
The possibility of this being an insanely well configured prank had crossed my mind several times. I had asked for this elaborate joke the moment I bragged to all of my friends that ghost stories didn’t scare me or that I didn’t believe in ghosts. However, the way that the creature moved and how fast it went and how impossible it is to pull off something like this without Hollywood effects or circus creatures… I really had little to believe except the fact that Teke Teke happened to be the main character of an all too true story.
But during my rambling and strangely calm train of thought I noticed something. I got my feet to finally stop and listened. The clicking noise had stopped. A gust of wind swirled around the corners of the alley and wrapped around my feet. Suddenly a bolt of movement shot past the corner of my eye.
Teketeketeke.
I turned around at the strange spurt of the horrendous clicking. However, the moment I focused my ears in to find out where the specter had run to the clicking quit. I listened to what was now a dead and ominous silence, the type of quiet that would play out in a horror movie before some corpse fell out of the ceiling with its eyes sliced out of the sockets and its mouth hanging open in a ghastly scream.
Teketeketeke.
I turned back at the spurt of sounds again. My heart pounded so hard I felt like I was going to go unconscious. “I should just get out of here,” I thought to myself. That was perhaps a bad idea on account of a probable inability to watch my own back while mindlessly dashing. However, my body instantly obeyed and I took off. As I rounded the corner, I was stopped by the short and legless figure of Teke Teke who stood on her hands no more than a few feet away from me. My heart leapt up, slamming into my throat and expelling a gag. At the sound of my gag, Teke looked into my eyes. In the light of a street-lamp I actually got a glimpse of her face.
In means of symmetrical features and a well-shaped nose she was actually a very lovely girl. However, the sheer panic of the situation made the beauty matter very little to me. But the scariest thing was, when I gagged, I swear that the pupils of her eyes grew until the whites disappeared from her sockets when she turned and faced me.
She raced at me while I attempted to start running again, and lurched like a fierce predator toward my lower torso with both of her hands outstretched. It was unreal how far she was able to jump. I screamed and swatted her as best I could to the side. I very well managed not to get cut in half, but her claw made a large gash in my side just above the pelvis. I yelled as the blood began to pour out of my side and in a terribly unintelligent motion I flopped down onto the ground and onto my back as I bled. By that time Teke Teke had shaken off my blow and leapt onto my form as I lay on my back.
It was at that point that I switched from mildly intelligent survivalist to mindless panicked child. I shrieked and twisted violently to shake her off. Most of what happened during that time was a blur. A bunch of painful slashes of claws and blood till my face was blinded by red. It was almost a surreal nightmare. No it WAS a surreal nightmare. Every feeling of panic and terror that you’d feel when being attacked by an angry dog was multiplied by the fact that this unhappy and vengeful creature was less than a dog and far more frightening.
I must have blacked out, because suddenly I came to my senses in a railway station. Everything was still blackened, horrendously dark, but I was able to see my hands and a few faint glows of shattered advertising signs. I was unable to recall how I got into the railway station in the first place. I could have crawled there in my wounded state or Teke Teke could have dragged me there. However, my memory at that point was fuzzy and unreliable. I checked behind my back, and my spine crunched as my torso turned a full 180 degrees when I looked behind me. It didn’t hurt, but it produced a strange feeling of relief… like popping your back in a violent manner.
I didn’t mean to turn myself around in such a grotesque manner, but it didn’t terrify me as much as one would suspect. When I straightened myself with another abnormal crunch I examined myself and unintentionally reminded myself of the gash that was laid upon my side by Teke Teke. Now I was able to view the thing in full potential: it was cut all the way from front to back in a clean slice. However, no blood poured from the wound. That was the final revelation that I needed to know why I had been left alone.
“I’m dead,” I thought to myself, still far too shaken to break the silence of the railway station by verbalizing my thoughts. The horror quit at that time, for the revelation that death wasn’t quite as terrible as I thought it was still sinking in slowly. However, I was quickly distracted by the sight of a young woman walking down a far more well-lit path far from me, not noticing my huge form standing stiffly in the shadows. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that it was my inner purpose to hurt her.
I moved toward the girl, my spine moving unnaturally and my torso twisting on and off of my pelvis with the large gash that kept the upper part of my body half holding on.
Category:Monsters