Come join our book club and listen as we read Akino Matsuri's horror stories, one that is about a mermaid. Another about a family that move into a house that has a dark history. And a woman who seems to have looks, fame and fortune, as well as mysterious past. Skip plot synopsis @3:34
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133: Petshop of Horrors vol. 8
By Akino Matsuri
Translation by Tomoharu Iwo and James Lucas Jones
Lettering by Nunu Ngien
D goes to a beach resort with Leon and Chris. Leon is there only to pick up ladies but when Chris and D help a girl find a lost ear-ring they are rewarded a boat trip by the girl's grandfather, a man who spends his years chasing a mermaid he once saw at a young age.
A violent wave hits the boat causing D to fall overboard, when they find D washed up on shore, he does not seem to be his usual self. D only recognises the girl's grandfather, calling him Shido, which is odd because Shido did not give out his name. The next day D predicts a volcano erupting, all islanders set out to sea but they lose D once again. The next time they find D he is with a mermaid, having had a body swap experience, D is now back into his own body. Having been saved previously by the mermaid, he was able to repay the favour by letting her reunite with her long-lost love, Shido, whom had no memory of her, since the only way he can keep his memories is if he stays with the mermaid. They leave Shido behind with her, but unfortunately for Leon this means he will forget the existence of mermaids.
The second story involves an entire family who have recently moved in to a new house. The family enter the pet shop looking to buy one however they do not seem to agree on what pet they want. The Count ends up choosing a pet for them that just so happens to appear to each family member as the pet that they originally wanted, for example, to the grandmother it appears as a cat but to the youngest son it appears as a gecko, D names the pet Tenko (or Tiān hú / Ten-chan depending on whichever translation) but the rest of the family bicker about what new name to give it.
One lonely girl in the family sees Ten-chan as a human, and it becomes clear that the pet favours this girl who seems down in spirit and isolated from the family. In truth the girl is a ghost, a part of the family that previously owned the house. D, having a sense of what's up checks with the police and visits the house. When he arrives, there is a house fire, the family escape except for their pet, who stays inside with the ghost. D comes to save Ten-chan who as it turns out, is a kitsune (a mythical nine-tailed fox), but not before they exorcise the ghost and let her pass on to the other side.
In the story "Deja-vu" D lets Chris decide what pet to give to a woman who seems to have everything. Searching the pet shop, he sees the child like ghosts of twin sisters, Meanwhile the detective Leon discovers the woman patron to be a missing person, long thought to be dead and intends to reunite the woman with her sister. When the time comes for the woman to meet her pet, she is forced to confront her inner child. Or as D calls it, a beautiful bird.
Note: The bonus chapter 'Flowers, Detective and the Detective's Little Brother' will be spoken about on a later episode of our podcast which will cover all bonus chapters.
Topics:
· The mute character Chris and the use of children and other side characters functioning as plot devices.
· For more Mermaid lore, check out A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, a treatise by Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim) The 1819 French fantasy novella, Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and 'The Little Mermaid' by Hans Christian Anderson, and there is also Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Psychoanalytic Folkloristics.
· Video that shows the Cresta mall mermaid incident in Johannesburg
· https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bloody-Mary-Mirror-Psychoanalytic-Folkloristics/dp/1604731877 Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Psychoanalytic Folkloristics
Historical, scientific, and cultural references:
· Shido as a character is an homage to Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. Shido is chasing a mermaid believing it to be a portent of doom, its appearance being a bad omen. In truth the mermaid has pre-cognition and the power to change a person's memory as well as save those from the disasters she predicts. They are very similar in that Captain Ahab and Shido both own boats, have scars that remind them of a perceived injustice and an obsession that leads them to chase. For Ahab it is the white whale, for Shido it is the mermaid.
· The Déjà vu story shares a certain similarity to Truman Capote's novel 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' in that Holly Golightly is a woman who flees her family to become a wealthy socialite in New York. Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe too, who was born Norma Jean Mortensen with her natural hair being a curly red and not her iconic straight blonde, she would defy her husband Jim Dougherty to pursue a career in showbusiness, albeit (and by his own account) he was initially supportive of her ambition until it became clear that she had to be single to get a contract in Hollywood.
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