#134 Three Eclipses

by Marc Nash

The geisha strummed the three strings of her shamisen. The instrument’s body encased in catskin that held the sweet vibrations like a purr. Its silk strings fashioned of the same material as the kimono in which she was draped. Three ivory pegs chorusing the hairpins shaping her high chignon hair.

She fed her Samurai master’s soul with poetry, dance, calligraphy and grace. At night, to preserve her elaborate hair pinned with turtleshell, she slept with her head on a block with a bed of rice around its base to alert her, were her crown to roll off the wood.

Then came the American bomb clouds that momentarily blotted out the sun and stripped the trees of their leaves. Birds crash landed, as they perceived night had descended.

Now the kimono silk writhed over her body, as if the worms sought to reclaim their cocoons for their unborn broods. The shamisen’s strings came away from the catskin body, as they too protested their indenture. Her master took his pitiless steel and rendered Seppuku. His insides unravelling like the insurgent strings on her shamisen. Her tresses escaped their turtleshell grips. A perpetual winter had eclipsed Japan’s ever rising sun.

Behind her shoji stood the silhouette of an American GI, save for the corona of light from the burning tip of his cigarette waxing and waning as he breathed heavily. Try as she might, she couldn’t convince herself that it was a firefly attracted by the scent of her hair’s pomade.



An assassin is sent from the Yoni Civilisation, back through the web of time to the current day. His mission is to kill the Mother of the Future, his future, in order to alter the course of history. For his civilisation is ruled by women, a world lacking any war or conflict and which has left men feeling emasculated. If he can prevent her daughter and her ideas from being born, to prevent them from ever existing, perhaps male dominance can be re-established, turning her story back into history.

Click on the cover to visit the book's Amazon page.