What is an urban legend? How are they formed? How do they persist? Legends from different times can be told a thousand different ways, each telling reflecting the time they were formed, informed somehow by the world around them. I’ve lived in so many places over the years, and in every place I’ve heard the same whispered stories. How many variations have you heard of the story of the hook handed killer stalking the couple on lovers lane? Every town has its own version with its own local flavor. Every town is different and every town incorporates its own local fears into the legend. Sometimes it’s not a hook handed killer but the Jersey Devil, a human, horse, bat hybrid of demonic origin. In Connecticut, Michigan, and Ohio it’s one of the Melonheads, one of a deformed gang of child insane asylum experiments. In Staten Island it’s Cropsey, the ax wielding serial killer of the woods. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and it all ties back to something that happened to me a few months ago.
The air was heavy with rain and the skies had opened. I was in downtown Manhattan, late afternoon, on my way back home from work in Brooklyn. I worked as a background actor. Dead body on Law and Order: that’s me. The back of my head: it’s in Succession. I had wrapped early and was on my way from one train station to the connecting path train station so I could continue my lengthy commute home to Jersey City. Between the two was about a twenty minute walk. It had been humid and overcast all day but I had hoped in vain to beat the rain. Now, I was quickly becoming soaked in the style of someone trapped inside of a washing machine during a flood so I ducked into the first bar my eyes caught onto.
It was a smaller, dingy place, somewhere I felt like I had been before but couldn’t recall the exact details. It was somewhere in the vicinity of Greenwich Village (though even if I remembered the name of the place, I wouldn’t tell you, and I would do my best not to seek it out again myself). Regardless, I went in because it was warm and a place to sit down away from the wind, rain, and steadily dropping temperatures. I hoped the rain would end quickly but according to my weather app I would have no such luck. Standing in the doorway, I put on my Covid face mask and ventured further inside.
That was when I noticed her, sitting on a stool on the far end of the bar, dressed in a white dress and black overcoat.
Her hair was long, straight, and black. It shined in the light. Her skin was as pale as porcelain and a shadow fell over her eyes. She was older than me, maybe 10 or 15 years my senior, perhaps more, but she was oddly… implacable. She could have told me she was any age and I would have believed it. The bottom half of her face was hidden beneath a face mask. There was something about her where when her dark eyes turned towards me, everything else in the room grew dim except for her. Despite the darkness of the bar and further shadows of the corner she sat in, she had a shine. I could see her clearly. When she gestured to me without a word, I came quickly to sit beside her.
The bartender came, though I barely noticed through the shadows, and I ordered a drink. She felt like when you meet someone in a dream. Has that ever happened to you? They say that every face you see in a dream is someone you’ve seen in real life. I see actors a lot. But have you ever seen someone in a dream that you’ve never seen in real life before? That’s what this felt like.
I took my face mask off to drink my own drink. Hers stayed on. Fair enough. You can’t be too careful these days. Fortunately, in the film industry they test actors, even background actors, every morning of every work day, so I was fairly confident of my own health. I also knew that in Japan, masks were more commonplace before the pandemic then they were in the states. They were worn in cities with heavy smog and were worn every flu season by some, so I didn’t think much of it.
There was a sense of mystery to her. Her eyes were as black as the night sky and I could sense no emotion in them. I didn’t even know what she looked like under her mask. I began to talk to the woman, asking her about herself, her name, occupation, and up close she was even more striking then afar. Her skin was smooth without even a wrinkle, almost like plastic or a piece of carved marble. Her hair shined like how a spider’s web reflected light. And her voice: it was rhythmic, never faltering in tone, almost hypnotic.
The alcohol put me in a daze, loosening me. Everything became subtle movements, ripples on water, a sort of merging of thought and action. Everything merged and formed and unformed.
She told me she was originally from Japan, Tokyo to be exact. She had worked as a fashion model and had been fairly popular, appearing in all sorts of magazine advertisements. She had come to America recently for a fresh start. When I asked what from, she was less forthcoming and quickly changed the subject.
I told her a bit about myself, that I had lived in Japan for a time as a child, and I found as I talked to her that every location I mentioned, she knew. Different cities, even different islands, at one point or another she had been there and could recall exact details. It was almost scary. Memories long forgotten of those places came flooding back and I recalled a simpler, happier time. Back then I didn’t have to worry about anything “real”. I was a kid free to explore the world with the support of my parents to fall back on. Now, the world was colder and I was on my own. I offered to buy her a drink. She told me she was alright, and I wondered what she was doing in this bar if not drinking. I made a joke “just trying to get out of the rain, too?”
“What rain?” She responded in deadpan. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.
There were other odd things about her, though. At one point I mentioned how I had lived on an American military base in Japan and she spoke at length and in detail about the initial American occupation of Japan following WW2. The way she spoke about it, the descriptions, she knew things that meant she had to have either been over a hundred years old or an expert historian in her field.
I shook my head. I knew she was older than me, though from certain directions she occasionally looked a bit younger, but she couldn’t be that old. The most likely explanation was she had either a love of history or an older family member who had experienced those events and passed the story down.
I asked her if she had any family in Japan, and she told me that she had once had a husband. She recalled how she had slaved away on the farm while he was away at war, but he had never trusted her. He had been a paranoid man and had come to believe with every fiber of his being that she was cheating on him with their hired farmhand. The way she talked about their home, her description of the paddy fields and the way the sun shined down on the water, it sounded like a story out of another time, centuries ago. Time became fluid. My mind wandered to thoughts of feudal Japan and the wars between different samurai houses. As my vision drew further and further into the black holes of her eyes it could have just as easily been happening then as in this exact instant. I could hear screams, blood, a hundred years of blood and rage and retribution. There could be no justice except in death.
Suddenly, I snapped back to reality. Her eyes glinted. I almost felt like she was smiling under the mask. She asked me if I would like to go outside with her. Her voice was like a whisper and nails on a chalkboard. I stood and followed her, slowly out the back door of the bar. I couldn’t feel my legs and I realized they had fallen asleep.
Her footsteps were heavy though her movements were like she was gliding. For a moment I swore she was looking at me with hate though her eyes. When I woke up I was standing beside her in the alley. My back was against the bricks of the wall as she stood before me. Rain streamed down from a metal overhang and puddles covered the cracked pavement. We were beside the garbage cans at the back exit to the bar. Something about her screamed at me the image of a predator.
“Do you think I’m beautiful?”, she repeated. I laughed nervously. “I do.” I responded.
I watched as she removed her face mask. In the light I could see her more clearly. Her pupils were tiny, hateful black pinpricks. She was as pale as a corpse. The wet hair clung to her, dripping. The mask came down after an eternity. Each second went on for hours until I finally saw the cracked porcelain of her face.
Her blood red lips were far wider than any humans and she had far too many teeth. I realized she had been cut from ear to ear by a blade. Her teeth and jaw were exposed through her cheeks. I watched as she pulled a massive pair of scissors from her coat pocket. They were by far the largest pair of scissors I had ever seen. Had she had those the whole time? Was this what had done this to her? Was she about to do the same to me? Something had gone horribly wrong.
Like a punch to the face I remembered. I remembered stories I had heard as a child living in Japan. Campfire tales, ghost stories told at sleepovers and on internet message boards: The Slit-Mouth Lady. In the 1970’s there had been such a panic about stories of the slit mouthed woman that teachers in Nagasaki began walking their students home for fear she would attack them on their routes back from school.
But she was an urban legend, not reality. There were many versions of the story. Though it had started in Japan, over time the story spread to Korea and other Asian nations. In older folklore, she was the adulterous wife of a samurai, though in another story she was his mistress. Either way, he had mutilated her in a rage. But she had returned, hadn’t she? Disguised with a fan she held below her eyes, she had returned to exact vengeance. In more recent stories she was horribly disfigured in a dental surgery gone wrong and she wore a medical mask to hide her injuries. In another she was a stalker of children who police chased into traffic, resulting in her facial injury. In the 90’s she was a victim of botched plastic surgery. In others still she was a model, carved up by her jealous rival. She killed others with a knife or a sickle or yes, even a pair of scissors.
She couldn’t exist. She was a metaphor, a bedtime story to scare children, but looking at her, I could tell that somehow, every one of these stories could exist simultaneously. She lived in the whispers and nightmares, in the backs of throats that held back from saying her name. She was in the school bathrooms and locker rooms, following behind on the dark streets just out of view on a late night walk home, a stranger stopping you on a road through the forest late at night, and yes, she was there in the backs of alleys, in the back of every alley. She was in this alley, blocking the way out, holding a blade to me, blocking my escape, no way out, trapped like a cornered animal. Blood lips. Black eyes. Long hair. The bloody scissors! No escape!
Her words tumbled out like a thousand spiders from between her lips. Her voice was a croaking death rattle. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”.
This is what it feels like to be a ghost story. I had left the ordered world behind. Truth had walked out the door and sensation had taken the wheel. All I wanted was to go back.
I struggled to focus instead of giving in to the urge to scream. She glided the scissors like a caress across my face. There was nowhere I could run. She had me trapped. How did the legends say you could escape her wrath?
“Uh… average”.
Her eyes narrowed. She stared with confusion. Her scissor wielding hand lowered slightly as she faltered. I took my chance and I ran. I ran out of the alley and then I ran some more. I didn’t look back. I ran until I was out of breath and I kept running until I couldn’t stand.
I haven’t been back to that area since. I know though that it doesn’t matter. Her legend has spread now. I know she’s out there, part of the crowd, able to hide amongst us. She’s here and wherever a version of her story is told she will be there, ready to exact a bloody vengeance. I’ve started to wonder if it was all some kind of waking dream, but I don’t think it would matter if it was. When I close my eyes I can still see her. At night I lie awake, facing the wall, terrified that if I turn around I’ll see her standing in the corner or at the foot of my bed. Terrified that she’ll be there smiling with that cracked porcelain grin.
I’ve been careful not to speak of her to anyone until now, to keep her story from being told wherever I can. I realize now that it’s futile. Maybe, if I spread her legend, I can keep her away. Maybe by telling you all I can spread her out enough to improve my chances. Just know that if a woman like the one I described ever approaches you on your path, get out of there before she has a chance to show you her face…