Sleep well, little Jissou!

By Pistol, Edited by REd

A couple of weeks back, I found myself at a bit of a loose end. It was coming up to year end at the company where I worked and I’d been informed that I had a few days holiday still outstanding. At my company the policy with holiday is ‘use it or lose it’; they don’t let you carry days over to the next year.

Faced with several days of unanticipated holiday, I did what I normally do in these situations – I hung around my apartment, watching TV and drinking too much. After a couple of days of this, I finally decided to leave the apartment and get some fresh air. I strolled around town for an hour, feeling hungover and generally irritated with life. I avoided the town centre, not being in the mood for crowds and eventually ended up in one of the town parks.

Sitting on a park bench, I began to feel a little better. Then I became aware of sound and movement on the ground close by the bench. I glanced round, expecting to see a squirrel or a pigeon scavenging among the litter for food. Instead, looking back up at me was a small, dumpy creature with mismatched eyes and a half-witted expression that immediately and irrationally made my hackles start to rise again. I was looking at a young Jissouseki, on the cusp of adulthood.

Jissouseki are very odd little animals. Their biological oddities aside, they have a strange and powerful urge for human love and affection that scientists have never been able to explain. Rather less hard to explain are the human responses to this which tend to range from annoyance through to bloody murder. Jissouseki are just incredibly infuriating creatures. Their helplessness, incompetence and awful squeaking little voices transform the most mild-mannered people into raging sadists. I once saw a (normally shy and gentle) girl that I know kick a Jissouseki that had stumbled across her path so hard that the little cretin literally disintegrated in mid-air. I asked her later on why she’d behaved like that. “I don’t know,” she replied, rather embarrassed after the fact, “Those Jissouseki just seem to bring out the worst in people.”

I turned my attention back to the Jissouseki and realised that it was attempting to communicate with me. (It’s high-pitched, needy voice had about the same effect on my hangover as fingernails down a blackboard.) “Mr Man! Mr Man! I’m hungry, dechi! Do you have food for me, dechi?” Its gormless little face was turned up to me, wearing a pleading expression that it probably thought was melting my heart as it spoke. “So hungry, dechi!”

Before I had time to analyse what I was doing, I found myself kneeling on the ground and carefully reaching a hand out to the Jissouseki. To my faint surprise, I found that the creature was only too happy to be picked up and handled. “Oh! The nice human is taking me home, de?” It squeaked. I examined the little creature disinterestedly. It was somewhat smelly, it's tuft of hair on it's forehead looked partially torn, and it's green dress and bib were ragged. Still, it was surprisingly tidy and healthy for what was obviously a lone wild jissouseki.


I carefully slipped it into my jacket pocket and set out towards home. As I walked I would occasionally give the jissouseki a reassuring pat on the head, eliciting a little squeak of pleasure each time.

Back at my apartment, I set the jissouseki down on my kitchen table. The little creature peered around eagerly at what it assumed to be its new home, while I began to gather the equipment needed for what I had in mind. A screwdriver, a drinking straw, a garden trowel and an empty pickle jar. I set them down on the kitchen table too, the little jissouseki regarding them with interest. “What are those things for, Mr Man?” It squeaked.

I didn’t answer it. I laid the pickle jar lid flat on the table and, holding it steady with one hand, punched a hole in it with the screwdriver. The loud bang caused the jissou to visibly jump and let out a squeal of shock. It hadn’t soiled itself yet, although I was sure that it would do very shortly.

“That was scary, Mr M-“ I cut the jissouseki off in mid-complaint by picking it up and smoothly dropping it into the pickle jar. It fitted nicely, in much the same as a human would in a phone booth. The Jissouseki was confused and nervous now but didn’t start panicking seriously until I put the lid back on the jar, screwing it tightly shut.

“Trapped! Trapped! Don’t like this game! Stop it desu!” The jissouseki was beating it’s stubby arms frantically against the glass walls imprisoning it, tears streaming down it’s cheeks. It was far too weak to break the glass of course, and as for the lid, forget it. I picked the jar up, along with the trowel and straw and headed outside again.

I don’t have much of a garden, just a small patch of lawn which I mow whenever I remember to. It was quite sufficient for my current needs though. I set the jar down on the lawn, along with it’s whimpering occupant and began to dig into the ground with the trowel. In just a couple of minutes, I had a hole wide and deep enough to hold the pickle jar, which I promptly placed in there.

I began filling the hole back up with soil, carefully packing it around the jar. With the jar almost covered I stopped to listen for a moment. The jissouseki was now just repeating one word over and over: “Dark! Dark! Dark!” I inserted the drinking straw into the hole in the lid that I’d made earlier and piled the rest of the soil over the jar.

I sat back and admired my handiwork. The straw would ensure that the jissouseki would have a steady air supply for as long as it lived. (I could see the straw twitching noticeably; the jissouseki must have been thrashing around in a blind panic down there.) I wondered how long it would take the creature to starve, a week maybe? Assuming it didn’t drown in its own shit first. After having seen the frequency with which jissouseki defecate, that was a distinct possibility.

Either way, I’d managed to kill a couple of hours and, I now noticed, my hangover had gone too! Now that was definitely worth a celebratory drink. I stood to go and said my farewells to my briefly owned new pet: “Sleep well, little jissou!”