Do You Know What Your Dash Needs?

Do you know what your dash needs?

This lady! 

Meet Kuchisake Onna, who is unsurprisingly known as “The Slit-Mouth Woman.” She is one of Japan’s freakiest urban legends, and she is probably what would happen if you used dark magic to fuse Heath Ledger’s Joker with Slender Man and gave her Sweeney Todd’s blood-lust and Snow White’s stepmother’s vanity issues. 

According to legend, Slit-Mouth Woman was mutilated and killed by her jealous husband, as per the norm in onryō tales. She promptly comes back as a malicious ghost and spends her days wandering all spooky-like through the streets of Japan while wearing a white surgical mask, which isn’t that weird a sight in Japan’s big cities during flu season. Regular people wear the masks so they don’t spread germs. Slit-Mouth Woman doesn’t give a single fuck about germs. She wants to spill blood. Specifically, children’s blood. Naturally, this brings up the question of why she’s taking her vengeance out on random, innocent kids rather than going for insanely violent husbands/boyfriends. My best guess is evil spirit logic, but I digress…

If you’re living in Japan, haven’t hit puberty yet, and decide to take a shortcut through that suspiciously dark and empty alleyway or something, chances are she’ll suddenly appear like a wild Pokémon and get all up in your face. 

“Am I beautiful?” she’ll ask you like a needy girlfriend, and since she’s not really bad-looking at all with the mask on you’d be almost tempted to say yes until she tears off said mask. 

“You wanna know how I got these scars? Am I beautiful NOW?!” she’ll scream, after showing you what looks like what would happen if the world’s worst surgeon and the world’s worst dentist had a contest to see who could destroy someone’s mouth more.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”  would most likely be the first thing to come out your own mouth. This is a bad answer. In fact, there are few good answers in this situation. Like I said before, Slit-Mouth Woman runs on evil spirit logic and gives her victims less reasonable chances to escape than Jigsaw. Reply with the honest answer of “no, you’re hideous” and she’ll decapitate you with the freaking huge pair of scissors she keeps handy at all times. Lie your head off and say, “yes, you’re beautiful” and she’ll slice your face open to look just like hers, because…she wants to pass on the beauty secret? Try running away and she’ll hunt you down like a Stride Gum agent. The only way to win this battle is to answer with “you're average.”

Kid used confusion! It’s super effective!

For some reason or another the concept of “average” stumps her, and she’ll stand there dumbfounded, trying to work out this puzzle in her head, while you creep away and go straight to the police go brag to your friends that you survived an encounter with her.