Japanese Netsuke

At CTY summer camp (see below post), we did an activity where we held actual artifacts: traditional Japanese netsuke. We were supposed to examine the little statuettes, taking careful note of small details, and tell a story based on the artifact.
   For those of you who don't know what a netsuke is, here's the definition based on the International Netsuke Society:


A netsuke is a small sculptural object which has gradually developed in Japan over a period of more than three hundred years. Netsuke (singular and plural) initially served both functional and aesthetic purposes. The traditional form of Japanese dress, the kimono, had no pockets.

In short, netsuke were used as a counterbalance for the belts of traditional clothing (someone correct me if I'm wrong). They were gradually customized to sort of represent a story that had significance to the wearer.

   My chosen netsuke was very interesting. It was made of dark wood, depicting a long snake-dragon creature with the face of a gruesome man with long hair, wound around a large bell. On closer inspection, it was revealed that the man-dragon held a mallet in its right hand, presumably to strike the bell with, and there was a large crack on one side of the bell revealing the face of a terrified man with his hands raised in prayer trapped inside the bell.
 
So here is my take on this netsuke*:

The Nightmare

  The time had come for the man. He was fifty years old, which was considered a ripe old age at that time. As he slept fitfully in bed one night, a bell outside chimed eleven times, signaling an hour until midnight.
  As the man slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of a cold, dark world, where everything was either a shade of black or red, where demons with bodies of long snakes but faces of ghastly men with horns soared like ribbons in the windless, ashen sky. Their skin was the color of old dried blood, and they all carried mallets in their filthy, cracked hands, the type of mallet that was used to tap bells in the olden days.
  One such demon, larger and with a crueler face than the others, came spiraling down and down, chasing the fearful man, until he fell into a gaping, black hole that appeared to materialize right under his feet.
  Down the old man spiraled, clawing at the air, watching evilly smiling faces with bulging eyes appear out of the gloom and cackling loudly, then fading away again.
  His breath, already ragged from running, age, and fear, was knocked violently out of him as he hit the stone hard bottom of the hole. Wheezing horribly, the man creakily got to his feet.
  The demon that had been chasing him in hot pursuit materialized from the darkness, close beside him, so close that the man could feel its hot breath against his face, smelling of stale tobacco and decay.
  “Your time has come, old man,” the demon taunted in its dry, raspy voice.
  The man did not answer. He was frozen in fear, unable to contain his trembling, even though he knew that this was only a bad dream.
  Mockingly slapping its mallet against its other hand, the demon circled around the man crouched over in fear.
 Suddenly, the man realized that he was trapped inside a huge bell with many broken holes in it. The demon hit the bell with its mallet, and, with a reverberating gong that pounded against the man’s ear drums like a hailstorm, one of the holes repaired itself instantly.
 Shivering violently, the man slowly raised his hands in prayer, prayer to make this nightmare end soon.
 “Prayer won’t help you here, old man,” the demon scolded teasingly. “Do you even know where you are right now? You might as well pray to Lucifer to give you a quick end.” The demon laughed nastily at its little joke, still striking the bell at regular periods with its mallet, repairing more and more holes, so that only one remained, the only one that could give the old man his freedom back. The demon had already repaired eleven of them.
 Not hesitating for a second, the demon mercilessly struck the bell for the twelfth time with all of its might, sealing the bell once and for all, trapping the old man inside.
Carefully and almost lovingly, smiling sadistically, the demon wrapped itself around the bell prison and dragged it, along with the praying man frozen inside, into the deepest pits of hell.

******************************************************************************
 The next morning, Father Sun rose out of his cloud covering, beaming benignly upon the face of Mother Earth, gently kissing each of the dewdrops on the flowering azaleas, to shine his warm light with surprised horror through the open window of a house upon the stiff, dead form of this man, still in bed, hands raised in prayer, a mask of terror plastered to his face.

*The true story to this netsuke is actually completely different to the one I wrote.

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Here's the true story's summary:

   A princess was walking on the road when a monk walked by. She apparently fell in love with him right away, but the monk turned her romantic advances down because he was, well, a monk. This princess got mad so she turned into a horrible snake-dragon-person, and then she trapped the monk in a huge bell so she could keep him forever.

My first impression on the true story: "Wait, that monster thing is a GIRL?"