We had gone to Ueno with the best of intentions, to take in some art and culture, but by 2 pm it was too hot to do anything but drink in the shade by the pond there. The lotus plants were fully grown now and spread out, standing tall, across the whole of the pond like a field of corn husks back home; in the middle you could just see the red and gold spire of the temple there, in the middle, rising above the lotus.
We sat on a rock under a weeping willow. Emi had told me once...
He was coming. Footsteps down the hall.
And, of course, he was alone. Nobody else inhabitated this old house - his wife had disappeared, a long time ago now. He can't blame her, it's impossible to blame her, after that - after their son (their son, their child, their baby) was born, she had retreated into herself.
Of course their son chased her, raged at her, destroyed her. Mothers hating their children is meant to be post-natal depression, but does that count if the child is goading her, forcing her to hate?
She has been gone for a while now....
It was practically viral by now. the video a friend of mine had posted on youtube, of our mass dance party for cancer. Everyone was doing it. There was a practically a million other videos like ours, everyone doing our dance, to various remixes of that song. We had worn masks, for some bizarre reason, and evryone was doing that too. i had seen everything from drama masks to those little ones you see doctors wearing. I watched yet another video of people throwing their arms in the air and twisting their hips. I was kinda proud of us. coordinating...
No swimmers.
No DNA-laden tadpoles.
No way that the child was mine.
If you asked me 10-years ago if I could ever imagine myself sitting in a doctor's office waiting for my sperm count to arrive, I would have told you to fuck off. Or maybe piss off, since I hadn't lived enough life 10-years ago to cuss appropriately.
Yet, here I was. My soon to be ex-wife was pregnant. She didn't know if was my child or the child of the irish man she ran off with 2-months prior. Apparently, that surgery I survived only guarantees 99.995% success. But...
I fumbled about with my phone, waiting. She was going to be late, but I was always early. Damn nature and nurture. Or is it nurture and nature? What the hell, man. Concentrate.
She went to Northern Illinois. She got a degree in English and is currently working as a barista. God, what a stereotype.
It's ok, get out of your comfort zone.
Ok, I think that's her. Is that her? No, no. The picture of her didn't look like that. I am way too overdressed for this place.
And I hate tea. Why did I get tea? Should I...
They were listening. Halloween night was the perfect cover for their activities. They heard our every whisper, laugh, cry. When we are socialising with our tribe, friends we felt comfortable around to dress up, act like a fool or even express normally hidden sides of our personalities. Trick or treat with menace.
Until this year I didn't know they even existed, except in urban legends. When I accidentally found out, my life changed in an instant. Never to feel relaxed, never to be myself in case they would use it to their advantage one day when I'd least suspect.
I...
It approached.
It was too bright. Light wasn't meant to be frightening, but this one was - it was too bright, and there was too much there, it meant too much.
Easier to turn away. But that wasn't an option anymore; there were other powers at work here. There was no escape route.
Everything was happening too quickly. No time to work out what to do, no time to even begin to create other options.
Just the light. The light and the fear. And the horror that was approaching.
In a rush, in a horrific scream, bathed in terrifying light,...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.
Yeah, wasn't that my typical luck? My day in and day out? Slipping in and out from the friggin' jaws of death like a suicidal mouse playing with a cat? If this was what the rest of my life, which, granted, didn't look like it was gonna be very long, was gonna be, I wasn't so sure I wanted part of it. It got damn old, damn quick.
I'd faced down a lot of things in my...
Her toes struggled to grip onto the slimy rocks. Slippers were not the right sort of footwear for this kind of thing, but she hadn't had much of a choice.
She's spotted him through the net curtains, hovering on the doorstep, ready to knock.
Not today, she muttered.
She scurried out of the back door. Leapt the fence. Hadn't realised she could still manage it, but then adrenaline did that to you. She heard the knocking as she dropped over the other side of the fence and into the woods beyond.
RAP RAP RAP.
She scaled the rocks down towards...
Twist. Twist your t-shirt to ring out the blood and water. Shake. Shake your head again and again. It's over. It's gone now.
Your palm feels cold against your forehead, but the blood is hot. Hot and wet and it feels funny because there's no pain, only heat. And you can see but its not the same somehow, like when you look away from staring at the lightbulb and shapes dance around you.
I hear pounding. Like drums. Hammering a distant rhythm but wait... no. It's in my head. It really is. Blood. Pounding, marching through each stressed canal like...