Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Black Box

There's nothing in my pockets, they had taken away the note I kept. No knife or cell phone of course. Not even matches or water like I had in my dream.

How I longed to dream again. I wished to see the night sky again and watch the stars above. I wanted to feel her body on top of mine and listen to her voice. Instead of my organs. No doubt, better than complete nothingness. But I had gone and ripped up the pages, and severed all those connections. It had to be done. But now no longer could I dream again.

At some point, I had fallen asleep suddenly like someone reaching up from the ground and pulling me into a dark dank hole. Now there seem to be dull taps through the membrane of my hollow rest. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Through the dark. A consistent rap against a surface. Not like someone knocking on my door. It's a mechanical sound. Even in strength. Just loud enough that it bleeds in all around, making ripples through the nothingness. Once it started, it doesn't stop.

One dull beat at a time, like a ticking clock, consciousness returns to me as this sucking draining feeling, the transition from dimension to dimension, yet I can't tell which one I'm in or whether I am at a certain point in fluctuation between the two. And I'm not sure which one I prefer. Both worlds are the same, black on black, without vision or hearing. I pinch myself to be sure I'm awake and kick my feet out at the wall to make some sound, any sound. I sigh in relief when I hear something reverberate. A flat smack. Like kicking concrete. The metal is solid. And the air is still cold. I would expect an airtight box to become stuffy and depleted of oxygen. It had occurred to me that I might suffocate to death. But somehow there is still air in here, fresh and indifferent.

The tapping sound is incessant and insistent. It seems to get louder and louder, until all I can hear is this beat, driving the thoughts out of my mind. Chasing them out one by one like a school of fish darting away from a shark. They are at regular intervals. With each beat like a metronome, it begins to wear on my mind and my body. Almost physically, they tap against my head. I feel like I've been running for miles, and my heartbeat pounds along with the sound. It seeps in and I feel it through my blood, beneath my skin, in my bones, jittering through my teeth. My mind is blank and all I can think of is this tap.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

*

It must have persisted for an hour, or so it seems, before it finally stops. The length of time might have only been my imagination - it had been increasingly agonizing and strangely inhibiting, as if drugs were injected into my system and my body paralyzed, separated from my soul. But because it is so dark, I can't tell where my body is any longer. I search for it frantically but reach nothing.

In any case, time seemed to stretch on and on - but of course, I had no way of telling time. Time is not something that is consistent and uniform; rather than a linear fourth dimension, it seems to change depending on perception. It felt like an hour to me, and an hour I decide it is.

When it stopped, the silence became deafening. In many ways, the silence is worse than the tapping, much like the forest when my mother had appeared. As if a wash of water, it rises up to my neck. My ears ring.

I kick the wall again for some kind of noise to listen to and the sound seems feeble now. It dies in the dark. Weak and useless. It does nothing to drown out the piercing siren in my ears. It's like the sound of waves trapped in a seashell, a sound that resembles another reality elsewhere, a remnant of a world that once existed but yet is only the collection of ambience in the present. False perception.

It takes a while before the ringing subsides. And when it does, it does so ever slowly. Almost as if I'm waiting for the sun to evaporate water. I grow impatient for my ears to settle down. As soon as I have some form of relief, and am about to heave out a long restrained breath, it starts again.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Scratching right on top of my head, drilling holes into my skull. Just enough force to send a rattle through my jaw but not enough to shake the walls around me. Only I tremble.

I have a notion that this is something I am supposed to bear as a part of my imprisonment - some kind of psychological torture device to break my will. Now that it begins as such, I have a feeling it would become worse. There is no getting used to it.

All I can do now is visualize a cup of caramel chai tea latte, as best as I can. I try to drink from it. But the image distorts and flickers out.

*

About the ninth or tenth cycle, each broken by a long period of silence, it stops half way. My brain is slush. I am only half aware that my whole body is trembling. Sweating maybe. Some form of wet liquid is on my face. Maybe tears or saliva. I'm trying to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. I need more air. I think I'm thirsty. My lips and throat dry. I don't know. I feel like I've come from a different world. This wrenching sensation of the travel is ever intensified and perverse. Being squeezed through some tight tunnel. And the world starts to change. I barely realize it's light that's slowly coming in. It comes in the form of a line. A white line drawn with finger paint.

Then all of a sudden the entire place is ripped apart with white light, like heaven. So intense I can't move for a while. An explosion. Whoosh. There's a tremendous gush of air and I feel nothing above me but sky and my eyes clamp together tight as they water and water. It hurts. My eyes burn and burn and burn. But I can't put out the fire - I wish to reach up and climb out but I can't see. From within my eyes everything looks red, like fire and I'm crying, falling over, contorting in pain. The light is too fierce and unyielding. Too holy. I am nothing, unworthy of the light. I realize how much I hate the light. I might have said something out loud or I might not have, but all of a sudden the light is off as quickly as it had come and I have returned to darkness.

I collapse gasping for my breath. I search for the ceiling above me and find it there, in the same place as it always had been.

*

It takes me a while to realize there's something else here with me. I scramble away when I accidentally touch something warm and wet. It is after touching it that I start to feel the presence of another. But in the darkness, I couldn't make out who it is or what it is, for that matter. And I cower against the corner of the crate. My senses are so dull and sickly I couldn't even tell where or which direction it had been located anymore. It's warm so it surely couldn't be dead. It is alive. This warm and wet thing is alive. The thought made me shudder. But it doesn't move. If it does, I can't tell. Maybe it is creeping right up to me this moment, crawling on all fours, slowly drawing its possessed face near mine - but I don't hear anything. My heart pounds and I'm afraid of making any noise. I shudder.

I sit, cramped, in place, head tucked between my knees, for a long time. All I could think of is this cup in a coffee shop. I desperately try to sip from it. I'm thirsty. But I can't remember what it's supposed to mean. It's just a cup from all I can tell, but somehow there must be some more significance. I realize I am losing all context, of who it belonged to and what is inside. It exists as a formless image like a painting over a dining table. Porcelain cup on a table. It might have been called, by some unnamed artist.

*

After some time, anticipating the taps to begin again, picturing the coffee shop and that cup of chai latte, and muscles tense, I had drifted off to sleep in complete exhaustion. Again, my sleep is empty, black, full of nothing.