All the lights went out. The sun disgorged a dust of insects. Microbes crawled from the disintegrated carapaces.
He sensed them marching in serried ranks towards the lesions in his skin. His hands could not find the switch. For a nanosecond a shell of fear encased him. His trembling broke it. Then he acted.
Reaction first. Interrogated the night but it had nothing to say, was full of aliases, none of them his. He felt like Schrödinger’s cat – but where was Schrödinger?
The air was full of dis-ease. Space was the uncertainty principle. Time was not his friend.
This was not an experiment, it was slaughter. The rustling battalions had already breached his integument, were immune to his response. His massing white cells were being massacred. Defense is knowing when to run.
Afterwards, he never knew exactly how he got away. Surmised that just as there were lines of force there must be lines of weakness, and the pale pupa that was his soul had somehow broken one and used the other to lift off.
His new wings were like nothing else in the world.
Eudy and Lenny bumped along in Eudy’s Hummer, down the muddy, rural path through farm country in Southern Georgia. They were intent on big game. Located in the lower Piedmont region of the state, the area was the site of a vast peanut farm which had been in the Eudy family for generations. It was 2 days before Thanksgiving and the morning air was a bracing 39 degrees. A brisk wind whistled through the towering sweetgum trees that were harvested for the manufacture of high end furniture. In less than 48 hours, Lenny thought, he would be breaking bread at Eudy’s family estate and giving thanks for a new Republican president and all that implied.
“We’ll get us some trophies today, Lenny,” promised Eudy, taking his eyes from the road for a moment. “It is what you call a target-rich environment, boy!” He took a long drink from an amber-hued flask and then passed it to Lenny.
Lenny grinned rather uncertainly. He’d always managed to elude these trips with Eudy up till now, but this time his boss had been adamant. According to Lenny’s fellow employees, Eudy held that you couldn’t take the measure of a man until you’d been with him on the hunt, out in the elements and all the rest. Lenny watched as they passed a forest of red maples, grown for transplant onto the large, palatial, plantation-like estates of the Georgian gentry. The scarlet leaves fluttered in the breeze.
Lenny spent 12 hours per day, in season, operating the huge, quarter million dollar peanut combine for Eudy, which proved that his boss trusted him. They often talked knowingly of fallow fields and LSKs and the like. He couldn’t fail him now, he thought. Since October, with the last harvest, things had slowed down on Eudy’s Farms, making time for excursions into the back woods.
“I think the truck looks damn good, Lenny,” Eudy said.
As well it should, thought the other man. Lenny had squandered a full weekend with his boss, applying the camouflage motif to the Hummer’s sides and roof. Spraying can after can of Rust-Oleum on the SUV’s carapace had been unnerving. Lenny read on the cans that the paint should be applied only in a well-ventilated area, but Eudy had been insistent on doing the job in the confines of his family’s capacious, 6-car garage. The reason for this, Lenny guessed, was that Eudy wanted to enjoy the high incidental to inhaling the toxic vapors. But, what could he do? Eudy was his boss.
The use of the stencils, the application of a base coat and the subsequent layering of coats was exhausting. The final application of a clear coat on top of it all had seemed to take forever, but at long last Eudy was satisfied. Lenny’s fingers were still sticky from the masking tape.
After what seemed like an endless trek, the men arrived at their destination, a small clearing abutting a medium-sized pond. The two men alighted from the vehicle. Eudy ran his hand loving down the tan, brown and muted yellow camouflage stenciling they had applied the previous weekend. Lenny gingerly felt his side; the jarring journey had played hell with his kidneys. Eudy seemed unaffected, however.
The men stretched their limbs and Lenny said, “I wish I’d bought more firepower, you know?”
Eudy shrugged, hefted his AR-15 and said smugly, “This’ll do me just fine, Lenny.” He took a sighting along the tree line of the distant forest.
Lenny frowned. “Sure,” he said, “you got your Franken-gun; all I got’s this piece of shit Winchester.”
The other man smirked. “You had your chance at the gun show on Saturday. You’re the one refused to lay down twelve large for a decent weapon.
Lenny winced. “Yeah, well, my daughter needs braces,” he pointed out.
“Priorities, Lenny,” scolded his friend. “You got to set your priorities.”
Lenny shrugged. Eudy had a point. “I guess you’re right.”
As the pair moved into the woods, Lenny raised his firearm and took aim at a flock of geese, but the other man stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t waste your ammo, son. We got bigger game to hunt. Besides, the world needs more geese.” They walked on for another half mile.
“How do you know they’re in there?” Lenny inquired.
“I do my homework,” replied the other man. “Use scouts. And electronic surveillance. There’s a whole nest of ‘em about a mile into the reserve.” Taking point, he led the way.
As they proceeded through the trees, Lenny’s footfalls were magnified by the snapping of branches and twigs along the trail. Eudy, by far the more experienced tracker, was silent as a whisper.
Finally, the two outdoorsmen emerged into a clearing and came upon an encampment: tents, crackling fires, the savory aroma of grilling meat and open cans of beer were everywhere. About 20 men milled about, unaware of their presence.
Lenny whispered, “You sure this is it? Are you positive we got the right place?” he asked earnestly.
“Abso-damn-lutely,” said the other man in a boozy voice. “Pick a target, son.” And before he opened fire with his own weapon, he added, “You know the law of the jungle like I do, Lenny: first get ’em outta’ the libraries; then outta’ the government and the press and finally, at long last, it’s open season on poofs.”
The train coughed and shuddered to a halt at Kawaguchiko Station. Dr. Kenji Morita, biochemist and thoroughgoing skeptic, stepped onto the platform, the damp chill seeping into his bones.
He adjusted the strap of his backpack, its weight a grim reminder of his purpose. Inside: a bottle of Suntory whisky, a Swiss Army knife, and a worn copy of Camus’ *The Myth of Sisyphus*. He’d always found a certain mordant humor in existentialism; a final joke before the lights went out. Or so he thought.
Kenji, a card-carrying atheist of the Dawkins variety, found the diagnosis especially galling. Stage IV pancreatic cancer. A cosmic punchline delivered with the subtlety of a runaway pachinko machine. Except, as it turned out, the CT scan had been misread. A shadow on the pancreas, yes, but merely a benign cyst. A sword of Damocles withdrawn at the last moment. Except, he had already bought the one way ticket.
He hired a taxi – an extravagance he’d normally eschew – and directed the driver toward Aokigahara. The forest, a thriving, dense expanse of 30 square kilometers grown atop the lava spewed from Mount Fuji in the 9th century. It was, after all, the most common place to commit suicide in Japan. As the car wound its way through the foothills, Kenji stared out the window, the dense foliage blurring into an impressionistic swirl of greens and browns. He’d always prided himself on his rationalism, his unwavering adherence to empirical evidence. Now, facing a death sentence that wasn’t, he felt adrift, unmoored from the bedrock of his convictions. He had planned on oblivion; was that such a bad fate, truly?
The taxi dropped him off at the edge of the forest. A sign, attempting to dissuade those entering with ill intent, read: “Life is a precious gift.” Kenji snorted, a plume of condensation clouding the frigid air. Sentimental pap. He stepped past the sign and into the Jukai, the “Sea of Trees.”
The air grew immediately colder, the sunlight struggling to penetrate the dense canopy. The porous lava bedrock swallowed sound, creating an unsettling stillness. He consulted his compass, noting the magnetic anomalies caused by the volcanic rock, and then set off, deeper into the woods, the weight of the backpack a constant presence on his shoulders. The trees, gnarled and twisted, clawed at the sky. It was an odd and hauntingly beautiful forest to be lost in. He passed the telltale signs: discarded backpacks, tattered clothing, empty pill bottles. Grim detritus of broken lives.
As dusk began to settle, Kenji found a small clearing, a pocket of relative openness in the oppressive woods. He pulled out the bottle of Suntory and the Camus, placing them on a moss-covered rock. He took a swig of the whisky, the harsh liquor burning a welcome path down his throat. He opened The Myth of Sisyphus. Maybe it would give him one last laugh. It was the last line he would ever read. Then, he heard it. A whisper, carried on the wind. At first, he dismissed it as his imagination, the product of stress and too much whisky. But then it came again, louder this time, a chorus of voices murmuring, pleading, lamenting. He looked around, but saw nothing, only the silent trees, their branches like skeletal arms reaching out to him.
The voices intensified, coalescing into distinct words, phrases, fragments of lives cut short. “Gomen nasai…” Forgive me. “Modorenai…” I can’t go back. “Kurushii…” It hurts. The voices swirled around him, a cacophony of despair. And then, he saw them.
Pale figures, shimmering in the twilight, their faces etched with anguish. Yūrei, the restless spirits of Japanese folklore, they drifted between the trees, their ethereal forms flickering like dying embers. One, a woman in a tattered kimono, reached out to him, her eyes hollow sockets filled with an infinite sorrow. Another, a businessman in a rumpled suit, wept silently, clutching a photograph of a young girl. These were not the comforting ancestors of Shinto belief, but tormented souls, tethered to this world by regret and pain.
Kenji, the rationalist, the man of science, felt a primal terror grip his heart. His carefully constructed worldview shattered like glass. He’d spent his life dismissing the supernatural, scoffing at ghost stories as superstitious nonsense. But here they were, tangible, undeniable, their grief a palpable force in the cold night air. The yūrei in Aokigahara were those individuals “who suffered some sort of injustice during their lives.”
He remembered Azusa Hayano, the geologist who spent his life in the forest, encountering hundreds contemplating suicide. He remembered his words of encouragement, his simple act of human connection. Maybe, just maybe, these tormented souls needed something more than oblivion.
Kenji stumbled back, knocking over the bottle of Suntory. The whisky spilled onto the moss, a dark stain spreading across the green. He scrambled to his feet, the weight of the backpack now feeling unbearable, a burden he no longer wished to carry. He turned and fled, crashing through the undergrowth, the voices of the yūrei pursuing him, their sorrowful cries echoing in his ears. He was just another ‘salaryman’ running from death, from the dark and looming abyss.
He ran blindly, heedless of direction, driven only by the desperate need to escape. Thorns tore at his skin, branches lashed at his face, but he didn’t stop, fueled by a terror he couldn’t explain, a terror that transcended logic and reason. Finally, he burst through the treeline, stumbling onto the road, gasping for breath.
He looked back at the forest, a dark and impenetrable wall against the fading light. The voices were fainter now, but he could still hear them, a chorus of despair carried on the wind. He could envision the final walk of those who have died in Aokigahara forest—as well as the spirits that remain.
Kenji didn’t know if he believed in ghosts, not really. But he knew that he couldn’t face them, not yet. He couldn’t join their ranks, adding his own voice to the chorus of sorrow. Not when there was still a chance, however slim, to find some meaning, some purpose, in the life that had been so unexpectedly restored to him. ““We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken,” he seemed to hear, faintly.
He walked back toward the station, the cold wind whipping at his face. As he walked, he thought not of death, but of life; a life that had been given back to him, a life he now had a responsibility to live. A life he had to make count. It was time to figure out what the point of it all actually was. Maybe the cyst bursting in his gut was more than the terror of the specters he had met. Maybe. He had a hunch. A hunch which had to become more.
He would return to his lab, he decided, bury himself in his research, seek answers in the cold, hard logic of science. But this time, he would also look for something more, something beyond the empirical, something that resonated with the aching sorrow he’d heard in the voices of Aokigahara. What it all meant was something he wanted to get to the bottom of; the voices in his head, the pain in his heart, all coalesced into something resembling hope. It was time to truly live. Home was where the Hell wasn’t, at least for now.
But by your memory in details I would have been lost
Your passion for fairness I could never forget
How you did stand to your principles set
A poem I wrote who would think would start
A friendship so true in form as a dart
A nasty post once that made me cry
Overnight you stayed by my side
Never mentioned that I was being petty
I was struck by your patient loyalty
Days and months did pass us by
Never once to each other did we lie
For a time together we fought for a cause
Now we are too busy from different source
Still the friendship kept its glow
As our rivers to other branches flow
Strange how two strangers connect so neat
When in person we still yet have to meet
Heal with Smile
Many are the secrets of pain
With scars seen and unseen
Blood and tears a soul stain
Smile covered the past scene
Not deceit nor indifference
Pains still remain not gone
Grieve or move on’s chance
A choice where love has won
It is not a spiritual weakness
When one choose to forget
Outside one show happiness
Inside same joy one can get
Heal inside as heal outside
Inspire others forbearance
Awaken strength in reside
A smile not for appearance
Why must choose to wallow
Sink your head in filthy gutter
Why drown in sea of sorrow
Joy from other source gather
Life is hard but still beautiful
In the midst of dark seek light
Consider the glass as half full
Space to fill with greater delight
Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa was born January 14, 1965, in Manila Philippines. She has worked as a retired Language Instructor, interpreter, caregiver, secretary, product promotion employee, and private therapeutic masseur. Her works have been published as poems and short story anthologies in several language translations for e-magazines, monthly magazines, and books; poems for cause anthologies in a Zimbabwean newspaper; a feature article in a Philippine newspaper; and had her works posted on different poetry web and blog sites. She has been writing poems since childhood but started on Facebook only in 2014. For her, Poetry is life and life is poetry.
Lilian Kunimasa considers herself a student/teacher with the duty to learn, inspire, guide, and motivate others to contribute to changing what is seen as normal into a better world than when she steps into it. She has always considered life as an endless journey, searching for new goals, and challenges and how she can in small ways make a difference in every path she takes. She sees humanity as one family where each one must support the other and considers poets as a voice for Truth in pursuit of Equality and proper Stewardship of nature despite the hindrances of distorted information and traditions.
