Hey Mortality (19 page)

The very fact
that humans can think, can make discoveries, and have innovations. That we can walk and communicate, that we can destroy ourselves and take away the very freedom we strive to create, is proof that a god cannot really exist. If my thoughts and actions are known already, then there is no possibility that the choice that I am so often told that I have can even exist.

Everything can end, love can vanish in a single moment. Happiness is short lived and cannot survive forever. A moment of joy vanishes suddenly and is replaced only by darkness. And, as I walk home, shrouded in a similar darkness that spreads and covers the starless sky, I think, there is no god, there is no point. I feel that now, closure is all that I require, a way to say that everything is over; an action that goes beyond what I am capable of doing.

I wonder where exactly I will end up. I wonder if it is true, that I am fated to an eternity of pain and suffering and in total silence. A deal made, and promises kept, for what? A life that ends and is never remembered. Just a suffering silence that keeps me bound to time, if only belonging to its history. I was here, once, and so too were so many others. The people before me and those that come later in time; I can never join them, I can never fit here now. Not once do I feel overjoyed by the ability of living. Breathing with heart beating, and an absent creator that so states that the path to the afterlife is about being good. I do my best and try and try, but for whatever reason, the world I live in is full of terrors and horrors and nightmares. I can’t close the door like this; my dreams are there, idling at its frame, waiting to be shattered by a faceless god.

In all my moments of existence, I am never collected. Always fractured and broken and succumbing to the howl of the innocent wind, as it screams past taking with it my thoughts; scattering all hope into the
æther
.

How did we end up in a place like this? Like animals going through the flow; fighting and arguing and wishing pain upon others. Hoping for disasters just to feel alive again. Breaking everything so we can climb back out of the abyss of our own creating, just to feel alive.

And, what of gods’? Do they feel alive in their eternity of boredom? Forever watching the paths we choose to take, those paths that lead only to the suffering of self and others. We do this because gods’ watch from the distant skies and heavens, and if we are theirs, then why would they let us feel this illusion of existence and choice? Time carefully invented, crafted, so that some tongueless god can watch us suffer and die.

I eventually return to the garbage strewn Nihontuzsumi streets. Left behind by the drunk, the homeless, and the most recently deceased man from the arcade. A heart wrenching misery hits me and for whatever reason I think of her. Her ability. Liar. She who can tell a lie without consequence, dancing from her fingertips and into the thoughts of others, a belief that only a character so strong can persuade, and only a repentance from another, myself, can truly forgive.

It is again that I feel so incredibly miserable. A depression made up from a mix of whatever it is I am feeling. I can’t decipher whether I am just hungover, depressed to the point of anxiety, or have just been spat back into the world from a hell that I will eventually call my home.

Schizophrenia is a troublesome world and a difficult word to comprehend in my state, and recognising it as an actuality is perhaps one step closer to proving it doesn’t exist here, inside of me, but I can’t be certain. I feel that from day to day I think with different minds, different thoughts, different feelings, and with different strengths to my emotions.

Some of me wants nothing more than to do something for the world, be remembered after death, be remembered forever. Some of me wants to actively find joy in the small things in life, find joy in the mundane. Some of me is just scared. But even for us, the wanting to be remembered or the not wanting to be scared, we will disappear to dust too. Entropic times consume us all.

Even the afterlife isn’t immune. Eventually there will be no hell, no heaven, no place to go. Everything will disappear like dust, like us, like the sand on a beach. We disappear too, we are consumed by it. There is no escaping it, time, it removes life and watches, like an eternal river as it does.

Even when facing the end, a part of me wanted to jump into that stream of time, that eternal flow of the universe, but, I persuaded myself not to. I fought with both minds and deciphered the consequences. Even the consequences will fall apart. The choices that I make that lead me to new paths of existence, all of them will disintegrate until there is nothing left.

But is living any better? At least in hell I can stay with my consciousness, despite how horrific that will be. But in life, I am still fated to die. Living with the worry that one moment, a skip of the heart is all that it takes to end the blood that flows through me. A brain that is weak and tired of it all can decide to stop, suddenly.

I wonder if living in a foreign land is the reason for this effect on my mentality. Nightmares, ghosts of dead authors, stories of time, and losing forever the one I love; those things can change a person, change the chemicals that we were born from and that make up every thought and emotion. Even chemicals can change.

Before, billions of years ago, all of the things that exist now were formed from the exact same point, perhaps the same atom. We were in embrace, but now scatted like pollen on a summers day; insignificant, lost, and waiting to seed and grow into something of grandeur.

Even as I wander around without any aim or purpose or direction, as I try to distract my mind from the void, I often see someone that looks like her, Liar. My heart stops for a moment as I make eye contact with a woman who might or might not be her. She rides a yellow bicycle, as always. Walks slowly while wearing a black hat, as always. Each time, a beat or two becomes missed before resuming in timely rhythm. My mind floods with chemicals that fill me with such excitement, such joy; indescribable, again. That whole world of ours, created for that feeling, that moment, that absolution. I stand and watch as she crosses a road and vanishes, as I, at the same time vanish, swallowed up by the feeling known only as love.

As I return to the steps, a broken illusion envelops me, a broken shattered illusion of dreams and promises. I am consumed by the thought of Yakuza Guy, and I wonder who the man that led me to my fate really was, or how any of this can be real.

I return to my room and gather my possessions and stuff them into a bag. I have no regrets now but to leave this place, leave this life behind me. My broken torment repaired by the Devil with promises of an eternity of silence; yet one filled with such pain and wrath. All because I have so much love for her. A broken being that needs nothing but help, and that help came from me, and she will never know.

My sacrifice perceived by the Devil alone, or the tongueless gods’ that don’t exist. They can watch and know, but they can’t change a thing. Only the Devil keeps his tongue, and with his words, he persuades and tricks and offers a fitting end to an existence of hell on earth. The existence of fools.

I wake up
late morning, sand in my eyes. For the final time I decide to wander through the streets of Nihonzutsumi. A final goodbye to the place I used to call home.

I pass a horse meat restaurant, and next door, a queue of people waiting patiently for famous fried vegetables and prawns. The people here are not locals. These two restaurants get the lunch time trade of salarymen from nearby offices, the sushi restaurant gets nothing.

I pass a
Pachinko parlour
that quietly sucks away the souls of people; a smoke filled room of flashing lights, loud music, and the rattle of metal balls. These people will risk their last few yen on a chance to win big. Risk their food for the day in exchange for the excitement of gambling.

Can Men, the harder working of the homeless pass me on old bicycles. Huge plastic bags full of empty beer and coke cans hang, salvaged from garbage bins beside vending machines. They will be able to get seventy yen per kilogramme of cans; barely a hot meal for their efforts. Or perhaps they too will end up with the swarms of addicts at the
Pachinko parlour,
full of false hope, always expecting more.

I take a left and head to Family Mart for a can of beer, and after purchasing from the happiest lady that has ever worked at a convenience store
—
fake smile and thank you, welcome in and goodbye
—
I wander to the nameless red shrine for a final godless prayer.

After praying, I head back into the arcade to see collapsed people in doorways, drained by the summer heat. The poor homeless living in desolate conditions. Some vegetables are browning on the ground, strewn from boxes during the early morning market where salvaged supermarket throwaway goods are sold for a profit. Lettuce marked with darkened footprints, waiting to be collected and consumed, as will eventually happen.

As I wander to the end of the arcade, passing the Kangaroo Hotel, I feel lost. Like a complete outsider and a total stranger to the world. My head is so heavy that a giant might well be standing on it.

It is here, as I cross the road and continue walking, that I begin to feel a certain dizziness. Like the ocean is in my head, and my ears are full of beach. I sip from my can and light a cigarette to calm down.

After walking for ten minutes with a spinning head, I arrive at a new area that I have not previously explored. A small shrine that houses the Haunted Jizō. He would apparently speak to passers-by, despite being made of stone. The statue of this guardian deity of children, said to raise babies from the dead, wears a steel hat on his head. It is said that sometimes the hat would move, perhaps through some mystical force, or possibly rattling in the wind. Oddly, there does seem to be a familiar cold air around this area, much like the feeling I experienced at the Ichiyō Memorial Hall. It is a bit overwhelming, and I decide I am done with Tokyo for good.

As I walk away, I don’t really know where I am any more. I have drifted and been pulled in directions of life that ten years ago, I never thought were possible. I live in a country that is not my own. Surviving, just; but without her it is the hardest thing. I don’t understand what I am doing here, I don’t even know if home has anything left for me either. I am completely lost to the world, and I don’t know what it offers me anymore.

I could have lived my life like an ant, like the others. Following a path that was created for me, and perhaps finding happiness along the way. But, some trigger inside of me, some force that I can’t explain that can’t be based on previous experiences or memory, this force made me give it all up, give up that comfort and made me end up here; away from the path, lost in the woods, distracted and seeing the world, but with consequence. I don’t know how I became this person. How I became so far away from home, my comfort zone, and from the life that I left behind. But I am here now, still an ant, crawling upon the surface of life. Following orders and paths and religions and routes mapped out by false fulfilment. I have become trapped and obsessed by everything around me. A lone soldier in the battle against myself, and my innermost torments. A wounded soldier trapped by fate alone. Trapped by fate, alone. Impossible to understand and lost in the void again, as always, never to be found.

The world here is so very strange. Statues of ghosts have no name. The only thing left is closure, to follow the path I have been guided towards, to find out the answers or some meaning of sorts. But ghosts won’t help me find an ending, or a new beginning. Ghosts are ghosts, and the dead still remain dead.

When life has
taken everything away, we are faced with difficult choices. Some people, they cut their wrists, others hold a fake smile for a day and tell everyone that everything is okay. I just fall alone, and wait as one thousand ghosts haunt my state of mind. And I realise that there is nowhere else. That there is no one else.

It saddens me to realise that now, even though those times with her were some of the best times of my life, they feel like a distant daydream. Like a shattered existence that no longer feels like it was real, like something great that has faded away and remains somewhere in the deep depths of my mind. Just a traced outline of a time gone by.

I want nothing now but for someone to take me away from here, take me home, or to take me out of this horror. So, instead, I will just leave and start again, all over again. Screw everything else, every thought or dream into a little ball. A paper shape of words and hate. The inky remains of a hand written history that is all but ready to be forgotten. Ready to be left alone like the darkness and misery. My time to travel, to leave and to travel to a place where even the Devil will not follow me.

With my bag of everything left, I wander to Minowa Station and take the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line; my escape route. At Ueno Station, I take an unreserved seat on the
Shinkansen
, a high speed bullet train that will waste no time in taking me away from the slums, forever.

After just under five hours, I arrive at Kokura, a place I have heard of only in the manuscript. The train stops here though, so I walk around a little and end up at the castle. Even though the castle is beautiful, I am too distracted to concentrate.

I think long and hard about how I came to this point in my life, and finally accept that with her gone, that it was all my fault. Liar was good to me, but my own paranoia and questioning of her whereabouts, who she was with, what she was doing; those things kept her trapped in a cage. A cage I built around her rather unfairly. She did nothing wrong but return my love for as long as she could allow. But fighting about things as to where she slept that night, or asking her bluntly if she had ever cheated on me, or if she really loved me, those things were the final nails. And, following from those words that I wish I had never said, I too received the final nail in my coffin of life.

The saddest part wasn’t that I didn’t believe her, it wasn’t that I didn’t trust her like I said I would. It pains me so much, but, I hated her when she died. Knowing that I couldn’t resolve the things I had caused left me with a lack of closure. I couldn’t tell her how sorry I really was, or how much I really loved her. I had chances but failed to take them. I was too bitter, too angry, and too upset. It is the hardest thing in the world to lose somebody. It is ever harder to hate somebody you love, and then lose everything.

It was after she died that I took to silence. Thinking that if I could say things that hurt another person so badly to dissolve any love for me, allow their heart to crumble because of things I said, that I would never speak again. Never talk for fear that it would destroy anything else I had. But, it is too late, I have no way back and am now deeper than I have ever been. Lower than I ever imagined a person can feel. And, perhaps the way she felt was of equal sorrow. A painful hatred towards me, and one completely deserved.

I loved her but I don’t know why, and I still do. I don’t know how it came to be that I said those words that shattered our existence and parted our eternal souls.

I leave the castle and walk back to the train station, my head spinning as dizziness consumes me again. It feels like I want to break out of my own skin. I want to scream as loud as possible, scream at the top of my voice until there is nothing left in my lungs, until there is no buzzing in my head. I just want to be empty, but perhaps I already am. I want to be alone more than ever before, but at the same time, I want to be wrapped up in the body of someone I love. I am completely in limbo, but impossibly in limbo, and destined for hell.

On the train to Beppu I take a beer and fall away into a peaceful dream about climbing over a mountain with a harp.