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  Hey Mortality

  By Luke Kinsella

  Hey Mortality

  Kindle Edition

  © 2016 Luke Kinsella

  Cover design © 2016 by Rae Shirley Photography & Design

  Luke Kinsella has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  1

  In my complete state of utter darkness, shrouded by everything in the world that has shattered and broken my existence, sits a box. A red box. Contained within is all the chaos in the world, all the dark souls that have and still haunt my every moment.

  They float in the sky around me, like angry demons of the night. And this darkness never ends, and too, the demons never stop appearing; lost dark souls that time is ready to forget about. They continue on and on for almost eternity, until the bubble of time collapses into a ball of forever. And when I do finally escape its clutches, its inevitable wrath, something else begins to consume me, something closer to darkness than darkness itself.

  Then creeps in my doubt. My doubt for everything around me, everything I have ever dreamt or ever thought begins to distort the nightmares of time. There is nothing left, nothing for me now. Nothing to live for, nothing to dream for. And, as those blurred lines between dream and reality begin to shimmer, crossover, they take with them my last moment of joy, and replace it with sombre and subfuscous fear.

  Often I find that just as words force themselves down my throat, I become speechless, choking; my soul evaporates, floats away before disintegrating into the dark skies above me. Showering me with a flood of my own creating; my own soul turned to dust. Decaying satisfaction, a state of complete despair; wrapped in the torment of my broken imagination.

  When you are as lost as I am, you will never be found. You will never return to the place or person that you now long for most. Replaced, eventually, over time. Your actions, the fragments of life, your imagination, images, become completely replaced to the point that nothing can shatter you any further; you are already so shattered, and so broken.

  But without the fear, the mystery of the box, without any of this I have absolutely nothing, a true nothing; absolute zero, the coldest of colds. No reason to wake up other than to obsess, no reason to dream, no reason for alarms or to even be alarmed. Just silence, slow silence that paves its way to the end. And everything can end, and it will.

  And in this, my fleeting deceit of memory and time, I am left all alone. Just a box waiting to be opened. A dream or mystery waiting to be shattered awake or solved. Nothing else lies ahead but my own imaginary demons, created from nothing but my own innermost hatred. Nothing lies below but monsters of an imaginary hell. Above and beyond me, nothing in the distance, just everything else; lost and trapped and broken in the flow of time.

  In this life so close to ending, as the seconds silently tick by, the moments pass like a slide-show. Like a broken slide-show just hanging like painted clouds in the sky. Fractured painted clouds, frame by broken frame; they flicker as they pass. Like a moment, a second, a thought, a blink, a smile. And the smiles. The smiles they become part of the collective consciousness, my imagination, and my being. And every single moment and memory, and everything I have ever done, dreamt, thought, becomes lost. Lost in the smile. Lost in the frown. Floating like ghosts across my eyes, green, like the tears, and like the broken slide-show as it returns once again to fracture in the evening sky so absent of stars.

  And it is during this moment of thoughts that I continue to sit and wait and watch the box, waiting for an event to occur. I occasionally glance off at the skyscrapers beyond, as they stretch off seemingly forever. I stare at the empty skies that will always be empty. Nothing left hanging there. Nothing holding anything together. Not even a broken slide-show can survive.

  It is with this fear in my mind, ever distant imaginative ideas flow to a single thought, and in this thought—a great waterfall of time and space, ever crumbling, decaying, eroding, suffering only from entropic waves of the universe—my life floats away into the stream. With it, it crashes into a rock. Resolve, but with revolutions not forthcoming.

  And, my eyes drift back again, and from that red box I might discover all wealth of ideas, fame and fortune, love and desires, goals and dreams. But what is it for but to offer a choice or chance. Its emptiness will leave me lost and destroyed and left to decay. Nothing in the box would give me satisfaction, only remove all purpose to sit, to exist, or to contemplate the very thing I am now. But I am willing to take the chance.

  And if it is to be a complete failure, then I am ready to crash into the bottom of the sea, let all of the emotions I still hold dear sink to the bottom of my heart. I will not be defeated by this end. I will find another addiction, another challenge. The end is the start of a new beginning. No thoughts no dreams no challenges mean nothing. I need fascinations and obsessions. Distractions and addictions. Addictions are our way to trap ourselves in life. Keep us happy as we move on from one to the next, until we become lost in the void. The ever void. Life. A box. I will cross the bridge now.

  It was during that moment of thoughts that I observed the event. The usual collection at two in the morning. A daily routine, and one that I have watched with fascination from the comfort of the steps that lead up to my house. It was as though the thoughts I had were building up to the point where bravery finally washed over me and led me to the mystery. A mystery interrupted once again. I will return, and I will wait. It might be the next day, or even the day after, but I will face my fear and succumb to my obsessions, and solve whatever it is that might be eating me alive. Whatever it is that sits so idly in that red box across the road.

  I should probably set the scene at this moment, having wandered through the vast chasms of my mentality for long enough to discourage any further continuation of my thoughts. The truth of the situation though is that I am broken. Broken to the point of disrepair. I would say I do not know how this fate befell upon my innocent situation of living, but in truth, the fault is entirely my own.

  Her name, changed for the sake of legality and fairness, was Liar. And I loved her. Loved her more than life itself. It was a sad state of affairs that led me to be here so very alone. So alone and allowing my thoughts to disintegrate whatever section of my mind has yet to be consumed by my love for Liar. Saying that, despite some hatred toward the person I so dearly loved, and all fault being my own, it can only be surmised in my renaming of this very special person, that I might be drifting slightly away from what could be considered the truth.

  So, to continue in the setting of this most interesting scene that I find myself wrapped up in—the scene in which a character of sorts, myself, is obsessing about the contents of an ordinary looking red box—I will hereby continue to place that imagery around you.

  I live in Tokyo, Japan. This is my home, for the time being at least. I am not a rich man or from a background of wealth. I decided to leave my home country on a whim, and to pursue a new life as far away from the disease that is known as Europe, specifically England. It is sad, but after living in Japan for a year, England holds no interest to me now, as it was when I lived there for those twenty-nine years.

  It is, or at least it was when I started, around two in the morning. That time has since elapsed, but here from the building that houses my borrowed room that I can at least c
all home for now, I can see a lot of things that somehow disturb me, or at least distract me from the misery I am perhaps becoming more accustomed to with each dying second.

  I watch. I watch it all, everything around me seems strange. My paranoid antics both allow me to drag my mind away from thinking of Liar, and offer me at least something else to occupy me, fascinate me, and stop my time from crumbling with the rest of my fragile mind.

  So, it is here on the steps that I watch, at this time of the morning, every day including Sunday, a set of events occurring.

  It starts, as always, with me sitting and smoking, and drinking. I sit on the third step closest to the world, the steps that lead up to the house I share with the others. On the steps I am shrouded by darkness. I can watch but nobody can see me; except for the occasional orange hue of the cigarette I smoke, illuminating my misery and giving away my location.

  I like to sit and drink red wine here, it is peaceful; except for the periodic shouting from a fire truck, or the odd slow moving car. I just sit and watch. It is recently raining, the season for it, but, in the mid-July heat, the rain is tranquil and cooling and offers a nice meditative distraction to all that is going on in my head.

  Since I lost Liar two weeks ago, I have been making it my routine to sit here at night, to watch, to see, to cry. Here on the steps the life I have is all but forgotten. The blinking green lights of a pedestrian crossing reflecting in shallow pools of water on the road, a relaxing sight, and a thorough distraction from the heavy flow of regular Tokyo traffic.

  It would be fitting to add now that I live in the strangest area of Tokyo. We can call it the slums, though, a far worse word would be more applicable. An area known as Nihonzutsumi, where the impoverished sleep outside, and vending machines selling alcohol are scattered at every available power outlet. Empty plastic cups of nihonshu, Japanese rice wine, litter the streets that are home to burnt out people lost to the world. It is not necessarily a dangerous area. But, there are often scenes that happen here that could not be believed. A part of Japan that is so enshrouded, and for reasons of the past, it remains mostly unseen or unknown.

  Directly across from the steps sits a small sushi restaurant. The owner, the Fat Man, having been watched by me day and night from my desolate home, takes out the sign at ten in the morning. He often leaves the restaurant at hourly intervals, pacing up and down the street. He wears a white hat that indicates a skill in cooking and a white apron; clean and perhaps soaked in bleach the night before.

  It has been two weeks of loneliness for me now, spending my time watching the people in the area. And for two weeks not one customer has entered the sushi restaurant. Its location perhaps the reason for the Fat Man’s own predicament; or something else, something unknown or mysterious that might be at hand.

  At ten in the evening, twelve hours from opening and customerless pacing, the Fat Man takes in his sign and pulls down his shutters. Right after this display, he takes a red box, of metallic composition, and places it in the small alleyway running along the right hand side of his restaurant. The box then sits, waiting in silence. And it is then, after a further four hours have passed, that the event that has become my obsession occurs, and did just occur moments ago.

  A silver truck slowly creeps along the street that houses both my home and the apparent failing restaurant, and stops, directly at the corner that leads to both the alleyway and to the box. A man steps out, dressed in black, and definitely not wearing clothes associated with a work uniform. Baseball cap, black jeans, black shirt. He glances around, over his shoulder, and off into the distance, as if checking to see if somebody is watching. Twice he has glanced at the steps that I take refuge on, but has not noticed me; thanks to me extinguishing my cigarette each day, moments before he arrives.

  The man then walks to the rear of his truck, a big silver truck more modern than any vehicle I have seen before; shining silver and a trailer on the back. He puts on his black gloves then walks toward the red box, peels of its silver lid, and takes out the contents, discreetly. He then climbs the ladder attached to the rear of his truck, and drops whatever object or mystery he retrieved into the trailer, before collecting some other hidden item from inside, which he then silently places in the box. Finally, he refastens the lid and returns to his truck, before driving off just as slowly as he arrived. He will not be seen again for twenty four hours.

  It is this scene that I have allowed myself to become consumed with. I feel that a collection of this sort should not be happening at this late hour. It is whatever might be stored in that box that I have allowed to eat me alive. Perhaps it is a coping method, a way to forget about Liar and move on with my life. But, whatever it is, whatever is contained within that red box is something I long to discover now. Something I long to find out, so that I can sleep peacefully at night, and so that I can forget about all of the things that are here, in my mind, and in the slums, waiting to consume me again. Whatever closure is offered by its contents will not be enough to remove the other doubts that fill the reaches of my mind, for already, another mystery has manifested. A strange housemate.

  2

  It was after a few weeks of being alone and spending far too much time on the steps, that I really got to learn about the people of my house. It was maybe only in the last few days, but time has a way of losing track very quickly when you are as I am. In those days I met those that lived and shared the building, named without rhyme or reason, Plum Ship Building. My home. My home in the Tokyo slums.

  I share the building with twelve others. Thirteen occupants including myself. The building itself has five floors, but our home only sits on three of those. The Plum Ship occupies the third, fourth, and fifth floor. Below, at ground level, the building houses a small Chinese restaurant that I have never bothered to visit. Too close to home, I suppose they say.

  The second floor of the building is unknown to me. It has some paper signs in the window saying Mahjong, so presumably it is related to the Chinese restaurant, and is perhaps a club for gambling and tile based action. I have never seen anyone enter the door to the second floor, which shares its entrance half way up the steps I often perch upon.

  The people that live here with me seldom talk. An occasional nod or a greeting in my direction as we pass, but other than that, we do not talk. We do not cook together or eat together. What acts as our shared space on the third floor, the common area, sits a television, computer, table and chairs, and a very small kitchen. The space is rarely occupied and it would be fair to call it the uncommon area, rather than the social area in our house. The bottom of the steps sees more action or conversation, as the smokers sometimes assume position there; and conversation always starts amongst the smokers.

  I recently started listening to those other housemates during those times I was sitting on the steps. And, despite me taking a vow of spoken silence, for reasons that involve hateful words, I often listened to the stories of others during smoking sessions. It turns out that a few of the other inhabitants, though quiet, seem to be quite nice people.

  The general conversations they have are to gossip about the other guests, which is, I suppose, what I am doing right now. The other housemates come from various backgrounds, and of the thirteen rooms that are encompassed within the Plum Ship, I am aware of only eight of the residents. I will list them all for ease of reference, both for myself and the benefit of others. They are:

  Fifth floor

  505 – Yakuza Guy

  504 – Taiwanese Guy

  503 – Canadian Guy

  502 – Unknown

  501 – Unknown

  Fourth floor

  405 – Myself

  404 – Prostitute

  403 – Old Man

  402 – Baseball Man

  401 – Korean Guy

  Third Floor

  303 – Swedish Girl

  302 – Unknown

  301 – Unknown

  Of the people in my house, those that I have heard communicate the most
have been Canadian Guy, Prostitute, and the two newest members of the house, Taiwanese Guy and Korean Guy. They often discuss what they think of the other guests, but the conversation generally swings to the man in 505, or the thirteenth room of the house. Something about this person seems generally amiss. He is Japanese, perhaps in his late forties, and always stamps his feet when he walks. You can hear him coming from a distance as the sound of stamping feet echoes through the stairs to each floor of the Plum Ship. He wears a white bandana and dresses in clothing that could not closely be considered fashionable. Deteriorating chinos, and a scruffy white vest with various stains that he wears far too low, revealing a forest of chest hair. The man looks dirty. I have never once seen him smile, his face continually painted with despair. He will never greet anyone as they pass him on the stairs or as he comes home and passes the crowd of chatting smokers. He is unusual in every sense.

  One day, Canadian Guy—who I will just add is an English teacher and an alcoholic who has been living in Japan for ten years—saw me waiting on the steps and staring off in the direction of the box. That day, he came and sat beside me and offered me a can of very strong beer. Canadian Guy does like to drink, and often in the late evening or early hours of the morning he has a one-way conversation with me in a state of inebriation. His conversations are usually about how he got arrested again, or how his ex-wife won’t let him see his six-year-old daughter. Always pessimistic, and a real broken man. On the day in question though, he wanted to talk about the man on his floor, the room two away from his, 505, now known as Yakuza Guy.

  He told me that a few days previous he had noticed the door to 505 slightly ajar. His curiosity lead him to the entrance offering a rare opportunity to look inside the room, and what he saw inside that room, the thirteenth room of the Plum Ship, shocked him. Not because the scene therein contained anything that could be considered disturbing, it was in fact the opposite; a room so spotless, so full of minimalism and cleanliness, that Canadian Guy was taken aback by surprise. He said that in the room was a small single bed with perfectly folded sheets, and linen that sparked white. The wooden panelled floor was beautifully cleaned, no trace of dust or hair or anything for that matter. The window was pasted over with newspaper. And, as if as a centrepiece, the only other object was a clothing rack in the middle of the room. The clothing rack was the most mysterious of all objects, because hanging from the rack were five identical black business suits, white shirts, black ties, black folded trousers, and five pairs of polished black shoes. An outfit that I, or no other member of the house had seen him wearing. An unusual sight and another strange mystery of the Plum Ship, or of Nihonzutsumi, or of the Tokyo slums.