The Marine woke up being faced against a wall of darkness. Panic took over his mind. Did he become blind? His thoughts were too jumbled around for him to answer his own question. Admist the dark he made an effort to get himself on his feet, but he kept himself motionless. Even more confused, he checked to see if he could still feel his limbs. Thankfully he could. Relief calmed him down for a moment. One less problem to care about.
There was something above pressing him against the ground behind, blocking the air and his vision. Under the sound of his own heavy breath, he moved his left arm around in the hopes of freeing it. After a few moments, his arm was outside his entrapment. He did the same with his right arm, only this time, once he freed it, a soft but viscous material touched his fingertips. Ignoring it, the Marine made an effort to remove whatever was pressing him against the ground. A feeling of a hundred of ants crawling under his skin made him weep in pain as he tried. Finally, he managed to lift the object off his body,the sunlight blinding him for a moment. He moved his head to the side to know what was trapping him, the discovery made him freeze in horror.
It was a corpse. His shirt was a mess of colors. The green-ish tones of the fabric turned into a deep red. It was ripped with bullet holes. Eyes expressed a feeling of confusion mixed with pain. It made the Marine turn his back,in disgust.
The trench corridor welcomed him with a dirty row of dead soldiers and civilians lying in the tight space. Heads blown wide open, gibs decorating the ground and the walls, eyes dangling by the cord down their face, knives jammed against ribs and throats. A few even had a whole rifle muzzle impaled in their chests. The awful stench had a mixture of sweat, blood and dirt. The Marine felt like vomiting, his vision started to become blurry, thoughts engulfing one another in panic. His confused mind could only think of one thing: Escape.
Without any other way to get out of that trench, he started to walk down that narrow corridor, in hopes of finding somewhere where the walls were small enough for his weak body to boost himself up. At slow, dragging steps, he pushed. His lungs filled with the scent of the blood of all of the dead as he made his way through the confined space. Japanese, Americans, civilians, soldiers, children. It made him lose his footing, but he had to push on. He started to pay attention to the sounds above. In the distance, an air raid siren depressingly echoed it's cries, like a mother warning her children of danger. Someone running while whispering unintelligible words. An occasional sound of a bullet being shot. A Japanese Zero airplane flew over him, being chased by an allied fighter plane, their engine sounds engulfing everything in the vicinity, as they chased each other. He could only imagine how apocalyptic the surface looked.
After a few minutes wandering through those tight corridors, a flaw in the trench wall revealed itself a few meters from him, looked like it's top was blown off by a grenade. He found a bit of strength and boosted himself over the wall. Getting topside, the Marine stopped for a bit to get his thoughts in order. Disjointed memories came to him. The words of a rugged sounding man echoed in his head, with statements like "Take the main islands", "heavy resistance", and the sound of sea waves hitting against the wooden surface of the boat he was in, hitting elbows and shoulders with an entire company of other marines like him, holding their most precious M1 Garands and Thompsons like they were their own child. Most of them were young. Too young.
The Sun's burning rays brought the Marine back to reality, being welcomed back by a melting sensation on his head. He took a good look in his surroundings. He was in a street,or what was left of it, as piles and more piles of rubble decorated the once-was walkway. The houses were full of holes, their eastern architecture violated by the war. A few Japanese civilians and American soldiers lied on the ground among the rubble and dirt forming a trail, while water flowing from broken sewage pipes underneath the street mixed with the blood pools the bodies left. Down the street, the tail of a plane made an arc over it, the nose had dived deep down a house. The monochromatic imagery made by the dust only made the Marine wish he could get out of there as quick as possible. He stood, grabbed a helmet from one of the dead American marines, and advanced, stunned.
He didn't know where to go, or what to do. Where did he wanted to escape to? That place was like a maze. Maybe he could run to a mountain and stay there for a few days, but how? He needed to get out of there. In another street, he witnessed another grim landmark caused by the aftermath of the war. A dead young girl, pinned down on the ground by an another dead marine. Her sailor uniform was ripped apart, while the marine was full of holes in his back. An uncooked grenade lied next to them. The Marine moved along, with his eyes closed.
Turning into another corner, the Marine stopped for a while. He felt heavy, so he decided to get rid of the bag on his back. Before discarding it, he took a look at it's contents inside. A lighter. That could be useful. He also picked up his canteen and drank a bit. He felt better for an instant. Looking around,he focused in a broken mirror on the ground. Looking at it, he saw what a mess he was. His young face turned grey, only his vacant eyes stand out, his clothes went from green to brown and grey. The USMC symbol on his breast pocket was faded out, and his shirt was missing a few buttons. He also noticed that the satchels on his hip were full of holes and unusable. With a sigh, he ditched them on the floor. As he moved his head upwards, she appeared.
In the middle of the street, a figure stand among the dead and destruction with a virtuous and umpreocupied aura surrounding her. A woman, wearing a stylish purple dress and donning a white cap on her beautiful golden hair strolled around the dead bodies rotting on the dirt road. The frills on her expertly sewed dress slowly dragged around the rubble and the faces of pain on the floor,while her steps with her red high heels moved in impossibly light and elegant movements, like she was consciously mocking all of humanity's knowledge about gravity. It looked like she was floating, a sign of superiority. In her gloved hands, a parasol protected her against the Sun.
The Marine, in wonder, took a glance on her face. Her face had all the perfect measurements and features, like a delicate porcelain doll masterfully crafted. Her yellow hair would elegantly fall on her eyes, hiding her stare. It haunted him how uncanny, yet beautiful, that woman looked. Like a light in the middle of darkness, she stood out among that desolated and death-ridden landscape, her colorful presentation acting in a high contrast against the grayish and depressive tones the Japanese town showed to him until now.
She disappeared behind a still-standing wall, making him dumbfounded.
He got up and ran to the junction to see where she was going, but she was gone without a trace, in her place, a landscape of destroyed wood and metal forming piles adorned the street. Confused, he returned to his belongings. He decided on what to take: A combat knife, a first aid kit, a zippo lighter, and his canteen. Stuffing all into his pockets, he carried on.
No matter how much he moved, he couldn't outrun the destruction. The smell of smoke from some dying fires around the town was still strong, the cinders still traveled in the air and landed on his face and blouse. There wasn't anything alive in that place, no plants, no animals, no people. The land suffered so much during war, it gave up on living. Hope was lost.
After avoiding some dead bodies and twisted metal, the Marine found himself in the front of what appeared to be a religious shrine, on fire. He was familiar with it, there was a similar shrine in Okinawa. A faint curiosity to see if anything was still standing inside in the aftermath formed within him. He took a peek inside, and something caught him by surprise.
Above the entrance gate and the small stairs, there was a small yard, where that elegant woman stood, next to the shrine. Her golden hair was still clean as the last time he saw her in the junction, no sign of cinders or dust or anything in it, like she was a projection realized on the battlefield. Her dress was also in a similar state, her uncanny beauty and mannerisms still untarnished by the leftovers of the war.
She stared at the small shrine in flames, as if she was analyzing a painting, with such focus and concentration, listening to the bell at the entrance, still untouched and the wood creaking by the fire. Small fires and and smoke dots would fall all around the entrance in a dance, but still avoiding landing on her. He stood at the entrance, trying to decipher what was she thinking. Then, she shook her head, in a negative movement. Apparently without noticing him, she went behind the shrine, disappearing in the shadows. The Marine blinked his eyes in disbelief. She seemed unnatural, like she didn't belong in that place, but in some random fantasy book. That was the second time he crossed paths with that figure. He got out of there.
It didn't take long before they crossed paths once again, this time, she stopped by a house, intact from war, as if it was a illusion. She went inside it. He couldn't believe how that house was still intact and unfazed, especially since everything in the vicinity was rundown and broken. It stuck out like a sore thumb.
He approached the small gate of the house. It was unlocked. An otherworldly rush of air coming from inside the house passed through his skin, as he opened the slide door.
Everything was in a perfect state, the windows being left open, leaving a delicate veil of sunlight to illuminate the whole living room, the smoke of aromatic candles floating from the small table in the middle of the room. Something on the wall in front of the Marine stand out. A painting, made in wood, showed a green, lively forest, where young-looking girls, some with wings on their backs, were decipted flying around, playing, while on the ground, a human-like figure with 9 fox-like tails was shown crouching with her arms open, greeting a equally weird human-like child, with cat ears on her scalp. A familiar woman dressed in purple with a parasol hiding her face stand next to the fox-woman. While the Marine stared at it, the sound of a wooden slide door opening was heard, letting a breeze of hot air travel through the corridor next to him. Feeling like a trespasser invading holy ground, he cleaned the sweat in his forehead and walked down the corridor, with the wind whistling through the door inviting him to investigate, and the sounds of wood creaking under his boot following along.
As the Marine pushed the door to the side, a small backyard was revealed, with a small swing quietly moving with the wind, along with a flowerbed on the opposite side, against the walls of the house. In the middle, a mattress was left open on the grass, with a bunch of items neatly placed on it. He could have sworn he heard a child laughing along the metallic and rustic sound of the swing moving with the wind. He was left confused, as who would organize a picnic during such times.
At the limits of the backyard, the foot of a hill stood, with some trees hanging from their roots in that inclined hillside in a clumsy manner. A trail carved on the dirt showed itself between two trees.
Going to the mountains and staying there until the dust settled was a good idea, or at least the best possible idea at the moment. The Marine couldn't shake the feeling that something was inside that house, watching him taking the next step. He looked back to the house, just to make his paranoid side more relieved. Nothing. He sighed and shook his head. His mind was coming back, the haziness and confusion wearing off.
Wishing to get out of that place once and for all, he marched onto the trail, paying attention for any surprises Tojo could had left for him. Although cautious and a bit scared, a glimmer of hope rose in him.
Anything was better than that horrible place.