?/?
The Fog
.
The path before me twisted and turned, but there was really only one way forward.
I couldn't see the bridge for the mists, but following the rails was easy. I kept walking, forwards and upwards on this metal scaffold, into the yellow swirl of fog. It was my only option, of course.
The sky rippled a beautiful red and black, but it wasn't reachable. It was the only thing the fog couldn't touch- and naturally, if it couldn't reach it, then I certainly couldn't. The fog was ubiquitous. It was my reality to wander the infinite fogbank.
The world was sky and fog and shadows; eternal and immutable. Against infinity, a moment is useless. That was why I didn't keep memories. This was a world where nothing worth preserving happened; there was no growth, no change. Stagnation defined this worthless realm, an eternity of perpetual peace drowned in the fog.
"Help me... please. Help..."
A small, human, sound.
I stopped.
"Hello," I greeted.
It was a woman- small, huddled in fear and blind within the fog, but alive. Her whimpering quieted when I approached, and she looked up at me with small eyes. I didn't know if she could see me or not.
"Hello yourself," she muttered, shaking her head and looking away. She seemed a lot stronger all of a sudden- as if the presence of someone else gave her power. "So, are you here to finish the job 'I' started?"
I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. She smiled bitterly and slowly got to her feet.
"Who are you?" I decided to ask. Identities were important. She wasn't supposed to be here, but I still didn't know who she was.
"Well... that's the question, isn't it?" she muttered more to herself than me, shaking her head. "I'm Mayumi Yamano. But that doesn't matter, I guess."
I didn't know what to say to that either.
"...It's just a name. Who cares about a name?" she muttered, walking over to the guard rail. "Or a career? Or the media? The police? It's all bullshit."
the mists were thinning again. Sometimes the fog faded, but it always came back shortly.
What did the world look like when the fog wasn't around?
"It's just a facade. A facade the entire fucking world wears," she muttered, "So they can protect themselves. From each other. Because on the inside, we're all the same. And when that mask cracks..."
she laughed, but there wasn't any mirth in it. I could see the entire path now- twining and twining like a worm round a piece of fetid meat as it hugged the walls of the building. Far in the distance, I could see shapes and formless things, scurrying to stay in the fog's embrace.
"You should leave. The shadows are getting agitated," I said. Humans couldn't survive if they met a shadow. Without their facade, they would be defenseless. That's why it was dangerous for them when the fog lifted.
"It's too late. Far too late," Mayumi Yamano muttered. She turned.
Her eyes were empty; the last vestiges of strength had fled, taken along with the receding fog.
She leaned back against the metal railing.
"I'm tired of wearing a mask," she said, voice cracking.
And then I watched her fall
into the evaporating yellow fog as it vanished, briefly revealing the black just beyond. Darkness and masks: laughing masks, crying masks, angry masks, cruel masks, kind masks. Human faces that stared out of the inky shadows of the world.
I heard a cry of grief; a wailing dirge from the uncountable to a single extinguished life that pieced my chest with empathetic heat. I was being ripped apart, parts of me that I never knew existed pulled in opposite extremes-
Horror. I felt horror, and disgust and sadness and why did this happen?
Then I heard and felt no more.
.
4/11
Inaba
.
Rain.
I felt rain.
Sounds. Loud screams- but alarms, not people. Police.
Talking. So much talking around me. I couldn't understand a word. I wanted to, but I couldn't.
I opened my eyes. I was staring upwards into a cloudy sky. Grey. White.
The clouds were grey and white.
I closed my eyes.
.
But I remembered that sky.