Brendan opened his eyes but everything remained black – so black that he wondered if he’d gone blind.

Pain started to register in different parts of his body.  A weight crushed his legs, a sadistic pressure twisted back his spine and an edge cut deep into his left collarbone.  The only part of him he could move was his head, and when he shifted that his left temple cracked against a surface inches away in the blackness.

Then he remembered the moments before the blackness.  He’d been standing in an old Japanese street, surrounded by wooden-and-stone facades.  He tried to take a photograph of an izakaya.  Above its awning was a painted sign showing a zigzag of geese rising from a lake beside Mount Fuji, while under the awning hung an immense red lantern.   He suddenly realised that though he was holding the camera steady, the image in the viewfinder was shaking.  Puzzled, he lowered the camera and just then masonry started crashing onto the street around him.

“Oh Jesus,” said Brendan aloud.  “It was an earthquake.”

In the blackness to the right of his head, a voice said, “Hello?”  There was another crack of pain as his head jerked in fright and struck the surface nearby.

*

“I’m sorry,” said the voice.  “Did I frighten you?”

A feverish excitement possessed Brendan.  “Are you a rescuer?” he babbled.  “I must be close to you!  If you dig into this rubble, you’ll find me!”

The voice sighed.  “I’m afraid I’m not above the rubble.  I’m trapped beneath it, like you are.”

Brendan’s disappointment suddenly felt much worse than the pain wracking him.  “Trapped?  Completely?”

“I can’t move.  The front wall of the izakaya building toppled onto the street.  It came down on both of us.  What about you?  Can you move?”

“Only my head.”  He realised he could shift his right arm too.  It was lodged in the same cavity that surrounded his head, the cavity through which he was speaking to the voice’s owner.  “And one arm.  That’s all.”

Then he thought about the street again.  “That’s strange.  I don’t remember anyone being near me when that building collapsed.”

“I was in the izakaya,” the voice explained, “but I ran outside when the earthquake started.  I was stupid.  During earthquakes you should keep off the streets because there’s debris falling from the buildings.  Anyway, you were the last thing I saw – a foreign tourist with a camera.”

Brendan wondered if the voice was male or female.  It sounded more female now because it’d become soft and coaxing, as if trying to persuade him that what it was saying was true. 

Something else troubled him.  “For a Japanese person, your English is exceptional.”

“Thank you,” replied the voice.  “I have studied very hard.”

*

Later, though he remained in the same twisted position, Brendan noticed a change.  The right side of his face was hot.  Around his head, the air seemed to contain an acrid smokiness.

“What’s happening?” he demanded.

“This isn’t good,” said the voice.  “Things are burning.”

“Burning?”

“This is an old neighbourhood.  That’s why things collapsed so easily.  The houses were traditional ones, made with lots of wood.  And it was the worst time for an earthquake – midday, while people were cooking lunch.  Gas cookers, flames…  So now the wood in the rubble is burning.”

Brendan fancied he heard a distant sound, muffled but shrill.  “Oh God,” he moaned, “I think that was another person trapped.  Screaming – maybe the fire’s reached them.”

For the first time the voice sounded afraid.  “Actually, it may reach me soon.  Where I’m lying is very hot now.  Listen.  You said you can move your arm?”

“My right arm, yes.”

“You’re on my left.  And my left hand is free too…  But…”  The voice was weakening.  “It’s becoming so hot around me…”

Brendan realised he didn’t just perceive the fire’s heat.  He saw a greenish light penetrate the blackness to the right of him.  “Don’t give up,” he pleaded.  “I’m sure there are rescuers searching for us…  They could find us at any moment…”

“I’m so frightened,” whispered the voice.  “If you could hold my hand, it would be a comfort for me.”

Brendan’s right hand scrabbled through the blackness.  “Wait…  I’ll find you.”

He managed to grasp something.  Then, peering into the green light, he realised it didn’t flicker, like firelight did.  It glowed like phosphorescence.  He also realised that the partly-slimy, partly-hairy thing he was holding didn’t feel like a hand.

*

A rescuer was exploring the rubble close to a fierce fire – a mangled red lantern lying there suggested it’d been the site of an izakaya – when he saw a camera lying on the ground too.  Its strap vanished under a slab of broken concrete.

He called over several more rescuers and together they dug into the rubble until they found the big painted sign from the izakaya.  Beneath that was a cavity, into which protruded a dust-covered male head and arm.  They wrestled away fallen blocks and beams and freed the man’s body from under them.  Because the izakaya sign was the same size and shape as a stretcher, they laid him on top of it and used it to carry him along the devastated street. 

The man’s right arm hung over the sign’s edge and dragged something along the ground.  Eventually, it slipped out of his hand and was left lying amid the debris – a putrid thing exuding long fibrous strands, like a dead jellyfish or a rotted section of scalp.

The rescuers took him to a clear area of the street where injured people were getting treatment.  As they lowered the makeshift stretcher, the first rescuer heard the man murmur something and he crouched beside him.  He saw how, beneath the dust, the cast of the man’s face suggested he was a foreigner, an American or European.

Then the man’s eyes opened and the rescuer sprang back, shocked at the greenness that glowed out of them.

____________________________

©2011 Jim Mountfield

James was halfway up the stairs when he saw the dragon.   Bright green scales covered its zig-zagging body.  Talons thrust out of its claws.  Fiery points of light shone from its eyes.  In the cavity between its jaws, its tongue writhed like a little dragon itself.
 
And the dragon laughed.  Yes, contained within the edges of the window, it was definitely laughing at him.
 
James wondered why he hadn’t noticed the stained-glass design until he’d reached the mid-point of the staircase, where the stairs twisted round and the window sat in the wall above.   Presumably it was because the clouds had moved outside, allowing some sunlight to penetrate.  This had brightened the coloured glass – bringing the dragon to life, so to speak.
 
The girl came up the stairs behind him.  At the sight of the dragon she stopped and took hold of his hand.  “I like this place,” she said.  “You chose well.”
 
James was relieved but he tried to sound flippant.  “Despite this big scary thing climbing the stairs towards our bedroom?”
 
“Especially with this.  Anyway, it isn’t scary.  It’s laughing.”
 
The room impressed her too  – the bed with its tapering wooden corner-posts, the walnut sideboard with its bowl of fruit and vase of sunflowers, the floorboards with their varnished finish.   She placed her bag on the bed, went and opened the door into the bathroom, and said:

“Wow!”
 
James came up behind her and, trying to keep himself from trembling, slid his arms around her sides and clasped his hands in front of her waist.  Above her red hair he saw that the bathroom looked as good as it did in the website photos.   Black-and-white Art Deco tiles on the floor and walls, a blue Victorian bathtub, a sink with long brass taps, a pewter basin and jug on a chest beside the toilet.
 
“This,” she said, “is going to be a lovely weekend, James.”
 
As he hugged her tightly, James wondered how he’d ever managed to get so lucky.
 
But then he found something else to worry about.  He realised he needed to use that bathroom – and the old guesthouse, charming though it was, didn’t seem to be well soundproofed.
 
“I’ll be a minute,” he said and closed the bathroom door on her.  He studied himself in the mirror that occupied the wall above the sink, trying to take heart from what he saw.  His hair as yet had more brown than grey.  His brow was only grazed, not furrowed, with lines.  His jawline hadn’t disappeared.
 
“I’m not,” he whispered, “old.”

Then, unable to delay it any longer, he went to the toilet.  He lowered his trousers, sat on the toilet seat and tried to empty his bowels as slowly, gently and quietly as possible. 
 
Suddenly he felt a violent shift of wind inside him.  He managed to grab the cistern-chain and tug it before the wind exited and made its terrible noise.   The toilet flushed loudly, prompting James to change tactics.  Desperately, he squeezed it all out as fast as he could, while the cistern made enough noise to cover the farting and splashing. 
 
It worked – everything was out before the cistern quietened.  He sighed with relief.
 
James cleaned himself, did up his trousers and re-flushed the toilet.  He couldn’t smell anything but he didn’t take any chances.  The room was equipped with a can of air freshener and he sprayed it around him.  Above the bath was a window and he opened that too.  Then, cursing whichever hotelier had invented the en suite bathroom, he returned to the bedroom. 
 
She’d taken off her green overcoat and he could see the tightly-fitting clothes underneath – the wraparound skirt that highlighted the lines of her slim-but-shapely thighs and buttocks, the silk tunic that showed the perfect curves of her breasts.  Again, James marvelled at his luck.
 
She said, “I need to use the bathroom too,” and went through and shut the door.
 
Half-a-minute later, the noises started in the bathroom.  James heard a huge, long rasping sound and then a series of shorter but more explosive ones.  Disbelievingly, he went to the door.  While the farting continued, he heard other things.  There were hoarse, grunting noises, suggesting an animal in great throes of effort.  Also, there were shrill, scraping noises that made him think of fingernails, raking across a blackboard – or indeed talons, raking across bathroom tiles.  He noticed a shocking smell too, seeping out past the edges of the door.  Sulphur.
 
Unable to bear it, James wrenched the bathroom door open.  But suddenly the vile noises and vile smell vanished.  The bathroom, he discovered, was empty.
 
*
 
“Table for one?” asked the bespectacled middle-aged lady who was the guesthouse’s proprietor.
 
“That’s right,” said James.
 
“Sleep well?”

“Very well, thanks.”
 
He had slept well, despite the dream – if it’d even been a dream.  But he couldn’t think of any other explanation for the sense of deja-vu that’d troubled him.  It was the first time his company had sent him on a sales trip to this city, so he definitely hadn’t been in the guesthouse before.  Why then did he have the feeling of having stayed here another time, in other circumstances?
 
Circumstances not of business, but of pleasure.  Circumstances involving a companion…  A woman.  But he couldn’t remember anything more definite than that.
 
James studied the back of hand.  These days, the veins in it looked hideously prominent.  And how long ago since he’d last been with a woman?  He sighed.  It must’ve been a dream.  One he’d nearly, but not wholly, forgotten.
 
The lady brought him breakfast on a tray.  Just then the sun emerged from behind some clouds and through the dining-room doorway he saw the hallway brighten with greenish light.
 
“That stained-glass window in the stairwell,” he said to the lady, “is very beautiful.”
 
“Yes.  All our guests remark on that.”
 
“But why is it laughing?”
 
The lady thought about it.  “According to the story – it likes to play jokes on people.”   

__________________________

©2011 Jim Mountfield