Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Room 6

- Room 6 -

It might have been an hour before the taps had returned but this time, with her in my arms, it didn't feel half as bad. We merged into one mass of flesh as the darkness swallowed us and she became my consciousness. We held each other tight the whole time. Like refugees in their last moments in a bomb shelter as shells flew by overhead. We could only clutch each other in a pit below ground while they drilled into our skulls. The earth trembled. Tap, tap, tap, tap. There's no fighting back. I recall the sound of her heels from the beginning of winter and tell her about it to alleviate the torment. She laughs, but only bitterly.

Your time has come, she says when the taps subdue.

For what? I say.

They're coming to get you.

I will find a way out of here.

Don't leave me. Come back to me. Please.

I love you, I won't leave you.

She falls silent, hearing that.

Again, the sky erupts not too long after, in some kind of nuclear scale blast. I can almost feel a physical shockwave through my system. The darkness disappears and immediately we are engulfed in a fiery storm of white light. My ears seem to screech and pop with silence as this happens. Then I squeeze my eyes shut and see nothing as rough hands grab me by the shoulders, hauling me upwards, peeling me away from her. Our sweaty skin separates violently.

I feel as though I'm floating through space, my arms and legs useless from our cramped position, so even when they hit me with what must be a stun baton for good measure, I feel nearly nothing but the same pulsing tingling nerves. The whole while, Shizuka says nothing. I can't even turn around to look at her or see her face for the first time in a long time, or the last time in a long while. She is still a faceless presence formed out of shadow. I hear the black coffin shut. And I begin to wonder if I will ever see her again.

I try to force my eyes open to observe my surroundings but they don't cooperate. I am in constant motion, while my brain feels like it is sloshing around, and I don't know if I'm upright or upside down. I'm not sure if I'm traveling forward or backwards. All I know is that my stomach is constricting, spinning like a laundry machine and I want to throw up.

Eventually, feeling returns to the point where I can feel my feet dragging along a cold concrete floor at an awkward angle and the watering in my eyes subsides. My nausea withdraws slightly, receding tides. I venture to open my eyes and slowly, begrudgingly, they do. They still burn.

Beside me are two suits, one on each side, hoisting me by the armpits, stony-faced, sunglasses, staring straight ahead. They appear blurry to me, because the lights all around - what I presume to be lights - are so entirely bright and hostile, they feel more like laser turrets. It must be the absolute perfect shade of white, no yellow or green tinge. Just white. The most stunning, pure white possible. It dazzles me. This white and black of nothingness. Like all the good and bad of the world compressed into two extremes. The shift in the polarities doesn't follow any transitional protocol.

Other than these two Images, as rear guard, there must be a third, holding a stun baton and probably other weaponry. Beyond our escort, I can make out a long corridor - I can't see the end of it - with no doors, only white walls and white concrete, occasional metal frames and sentries every few meters. They stand unmoving at rapt attention as we pass by. On their belts are black pistols, what look like slim Glocks, the ones Americans use. I can't imagine why they would need guns in Japan or where they had been supplied from, but undoubtedly, this is not a regular police force nor the common gangster. This is likely a government-sanctioned facility. And a very plain and uncompromising one at this rate. There's absolutely nothing of interest to take note of. Everything bobs and blurs in my crippled vision.

I don't try to struggle because I know there's no use. I had come here to face whatever it is I've been running from - I had only been delaying my fate. Even if I do plot an escape, there's no chance to even put up a fight against any of them - I had no prowess in the martial arts nor would that matter. These men have nothing human left in them. Furthermore, I would be running past dozens, maybe hundreds of Glocks, and thousands of bullets, without any doors or cover that I can see. Had one of these guns killed Shirayuki?

I begin to sweat and my muscles tighten at the mere anticipation of pain. I start to have trouble breathing and my skin becomes hypersensitive. I feel the urge to throw up again. Physical, emotional, psychological pain, whatever kind of pain, they eventually end up all the same. Just like the tapping, it digs straight into the brain, becoming paralysis. The signals scream through the body so rapidly, like a geyser of superheated water, it transforms everything into one continuous lockdown of all senses and mental faculty, a pile of mush, until the loss of consciousness. Nevertheless, at the mercy of these suits, I had to endure whatever is coming ahead. This isn't a comfortable notion at all.

They don't speak to each other or to me. They march on with regulated steps, synchronized like toy soldiers and drag me along in between them for what might be a good five minutes. We stop in front of a blank wall abruptly and a hole opens up without prior warning. I had seen no traces of a door frame or any kind of mechanism to operate the door. It just slides open to the left and right without a sound as if it's the simplest and most natural routine ever. They pull me inside. I debate about resisting but I don't move.

The room turns out to be some sort of a lobby, like a waiting room in a hospital ward, with rows of plastic chairs and cold lights overhead. White walls, white floor. There are no displays or posters or bulletin boards, nothing with any information on it. It's almost entirely empty except for three people. One is a little girl, looking to be around seven or so, and another, a steely broad shouldered man in a nice suit, someone who could've been an ace athlete or bodyguard. The last is a boy with red hair and where there might have been piercings are now gaping holes. They don't talk or look anywhere in particular, just straight ahead as if their eyes are tethered onto a rope, but yet they don't seem very focused at all, not comprehending anything.

They force me past them with an unnatural vice grip so powerful I can feel my bones grinding under the pressure. I don't complain and follow. It seems like I don't have to wait. Down a narrower hall, where there is a line of unmarked featureless doors and silver doorknobs, they open one of them. Room 6. It appears to be my room.

There's a chair in the middle of the room, white and stiff, reclining like a dentist's chair. From its arms and footrest spit fat ugly black velcro straps. From its back a long bundle of cords and wires. There's a single flatscreen mounted to the wall. It's blank at the moment. The rest of the room is empty.

It's after they had clamped me down to a seat, injected me with some sort of full body tranquilizer and slapped electrodes onto my head when the first session begin.

Then the world around me and the world within me exploded again and again.