Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Old Man and the House

It's rather large, with what seems to be an infinite amount of blank doors, stairs and floors up on top of each other with no end, a forever M.C. Escher. I can't make out the top of this winding staircase - it climbs up and up. At some point, it disappears into the third vanishing point above.

The house is made of ebony and mahogany. Rich wood, but everything is dark, ominous. There is no artificial illumination and only open windows shed some sort of pale white moonlight. When I look through the window all I can see is a moon so round and flat against a black sky, it appears fake, as if a child's sticker. The place seems to have been totally abandoned for a long time. I feel at a loss like I had been abandoned as well and I tremble in fear.

I'm simply in a strange house, I say to myself. I try to recall when I came across this house, how or why I had entered or who exactly I am, but nothing comes to mind. My mind is empty like this place. I end up wandering slowly through the floors for a long time - how long I'm not sure. I dare not speak, afraid someone would hear me. Instead, my footsteps and the pounding of my heart echoes against every wooden surface like gurgling thunder. I keep my breath shallow but in the silence I can even hear that.

Though every time I brace myself and cower in case something is awaiting me on the other side, whenever I open a door, it opens into a blank room. Its inhabitants must have moved out long ago. There is even a thick layer of dust on the floor. Whenever I take a step, my feet leave black marks against the dust I displaced. Only the moon gazes in, ever indifferent. No matter which angle or which room, I find the moon outside like a ghost child.

Once I've finished with the first floor I move up to the second. The first floor is composed of all the same rooms, same dimensions and design. All are empty. On the second, they are empty as well. In the very last room however there's a bag of trash that sits in the middle.

This bag of trash is as ordinary as possible. Sitting as casually as possible. Right dead center of the room. A clear bag, all its contents visible. Inside seems to be crumpled paper, empty take out boxes, tissue, flyers, a condom wrapper or two. I wonder about its significance but I absentmindedly seem to take out the garbage and set it down in the hall. I didn't think too much about it.

On the third floor, there's the same situation, except instead of one room with trash, there are two. Two bags of trash. This confuses me for a moment, who on earth would discard two bags of trash in the middle of two separate rooms? Is there no garbage disposal service here? For a while I am standing there, preoccupied with the thought of these bags at my feet and fail to notice a cell phone in each. When I do see them, I dig through the loose pieces of paper and wrappers and pull them out. They look perfectly fine, new in fact, gleaming and shining in the moonlight. One is black and the other, white. I compare them and find them to be the same touchscreen models. Why had they been thrown out? Perhaps it had been a mistake? Surely, it would fetch a great deal of money. I turn them on. And they come to life, blinking and blazing with newfound energy. Nothing seems to deter their elated release from sleep. As if they had been waiting hundreds of years for this moment. But hardly would they realize their resurrection is to such a mundane world.

They work fine, and don't seem to have any saved contacts or prior information. There aren't any SIM cards in them so they are of no immediate use. Looking around, I find no one nearby - not surprisingly - so I pocket them. One man's trash is another's treasure.

These two bags I deposit at the stairs so it would be easier for whoever would take out the trash. Maybe it might be me in the end, but that would be if I head back downstairs. For now, I would be climbing up higher.

Again on the third floor, likewise, there are three bags of trash, but no cell phones or anything of value from what I can see. In a robotic fashion, I somehow take it on myself to make sure to collect all the garbage and deposit them at the stairs on each level. No one else is going to do it, I had reasoned. It wasn't until what might have been the tenth or eleventh floor - by which my body had grown sore, my legs trembling from walking - that I find something I think I recognize. I couldn't be sure, but there's something at the back of my mind, a faint nudge.