HAZE

[written as an assignment for English class]


Haze


Where I lay, the sun rises and sets without occasion, the days pass without significance or meaning- I am just waiting to die. The clothes in my back are nothing more than a few shreds of cloth, worn down and destroyed from years of accumulated grime and dirt. It's all a part of me now, a second layer of skin that keeps me detatched from the rest of the human race. I sit in my abode listening to the footsteps of their leather shoes and the whine of their cars. Sunlight, fresh air, hope; that is their world,more that is no longer mine. My world died with my family.

Sometimes, when the night is deep in its dark mysterious shadows and it seems like the world has been frozen in its place, I hear his voice. The voice of my son calling out to me and begging me to save him. It grips my heart and clenches it tight, ripping at the tendons and hanging it out to dry. The pain is so intense that I consider ending my own life in search of relief. I cover my ears with my withered hands, praying for the voices to stop and for the pain to subside. Alas, my prayers go unheard and my little boy continues to cry in the still night air. His voice leads me out of my little confinement, and I step out of the murky waters and emerge from under the stone structures to return to the world I had left behind. It's terrifying to be so close to reality- I could reach out my fingers and greet it like an old friend. I'm so close. My son and wife are waiting for me just beyond the horizon, forgiving and calling for me with their arms wide open. I take one step into the ivory moonlight, and the illusion is shattered. My son's voice breaks off into silence, and glow of the moon becomes a spotlight, and all I can see before me is darkness. In the moment, I see myself for what I am- a monster. And I return to where I belong, far from the eyes of unsuspecting passerbys, blending into the shadows.

This is how I have lived my life, until the day the haze returned.

I was having another night of restless sleep: blood splattered across the dark backdrop of my closed eyelids, the sound of clothes being ripped apart. It was all part and parcel of the nightmares that played on repeat in my mind for the last 10 years. Normally, I would wake up panting just as the skin of my wife's neck began to split at the end of a long-bladed knife. But that morning, it was the smell of death that stirred me from my dreams. It filled the air around me, curling around my body and seeping into my bloodstream. It was the smell of smoke, destruction and murder. I trashed around,thinking that I was stuck in my dreams. I tried to force myself awake to escape from the suffocating stench. The smell of the smog was all too familiar, and it unearthed all the images that I had spent years trying to bury underneath my heartache. Inhale-the steady beat of the soldier's boots against concrete as they marched into my village, yellingg foreign words and setting out home ablaze. Inhale-the feel of my wife's fingers losing their grip on my arms as they dragged her away. Inhale- the animal look in the eyes of a Japanese soldier right before he slit my son's throat. Inhale- the sound of the uh human howl that escaped my lips just before I passed out. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale. I couldn't save them then, I can't save them now.

Just like the ghost of my dead wife and son, the haze is a part of me now. It is the monster lurking underneath my bed that I can't escape, digging into my skin with its razor shar talons. It is all so clear now- the blood red circle in the middle of the white Japanese flag hanging high above the bodies of my family, the haze in the air that is all that is left of what I once called home.