Excerpt: Tooryanse

I’m currently lying on a slab in a mortuary in Hokkaido. When I was a child, Hokkaido was always the place we’d go to for our holidays. I never in a million years thought I’d end up dead here. But here I am, very much dead, cold to the touch, waiting for them to do my post-mortem. The room is grey and cold, much like my skin, and there are metal instruments everywhere. Most of them I couldn’t tell you a thing about, except for the scalpels, which, if I were still alive, would be infinitely more painful than they’re going to be later on. The room is probably higher than it is wide, although this is partially hidden by the fact that the containers lining the walls all have, or have had, dead people in them. I was in one myself till about half an hour ago. I can tell that by the clock on the wall.

I can’t remember how I died, nor how long I’ve been dead for. In fact, the only thing that I do know for sure is that I am dead. That is a definite fact. I cannot move, and I think that the fact that I’m floating above my own body is a dead giveaway (sorry, bad joke). I hope that, by telling you my story like this, I’ll be able to figure out exactly how I died. The coroner will only be able to tell me so much. Only I know the exact details, and most of those I can’t remember. For one, I’d like to know why my body hasn’t been cremated yet. Taro used to tell me that the whole point of therapy was to make people remember what their brains didn’t want them to. So I guess telling you my story is my own perverted form of therapy.

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I dreamed about a giant Daruma doll. And by giant, I mean it was taller than Tokyo Tower. It was huge and round and fat, and the only thing I could think to do in this dream was push it over. So I ran at it again and again and again, but with no success. Every time, it would nudge slightly and I would hear this deep, booming, sinister laugh coming from all around, echoing through my ears. And every time I heard the laugh, it only made me more determined, and I would run at it harder. But the harder I ran at it, the louder it laughed, and the more frustrated I became. It felt like it was becoming an everlasting circle, a cycle of events from which I knew there would be no escape. No justice.

“Jiro Tsukada.”

I stopped suddenly in my tracks, halfway through another lunge at the giant red Daruma. Looking around frantically, I tried in vain to work out where the harsh and unfamiliar voice had come from. But there was nothing around. All around me, all I could see was a vast, everlasting, white space. I looked down. White. Up. White. Left. White. Right. White. The only things here were me and the Daruma. But the Daruma couldn’t have spoken, I thought to myself. It’s not real. It’s a wish doll. Wish dolls don’t speak.

“Jiro Tsukada, look up.”

The booming voice spoke again. I felt nothing but fear, and I felt as though I was frozen to the spot, unable to move. I tried to lift my feet to run. I didn’t know where I would run to. Anywhere would have been fine, there had to be an end to the vast emptiness around me. But my feet remained locked in place. I tried in vain to pull myself free with my arms, but it was no use. There was nowhere for me to go anymore. Finally, when I realised that there was no point in trying at all, that there was nothing I could do and nowhere I could go, I looked up.

I guess I should have known what to expect. This was a dream after all. Only really strange things happen in dreams. But as I looked up in that dream, anything could have happened. But because I looked up, because I chose to knock my head back and look up as high as I could, the voice laughed.

“Good boy. You’re going to play, Jiro Tsukada. We’re going to play a game. You looked up. That means you want to play.”

I shuddered as I looked at the face of the Daruma doll. A black spot was slowly forming over its left eye, huge and dark and deep. It looked as though a child was drawing it with an invisible pen. The lines became smudged and blured and the eye wasn’t a perfect sphere, but soon, it was complete. And as soon as it was, this lone unblinking eye looked downwards to stare down upon me. And as it did, I felt a sudden wave of dizziness overcome me, and I stumbled backwards. But, because my legs were frozen to the spot, the only thing that happened was that I fell backwards, landing painfully on my backside. As I winced in pain, the booming, yet strangely familiar voice told me one final, definite fact.

“This game will only end when one of us dies.”

And then, I woke up screaming.