Dreams

Ryan dreams.

            He dreams of a little boy just a few months shy from nine years old.

            He lives in a quaint little village in the Japanese countryside where Western influence is practically nonexistent. The little boy lives with Mother and Father and Grandmother and Grandfather and a little dog he called “Sheep” because when he was much younger, he didn’t know the difference and as he got older it didn’t really matter.

            The little boy could remember a time before this, when it was just him and Mother and Father living many, many miles away in a loud and bright-lit city in a home with a TV and a radio and a telephone.

            Almost everyday, someone would say something about Father. It was usually Grandmother, berating him for being such a failure and shame to the family for trying to make it in a place called “New York”. And almost everyday, his father would just stay silent and leave the house, coming back many hours stinking of sake and cheap beer.

            One day, he never came back home.

            It wasn’t like the little boy didn’t have a pleasant life. The village was fun, and he was treated well enough. He got along well with the other kids and he learned his school lessons well.

            When he got back home from school, Grandmother would tell him the tales of the Tengu that paraded around in the forests that would swoop down and take him up if he wasn’t a good boy with their sharp finger-like talons and beaks. She would tell about the Bakemono that would come up from the ground and gobble him whole if he didn’t listen to Mother and Grandfather like a good boy should. She told him about the tales of the disgruntled spirits and the various things you should do to soothe their tormented souls and be grateful he wasn’t one. She told him about the Yomi, and the thousand hells, and the Kuei-jin that stayed in the shadows, but waited for the day you would wonder into them.

            Then, she would say, you would never find your way out.

            Ryan dreams.

            He dreams of a little boy just a few months shy from nine years old.

            He is now in a large wicker basket that stinks of the fish Mother would bring up from the nearby river. He is trembling so violently, yet trying to keep so still. His knees are tucked to his chest and despite the fact that sounds of the wet slurping and rending of human bodies and the shrieks of the still living are so loud, he can mostly only hear his own heartbeat hammering away in the darkness.

            The little boy wonders how come the monster cannot hear his heart, and find him like that, then tear it out of his chest and eat it to still the beating. Maybe, the little boy thinks, the monster is playing with him, saving him for last.

            The little boy was right.

            The sound of something wet and heavy dropped on the wooden floor, what the little boy would never know was the remains of Grandmother’s arm, and then heavy, hulking steps began to approach the little room the wicker basket was in. The little boy could only close his eyes and hope that if it was his time to die, it would be quick.

            He had seen the monster’s initial attack on Grandfather and he didn’t want to suffer through its long, distended teeth tearing through his skin. The look and screams of Grandfather told him all he needed to know.

            Closer, closer the monster came and with one horrible wail, it picked up the basket in its dirt, mud-encrusted and blood-matted arms and flung it through the flimsy rice-paper wall. The top of the basket flew in one direction, the basket going the other. The boy shrieked in horror and surprise as he was airborne, then shrieked again as he hit the ground, tumbling halfway out of the basket. He looked up in time to see the maddened eyes of his father beneath the tangle of crusted hair.

            And then, the monster that was no longer his father ran at him, distended jaw opened wide, dirty, horribly sharp nails outstretched.

            Ryan dreams.

            He dreams of a little boy just a few months shy from nine years old.

            He is now watching two green streaks race over his head and at the monster, sparking and smoking like cheap pyrotechnics, the odor of burnt flesh and ash filling the room. As they hit, two things happened: the monster was flung back as if those green things were sledgehammer blows to the chest, and the two green streaks turned into green glows, then fluttered down, the glow fading from the two sheets of normal looking rice paper that were now on the ground.

            Before the monster could recover, a blur of motion followed the path of the two sheets of paper, the glint of worn, but still very sharp, steel shining briefly in the moonlight. The little boy didn’t know what was going on as he watched the stranger swing and slash with his ancient sword, all he knew was he was very sleepy.

            “Rest,” said a voice belonging to a boy only a few years older than he. The other boy grabbed him by the shoulders and began to drag him off somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t there.

            And that was ok.

            Ryan wakes. Not in a cold sweat, not hyperventilating, not looking around wildly. He just woke up. It is an old dream and it no longer bothers him.

            He glanced around quickly, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.