thisisallonewordpress

And so thisisalloneword finds himself stuck in some classroom four floors up in a country close to both his old childhood town and Japan. Looking out over the water to the Island he sees the first of the bombs decimate the small leafy city at the foot of the mountains. Holy shit! That was one hell of an explosion – Jesus, look at the mushroom cloud. Shit! We’re going to feel that blast in a few seconds! Everyone, everyone, the shock-waves are going to hit very soon, maybe more bombs will let off, maybe closer to us, goddam terrorists, everyone lie on the floor (yes, I’m sure that that’ll work just fine).

We all lie down on the floor as the first waves hit, the building rocks, shaking, shuddering and then suddenly leering, tipping at twenty degrees. Bodies fly about, students fall through the windows and smash onto the grey concrete yard below, those that can hold onto their surroundings, surfing the chaos. Keep upright, keep calm, keep holding on, it’ll be over soon.

Then it stops. Thisisalloneword makes his way to the ground floor hall where the students that made it are making their way outside, not rushing, in a state of dazed, numbed, coolness. They are silent but as soon as one starts talking they all do. Then down, down into the underground to make their way to safety, somewhere. Thisisalloneword is being stalked, but not in a very menacing way, by a fellow student. He gives him the slip at the first escalator but they meet up on the platform. When the train arrives they step into the carriage and as the train moves a fellow passenger approaches them. She is an old lady with short grey hair tied tight at the back and white eyes that suggest she is blind.

Can she read thisisalloneword? Sure, why not… she places her palms over his eyes and tries to dig into him. This may not be easy to do, he tells her, because I have multiple pasts…

…Somewhere along the line thisisalloneword became the collusion of two distinct people. He knows exactly when this happened. He was approaching a small room on the side of a wide expanse of concrete, high walls, like on a castle. Under the door seeps a red liquid, not blood, but some kind of water. Inside this is his other.
His other didn’t know what was happening, he’d gone inside this room for some reason and then it started filling with this red stuff till he was almost drowning and then the door opened from the outside and it was… it was him opening the door and then he vanished and then there was only one of them left, but which one? No, both of them were gone and one remained, was that it? Kind of.

This fills them/him with a strange, fervent belief that no harm can come to him. He tells his friend and she is worried but sort of agrees that he does seem better now, better than before when he was such a pessimist.

Thisisalloneword has seen this all before, he remembers it as if he had been watching it on television that morning.