The trail in front of her opened onto a small wooden bridge. There was a large pond below and she stopped to watch the koi fish swim underneath her. The water rippled across the surface where raindrops fell. She saw two fish peacefully circling each other.
At the end of the bridge were three small red torii. The girl passed underneath them and onto an overgrown path of loose stones, twisting and turning on the grassy forest floor. She stepped from stone to stone, careful not to slip on the wet surface. After a short while on this path, it started to gradually ascend and the scattered stones lengthened and became stairs. Suddenly, she found herself on the wooden porch of a very crude cabin. It was old and covered in moss, but a beautiful scene of a young girl asleep under a blossoming cherry tree was carved across the two heavy wooden doors. One of them was ajar, and warm orange light flickered in the gap. The young girl entered and the sound of rain died away.
In front of her, was a painting of a girl with golden hair weaving the edges of the canvas into being with threads. The threads sparkled in the light and the girl wondered if they were actual gold. Behind the painting was a long wooden corridor. Lanterns hung in pairs from the ceiling along it.
By now, the girl had forgotten her troubles and placing her bag by the door, she stepped deeper into this place. The corridor was lined on both walls with paintings. The first few were of a mother and her newborn child. The colors were warm and the texture was so soft the faces and the background blurred together. She glanced between them as she walked by, but abruptly stopped at the painting in front of her. Dark blues, purples, and black replaced them. In the foreground, in disturbing detail, the soft tones of the skin on a baby's hand were interrupted by a gash blood red and black. A steel knife laid in the background.
Pulling her sleeve down below her wrist, the girl held her hand up to the lantern and saw an identical scar on her own hand. Where she had accidentally cut herself with her father's knife as an infant. Lanterns above her cast the dark shadow of her bushy hair over her eyes. Turning her head, the girl looked down the corridor. It had grown darker and the whole space faded into a black fog, except for the few paintings in front of her.
Her heart beat fast in her chest as she started to walk again. After many paintings, the girl was certain that these were scenes from her life. She wondered how many there were and how far they continued. Some paintings she recognized, but there were many she didn't.
A mother and her daughter slept in the bed of a messy one room apartment.
Watching intently, a young girl excitedly sat on her mother's shoulders. Behind the mother, dressed in a gray jumpsuit and cap, was a janitorial cart.
Four gravestones neatly grouped together. One without an inscription. On each of the three graves was a flower. The mother stood quietly with the girl, holding a lily at her side.
Walking through the corridor, she suddenly reached a set of familiar doors. A strong feeling of dread and panic settled in her stomach. Stepping forward, a pair of automatic doors opened and the hardwood floors of the corridor became the sterile white tile of a hospital. On the walls, were more paintings.
The girl in this painting was not an infant anymore, she was dressed in a baggy t-shirt that said "Aomori Zoo New Year's Night 20XX". Her bare feet hung above the tile, sitting in the last of a series of empty chairs. The fluorescent white lights cast her shadow on the wall behind her.
After looking at the painting for a few minutes, the girl sat on the floor and leaned against the wall, pulling her knees close to her chest. She stayed like this for fifteen minutes or so before getting up and moving on to the painting on the wall across from her.
The perspective in this painting was familiar to the girl. It was the view from their bed, looking over towards the kitchen. The lights were off, but the shape of her mother knelt crumpled in a heap in front of the kitchen sink, weeping as she clutched the counter above her.
It was the first time the girl had ever seen this before and she wished she hadn't.
This painting was dark. It was so dark that it was hard to see what was going on, but the girl was familiar enough with the background to tell that it was the bed in their apartment. The girl could see her sleeping silhouette in the foreground. Behind it, she saw her mother's open eyes and her hand placed on the sleeping child's face.
Another. Standing opposite the girl and her mother, was a man and his daughter. The four of them stood against a blank background. The other girl was a few feet taller than she was, with black hair and dark eyeshadow. The man's glasses matched the look of his half-tucked collared shirt and messy hair. Her mother and the man stood closest, but the two girls lagged behind. Between each of them was a varying degree of blank white space.
The young girl was unpacking the things from her suitcase in a small room with bunkbeds. There were guitars in stands and posters of punk rock bands hung on the walls. She was holding a stuffed giraffe she had gotten at the zoo and placing it on a small white table near the ladder to the top bunk.
A starry sky shone in from the windows. In front of a kitchen where pots and pans hung above the stove, was a dinner table. The man and the girl's mother sat across from each other, she was laughing at something he'd said. The girl blended into the shadows in the background.
Dressed in her school uniform, standing in front of a chalkboard where her name was written in large white letters. The silhouettes of a classroom full of children crowded the foreground. Looking at the ground, the girl stood stiffly with tears in her eyes.
At a desk by the window in the back corner of the classroom, the girl ate alone. A boxed lunch, the white rice was decorated with a bear drawn in ketchup. Girls laughed together in clusters of desks around her.
In front of her, the girl could see the doors to exit the hospital, but the lights on the ceiling in front of the door were off. To the side of the corridor, behind glass, dim fluorescent light shone into the hall.
Instead of a painting, the girl looked through clear glass into a patient's room. Machines beeped and a thousand tubes twisted and winded, all of them connecting to the corpse of the girl's mother, lying dead in her hospital bed. The girl's heartbeat got louder and louder until it was the only sound she could hear.
The lights in front of the hospital doors switched on. She ran, the doors swiftly opened and closed behind her. The ground beneath her turned into mud and the ceiling of the corridor disappeared, becoming a rainy sky. The girl ran at full speed past trees lined with paintings.
In darkness, the girl laid on her bunk bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Standing in front of the bear exhibit at the zoo in the rain, but no bears were out that day.
Light from a sunrise shone on the girl, squeezing as many stuffed animals and clothes as she could into her backpack.
The girl ran through the mud as fast as she could, but she slipped and landed flat face-down in the mud. She wiped at her eyes with a muddy sleeve and laid there sobbing while the cold rain poured down on her. A sudden wave of warm light covered her. Illuminated above, was a painting.
The paint dripped off the canvas and a wet painted hand print sat just below the painting. Standing to her feet, the girl touched it and it came off on her finger. She looked around, but the fog was too thick to see through. The rain had stopped now. She turned back to the painting.
It looked almost identical to the painting before, she was sitting at her desk by the window. Eating the same boxed lunch she had eaten every day at school before her mother died. Again, there was a bear drawn in ketchup (although much worse). Clipped onto her backpack was a stuffed bear she had never seen before.
She moved onto the next tree.
At the dinner table, she was eating with the man and his daughter. It was fried chicken, her favorite. His daughter had her arm around her.
In the top bunk, she slept with the stuffed bear. Streaks of tears ran across the pillowcase.
At this point, the girl began moving through the paintings faster until she had broken into a slight jog.
Attending her mother's funeral.
Eating ice cream with the man and his daughter.
A card from her classmates, decorated with bears (stickers and hand-drawn)
Desperately she started to run, barely looking at the trees and paintings she was passing. Until suddenly, she stopped. When she turned to look at the tree beside her, her eyes were wide.
A photograph was sloppily pasted onto the tree. It was full of people the girl had never seen before. They were all standing behind the dinner table in her house. In the middle, the man and his daughter stood behind someone with round glasses flashing a large smile. Seeing the blue hoodie she wore, the girl realized that this was an older version of herself. The man's hair was ruffled and his glasses were crooked as always. His daughter was holding him around the neck with her arm. Her hair and nails weren't black anymore, but the girl could tell it was her. One of each of their hands was placed on the girl's shoulder. Seeing the smile on her own face, she reminded herself of her mother.
For a long time, the girl stared at the photograph and a warm feeling danced in her chest. But as she turned back to the dirt path, fear began to settle. The sky had cleared and begun to transition into night. Looking clearly into the distance, far down the path the source of her discomfort manifested. Separated by hundreds of paintings and covered by the black of night, a faint red light shone. With tightness in her gut, the girl walked growing increasingly frightened. She shielded her eyes from the paintings and focused on the light in front of her. Finally, she came upon it. At this point, the forest had disappeared around her.
Glowing red amidst the darkness, a lantern in the shape of a human heart pulsed softly. The same color as if it were beating in her chest. Illuminated beneath it, was a smooth black door. A mechanical counter displayed numbers behind a glass pane in the center. With each pulse of the lantern and its light, the number went down by one. The girl pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down past her hands, and reached for the knob. Uncertain what lay behind.
by zombi