Forget all those awful movies and publicity stunts. Here’s a little gem about a washed-up rocker and his agent. So much for a walk in the woods, Gaijin…
Art by Byron Rempel
TW: Drug Use, Suicide
I winced behind my dark glasses in the early morning sun. “So, what the hell are we doing here?”
“This is Aokigahara. A very spiritual place. Simply put, this is where people come to die. The forest’s been recently swept, so we shouldn’t be troubled by any nastiness. This is a place where the veil is thin. This, my brother, is where you get your groove back.”
“Rory, I think your idea sucks. Of all the screwed-up schemes...”
“Listen, Mate. The label wants to drop your ass. Do something, or you’re out in the cold. You don’t want that. Come on, then. You know you want to.”
It wasn’t a request. Resigning myself, I picked up my pack and followed. We were still in the parking lot on the edge of the forest when I patted my shirt pocket. Rory put his hand up. “No, Mate. No ciggs, no beers, no chems of any kind. Stop running from what you feel.” I busted out laughing. Rory McDonnell, my manager for 23 years, telling me to do anything clean was a joke. Pushing his hand away, I went for my smokes.
“I mean it.”
He used a tone I’d never heard out of him before. I didn’t say anything, and handed him the pack. “Bag, too.” He put my pack of smokes in my backpack and put everything in the trunk of the car. “For after,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We made our way past the other cars. A few were covered with leaves and looked abandoned. I wondered how long they would be there until someone got around to towing them. Then I remembered why they were there in the first place, and I got a sick feeling. We entered the forest, past signs I couldn’t read. Rory looked at his guidebook. “Warning signs,” he read out loud. “‘Do not dishonor your family’. Stay on the path, my brother.” I reached into my pants pocket, but my phone was in the pack. Seeing my panic, Rory chuckled. “No signal out here, Mate.” And we kept moving.
It was bright in the parking lot, but as we went into the woods, it was still and quiet. I was used to arenas and screaming hoards. The silence throbbed in my ears, and I found myself humming nothing in particular, just to have something to listen to. We didn’t talk. Rory would occasionally point out a trail sign or mention a bit of history about the place: “used to leave the oldies here to die... supposedly haunted....” There was tape everywhere, the kind they used to block off crime scenes back home.
“I want to stop for a minute,” I said. I moved a branch, so I could sit on a log when I found it—a pink shoe with what looked like part of a foot and a few bones. Rory stopped talking, and I followed his gaze up to a rope tied to a branch above us. “Looks like they missed one.”
I tried to sound casual, but failed. Rory shot me one of his back-end-of-the-cat faces.
“The main trail’s this way.” He didn’t wait, but set off. Soon, we were seeing less trash and tape. I finally started to relax in to the quiet and the rhythm of our footsteps on the stones. Granted, Rory was an asshole, but in the grand scheme of things, I had come to realize that he was the least offensive person in my life. I knew if the label got rid of me, he’d be off like a rat on the last lifeboat, but here he was, with the dumbest plan ever, trying to save my ass. “Sit yourself here, Sunshine. I’ve checked for anything that would offend your delicate constitution.” Rory dusted off the top of a tree stump with his handkerchief, but not before wiping off the sweat from his bald, well-tattooed pate.
He kept his pack, and handed me a bottle of water and some trail mix. I’d guessed it was about noon. I hadn’t worn a watch in years, and it was hard to see the sun though the canopy. I looked around. The silence was weird to me, but so was the lack of, well, everything. I didn’t see any birds, no squirrels, not even flies. Nothing. There were no signs of other people. I had the feeling that we were the first humans here, even though I knew it couldn’t be possible. The crashing sounds of silence settled in to my head, and I was learning to work around it. Rory put himself on a tree trunk on the forest floor and dug through his bag. “Forgot I left my mobile in the car. Damn things! Worse to kick than heroin. Remember that? Ha!” I didn’t much care for his sense of humor. Still…
“Yeah, Buddy. Good times.” He cracked himself up, and went back to his granola bar. “So Rory, what am I supposed to do here, exactly?”
“Well my lad, you have to face facts. The songs are… to put it kindly, a bit tired. Look, I know it’s tough, but you’ve lost your edge, Mate. You’re here to soak up some realness…”
“Realness!?! People commit suicide here and you want realness? What is wrong with you? It’s human tragedy, you asshole. You want realness? I can’t believe I let you talk me in to this. So what if the label drops me? I’ll sign somewhere else. I’ll go on my own. It happens all the time.”
“No you won’t.” Rory stood up, his stocky legs peeping out from under his hiking shorts. He stood over me, his tribal face tattoos twisted into an angry knot. “You don’t get it, do you? You are an old man in a boy’s game. You will pull something new and exciting out of your arse, or you may as well join our little friend back there, eh? This is your best last chance to avoid playing bloody state fairs, understand? You like the big house on every bloody continent? You like the young girls hanging off your cock? Well get some bloody work done! Starts right here and right now…”
I should have told him to go fuck himself. I should have gone back to the car and demanded that we go back to Tokyo. Hell, I should have done a million things, long before now. The truth is that he had me by the balls, and we both knew it. I was the rock star, but nothing would have happened without Rory. I knew he skimmed off the top. I knew all about the stuff that should have gotten him fired, and sent to jail besides, but I… needed him. Maybe as much as he needed me. I’d play along, anywhere he wanted to go. He’d gathered up his pack and started further down the trail, deeper into the forest. With a deep breath, I stood up and followed.
Knowing he’d won, he decided to talk sports, a subject he knew I hated. “Ah, Beckham. A genius with his foot, thick as a brick the rest of the way up. His Missus isn’t a half bad bit, though…” He had his back towards me, but I could imagine the visual he was providing as we made our way to who-knows-what.
“Rory, why do you bother?”
“Pardon?”
“Why do you care if I get cut loose or not? It’s not like you don’t have other clients. Why do you care?”
“Brian, my lad, you are my client, you dumb piece of…” I turned, and saw what stopped Rory in his tracks. It was a man, standing next to a small tent. He was alive, if you could call it that. I could still see the syringe hanging out of his arm. He was a local, not that either one of us could understand what he was saying. He was stringy and gaunt and looked like he’d been on the streets for a while. His clothes hung off him and the syringe flopped crazily as he swung his arms at us. The saliva was thick and ropy on his lips and it fell off in sections on the front of his shirt. The stink of him hit me as I got closer. He got louder as I approached. I don’t know what I was thinking, but as I touched his shoulder, he screamed and collapsed.
“Rory, what are we going to do? We can’t leave him here.”
“Are you mad, Mate? He came here to die.”
“He’s still breathing. We’ve seen this before. There’s still time. We can get to the car. Can’t you call someone?”
“Mate, there’s no signal here. He’ll be gone before we get to the car park. Let’s go. We can find your mojo in Tokyo.”
“We’re not leaving him here to die. We’re either taking him with us, or we’re getting help for him.”
“You’re on your own, Mate. I’m not helping you with this one. Come on, lad. We’re off.”
“No.”
He spun around to look at me. I was sitting next to the man, who was shaking on the ground.
“We’re here. He needs help. If you’re not in, fine, but I am.”
“Laddy. I’m warning you…”
“You’re my agent. You’re helping me or you’re fired.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Help me get him to the car park. There is no other option.”
Turns out, there was. We tried to get him to his feet, but he started to scream “Onie! Onie!” or something like that. I decided to stay with him, and Rory agreed to get help. I didn’t have a watch, but the guy did. It was 3PM. I told Rory to get moving.
Let’s just say that even though I’m no doctor, I know a thing or two about the recreational use of less than legal pharmaceuticals. Looking at my new friend, I was guessing he had a speedball going. Not a bad ride, but the heroin could get you on the way down. That had probably been the plan, though. It wouldn’t be pretty, but there are worse ways to die.
I looked at Bob (I decided that because my Japanese was horrible, and his English probably wasn’t any better, I could call him Bob, and he could call me whatever he wanted), and saw he was still somewhat coherent. Rory left me some trail mix and water. I sat next to Bob on the ground near his tent, and fed him sips from the bottle. He seemed to calm down. He said something to me softly, and grabbed at a bag next to him. He thrust an old crumpled photo of a young girl, at me with tears and murmurs. I smiled and accepted it. More tears. He started to get upset and waved his arms. I managed to calm him down. It was getting late. Where the hell was Rory?
I had kind of hoped he’d find someone right away and come back, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Even if he did get out of the woods, the chances of finding someone who could help, even just speak English, were between slim and none. I looked down at Bob, who was still twitching and looking at me with wild white eyes. I gave him sips of water. He clung to the photo of the girl.
I still fought with myself as the sun sank. Did I have time to get out before dark? Even if I did, could I take being such a dick for the rest of my life? “Rory,” I yelled, “get your ass back here now!” Bob jumped, shaken. He grabbed at my shirt, babbling, and I had to sit with him, talking softly, until he settled down again. As far as I could tell, the speed part of his cocktail: the coke, meth, whatever, was starting to wind down; the heroin was kicking in. He was getting more lethargic. Looking at his arms, I figured it wasn’t his first rodeo. He knew what he was doing, and he was juiced to kill. Damn shame. He seemed like a decent guy.
I told myself how stupid that sounded. I mean, it’s not like I ever had a talk with him. I never would have even met this dude, except for here, and despite my lame-ass efforts, he’d soon be dead. His breathing got shallower, and I figured he wouldn’t have much longer. Looking at his watch and up at the sky, I thought that I’d maybe just make the parking lot if I started heading out of the woods. Bob was off to wherever Japanese junkies go, and nothing I could do would change that. I was about to get up, having decided that being an asshole under the lights was better that being a saint in the dark. Just then, Bob grabbed me, yelling “Oni! Oni!” And finally “daemon.”
I jumped back. For a second, Bob didn’t look like Bob, and his voice was gravely and dry. I tried to give him some more water, but he had passed out. I was relieved that he was still breathing, but I had kind of wished that he wasn’t. The light fading, I looked through his things, hoping he’d have a flashlight. He didn’t, but I found a lighter with a little bit of fuel. I was able to get some branches together, figuring a fire would help someone find me, because someone would have to be looking for me. Of course they would. Search parties and stuff.
It was a crappy, lame-ass fire that used up the last of the lighter fuel, but it was going as the sun finally set. It was the darkest, quietest, stillest night of my life. Realizing I hadn’t checked on Bob, I turned to him. His hands wrapped around my neck in seconds: “Oni” rasped from his lips. I pulled him off me, only to realize that he was already stiff and cold.
I sat there. I couldn’t move. I didn’t understand any of this: How the hell did I get here? I crept away from Bob and the tent, almost into the fire. Dammit, where was Rory? Why wasn’t he here to fix things? He had one fucking job. Here I was in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere surrounded by stiffs with no way out. Calm. I told myself to stay the fuck calm. What did that guy say in the survivor shows? Zone of assessment. What was in my pockets? This made me feel a little bit better, as I didn’t have to look into Bob’s wide-open eyes as he stared all deadish at me from his tent.
I tried to calm down, breathe. Slowly, my heart slowed and my head began to clear. The fire started to die down, and I scrambled for more wood to keep it going. That place with the fire was bad enough, but without it… No. I’d make sure it kept going.
It was kind of stupid. I never was an outdoor guy, but anywhere else, this would have been cool. But here, like this, not cool. Not at all. I wished to hell I knew what Bob was going on about. “Oni.” Probably just someone’s name. I just wished…
I heard something. A whoosh. I thought it was a bird, but I didn’t see anything, and Rory said… Fuck Rory. It was a bird. I mean, what else…
I still didn’t see anything; it was more of a feeling. I felt wiped out. Terrified. Like something reached in and squeezed my heart and packed it in ice. And in an instant, it was gone. I grabbed a branch from the fire. I didn’t want to go far, but I needed more wood. I picked some up from the ground, and then I heard it: a low growling sound. I didn’t hear it on the outside, if that makes any sense. It was coming from inside my head. I tried to shake it off. “No one’s out here! And if you are, let me see you, coward!”
I tried to feel brave, but I knew it was all a big fat lie. It was new to me, this fear. I mean, I’ve been in dodgy situations, but nothing like this. I’ve been rushed by crowds. I’ve been threatened by angry dealers, husbands, you name it, but I’ve always had someone, Rory, to fix it. This was different and I didn’t like it.
I tried to sit down and breathe like they taught me in rehab. I built up the fire. I stocked up on wood. I didn’t want to touch Bob, but I managed to nudge his arm. I could see his watch, and the soft, pulsing glow told me it was 10:03. With deep breaths, I tried to calm myself. I closed my eyes and did my best to focus on my breathing, but all I could hear were unsnapped twigs and still leaves in the night air. I tried for a few minutes, but finally gave it up. “Bob, why did you do it? What was so damn awful?” He wasn’t much for conversation, so I stared into the fire and tried to ignore the dead man next to me and the voice growling inside my head.
I gave meditation another shot, but I kept hearing, no, imagining that I heard noises, and it would bring me back. “This is stupid.” The sound of my own voice startled me. I never heard myself sound so raspy, so off-key. So afraid.
I got up and walked around, keeping near the fire. I threw more branches in, and looked around to check my firewood supply. As the wood caught, the fire leapt up, and I saw her. At least I thought I did: a girl in a white dress and long black hair. She laughed at me, waving at me to follow. I couldn’t move. I saw her, but I could see through her, too. I blinked to clear my eyes, but she was gone.
What am I doing here? I wanted to make this night end. I wanted to lie down, to sleep, but where? Not next to the tent, to Bob, but I didn’t want to be across from him, either. If I slept, the morning would come sooner, but what if one of those things came after me? I decided to stick it out. I carefully leaned in towards Bob, to look at his watch. It said 10:15. This was going to be a long night.
I really wanted to close my eyes until everything went away, and the sun came back up, and asshole Rory came back with my phone and shit, so I could beat him to death with it. But none of that stuff was here. I just wanted this all to be over, so I could crawl back to into my nice bed at the hotel with some warm and willing little thing and pretend this was just a bad trip from the old days. See Rory, I know all there is to know about the groove and the art of its recapture. I threw another log on to the fire, not wanting to see what the light would show me. I sat with Bob at my three o’clock, leaned back against a stump, and tried to stretch my legs out. Some sweet little thing was out there, cold and alone in the city, and I was here. “This is stupid,” I said again.
With that, I decided to try for some actual sleep. Funny, I thought to myself, when was the last time I turned in voluntarily before 4am? Sleep was the answer. I tried to find a softish place and rolled my jacket under my head. I lay down next to the fire and stared up into the trees. The branches were thick, and I could sort-of see the night sky. I tried to relax, and I felt myself drift off. I settled in, and I felt a spreading chill along my body. I barely realized what was happening. I pulled in closer to the fire, but it got colder and colder. I felt something like a freezing claw grab me. I was surrounded. Hundreds in white with hard, black eyes. All I heard was screaming in my head, and I grabbed my skull, trying to drown it out, make it stop.
I opened my eyes, and they were gone. There was only the crackle of the fire, a soft summer breeze, dead Bob, and me.
Dead Bob. Bob. Dead.
He OD’d. I didn’t know why, but I knew he had. In a corner of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder.
Did he leave any behind?
I cringed, disgusted at myself. What the hell was wrong with me? Why did I even think that? I was months in rehab, fighting to get clean. Even so, digging through a dead guy’s pockets, looking to score. What the fuck? What was my problem?
No problem, said a soft voice in my head. Just a little, just to help you sleep. No harm there. I shook my head. I could feel my arms itch.
I slapped my arms, my face. What was I thinking? It was wrong on every level. The guy was dead. It would be stealing. It would be exposing myself to God-knows-what. Morally wrong, medically a piss-poor idea. Top to bottom, a crap plan, but I couldn’t let it go. A lighter, a glance of a watch, that was one thing. Looting a body for drugs… but I could sleep. Just sleep. Just a little.
“Yessss…. Sleep. No harm. All good, Buddy.”
“Dad?” I knew I had to be hallucinating. Slowly, I turned. And there he was, looking just like the last time I saw him, but his neck looked off. Skinny. “Dad? You’re dead, though. Aren’t you? I mean…”
“Awwww Buddy, you can handle it so much better than I could. Get on the horse. It’ll cure what ails… Yesssss…”
I shook my head. Rubbed my eyes. He was gone, but the itching was so much worse. Maybe just a little, just to take the edge off. It wouldn’t be bad. Not like last time. Before I could stop myself, I shoved dead Bob out of the way. I dug through his stuff, hoping. There were pictures of people I didn’t know, books I couldn’t read, a statue of Buddha. Nothing else.
He took it all. Even the needle was clean.
I kicked Bob in the face. I kicked him so hard, my boot stuck in his skull. I wrenched my foot out and stomped him again and again, until dead Bob was no more. I screamed. I threw the tent into the woods. I kicked the rest into the fire.
What the hell was wrong with me? Who was I? What would I do now?
In all honesty, I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I was in the woods alone. I didn’t care that I was tossing a stranger’s corpse to score a hit. Hell, I didn’t care that I was seeing a guy who died when I was 14.
I. Did. Not. Care. All I wanted to do was to make it all stop. As far as I was concerned, none of this was my fault, so it really didn’t matter, as long as I felt better. I rolled Bob over, checked his piss and shit and blood-covered pants pockets, and rooted in the dark for the thing that would make it all go away.
“Go ahead, Buddy. It’ll be OK. So hungry. Make it stop.”
I heard a sound behind me. An actual, real sound. I stopped and turned around. I thought it was another hallucination-thing, but I couldn’t see through it. It looked like an elderly Japanese man. He said nothing, but looked at me sadly, and turned to go. My voice was hoarse. I was covered in crap and blood and every other thing, but I jumped up and tried to yell for him to stop. He looked back at me and responded in perfect English:
“Do you know where you are, Gaijin?”
“I was left here,” I replied. “My friend…”
“Will never find you.” He came closer to the fire and I could see him more clearly. He wore grey slacks and a cardigan, like someone’s Boomer father. “Not alive,” he continued. “As your friend said, this is a place where the veil between the living and the dead is thin. As far as the rest is concerned, he was sadly mistaken. I am sorry, but your days of ‘getting your groove back’ are quite over.”
I must have stood there for quite some time after the man left, but I looked up at the sky, and it didn’t look like the stars moved at all. I went over to what was left of dead Bob and I grabbed his wrist. His watch kept on flashing 10:15.
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