Out of Place

I woke up with a start. The sun was still low behind the mountains, and shot fiery red streams of light into the sky. I rose out of bed rather disoriented, perhaps due to the lack of light, or the fact that I was still thinking about the dream that I had. I opened the drapes, coughing at the dust behind it. The marketplace was already bustling with merchants setting up their stands, and the steady stream of people seemed to get thicker with every passing minute. Something felt odd, however, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

After getting dressed, I left my tiny apartment in southern Japan and headed down the street to board a bus that would take me to my workplace. As I sat on the bus, absentmindedly looking out the window, I thought about my family, still in the United States. However, my thoughts were interrupted when I felt something cold and slimy running down my cheek. As I instinctively touched my face and looked up, I saw a man cursing at me, and realized he had spit on me. Confused and scared, I quickly got off at the next stop, knowing that it wasn’t the right one.

The entire way to the ad agency where I worked, people cursed and threatened me. When I finally entered, I immediately noticed that the office looked different. Black and white tile covered the usual polished wood floor, and the television sets that normally covered the walls were missing. Thinking that perhaps I was hallucinating, I walked slowly to the lady at the reception. But instead of checking me in, her eyes widened, and she screamed for me to leave in a thick Japanese accent.

Once outside, I stood against the cold brick building, wondering what I had done. “Why does everyone seem like they want to kill me?” I thought to myself. The answer came only a few moments later. A young boy who looked about seven yelled, “An American spy!” The street slowed to a standstill as the town’s eyes moved to me, like bulls who saw a red flag.

I didn’t know what to do. Slowly, they were moving closer, so I did the only thing I could do: run. I ran, not knowing where I was going, and not looking back. I didn’t know whether they were following me, and I didn’t care about the people who I passed by with questioning looks. It felt like an eternity before I finally collapsed, sinking down low and waiting for a bullet to go through my chest.

When I finally regained strength to stand up, the sun was setting. Still dazed, and now lost, I only wanted to weep. As I sat down, exhausted, my mind wandered back to the little boy and what he had said. “An American spy?” I thought out loud. “What year is this?” If it wasn’t for the condition that I was in, I would have laughed.

The next morning, I found myself still against the same wall. I had hoped that this was part of the dream that I had the previous morning, but I knew it wasn’t. It was all too brutally real to be a dream. I walked into a nearby store, half expecting angry protests and curses. It was eerily silent, however, and only one man with graying hair stood behind the counter. “Do you have a phone?” I asked, surprised at how raspy my voice sounded. The man frowned and said, “The only phone is in town, with long lines to use them. A poor merchant like me can only dream of having a telephone.” Dazed, I ran back outside, and a rather odd idea occurred to me. But I had no time to run back to the merchant and ask him my question, because I was thrown to the ground by a powerful force. Others around me were suffocating, and I too felt my air passages start to close. My mind, though, was racing, as I realized that I was in Japan at the time of the Hiroshima bomb blast. How I had gotten there, however, was a question that I never got the chance to answer, because a few moments later, the world closed in, and everything went dark.