The Last Normal Day

Carlee Shimek

Ayako refused to play with me, saying she had responsibilities. I think she was just getting tired of babysitting me, which was hypocritical, since she loved playing in the little copse of trees behind our garden only a year ago. But for some reason, age thirteen was like the official stop-point for being fun. So, henceforth, when she would walk to town for fresh fish or fabric for clothes-making, I would be alone while Father ferried to the mainland for twelve hours at the manufacturing facility and Mother focused on embroidering commissioned clothing for the neighbors’ children. It was a lot because the entire island was considered our neighbors. Mother made the most beautifully patterned scarves and shirts and pants at a price much cheaper than if you purchased them at the mainland market, so it was a great source of income for us.

Not that I didn’t work. I tended the garden. I plucked the weeds and watered the vegetables as if they were my own children. I cooked dinner for everybody, since Ayako and Mother always burned stuff or added the improper portion of spices. But even when she had free time from her own chores, Ayako would find something else to do, like reading or schoolwork. She loved school; I didn’t. I could never spell properly, always messing up letters, while everyone else got it on the first try. I think there was something wrong with me, and it wasn’t stupidity, despite what the others called me. As a result, I didn’t have many friends besides Ayako, and now she was moving away from me too.

I spent most days outside, either tending to the garden, pretending the woods behind our property were filled with magical foxes or ancestral spirits, or traversing the rocky shores at the isle’s edge. Sometimes I spotted little fish and even sea turtles. In the early mornings, I could barely see the mainland behind a fog barrier, leaving only the tallest buildings visible. I haven’t been to the mainland in five years, back when I was six, because Father said it wasn’t safe anymore. I never understood really why he went, then.

It wasn’t so bad being alone. No one nagged me for how I cared for the garden or spent my time. I liked to talk to the plants, which Mother said helped them grow. While we mainly had vegetables in our garden, I was allowed a few flowers: cherry blossoms and kinmokuseis and akaichurippus. My favorite, though, were the asagaos, with the rarest shade of blue I’d ever seen on the petals. They blew in the breeze loftily, as if they wanted to fly away with the wind from this tiny little island.

I judged the growth of this year’s crop as on schedule, knowing the squash still had a ways to grow since it was only the beginning of August. The family rose with the sun, Father having headed to the mainland before any of us woke, and Ayako went to town after breakfast, hoping dyes were in for a new dress for her upcoming birthday. Mother sat indoors on a rocking chair. A light, seascented breeze carried from the north, blowing my cropped black hair into my face. My flowers flowed with the wind.

I heard what sounded like an automobile backfiring, which is a sound I only know because I once heard one do so on the mainland. But there were no vehicles on the island; it had no paved roads, barely dirt ones, so I was startled for a moment before resuming my gardening. Only, what felt like a minute later, a sharp, powerful, gust of wind blew in from the north. It flattened the tall grass and even ripped petals from the cherry blossom tree. I tipped to the side a little. I only felt that kind of wind when riding on a ferry across the bay.

I looked around, confused by such a sudden shift in the weather. Toward the mainland, a monster rose up into the sky, partially obscuring the sun’s rays. Black and billowing, it reached past the clouds and I had to turn my head to see the opposing ends, for its width reached past my peripherals. It stretched out in all directions with smoky, bulging tentacles, trying to consume everything. I believed my imagination had punctured reality; a trickster spirit really did live in the woods and it took my thoughts of dark, dangerous creatures and brought them into the real world. For something like this could only come from a person’s subconscious. It was beyond human invention. Winds of intense heat carried over the waves, so thick I felt the weight of them in my lungs, making it difficult to breathe properly. I saw orange and red, and even the hottest blue of

fires grew at the bottom of the beast’s body. Mother screamed from the house. She was hysterical, and I was left to try calming her down, unable to go look for Ayako in town. She thankfully arrived a while later, saying that every glass pane in town, what little there were, shattered simultaneously. There were shards in her hair and cuts on her face. As the day went by without word from neighbors about what happened, Mother grew increasingly crazy, sobbing and speaking a gibbering mesh of Japanese and English. It wasn’t until I realized Father wasn’t coming home that I understood why she was inconsolable.