The first time an earthquake happened, I couldn't see anything. But he was there, I could feel it. I felt his eyes on me. I could almost hear his slow and shallow breath. Although there was nothing there, I couldn't help but obsessively peer from my futon into the darkened hallway across the kitchen. Waiting.
I moved to a rural town in Kyushu, Japan about a year ago, and ever since then unsettling stuff has been happening. It might seem like nothing to you because these events are so rare and spaced far apart, however these strange occurrences are beginning to make me fear for my life. I don't know where to get help or what I can do to fix this situation, but the matter of fact is I cannot go back home simply because I do not have the money.
At first this move seemed like a good idea, after all it was the only shot I had to try and live my dream overseas. Until I found this position I searched on websites like Gaijin Pot, Daijob and Career Cross every day for a job in Japan that would offer work to someone without a college degree or previous experience living in Japan. Whenever I applied anywhere it was always the same frustrating response, I needed either a college degree or to already be residing in Japan. Of course I never met either of those qualifications.
One night when I was sitting in my pajamas drinking coffee at two thirty in the morning about to give up my search and go back to looking at cat videos on Tumblr, I decided to hit rock bottom and check the 15th page of a Google search. And there it was, a job that required almost no qualifications at a night school in Japan. Needless to say I applied right then and there, and within a week and a half I got the position. Of course, I was a little weary because they did not require an interview or any kind of background check, but with a job that provided a livable wage and arranged housing, so I was not about to pass up this chance. The plane tickets came in the mail two months later; they were not business class or anything, but being shoved in the back of a small plane for fourteen hours was just a small price to pay for living my dream.
It was incredibly muggy the evening when I arrived in my new town and I was more than ready for a relaxing bath and a long nap in my new place, but before I could get there I needed to stop at my new school to get the key and meet my new coworkers. Lucky enough the school was only an eight and a half minute walk from the train station. When I got to the school I wasn't entirely sure if it was open. It was very run down and half covered in rust and a green moss much like most of the buildings in this old town. There was only one fluorescent light on in one of the rooms in the back of the building. I decided to just go in. The heavy metal door opened with a loud creek revealing a dim hallway that lead to the room with the light at the end of the hall.
"Hello?" I called out timidly embarrassed of my accent when I spoke Japanese, "Is anyone here?"
I proceeded to the room in the far back. It had a bunch of empty desks lined up in five rows of four and there were only three people sitting there in the room. Two of them were reading documents and the other one was sleeping in his chair leaned all the way back, his arms stretched out and his mouth wide open attempting to quietly snore with a mouth full of saliva.
"Hello, I am the new English assistant, my name is Cory, nice to meet you."
Silence. One of the women reading peered up at me but said nothing. I just smiled awkwardly, my usual response. Not before long I heard footsteps echo through the half-lit hallway behind me.
"Hello, welcome to Kyushu's Tenth District Night School," said a middle aged lady in a slightly faded business suit and dark circles under her eyes entered the room.
"Hello!" I said cheerfully, "Nice to meet you." Her face did not seem to move at all, I just got a blank, soulless stare. She handed me a manila envelope with some documents and the key to my apartment. "Your work day starts at 5:30 tomorrow night."
"Great! I can't wait to.."
She walked off before I could finish, her feet weighing down against the metal stairs as she made her way to another floor.
I followed the map to my new home. The apartment wasn't anything like I pictured. It was just as run down as the school and the mailboxes were filled with many letters and advertisements for pizza delivery, no one else seemed to be living here. I walked up five flights of stairs, avoiding as many spider webs as I could. The spiders in this area are huge! I put the key in the slot and gave the rickety metal door a hard shove and went inside. It was quite musty and it looked like it hasn't been cleaned yet alone lived in for at least half of a year. Broken dishes littered the floor, a yellow stained mattress hung off the bed and the refrigerator door was left ajar. I already knew how I would be spending the next few days without internet or TV. But for now I decided to just go to bed. Unwilling to sleep on the worn out mattress, I searched through the closet where I found a slightly better looking futon. Although it wouldn't be the most comfortable nights sleep, it was better than nothing.
That was the night of my first earthquake. I couldn't believe my luck, an earthquake on the first night here. Deep in my slumber I was woken up by an unfamiliar feeling of swaying back and forth, things around me were rattling and I could hear a strange sound almost like the whooshing of something like a giant washing machine. I was extremely disoriented. I didn't know what to do; I wasn't prepared for this. I darted under the small coffee table and waited for the shaking to stop. Once it did, I made my way back to bed and spent the next couple hours trying to fall back asleep.
Crash! The shattering of glass woke me once again and I sat straight up with my eyes wide open, trying to see through the darkness. Seconds later the shaking began again. I was so frightened I couldn't move. After about 10 seconds the shaking amplified and I couldn't even get to my feet. Things were falling off the shelves and shattering on the ground.
And then it stopped.
Everything stood still. But something wasn't right, it could have just been the adrenaline rushing through my veins, but I just felt completely unsettled. Like someone was in my apartment with me. Not just watching, but observing.
The following months went by and my job maintained its awkward silence, whenever I tried to start conversations my coworkers just stared at me and continued working. I almost never had anyone to tutor, which made me wonder why I was even in this place. I only had five people come to me for help since the job began. Nevertheless, as long as I was getting paid I would continue to do my job. I often spent my time in the office reading through random posts on Reddit waiting for my day to be over. It was either that or watching the man across from me bite his nails and play with the clippings.
It was mid November and things were just starting to cool down, cool enough at night to burry myself under a couple of blankets. It became a habit of mine to lay in bed around eleven every night reading manga and sipping warm barley tea. I don't know why, but at some point I decided to look up at the clock. It was 11:47. Nearly twenty seconds passed and the clock flicked to 11:48. The air was unusually still.
Clank, clank, clank.
The ground began to rumble and I froze in place. The alarm on my phone kept shouting, "Earthquake, Earthquake." My heart sank. This was the first time I heard the warning go off. "Earthquake, Earthquake."
This one was the strongest earthquake yet. The furniture began to shift around the room and the lights flickered with an oscillating buzz. Then. There he was. I saw a dark figure, about six foot five or so pacing back and fourth on my balcony. I knew it couldn't have been a person for I was on the 5th floor, and I haven't seen anyone around since I've moved here. Back and forth, back and forth. As the ground was shaking below me I raised the covers up over half of my face, staring at the window ready to get up and run at any moment in time. The quakes began to slow down and he was gone. Though either way I didn't want to avert my eyes from the window, I still didn't feel safe. I kept staring, watching, waiting.
Thump. Screech.
I turned to the window behind me. There he was, a pitch black figure with his charcoal hand against the window staring at me. His face was so pure black that It was impossible to see any facial features, but if you looked hard enough you could make out the outline of his smirk and his dark black teeth as he pressed his face against the window. I dove under the covers, listening to him pace back and forth behind me until the shaking desisted. I would not allow myself to come out of the covers until my alarm went off the next morning.
I shit you not, the next few nights I slept in the bathroom where there were no windows and a lockable door. But eventually I came to my senses and realized the bedroom was more comfortable and definitely more sanitary. Nothing occurred for the following months.
It was now nearing April and high school entrance exams were around the corner so work was beginning to pick up. By picking up I mean two more students in the past three months. One of the boys I was tutoring was being forced to go to night school by his parents and the other girl barely talked. No matter what subject I brought up the boy would always remind me that he doesn't like English and kept telling me how big foreign women's breasts were. You can only imagine how hard this made tutoring them. Anyhow I continued and tried my best. Eventually the boy dropped out, but the girl continued to come to the night school. Whenever I talked to her she never responded, but she would always write and do the assignments as I asked. That evening at work we had a small 2.0 earthquake, things shook a bit, but you could hardly feel it. Even though it was so minute, I couldn't get my mind off of being unsettled. I truly hated earthquakes at this point. With a lack of being able to concentrate I told the girl to just take the remaining 30 minutes of class to write a diary entry about anything she wanted while I went to take a break to in the back to calm down. After the 30 minutes exactly, the girl packed up her belongings and left the entry on my desk, proceeded to the door, bowed and left.
I sat at my desk for a while just thinking to myself while the dim light in the office flickered a bit as usual. Maybe I should go home early I thought, but I was too nervous to ask to use my vacation time. Instead, I decided to read the girl's journal entry for the remainder of the time.
I opened the little blue book and flicked through the entries until I got to tonight's assignment. The girl wrote a little darker and more heavily in this entry compared to the rest of them. "He is watching," was written over and over again for pages upon pages. My heart was pounding and my head was spinning as I kept flicking through to see if there was anything else written.
There, on the last page was, "He is following you into the other room."
I slammed the book shut and packed everything I had and headed home. I didn't care if it was early, I didn't care if I would be in trouble. Nothing mattered at this point.
I spent the rest of the night under my covers browsing the internet for funny memes and listening to a Japanese comedy game show in the background trying to get my mind off of anything the least bit frightening. I was already on my third bottle of Café Au Lait from the vending machine outside with absolutely no intention of sleeping that night.
Shake. The apartment moved once. Shake, shake. The apartment moved again. Clank, clank, clank. Another small earthquake following the previous one. But this one was even shorter and less intense. I covered my ears and shut my eyes so tight that a tear dripped out of my left eye and began to run down my face but stopped halfway on the edge of my cheek.
The shaking intensified, and for the first time strange sirens began to go off incessantly in the streets outside. I didn't want to move or open my eyes, but something in me knew I had to gather the courage to check the window behind me. I needed to know. I needed to know if he was there.
I took a few shallow breaths and relaxed my eyes enough to open them a bit. Nothing was there, the only thing in the window was the reflection of a couple street lights and the sirens going off. Phew. Getting ready to evacuate, I opened my eyes all the way and breathed a sigh of relief. I leaned back a bit on my pillows preparing to stand up.
It was then I noticed. He was in the far corner of the kitchen across the room from me. He was inside my apartment now, between me and the door. His shoulders hunched over a bit and his head straight up, looking at me.
Smiling.
Breathing.
Licking his lips.
Submitted July 23, 2015 at 07:49AM by Nutty_Muffin http://ift.tt/1Mp6Mcs nosleep
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