Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

No thinking. You are not allowed to think, I told myself. You are not allowed to use your imagination. Lieutenant Mamiya had said that in his letter. Imagining things here can be fatal.

Finally, the flashlight beam began to move forward slowly, very slowly. The man seemed to be heading for the inner room. I tightened my grip on the bat. It was then I noticed that the sweat of my hands had dried. If anything, my hands were now too dry.

The man took one slow step forward, then stopped. Then one more step. He seemed to be checking his footing. He was closer to me than ever now. I took a breath and held it. Two more steps, and he would be where I wanted him. Two more steps, and I would be able to put an end to this walking nightmare. But then, without warning, the light disappeared.

Total darkness had swallowed everything again. He had turned off his flashlight. I tried to make my mind work quickly in the dark, but it would not work at all. An unfamiliar chill ran through me. He had realized that I was there.

Move, I told myself. Don't just stand there. I tried to dodge to the left, but my legs would not move. My feet were stuck to the floor, like the feet of the bird sculpture. I bent forward and barely managed to incline my stiffened upper body to the left. Just then, something slammed into my right shoulder, and something hard and cold as frozen rain stabbed me to the bone.

The impact seemed to revive me, and the paralysis went out of my legs. I sprang to the left and crouched in the darkness, feeling for my opponent. The blood was pounding through my body, every muscle and cell straining for oxygen. My right shoulder was going numb, but I had no pain. The pain would come later. I stayed absolutely still, and he did too. We faced each other in the darkness, holding our breaths. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear.

Again, without warning, the knife came. It slashed past my face like an attacking bee, the sharp point just catching my right cheek where the mark was. I could feel the skin tearing. No, he could not see me, either. If he could, he would have finished me off long before. I swung the bat in the darkness, aiming in the direction from which the knife had come, but it just swished through the air, striking nothing. The swing had been a good one, though, and the crisp sound helped me to loosen up somewhat. We were still an even match. The knife had cut me twice, but not badly. Neither of us could see the other. And though he had a knife, I had my bat.

Again, in our mutual blindness, breathing held in check, we felt each other out, waiting for some hint of movement. I could feel blood dripping down my face, but I was strangely free of fear. Its just a knife, I said to myself. Its just a cut. I waited. I waited for the knife to come my way again. I could wait forever. I drew my breath in and expelled it without a sound. Come on! I said to him in my mind. Move! I'm waiting for you to move. Stab me if you want to. I'm not afraid.

Again the knife came. It slashed the collar of my sweater. I could feel the point moving past my throat, but it never touched my skin. I twisted and jumped to the side, and almost too impatient to straighten up, I swung the bat through space. It caught him somewhere around the collarbone. Not enough to bring him down or break any bones, but I knew I had hurt him. I could feel him recoil from the blow, and I heard a loud gasp. I took a short backswing and went for him again-in the same direction at a slightly higher angle, where I had heard the breath drawn in.

It was a perfect swing. I caught him somewhere high on the neck. There was a sickening sound of cracking bone. A third swing hit home- the skull-and sent him flying. He let out a weird sound and slumped to the floor. He lay there making little gasps, but those soon stopped. I closed my eyes and, without thinking, aimed one final swing in the direction of the sound. I didn't want to do it, but I had no choice. I had to finish him off: not out of hatred or even out of fear, but as something I simply had to do. I heard something crack open in the darkness like a piece of fruit. Like a watermelon. I stood still, gripping the bat, holding it out in front of me. Then I realized I was trembling. All over. And there was no way I could stop it. I took one step back and pulled the flashlight from my pocket.

Don't! cried a voice in the darkness. Don't look at it! Kumiko's voice was calling to me from the inner room, trying to stop me from looking. But I had to look. I had to see it. I had to know what it was, this thing in the center of the darkness that I had just beaten to a pulp. Part of my mind understood what Kumiko was forbidding me to do. She was right: I shouldn't look at it. But I had the flashlight in my hand now, and that hand was moving on its own.

Please, I'm begging you to stop! she screamed. Don't look at it if you want to take me home again!

I clenched my teeth and quietly released the air I had locked in my lungs. Still the trembling would not subside. A sickening smell hung in the air-the smell of brains and violence and death. I had done this: I was the one who had made the air smell like this. I found the sofa and collapsed onto it. For a while, I fought against the nausea rising in my stomach, but the nausea won. I vomited everything in my stomach onto the carpet, and when that was gone I brought up stomach fluid, then air, and saliva. While vomiting, I dropped the bat on the floor. I could hear it rolling away in the darkness.

Once the spasms of my stomach began to subside, I wanted to take out my handkerchief to wipe my mouth, but I could not move my hand. I couldn't get up from the sofa. Lets go home, I said toward the darkness of the inner room. This is all over now. Lets go.

She didn't answer. There was no one in there anymore. I sank into the sofa and closed my eyes. I could feel the strength going out of me-from my fingers, my shoulders, my neck, my legs.... The pain of my wounds began to fade as well. My body was losing all sense of mass and substance. But this gave me no anxiety, no fear at all. Without protest, I gave myself up- surrendered my flesh-to some huge, warm thing that came naturally to enfold me. I realized then that I was passing through the wall of jelly. All I had to do was give myself up to the gentle flow. I'll never come back here again, I said to myself as I moved through the wall. Everything had come to an end. But where was Kumiko? Where did she go? I was supposed to bring her back from the room. That was the reason I killed the man. That was the reason I had to split his skull open like a watermelon. That was the reason I... But I couldn't think anymore. My mind was sucked into a deep pool of nothingness.

When I came to, I was sitting in the darkness again. My back was against the wall, as always. I had returned to the bottom of the well.

But it was not the usual well bottom. There was something new here, something unfamiliar. I tried to gather my faculties to grasp what was going on. What was so different? But my senses were still in a state of near-total paralysis. I had only a partial, fragmentary sense of my surroundings. I felt as if, through some kind of error, I had been deposited in the wrong container. As time passed by, though, I began to realize what it was.

Water. I was surrounded by water.

The well was no longer dry. I was sitting in water up to my waist. I took several deep breaths to calm myself. How could this be? The well was producing water-not cold water, though. If anything, it felt warm. I felt as if I were soaking in a heated pool. It then occurred to me to check my pocket. I wanted to know if the flashlight was still there. Had I brought it back with me from the other world? Was there any link between what had happened there and this reality? But my hand would not move. I couldn't even move my fingers. All strength had gone out of my arms and legs. It was impossible for me to stand.