Nightmare | Mao Chinen

In the center of the black night

when the bone-white skeleton

suddenly appeared

in front of me

with no thumbs

he whispered

“Hello.”

and with a smile

like a devil in my ear

he slowly walked through

where a little child alone

in the dark lay

on a dreary city sidewalk

and I heard something

big and green chase

the child like a gloomy huge spider

seeking to catch its prey and suck

the life out of it

Memories | Mao Chinen

One Sunday morning

we were in the cozy little park

under some big twists

and turns in the trees

we played on the swing

rocking back and

forth like a pendulum

repeated endlessly

the yellow sun shined

on us when we looked

to our right

we could see

the blue-green ocean

and the waves coming

and going out

across the hot white sand

when we felt the fregrance

of the salt breeze

we don’t think anything

Autumn 2016  |  Mao Chinen

under the shade

of a stand

of big brown trees

the ground beneath

turned to yellow gold

and sunlight

disappeared earlier

as the air grew cold

dead leaves in the stairway

a girl wearing

a red wool sweater

came softly

without a sound

and tried

to hold them

A Sad Man with a Broken Heart

by Ritsuki Kuninaka  

  

The other day, I read a story in the newspaper about a short fat man, crying in his Speedos. His name was John X, a citizen of Norway, and he was thirty-five years old. The story went on to say that he was a famous biologist in his home country. In 2006, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. But 2008, he was arrested by the FBI because he used his cell phone as a weapon against helpless microorganisms on a Petri dish in his laboratory. And he lost his job.

After he was released, he started studying about the penny. Because he loved pennies and he wanted to be a scholar like a biologist again. He had been thinking about what to study. Something hard was an ideal task for him. He collected a truck load of pennies and studied them very hard. Then he made many documents that were written about the penny's history. The process as to how pennies were made and so on. He knew he was going to write a striking book about this. He bet his life on the book to succeed again. The documents were very important for his future.

On a hot summer day, he went to Family Mart. When he was walking around Family Mart, he found a nice body woman outside of Family Mart who was eating the most expensive ice cream called, "before spring thaw melts Fuji-san's ice". An old man who was walking in front of the woman dropped his coins but he didn’t notice. She picked it up and passed it to him with a beautiful smile. At that moment John X's body became extremely heated by a burning passion, and he fell in love with her.

After he left Family Mart, he met his friend Lion, and John told him about the woman. He just talked about how she was beautiful. He had no information about her. He didn’t even know her name. In the middle of talking, Lion said, "oh probably it’s Kristine." Actually Lion was the woman's friend. He asked Lion about her a lot. According to his information, her name was Kristine. She was twenty-eight years old and rich. She came to Norway from London on her summer vacation. Now, she stayed at a five-star hotel. Lion said "we are having lunch at my house tomorrow. You should come. "

The next day, John X was at Lion’s house with Lion and Kristine. John felt happy to meet her again but also very nervous and couldn’t speak to her at all. But Lion made the lunch fun and close between John X and Kristine. After this lunch, John X and Kristine kept good relation for six months and they became a couple. After 2 years, he was ready to put on The Tuxedo and propose to her.

From this day, he started his new beautiful life. They took walks and talked of their undying love every day. But after a while, he noticed that she began to do some rather nasty deeds. She developed a seriously bad attitude. But he kept on loving her. She was the right person for him, he believed.

One Sunday morning, when he was eating sweet honey on toast with cinnamon, suddenly she came to him and said, "I've just got a new boyfriend. He is funny at making jokes. He is not like you. I was seeking a faithful man like you before. But I found you are really quite boring and make my days dreadfully so. My dream is to run away from these days so I don’t have to live in this Zombie land anymore."

At the time of her disappearance, he realized she had robbed hi of his penny’s documents. Actually Kristine Jones was a secret agent. She approached him to steal his documents and become rich. This meant that she took his future and the best memory in his life.

Today too, he is howling at one picture that is in her under a heavy wool black blanket and crying, bumping, pushing, pulling and pawing. He still mutters to himself, "She was like a beautiful blonde bombshell who exploded in my life."

A Family Were Disappeared from Miami

by Mao Chinen 

A woman named Nancy was from Taiwan. She is the boss in the family. There are 3 people in her family. Her humorous handsome husband named Danny and her cheerful daughter Katy who is five years old. Nancy is half Taiwanese and half British. When she was a child, she lived in Washington D.C where her father worked as the head chef at the White House.

At eighteen Nancy was accepted to Harvard University where she studied Medical science and British literature. And Danny also majored in British literature. So she was getting along with him and they started dating.

After she graduated from the university, she worked as a doctor. On the other hand, Danny became a translater. When they were twenty-seven years old, they got married and lived in Washington D.C for five years.

Two months ago, they moved to Miami because they won the lottery. The family started living in a mansion. Miami is the best position for them.

However one night the Miami Beach midnight bash occurred. There was a twenty-meter tidal wave that killed everyone in her family. They were so scared for their lives, but it didn’t matter. They died. It was starting to snow in the background.

The police investigated the accident. It was normal except for one thing. There was poison detected in their bodies. The police suspect that someone killed the family. They decided to investigate the incident.

According to the police, murder suspects were narrowed down to three people. A first person is Hiro whose nationality is Japanese. He is thirty-three years old. He was a pianist. He was their friend and he loved Nancy. But his friend Danny proposed to her.  Second is Anita who is British. Thirty-two years old, she was the family’s neighbor. She was a writer. Unfortunately, It wasn’t going well and she broke up with her boyfriend who she had been dating for three years. She planned to marry him. Anita suffered from her misfortune. She had always envied the family.

Third is Pierre who was from France, and loved expensive candy. He is forty-five and also a friend of the family. He used to visit their house and played with their daughter. He was a job-hopper and lived in poverty. So he wanted a lot of money. After a while, he heard that they won the lottery.

Did one person of these three people kill the family? Or did the family commit suicide? Today, the police have been looking for the truth.

Medicine Woman Jane’s Odd Prediction

by Kumi Kobashigawa

Medicine Woman Jane told her good buddy Junko, “Tomorrow will be a beautiful new beginning for you,” when Jane was talking to Junko about her wildest dreams. It was a beautiful moonlit night. They were sitting under the shade of a tree in the backyard and eating juicy grapes and drinking excellent red wine with the roasted garlic chicken, jellyfish salad, and sugar-free dessert, which they had bought for a very low price at a local market.

“Listen to the voice of the heavens, open your mind and then you’ll land on your feet!” Jane cried in a quivering voice. “There she goes again,” Junko thought as Jane always talked about the purported predictions in her dreams even though her prediction had never come true.

Finally, Jane’s long talk finished, and they looked blankly for a short while at the beautiful full moon. The scent of the citrus fruits wafted in the air.

Then, some sweet music was heard from somewhere. Junko looked around and the crazy star-crossed lovers could be seen over the fence. The girl was sitting on a grand piano, and the boy was serenading her with a popular love song of the 1970s, and they began to dance under the moonlight.

“They’ve probably watched a few romantic musical movies too much,” Junko thought to herself.

After that, Jane began to talk again, but Junko was tired, so she said goodbye to Jane and walked home. As soon as Junko arrived home, she went to bed and, without remembering Jane’s prediction, fell fast asleep.

The next day, Junko arose and found the hands of the clock pointed straight to 9:00 A.M. “Oh, dear!” She muttered, remembering she had a job interview that day. She had decided to find a new job because the job of Medicine Woman, she felt, didn’t pay well enough.

She dressed in a hurry, spread sweet honey on burnt toast and got into her car. She hurried on her way to a company that she was going to interview for. When she made her way through the forest road, suddenly a deer leapt out from the right side of the trees. She turned the wheel sharply to the left but her car slammed into a tree!

Fortunately, she didn’t suffer any serious injuries. She called the police and the company, but her brand new car was wrecked completely, which caused her to cry uncontrollably.

Anyway, she was bound for the company in a daze. She got into a taxi and got out just a few blocks before the company. Then, she heard the distinct sounds of people squealing up ahead. She came closer there and saw that George Clooney was just coming out of the building. A crowd of female fans was surrounding him, snapping pictures and asking for autographs.

Junko tried to make her way through the crowd but one of the fan shouted, “Hey, you are in my way, step aside!” and pushed Junko. Junko fell onto the street. She tottered back to her feet but found her right knee was bleeding. “Oh, shoot,” she muttered and went into the closest store to use the restroom and wash the injury, and went back into the company.

After her job interview and the journey back home, she was very tired. She opened the fridge, took out yesterday’s dinner, and asked the girl next door Tomomi to join her for dinner.

Tomomi came soon, and they began to eat like sad funeral mourners. Tomomi asked Junko what had happened that day, then Junko began to tell her about her journey and about Mr. Clooney. Tomomi listened carefully to Junko and cheered her up.

Afterwards, they watched a documentary movie while sipping on warm milk. Then they felt sleepy, so Tomomi went back to her room and Junko went to bed.

“It was an awful day,” she muttered to herself under the heavy wool blanket and she was soon dreaming of escape from her bad hair day.

However, further misfortune was creeping closer upon her.

Unfortunately, she was seemingly unaware of the hair monster wearing with an evil smile and gulping down a strawberry shake just beyond the bedroom door!

A Gentle Man?

by Bruce Lee Walker

On the streets of Berkeley, a gentle white male, incredibly hungry for food, snatched some candy from a little girl who was merely two and passing by, with her mom, too closely to his big hairy hand.

Though gentle, the man was an utter loon who found himself periodically robbing his local Family Mart with a spoon and a water gun filled with apple vinegar which he produced to threaten the staff with. 

The gentle white male was now wasting away in jail cleaning bathrooms and scrubbing floors with a used toothbrush given to him by an abusive guard named Steve.

The gentleman was known as Stephano, and he’d been sentenced to two years and was there for only a month but could take it no more.  So, he decided to escape like a crafty ninja and slip through the steel bars of his cold hard cell and run like hell through the cold wet night.

After he escaped, he looked long and hard in a mirror hanging on a bus depot wall and found he was no longer so gentle. He had become crazed and an outrageous man. For the onlookers that passed by thought he had gone completely and utterly mental. And, it was true. Stephano, on the night of his escape, was howling at the moon crazed and selfish after having crossed the great Golden Gate Bridge wearing Prada shoes and eating juicy grapes he had plucked from a vineyard in the Salinas Valley.

He had now gone totally insane, and it seemed the gentle white male had become an evil, menacing, conniving thief. But it didn’t matter anymore as he was self-absorbed and concerned only about getting back to the place of his youth.

Stephano traveled day and night walking for many hours wandering the endless road. He looked for whatever he could find to eat. Suddenly, the guard from the jail found Stephano walking along a road and asked how he was slip sliding away from the jail cell he had been confined to. Steve didn’t wait for the cookie to crumble, because of his great anxiety and depression, he admitted to Stephano that he was tired of working at that depressing place.

Steve and Stephano talked for many hours about each others problems. Finally coming to a conclusion that they both wanted revenge. Revenge on the world that had put them in a position that was unfair.

They decide that they would rob one major bank in every State. Starting from Maine heading to Florida,Florida to Alaska and from there to Washington.

The first few heists were easy. By the time they hit Ohio, they were known everywhere as S and S. They worked their way down to Florida and started to realise that,since everyone knew about the S and S and that everyone knew what they looked like that they would never be able to spend any of the money that they had stolen. But,they had an idea. It wasn’t simple but it was the only way they would ever be able to use the money that they had stolen.

They decided to burn some of the money,keep only what is necessary and hide. Hide until no one remembered them anymore or at least were able to enter a convenience store without being noticed. Still after all the havoc that they had caused they still weren’t sure if a few years would be enough to clear their names.

The S and S duo hid themselves in the state of Alaska. Food, they could scavange for but finding a place to live was the problem. Every Motel, every apartment they would go to always had a wanted poster of them inside.

So, they decided to head to Texas instead. Since it was the biggest state, they thought that at least they might be able to find somewhere they could stay.

As they walked along the state highway they noticed something coming towards them. Shining black and white, blue and red light flickering and in huge numbers. They were on the highway so there was really no place for them to hide. 

As they ran they looked at each other knowing that this was the end they smiled and started to laugh. Holding each others hands and kept running and running until Bam, they were both shot, falling straight to the hot searing ground. 

The S and S duo had been ended. As all the money they had in their bags started to fly away because of the strong wind that day , their feeling for revenge also flew away leaving them with happiness. Happiness that was called “friendship”.

The police had looked at their past history of when they were young. Both of them abused by their father. Not having the childhood they deserved. They felt sorry for them.

A few days had passed, and the daily newspaper had been published with them on the front page. The title of their page was not what everyone had expected or probably thought should have. It was named “S and S the thieves with a heart”

Not many people no the reason why this tragic story or why that page of the newspaper was named that  but the police, the S and S family and you the readers the listeners of this story will truly know what happened.