After frisking me one more time, Bubbles orders me back into the cell, then slams the door shut. The whole exercise has taken less than five minutes, but leaves my head reeling for half an hour.
This can’t be happening.
I lie down on the tatami, clutching my head and begging for deliverance. A guard, passing by in the corridor taps his nightstick against the bars, and barks, “No sleeping!”
“Who’s sleeping?”
“No sleeping,” he says and walks off.
Grudgingly, I push myself off the floor and sit with my back against one wall, eyes focused on the opposite wall.
The cell is nothing like the tidy, antiseptic cells in photos released to the media by Japan’s Ministry of Justice to show how humanely prisoners are treated. The walls are a dingy white. A gray three-foot high border running along the base is mottled with the greasy silhouettes of the previous guests of the state, who have idled away weeks and months, perhaps years, with their filthy, sweaty backs against them.
Two seedy tatami mats, measuring four and a half feet by six total, form the main area of the cell. And, if it weren’t already cramped enough, in addition to the futon folded up in the corner near the toilet, there is a cheap, low-lying desk of sorts, butted up against the wall near the door.
On the desk, a tin kettle and a plastic cup, each one as stained as a smoker’s smile, have been waiting for me since I was brought in last night. In the plastic yellow basket tucked under the desk, are the underwear and pajamas that were issued to me, as well as the few items of my own clothing I was allowed to take, minus belts, long strings, or shoelaces.
A poster-sized calendar featuring the months of July to December and a photo of a bee hovering above a flower is taped to the wall above the desk.
Reaching up, I touch today’s date: Wednesday, the 12th of July, 2006. I feel as frozen in time as the bee in this poster, like a bug trapped in amber.
Anxiety comes crashing back like a tsunami against me.
How the fuck could this possibly be happening?
Jail never figured into the calculus of my life. Never. And yet, here I am, confined now by its stark geometry.
Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.