Somehow he always knows he is asleep, but it doesn’t mute the torment and disillusionment of what comes. Feeling cold hands on his neck, or corpse-like claws grasping for him as he runs past as a small child playing alone in the abandoned housing projects. His father named him Fuji Fujiwara before he abandoned the family and his mother petitioned the court for a name change. He remembers being small, not quite old enough for school and wandering around a submerged tunnel where  the train enters the city. It was closed for repairs so his friends wanted to explore and use their disposable polaroid cameras to find graffiti art in the shadowy depths. Glimpses of a world you only see in flashes while riding the train between San Francisco and the barren gentrified slums of Silicon Valley where only millionaires can afford crumbling 2 bedroom homes. It was cool down here, despite the day being nearly 100 degrees on the surface streets. 

Down in the tunnels it was about 50 degrees, but under their raincoats it was hot and uncomfortable from running all day. It was strange weather where humid rain came down all week. This is the first time they got to play since school was cancelled and their parents wanted some peace and quiet in the house. Days like this make the insects angry and the hungry dogs run into dark places to wait out the unseasonal tropical storm. Down in the dark where the fleas and water logged insects breed, a deep silence fills the blackness like a hurricane passing through an airlock ripping the breath from your lungs and out into the vacuum of space. Reassuring mantras of parents saying there is no such thing as monsters in the dark causes a temporary armistice with the denizens of the underworld, a fleeting and false sense of security among the empty train tracks bellow the streets. Where junkies fix and teenage maniacs come to practice satanic rituals, vivisect pets and set the homeless on fire.

The kids ran far beyond where the daylight would save them. Sprinting into dank depths where the only passers-by are vandals busy spray painting, city utility workers working on wiring and homeless ghosts who eye them with suspicion. Jaundiced eyes and liver spots on the living, fetid breath and exploded capillaries on the undead. While taking photos of eerie paintings, ghostly figures scrawled on the sooty walls, he realized his friends had disappeared down a staircase to the lower depths. He could hear sound of running, water echoing down there and sounds of groaning pipes but he had no flashlight. Hearing giggling out of sight he called to his friends, no doubt having more fun than him. Shadowy faces crossed behind his eyes as he blinked. He would press as hard as he could on his eyelids when he was scared, making black and white apparitions float in his optic nerve. Kids played dumb games like that or hunching over, hyperventilating then standing up and holding their necks so the hypoxia would give some fleeting euphoria of juvenile intoxication. Foolish games for tender hearts.

It wasn’t so scary, of all the places in the dark tunnel, the stair case had damp yellow lights. He was curious about the rushing water and the sounds of laugher but a voice in his head told him if he went down there and got into trouble he would never see his family again. Looking at his Scooby-doo lunchbox for courage, he opened it and looked at his best action figures for reassurance. Their expressionless plastic faces had no words of wisdom to share, only the dumb stare of cheap Hong Kong knock offs with rough plastic lines down the sides from over worked assembly lines. His Japanese “Sofubi” toy monsters seemed to have more courage. “Go see what wonders await in the storm drains.” Of coarse a monster toy would say that. So he carefully put away his toys and held onto the rusting iron hand rail as he navigated creaking grate stairs. One by one he made it to the next floor where a big steel door was firmly shut. Down one more floor. He looked between the stairs and saw it went down at least another 80 feet. He called to his friends, he didn’t want to meet any Morlocks that far down.

The next floor down had no door, the metal around the edges broken up from coastal moisture like an old battleship. Seeing phantom images in the dark of giant centipedes, cannibal giants and female ghosts who wanted to snatch kids to drown them in silted pools made him want to run up and forget his friends. He heard a man say once his mom suffered from hallucinations, was that what it meant when his imagination filled the darkness with ghoulish faces and dead men? Down here there were new sounds, machines pumping bay water out, storm drains diverted through big pipes into cement culverts and a woman crying. For some reason his first instinct was to say, “Mommy?” Into the echoing depths. No reply. There was some light reflecting as he looked way down to the left, that was strange… His internal compass told him the end of the tunnel was to the right. As he crunched along on gravel and old nails he started to smell flowers and candy under the smell of dirty water and old pipes. Coming to a bend in the tunnel he found his friends.

They were gathered around a wounded frog trying to right its self on its back. The frog was big, bigger than most medium sized dogs. The children laughed and kicked it, beat it with radio antennas and garbage power cords. Its eyes pleaded for him to help but as with most kids, he didn’t want to be first to object, breaking the camaraderie of friendship. The frogs red and yellow eyes asked for help, it’s silent voice screaming for mercy, a reprieve from a wrongful execution. Fuji felt shame and powerlessness, wanting to help, wanting to do something else. Freeing the frog back into its happy home in sewer water. He reached out to turn it over and his friends turned on him, punching him hard in the eye and throwing his lunch box into the storm drain running down the middle of the tunnel. The frog died, not from their abuse but something else. Maybe heart disease or lung cancer. His last memory of being swept away by storm water after his toys.

As cold as he feels, water pushing into his nose and mouth. It all seems so abstract. Somewhere outside his psyche, he is aware of a hard steel prison bunk. Of echoed yelling and gates slamming. He almost wants to stay in this sad dream where he is about to drown. Just one more moment with forgotten toys and people he hasn’t seen in decades. Even as he washes away into some yawning abyss, it’s better than the emptiness of where he really is. What sweet bliss can we steal from the reaper. Just one more kiss, or dream of a summer day. A day on a boat or running beside a freight train. No, it has come time to open his eyes for real. The warden and priest stand in silhouette, the morning light frame the stoic shapes, assaulting his eyes like a boxers merciless fist. In a solumn tone the Warden announces the Death Warrant… his execution at the bars to his cell. He must have known today was the day. He wonders what choking on sodium cyanide pellets turning into a caustic vapor of sulfuric acid beneath the chair felt like? Cramps and nausea or punishing smoke melting this sinuses and burning out his eyes? The dead man’s family and members of the press looking into the death chamber with cold eyes and blank stares.