Lost

[Somewhere out there]

Alex found himself sitting on the steps of the dilapidated Shinto shrine with its weathered and tattered roof near collapse, weighed down precariously by the fallen branches of the trees nearby.

Only a moment ago, a searing and excruciating pain shot through his body, shearing it to pieces on a hospital bed, causing him to move uncontrollably. Wasn't he supposed to be in Melbourne?

Now, he is in the middle of nowhere in Japan, or rather what seemed to be Japan. The peculiar style of the shrine was distinctly Japanese, one of the many he had seen during his exchange in Kyushu.

The doctors inserted some needle in his left hand and the nurse at the Emergency Department tagged him for admission, yet when he studied his hand; it looked untouched.

Not even a pin sized prick or a sign of the hospital patient tag. He recalled the ordeal being wheeled down the sterile, gloomy corridors to a ward, then being made to change into the patient uniform.

Looking down, he was wearing his favorite jeans, not the plain, patient pajama pants. Wearing a t-shirt, instead of the dank flannel top. Did the hospital admission even happen or not?

The agonizing pain wrecking his body had completely vanished. He stood up for a bit and his legs did not feel weak anymore. Cautiously, he sat back down, wondering about the place.

He glanced around the Shinto shrine. Cicadas were singing in their shrill mating pitch, instead of the next patient, an elderly man, who was constantly crying out for the nurses.

However, he recalled it was the wrong season in Japan for the cicadas. Summer in Australia was near Christmas, but Japan would be in winter now.

"Anyone out here?" Alex called out as he peeked into the termite eaten donation box in front of him.

At the bottom of the box, he noticed the brownish, yellowish leaves and two one-yen coins. Turning around, there was a lonely bell in front of the inner sanctum, coloured with a mix of brownish rust and greenish tarnish from hundreds of humid summers.

His eyes turned to the three brownish nesting spiders with their elongated bums cleaning the large mangled webs, like experts detangling the messy silk. Their eyes seemed to watch his every move, making him very uneasy.

"Spiders are more scared of you than you of them," he repeated to himself, the same way he comforted himself while chasing out a huge huntsman from his parents' house in Australia. "You are much bigger than they are."

Those were male Trichonephila clavata, also known as the Joro spider, and Alex often seen them around shrines during his stint in Japan. Usually more of the bigger and more brightly coloured females with one or two lurking males, rather than the sorry sight of three lonesome male spiders before him.

"No offence, dudes, but where's your big fat females? Shouldn't you be mating?" He asked the spiders sitting placid in their webs with their eyes seemingly trained on him.

A faint buzz of a busy giant Asian hornet nest, the suzumebachi, amidst the noisy cicadas, distracted him from the spiders.

His Japanese friends called those hornets 'the murder wasps', for they were perfect killing machines of the insect world and a feared insect in the human world.

For a good reason, the suzumebachi's sting would leave a person with a bullet hole sized scar. Several stings will leave a corpse with some unsightly holes.

He turned his gaze to the creeping ivy peeped out of the middling cracks in the dusty and dry granite hand washing basin in front of the shrine. No one has been here for a long time.

Shit, what if he got stung, or worse, chased by several suzumebachi? No one would know.

A miserable jingle from the half dead bell disrupted his thoughts again, followed by the familiar thud of a heavy coin in the box. Then two resounding claps echoed through the lonely forest, as though someone was there.

"HELLO, CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?" Alex yelled at the top of his voice.

No reply. He couldn't see anyone from a far but footsteps were coming his way.

He got up only to make accidental eye contact with the darn suzumebachi, just inches away from his nose. Its distinctive yellow armor, with a set of mandibles to shear and tear puny insect bodies, was fit for a horror movie, flying near him.

For a moment, he panicked and froze. Alas, its beady black eyes spotted his position. Before he could swat it, the buzzing suzumebachi swerved around him and flew towards the surrounding forest behind him. He let out a relieved sigh.

"Hello?" He called out again and look around.

Still, nobody answered. No one was around. He took a few steps around the shrine, hoping for some signs of human habitation, only to be disappointed by the sight of a large forest surrounding it with its thick undergrowth and the occasional bird pecking at worms on the ground.

Footsteps were now approaching the sacred boundary of the faded red wooden Torii gate. Alex ran towards the gate quickly.

"Hey, this is the cursed place I told you about," a boy's voice called out in Japanese, as though the person passed by without noticing him.

"Hello? Who are you?" Alex asked as he took a few steps towards the disembodied voice.

"Tomo, you ate way too much KFC and now you turned chicken like those in your box. It isn't even night."

"Where are you?" Alex called out, his eyes still searching for the boys while he sniffed around - he couldn't smell the KFC chicken at all.

"My grandma said people disappeared here… spirited away by the Kami… don't fuck around, man," that same panicky voice insisted.

"Hiro, are we on for the bet or not?"

Whoever these invisible entities were, they sounded like school-age kids on some ghost hunt. Yet aside from the sounds of their feet breaking twigs or trampling on the leaves strewn all over the ground, he couldn't see them at all.

Keep calm, Alex told himself. There has to be a logical explanation.

He pinched himself, only to wince in pain. Working pain receptors proved it was no dream. Alex fiddled around in his jeans pocket for his mobile phone and cussed his luck. His phone was gone and without Google or its map, he was helpless.

A thousand thoughts ran through his mind about the possibilities of being in this strange place.

Perhaps a hallucination from a brain trauma or side effects from a drug administered in the hospital. Or worse, a mental illness has reared its nasty head. Schizophrenia, perhaps? He shook his head in despair.

He looked up, conflicted about his thoughts. Did he really want to accept, as the kid said, being spirited away? Mental illness would destroy his hopes of a future academic career, one which he had worked hard for. He shuddered at the thought of a straight jacket. What would his parents think?

"Hello? Can anyone see me?" Alex called out loudly yet again in desperation.

"AHHHH A WHOLE NEST OF MAMUSHI!" One of the unseen boys yelled.

"NO WAY! IT IS NOT THEIR SEASON TO BE OUT!"

Alex stood stunned by the revelation. Was the season just an illusion? Never mind that, he thought as he walked towards the sound of the invisible shouter before a hissing sound stopped him in the tracks.

His eyes moved towards the ground where he spotted a mass slithering ball of elongated bodies camouflaged among the leaves and soil, only a foot step away. The markings on the unfurling ball matched those of the dreaded Japanese pit vipers, the infamous mamushi.

Some of the venomous mamushi detangled themselves from their companions and slid on the brownish dried leaves on the ground, rearing their bodies in a striking pose, hissing away loudly for the unseen boys to piss off.

Why could he see them, and not the boys? Alex edged away slowly to the side, then he realized the snakes poised at the unseen others, not him.

"TOLD YOU THERE IS A CURSE HERE… RUN… THOSE BLOODY SNAKES CAN KILL WITH A BITE!"

The sounds of the footsteps went past him, which sounded like a few people fleeing and grew further away.

"Pesssky kidsss, always coming around here to messs our place up," a disembodied voice of a man grumbled into Alex's ear, causing him to jump around with his hair standing at the nape of his neck.

If snakes could talk, it would sound like the new entrants, the unknown voices with their hiss-like pronunciations. Alex shook the thought out of his head. No such thing as talking snakes.

"Yesss, they threw their KFC down… last week was Mcdonaldsss. Not bad, two fried chicken piecesss in the box," the voices said in unison, surprising Alex.

"Who are you? Show yourselves… what is going on? Where am I?" Alex asked in hesitation, wary of the invisible lurkers, whoever or whatever they were.

"Ssshit another human," the voice hissed as the mamushi started to slider away into the forest. "Our competitor for KFC chicken."

"I don't want your KFC, you can have it. I just want to know where I am," Alex said loudly for all to hear, even though he couldn't see them.

"Neither dead, neither alive. Just a human sssoul at a cusssp of life and death…lossst," another voice spoke as Alex felt the uncanny sensation of a few eyes inspecting him curiously, like he was the latest human zoo exhibit.

"What do you mean by cusp?"

Again, silence, as though whoever the speakers were, they were ignoring him on purpose.

Still, their words about him being 'neither dead nor alive' confused him. Lost would be the correct description of his current predicament.

His gut told him that ignorance would be bliss, but a growing desperation overwrote caution. He really wanted to know where he was or the reason for being in this odd place.