It’s just cold enough for my breath to come out as a visible fog. I like how it combines with the smoke I exhale to create a small cloud. That’s why I started smoking. I liked watching smoke leave my mouth. I felt cool. Clint Eastwood-cool. I don’t know if that’s why I still smoke. I don’t think so. I think I just love that little buzz, though it never quite hits the way it did that first time. Anyone who smokes remembers their first time. The way their legs buckled and how they felt hammered. I remember it well. I had just turned eighteen and bought a pack of marlboros, ‘cause what the hell? I stood outside the gas station and lit one up and took a drag. I wasn’t sure if I could drive, if I was supposed to. Still chasing that dragon here in Tokyo, I suppose.
The city has this incredible neon glow that reflects off the streets, the vibrant lights robbing the stars of their spotlight, washing them away to reveal a pitch-black sky. It’s like a city straight from science fiction. I wonder what science fiction even is. Seems like we live in it already. We’ve got the drones, the handheld devices that listen to what we say, the breaking of every rule in the big book of cautionary tales. But people are still holding out for those flying cars. I guess once we have those flying cars, that’s when we’ll truly have “made it.”
I find my mind racing like this when I smoke. The nicotine is like a gas pump, spurting fuel into the tank of my manic brain. I’ve smoked this one down to the nub, and I need another. I flick it to the side and it lands in a puddle. I like that. Knowing it has burnt out immediately. If you listen close, you can hear a little hiss as the flame dies out. I light up another. Damn, I have to quit. I told Kate that I would. But, of course, I take another big drag as I –
As I bump into a lady. She scolds me, likely cussing me out, but I don’t know her language. I had a translator this whole trip. Boss says I should learn Japanese. Mandarin, too, for our trips to China. But I never feel like it.
I’m about to catch a train. That’ll bring me to the airport. The plane will get me home the day before Thanksgiving. What was that song? About the holidays, and being home for them? Gee, the traffic is terrific. Was it by Frank Sinatra? No, no, it was Perry Como. I liked that song when I was a kid. I remember imagining it in one of my cartoons that I’d one day create. A character rushes home for Christmas and that song is playing. I’ve forgotten the character’s name.
Now, I draw characters that advertise toilet paper and fabric softener and cars. Cars are why I’m here. We do ads for a Japanese auto company. They sent me over for a business meeting, though a phone call would have sufficed. Now I gotta feel jet lagged while I cut the turkey. That annual post-Thanksgiving-meal nap is about to be a far deeper slumber than in previous years.
My real dream was to create a cartoon. Something like Family Guy or The Simpsons. Something people in college dorms would crowd around a TV to watch. Characters that made you laugh and cry and, on occasion, think. Instead, I draw characters that wanna sell you shit. They may as well be reaching their animated, four-fingered hands into your pockets to fish around for cash.
Still, I suppose I’m content. I have a family. My wife, Kate, and our daughter, Claire. Claire is four, now. She’ll be five on Christmas Eve. She’s not old enough to realize she’s been gipped by sharing a birthday with the baby Jesus. The world is her playground, right now. Why can’t it stay that way?
I remember the day the world started to look less like a playground, and more like a big scary monster that wanted to eat me. I was seventeen and in a meeting with my school guidance counselor. His name was Bill. Or was it Bob? I think it was Bill. I spoke to him about college and he gave me his topnotch, totally qualified advice. I told him I wanted to go to the UNC School of the Arts, pursue animation. His response was something about some article he’d read about going to film school and how you were better off getting a masters degree in the arts, focusing more on the practical when it came to your bachelor’s.
“So you may wanna pump the brakes on that idea,” he’d said.
And pump the brakes, I did. That was back before I realized that 99 percent of the population is full of shit. I went to Clemson, studied marketing. Moved to New York and became an ad man after I graduated. Pays the bills, I suppose, and that’s good.
Yes but, yes but, yes but it’s New York! says my mind. You can still animate! You’re 29 years old, prime of your life!
The ground seems to vibrate, and that’s weird. I would’ve remembered news of an impending earthquake. Must be my imagination. No one else seems to notice anything of the sort.
I think more about the ad agency and how it just kinda sucks. How you walk in and hear the sounds of ringing telephones and shuffling paper and monotone voices trying to sell people on shit that’ll save their companies from going belly-up. And I think of how wonderful it’d be to create a cartoon. Sure, there’d still be ringing telephones and cubicles, but the people would be bringing to life a… a vision.
Do it! You have time, but not much! You have forty good years left before you’re frail and walk with a hunch and need to take pills for your back.
Maybe I should. Perhaps I will. Maybe I’ll have more to be thankful for during next year’s Thanksgiving, and –
And the ground is definitely shaking. There are little items that litter the sidewalk—a can, cigarette butts, small pebbles—and those jitter and bounce up and down. Everyone else seems to notice, too, so I know I’m not crazy.
I’m one block from the train station. Something’s going on. People loiter outside the train and seem like they don’t want to get on. They listen to something, some report over the loudspeaker. Sounds like a safety precaution sort of thing, but I can’t hear it. Some people are leaving in a hurry, jabbering to one another with frightened expressions.
Then, there’s that sound we’ve all heard before. Whether it be in movies or in real time, we’ve all heard it. Those air raid sirens. They start out as a low hum and then escalate in pitch until they are a powerful howl, only to die down again, but just for a brief moment.
I listen to the sirens and watch as people stand around in confusion. I almost forget about the cigarette in my mouth, which now hangs lazily between my lips. I hear some panicked shouts and chatters, but these come from the next block over. I wonder what they see.
There’s a loud crash, which becomes a low rumble. Like the sound of a car rolling along a gravel driveway, amplified times a thousand. I hear screaming. The people at the train station, they see it, whatever it is. They’re looking up. They’re screaming. And then they begin to run for their lives. I see rubble and smoke and dust coming from what I suspect is the source of the rumbling.
And then, I hear a sound I’ve never heard. It sounds heavily modulated. Like somebody mixed the sounds of an earthquake with the bellows of an elephant, and then lowered the pitch and, again, amplified it by a thousand. I look up, and there’s another crashing noise. This time, I can see it. The tiptop of the building I gaze up at, that’s gone. Something has knocked it off. The big chunk of concrete falls and hits the ground a block away, sending a shockwave that goes right through me but doesn’t knock me over. My eyes still gaze upward, and now, I can see the monster.
The creature is a leviathan, a god among men. Looks like it hailed from Mount Olympus. It’s gotta be 300—no, 400—feet tall. It’s saurian, with a thick hide covered in reptilian scales. It walks like it’s moving through molasses, but I know that’s only because it’s so colossal. It stands on two legs that are thicker than skyscrapers. It walks right through the building, and the entire structure comes apart into a million pieces that fall and produce a thick cloud of dust.
The behemoth marches onto the street in which I stand. Those air raid sirens still ring constantly. The screams of thousands of people have now mixed to create one super, hellish scream. A fiery glow emanates from behind the creature, created by the mountainous flames the monster has left behind. The orange light outlines the monster.
The monster turns its huge head and lowers its gaze, and it looks as though it stares straight at me. It’s got a saurian face with crocodile teeth that protrude from its maw, even when closed. Its eyes are bright orange and devilish and they glow with malevolence. I cannot tell if I am in awe or terrified. And that paradox only magnifies when the monster spreads its wings. The wings are huge—spanning the creature’s own body length—and bat-like, and they have a burgundy shade.
That crocodilian mouth… it opens.
A bright, purple glow radiates from somewhere within the monster’s throat, and it brightens with each passing second. It continues to brighten until I must squint.
Then comes the beam. It’s some sort of powerful cross between plasma and fire, and it completely envelopes the street on which I stand. It soon envelopes the entirety of my vision. I’m scorched, but I can still see for just one moment longer. All I can think of is how beautiful a shade of purple it is.
I want my cartoon to have a lot of purple in it.