An excerpt from my senior thesis...

**Does this work? Is it believable? Or is it just shit?


The crowds scared her.

People moved together in tandem, a smooth, seamless dance Keiko couldn’t hope to penetrate. They were like tiny cells flowing through the blood stream of the train station. Juggling her train ticket and suitcases, she stumbled through the platform entrance, but missed the ticket feed, and two sides of a small gate sprung forward to impede her progress. Keiko stopped and calmed herself. Exhaustion after a ten-hour flight had finally caught up with her, and she had to struggle to maintain control by taking deep breaths and telling herself that everything was just fine. Moving to another country would not be easy, she knew that from the first, but experiencing it was almost too much for her. It was a silly thing, really, not being able to get through the gate, but it was enough to undo her at that moment. Bursting into tears in public would not help anything, so Keiko carefully fed the ticket through the gate. It sped through the feed with a sharp, whirring noise, and popped up at the other end. The two flaps retracted with a cheerful “ding,” allowing her to pass through.

She found her platform and was lucky enough to arrive just as the train was pulling in. It wasn’t easy dragging the suitcases onto the train, but she managed to grab the nearest rail and hold on precariously as the people behind her surged onto the car, bumping and jostling. A sticky heat pervaded the air, making Keiko even more uncomfortable to be pressed up against so many strangers. From a ceiling fan came a burst of cool air, and she struggled to feel it, but it was gone as soon as it arrived. The gentle rocking motion of the train and the oppressive heat lulled her tired mind into a dazed stupor. Despite the pain of trying to hold on, or maybe because of it, she felt an intense wave of fatigue wash over her muddled mind.

The landscape changed.

The train looked older, felt older, not something she could identify right away, just a feeling, like someone’s faded memory of what it was like to ride a train years and years ago. Some of the details were blurred, such as a hand rail that was there one moment and gone the next. It was the train she was riding, but Keiko felt like she was viewing it all through the eyes of someone who saw beyond the surface into a long distant memory. The plastic shifted in and out, from wood to brushed metal back to plastic, and the swaying handles were rope, then sturdy weave, then rubber coated. She saw it all without really seeing it, a sort of sensory impression on her mind, like the afterimage of a bright light on the back of closed eyelids. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, everything went back to normal. It was just a train car. Keiko felt something sink inside of her chest.
It had been a few months since something like this had happened to Keiko, but even that hadn’t been the first. She remembered the first time that her surroundings had changed so suddenly, when she was eight or nine-years-old.

It had been at temple with her mother, on a cold, drizzly Saturday sometime in the fall. Keiko stared out the window at the dreary rain, growing more and more restless with the boring sermons. They always went to temple on Saturdays, and in order to keep Keiko still and silent through the long ordeal, her mother always promised that they would to go the park afterwards as long as she behaved herself. It was beyond difficult for Keiko to sit still for that long, but the promise of going to the park helped her get through it. So, she stayed happy thinking of the park, and her mother was satisfied that they had been properly pious.

On that day, however, the weather was too bad to go out. Without the park to look forward to, Keiko couldn’t keep herself under control and had to endure a few slaps from her mother for fidgeting during temple. As they sat on their knees, feet tucked underneath, Keiko stared out the window. The murmur of dozens of voices praying made Keiko bored and sleepy; she hated how quiet it was inside and how no one looked at her or talked louder than a whisper. She wanted to jump up and down, run around, and yell at the top of her lungs, but she knew her mother would just punish her severely, not to mention the dirty looks she would get from all the old aunties and uncles. So, in a great effort to stave off punishment, Keiko kept her energy bottled up. Still, small bursts would escape her, usually a loud sigh or a little shake of her arms and legs. Each time she moved, her mother would bop her on the head, not too hard, but enough to scold her. And so Keiko would once again try to keep herself under control even though she was bored to tears and knew she wouldn't be going to the park today.

There weren’t any other boys and girls at this temple, just Keiko. Her family lived in a neighborhood of mostly old people, so Keiko had no one to sneak glances and whispered words with. Only the aged aunties and uncles were there, bent over in prayer, smelling musty and, well, old. Keiko didn’t mind them very much because she usually got sweets from them. Her mother always tried to tell the aunties not to, but they would reply that they had no grandchildren of their own nearby. Mother would have to give her permission then, not wanting to offend. Auntie Oh was the nicest, she even brought homemade cookies once or twice. Keiko looked around for Auntie Oh’s snow white curls and found her sitting at the back on a bench instead of a floor pillow. Keiko figured that she was too old to sit on ground. Grandpa was like that too; he said his knees weren’t strong enough to get his body up and down from the floor. Keiko didn’t really understand why, she thought that your body should work all the time, and she said so to Grandpa.

He laughed and said, “Don’t you feel weak and tired when you get sick?” Keiko nodded. “Well, that’s kind of what it’s like to be old,” he said. Keiko thought that was really sad and said she would never get old because she didn’t want to be sick all the time. Grandpa
just laughed.

As she thought about Grandpa and various other things, Keiko didn’t notice at first how the air in the room changed. She started to feel it, though, how it was charged with a sharp static that her young mind had found frightening and strange. The light grew dimmer, and the cold from outside started to fade away into a warmer, heavier temperature. But what really got her attention was when she suddenly realized that everyone was gone. Her mother was gone, the aunties and uncles were gone, and it was just her in the dimly lit room. There was no light, yet a diffuse glow kept the shadows at bay, though Keiko couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

Slowly getting to her feet, she shook out her legs to make the tingly feeling go away from sitting for so long. Walking around all the floor pillows, Keiko peered up at the shrine that was positioned at the front of the room. The glow wasn’t coming from there, though, so she turned around and walked back to where she had been sitting. It was kind of scary that no one had told her when they left, and that she hadn’t even seen them leave. Did she fall asleep? Keiko immediately rejected that idea. Her mother would have slapped her for falling asleep, not left her there. Plus, she never closed her eyes because her mother always seemed to know when she did and bopped her on the head.

Still looking around the room, Keiko wandered a bit, starting to get bored, and wondered when her mother would come back. She headed towards the exit, thinking that everyone might be in the hallway. The door was wide open, and as she approached, she saw that the glow was getting stronger. She peeked around the doorway, and to her right was a hall table against the wall. On top was the source of the glow. It was brightest there, a golden, warm light that filled the building. Keiko didn’t want to get in trouble for being nosy, but she really wanted to see what the glowing thing was, so she slowly walked up to the table.

Sitting on the surface was the biggest white moth she had ever seen. At first Keiko was scared, she didn’t really like bugs and seeing such a big moth startled her, but upon giving it a closer look, she thought that it looked a little sad. Its big wings fluttered softly, drooping a bit on the table. The body was as large as her hand, each wing even bigger. Keiko thought that it saw her because its head moved a bit, but she couldn’t tell since its dark eyes were unreadable. She didn’t really know what to do, but before she could make any decisions, there was a tremendous bang from behind her.

Whirling around, Keiko saw that the glow was gone, the temple was grey and dreary again, and standing in the doorway of the shrine room was her mother, her face twisted in anger.

“What are you doing out here? You know very well not to get up and walk around during temple services. I can’t believe that I didn’t even see you move. Don’t you ever do that again.”

Keiko tried to tell her about the moth, how everyone had disappeared for a little while but it only made her mother angrier.

“You stay right here. I’m getting our things, and then we’re going home where you’ll sit in your room and do nothing until I say you can leave.”

Keiko kept quiet, knowing that any arguing would make things worse. When her mother stomped away, she saw that Auntie Oh had been standing behind and heard the whole thing. Keiko felt ashamed, and didn’t want Auntie Oh to yell at her too, but when the old woman came up to her, all she said was, “You saw a moth, did you?”

Keiko stared at her feet, not wanting to say something that would get her yelled at more.
“Where was it? On this table? Right here?” asked Auntie Oh.

Looking up at where the old woman was pointing, Keiko saw that a large urn sat where the moth had been.

“Did you know that sometimes, after a person dies, their spirit is carried around by a moth, and it goes to visit all their loved ones?” Keiko shook her head. “Well,” Auntie Oh continued, “in this urn is Mr. Oh. He passed on last week, and I brought him to be interred at the temple today. Maybe you saw him come to visit me?”

Keiko wanted to say something to Auntie Oh, but she didn’t know what. Before she could say anything, though, her mother came and swept her off to the car.

After that first time at the temple, things like that happened often. A frightened Keiko would try to tell her parents or friends every time she saw something strange like an object or animal that wasn’t really there, or sudden changes in her surroundings like in the temple. No one ever believed her, of course, so she tried to ignore it as much as possible. The things she saw never hurt her, and as she grew older, they became less frequent. She stopped telling people what she saw.

Yay, starting anew!

So, now I've decided that I need a post college blog that revolves around my writing. Please check back periodically as I will be posting MY VERY OWN WORK!!! If you are not excited about the prospect of reading my work, then what are you doing here...?

Questions, comments, critiques, suggestions, etc. are always welcome. Be honest, that's all I ask.