“We were wondering if morning would ever come, if help would ever come,”
-Takako Suzuki
. . .
We wept and grieved the many lives lost.
…I don’t think any of us have slept well that night.
I can still recall how I desperately tried to get some rest with my grandpa’s insistence. But it was hard. It was hard knowing I was about to sleep while lives were just lost, taken so cruelly.
And it was all the more harder because I can hear Grandpa crying softly beside me, whispering how he was so sorry, how he should have fought harder, pleaded harder for them to leave the seaside along with him… whenever I mustered up the courage to remember this awful night, I could have sworn I can still hear some of the younger kids beginning to whimper and weep in their sleep, more so when some of the adults began to panic when they realized that their ears were actually bleeding.
For three days and nights, what was once our village was lost to the sea… we were almost resigned to the sad fact that we will never know what had become of our home and our people ever again. Because we knew that they were now taken by the sea, never to be seen again.
But on the fourth night, while everyone was lost to an uneasy sleep, Grandpa suddenly jolted in his sleep, waking me up from my light sleep as well when he suddenly yelled and called for everyone to wake up. So we all hurried over to him as he stood and marched over the large window overlooking the view below and we all watched, transfixed, as the water seemed to be pulling itself right back into the ocean where it came from.
…And from the distance, something blue glows.
* * * * *
It was two nights later when the storm has passed and the adults have deemed it safe to finally return to the village.
And as we made our way down from the mountain that had become our safe haven for a very short period of time, I know that all of us are still mourning on the way not only for the loss of our home, but because all of us had been so sure that some of our friends and the people that we have come to consider as a sort of extended family have either been washed out to sea or have drowned…
Oh, if only that was what just happened.
…If only they were that lucky.
As I walked closer to my Grandpa while we were slowly making our way to where our home would have been last standing if it weren’t for that catastrophic wave, the smell suddenly struck us all at once, almost out of nowhere.
Fierce as burnt smoke, it smells of rot and ruin… like raw meat that have been left out for far too long to dry underneath the blazing sun.
I think Grandpa must have seen it first than I did because one moment, I was just pinching my nose and gagging as I complained about the awful smell but the next thing I know, he was jumping right in front of me and was desperately trying to reach for my face, to cover my face, my eyes–
“Don’t look!” he screams, “DON’T LOOK!”
But like an idiot, I still looked.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I even understand what was going on as my grandfather continued to panic, had desperately tried to steer and shield me away, wanted to spare me from such an awful sight even though I wasn’t even sure what I’m supposed to be looking at because all that I have managed to got a glimpse of were piles of pale, pinkish flesh that foolishly made me think for a fleeting second that it might have been rubber messily piled on top of the other on the shore…
Even from here, I can see the flies buzzing.
There were maggots feasting on the rot.
And as my stomach rebels without any sort of warning and I’m all but heaving and hurling out my breakfast in my grandfather’s arms until everything hurts and I can’t throw up anything else, I realized there and then like a cold slap to the face that… that those things weren’t rubber... they were actual, human skins–empty of bones, muscles and organs… just… it was just skin.
Even until now, I can still remember the way my throat burns as I screamed and cried until my voice breaks in sorrow, in agony. I feel so terribly sorry for Grandpa and myself for seeing this and for… for them… all these people…
* * * * *
It took an entire day… but the remaining men did manage to find and retrieve all of the bodies for a proper burial at the very least. It had been easy finding them, or so they said, because the victims had been found in one place for they have never left the grounds of our village, after all.
We’ve never talked about it.
I mean, how could we…?
Because all of us that have survived know now that their skin had been peeled right off from each of them with what seemed to be a precise and meticulous care before it had been left abandoned to dry out in the blaze of the scorching sun; each and every single one of them (it doesn’t matter if they had been young or old, men, women or even children, oh god there were little children–) none has been spared. They have all been gutted like a fish with their insides carelessly spilling out, not too far from them.
The ocean must have washed out all of the stains because there was no blood left behind from them. Not even a single drop.
It was like even that, the ocean has dared to take, has sucked their bodies dry until they were no better than mummified corpses. There were no marks left on their bodies too, no clear signs of struggle or any sort of clue as to what exactly could have done such an awful thing to them.
And if that wasn’t horrible enough, it was the faces of the dead, faces of the people that I once knew and lived with on the same village.
For as long as I live, I will never forget it.
Because even until now, I still have nightmares of that awful sight, I wish I haven’t looked, wished I hadn’t given in when the men have announced that they have found the victims… because each and every single one of those people had died with their skinless features frozen and still twisted in what seemed to be complete and utter agony…
As though they were still lucid, still breathing and very much alive when they were slowly being torn apart from their skin.