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In the dingy, leaking kitchen of 29 Paper Street, where the mouse population outnumbered humans 10:1, Akabane takes Maehara’s hand and gives it a light, chaste kiss, a spectre of one and yet it tingles the skin, gives Maehara a little jolt, static electricity cascading up his spine. His confusion, muddled and hazy, must show on his face, for Akabane gives a little laugh
Akabane raises an eyebrow. “That’s a kiss,” He points out, very matter-of-factly. “Did you know soldiers used to kiss each other on the battlefield? It was a way of showing camaraderie amongst them, when words couldn’t suffice,” He then unscrews the lid of a plastic tub, the one labelled lye. Suddenly Akabane’s grip on Maehara’s hand is iron clad as he pours the white powder. “And this is a chemical burn.”
Maehara had not experienced a chemical burn before. He had been scalded and there was the whole baggage of pain that came from Fight Club but nothing like this. That pain was manageable, he could shelf it, block it out through guided meditation. The pain was unlike anything else he had experienced. He had shattered his collarbone as a child but that was more of a dull, purple hued, throbbing pain, a deep ache within him. This? This was pure white, bright, and hot and supermassive and singular and multiple all at once, a supernova in the sea of stars. It was everything, the pain so unbearable that his voice died in his throat, instead just letting out pained gasps.
He tries to jerk his hand away with all the furiosity and craziness of a rabid animal, towards the sink (because surely water will put out this fire?) but Akabane keeps it on the table, firmly in place. Maehara’s confused gaze meets Akabane’s stoic one; they both can hear the flesh bubbling, spitting away like bacon fat in a pan. Maehara doesn’t want to look at his hand, the searing hot wound that has erupted onto his hand. Seeing something makes it real. If he doesn’t look, it’s not in his peripheral, not real. He can block it out.
“What are you-?!” He manages out, still struggling against Akabane.
“The first soap was made of human flesh. Humans used to use their fallen comrades to clean themselves with,” Akabane explains calmly. “You said you wanted to find meaning in life. You can’t find that meaning until you hit rock bottom.”
“You’re insane,” Maehara spits, not exactly in the mood for soap facts. “I’m already at rock bottom.” He tries to free himself again but it’s impossible. If his hand was not melting in front of him, he might’ve said Akabane was hurting him.
“No. If you think you’re at rock bottom, you’re still not there,” Akabane’s voice is level, a calmness that he doesn’t present elsewhere in life. “Self-destruction is the only path to rock bottom. And from there, the world is your oyster. You can only go up.”
Maehara closes his eyes, tries to run far, far away from this pain. Hides away in a happy place, somewhere that is not this dingy kitchen, not with his flesh melting away. Block it out. A forest clearing, with doe and the sun peeking through the evergreen leaves. If he closes his eyes, he doesn’t have to face the reality of the situation. Block it out. It’s going to scar. Probably has already started to.
They meet on a plane. One of countless, they all blend together. Maehara lost track after number thirty. With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything just blends together into one grey muddle of memories and soon you can’t tell your foot and arm apart. Combine it with soulless corporate travelling and you’ve got yourself a masterclass in comorbidity, in foggy brain syndrome.
Akabane, in his window seat the lucky bastard, smokes in the airplane, which confuses Maehara because he doesn’t think you were able to do that anymore. He could’ve sworn they banned that in the 80’s. Akabane catches him noticing out of the corner of his eye because Maehara is one to stare, perhaps too curious for his own good.
Akabane holds out the lit cigarette, an olive branch. “You want a puff, pretty boy?” His voice is smooth and deep, like treacle. Viscous.
Maehara swallows thickly and he tells himself it’s because of the smoky air. “No.”
To Maehara’s surprise, no flight attendant asks Akabane to put out his cigarette. Akabane just laughs, handing Maehara a business card for his soap business.
“Hey, if you’re ever needing soap, buy from me. It’s not good but it’s better than giving your money to those conglomerates, huh?”
It is probably then Maehara gets sucked in, down the rabbit hole and into the eye of the storm itself.
Akabane bangs his free hand on the table, which brings Maehara back immediately. “Don’t run away from this! You can’t block this out. This is pain, this might be the worst pain you ever experience. You can’t run away from it. Make this pain your own.”
Maehara writhes, seething in pain. “Fuck you, it’s already my own! My hand is fucking dissolving!” He feels the pinpricks of tears form in his eyes. “What the fuck is that stuff?”
“It’s burning, actually. And it’s lye. It’s alkaline. It activates in the presence of water, or in this case, saliva.” In a time long ago, Akabane was a chemistry major. He never graduated but the interest never flared down. If you wanted recipes for napalm, nitro-glycerine, calcium cyanide or mustard gas- he was your one stop shop in all things illegal, dangerous and destructive. “It’s essentially sodium hydroxide. Very nasty stuff.”
“You’re insane.”
“You’re just as insane.” Akabane retorts, holding up his other hand to reveal a similar looking scar, vaguely kiss shaped. “I know how it feels, trust me. After this, nothing will be as bad. This is the very worst moment of your meaningful life but it is also the very best. The beginning and the end. Do you get what I mean?”
“No!”
Akabane grumbles under his breath. “Put it this way. You don’t know if God exists or not. In this moment, he might be very much real. But that doesn’t matter. God, in this moment, has abandoned you. You are God’s least favourite child, and this is proof of that. He is letting this happen because he hates you.”
“Fuck! Okay, God hates me, I hate him too!” Maehara makes another attempt to reach the sink, to put out this brilliant blaze on the back of his hand. “Fuck. Let me go! I think I’m losing feeling in my hand!”
“If you use water, you’re only going to make it worse,” Akabane chastises. “Think for a minute, water is neutral, and lye is alkaline. What neutralises alkaline solutions? And if you say water, I swear, I’ll pour more of the stuff on.”
Maehara groans, thrashing as to ignore the pain as he racks his brain for the answer. “Fuck! Fucking, fucking acid?” He guesses, only to be met with Akabane’s unreadable face. “You fucker! Go and answer me?”
With this, he brightens up, a small spectre of a smile on his face. Wordlessly, he unscrews a bottle of industrial sized vinegar (labelled probably ‘vinegar’) and pours it on Maehara’s hand, a cascade of a relief, and it is only then, after what feels like eternity, the pain subsides, like a shore receding.
Akabane makes soap, pink blocky little things, and smokes maybe too much. Maehara isn’t a doctor but he never sees Akabane eat, just smoke and that’s gotta be bad for you. Akabane hates consumerism, hates labels, hates society. He’s undeniably cool, the kinda guy Maehara wishes he was in high school.
He wears a hot red leather jacket, with scuffed elbows and an oil stain splattered across the back. Nestled beneath the mass of crimson leather is a mesh shirt, some sports car logo faded on the front. There’s a pendant around his neck, hung on a glistening silver chain. On further inspection, it’s of Saint Christopher, with the little baby Jesus nestled in his arms.
Outside is dark and Maehara isn’t sure if it’s night or day or the twilight realm in between. “You a Christian?” He asks because he can’t imagine Akabane sitting in a church pew every Sunday, his messy hair combed to the side and a stiff, pressed suit on. Akabane hates conformity. He hates that whole style of idealistic suburbia.
“No, darling,” That’s another thing; he loves pet names. Says life is too short to just go by our ‘government issued names’. He idly plays with the necklace between delicate slim fingers, the fingertips burned off from the cigarettes. “But. I was born on the same day as Jesus so make of that what you will.”
Maehara rolls his eyes. “You sound egotistical.”
Akabane shrugs. “All the best men are,” Using a craft knife, he meticulously carves ‘Paper Street Soap Company’ into the pink mass below, little flecks of soap flying everywhere. “Every man is his own personal saviour. Religion is bullshit. Religiousness keeps us alive.”
Maehara snorts softly, smiling. “You’re talking out your ass again.”
After Maehara’s apartment blows up, in both a show of grandeur and mayhem, it is with Akabane he happens to stay with, in the dank and rotting Paper Street house, where the door does not properly lock.
They do not pay rent. There is no one to pay rent to. There is no neighbours, not for a half mile in every direction. An oasis in the industrial part of town.
In exchange for boarding at Paper Street, Akabane only asks Maehara for one thing.
“Hit me. As hard as you can. Don’t hold back now.”
In the parking lot of a seedy bar, two men fight like schoolboys, roughhousing and kicking and all knees and elbows and teeth locked loose and the stench of wet pennies between them. It is here where Fight Club starts.
You’re not supposed to talk about Fight Club. That’s actually rule number one. And two.
There’s no women at Fight Club because Fight Club isn’t for them. Fight Club is for disillusioned men with nothing more to gain and nothing else to lose, those unsatisfied and tired of life, where the monotony of regular life has grinded their spirits down into absolute nothingness. It is for the old and the young, the poor and the rich but mostly the angry. Those who feels adrift in a society of labels and boxes and expectations.
No unwritten, innate societal rules. Just a good old-fashioned fight between peers. No shoes, no shirt, only two men in the ring at a time, one fight at a time.
That and if it’s your first night at Fight Club, you gotta fight.
The insomnia is just as bad at Paper Street but at least he has Akabane. A kindred spirit, someone finally finally finally like him. In the havoc, there is something to keep him busy at night, a distraction of some sort. It’s getting manageable.
Until, one day, he wakes in his room to a silent house. Even the mice are gone. Akabane is not there. His stuff is not gone but there is no evidence of him ever having lived at Paper Street, bar his soap making tools.
Maehara waits for a week, expecting him to come back. He doesn’t go to Fight Club (even if he had, he would’ve found it had expanded and relocated, out of both his and Akabane’s control now).
Both sleep and Akabane never come.
He gets desperate after a month, starts flight hopping on Akabane’s old ticket stubs. Deva ju follows him like a bad smell, every place familiar and yet unfamiliar, as if another version of himself had been there. In the process of searching for one Karma Akabane, he stumbles across another Fight Club, this one has women. One of the women seems to know him, coos at him, waving.
“Oh, hey Karma. Long-time no see.”
This is when Maehara knows the insomnia is getting bad. He promptly scrambles back to the hotel he’s staying in, running until his blood turns to battery acid and his breath are biting and hot. Sleep comes eventually, as he tosses and turns on the thin linen sheets, simultaneously too hot and too cold and with no middle ground between the two extremes.
When he wakes up, Akabane is watching him like a hawk, nestled comfortably in the chair at the end of the bed. It’s velvet and awful plush and if Maehara cared about materialism anymore, he’d take it home with him.
Maehara blinks groggily, still not convinced this isn’t his mind playing tricks again. “Where the fuck have you been.” Not a question. Surprise. Envy. Betrayal. Something ugly.
A cigarette dangles dangerously between Akabane’s lips as they curl up into a smile. “I think you know what’s happening here.”
Sometimes pieces take some time to fall into place. Maehara’s never been the smartest bulb in the chandelier, and he may never be but you don’t have to be for this sort of thing. He rubs at his temples, vignette memories splicing together. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire and where there’s Akabane…
Maehara’s heart thumps in his chest. The smell of lye nips at his nostrils bitterly. If he had eaten recently, he would’ve spewed it all up. “We’re the same person…?”
Akabane clicks his tongue, seeming pleased with eyes like a snake. “Bingo.”
Maehara stares in disbelief. He must be asleep, surely. “That makes no sense.”
Akabane shrugs noncommittally. “You were bored with life. You needed a change and could not do that on your own,” He taps the ash off his cigarette. “Boom. You made me.”
“That’s insane,” Maehara laughs somewhat nervous because he’s not entirely convinced of all this. “I’m me.”
Akabane frowns, pouting like a child, jabbing a thumb towards himself. “That’s rude. I’m me.”
“You’re ruining my life here. My credit cards are getting maxed out.” Length bills, unknown phone calls late at night, purchases he doesn’t remember making. It makes sense now.
“That’s another problem with you. You think this is all just a hobby, weekend seminar,” He leans forward in the seat. “Forget about money. It’s all fake. That credit score shit? Made up by all those corporations.”
“But, I have a life-“
“And I have mine.”
Maehara chuckles, combing a shaking hand through his hair. The apartment. Gone in an instant. That was Akabane then, dynamite maestro and extraordinaire himself. “I thought you were my hallucination.” He challenges.
“Who’s to say you’re not mine? Who’s to say you’re the original? What if you’re a manifestation of me?” Akabane proposes.
“That’s not possible. I- I was here first.”
Akabane gives a dismissive flick of his hand. “You lack agency in your life. You’re a side character in your own story,” He lights another cigarette- God knows where he got it from. Maehara fingers the pack of smokes in his breast pocket and dully notes that he is out. “You didn’t wanna be you. You didn’t wanna look like you. So you made me. Boom. Hook, line, sinker.”
“That’s crazy. I like being me!”
Akabane shrugs. “Evidently not. You’re the one who made me up.”
“And Fight Club?” Maehara inquires bewildered. Because Fight Club was not his, there is no way he would invent something like that on his own. Fight Club was Akabane’s, that patented on brand madness. Those fights, illuminated in the depth of night was not his and his alone. It was tangible, physical. He remembers the feeling of Akabane’s skin making contact with his.
Akabane tuts, shaking his head dismissively, as if reprimanding a child. “You know you’re not supposed to talk about that.”
“Shut up,” Maehara dismisses, standing up now. He rubs at his temples. “If you’re an extension of my imagination then I’m speaking with myself now.”
Suddenly, he’s in the plush seat with a cigarette in his mouth and Akabane is sitting cross legged on the bed, now adorned with neon pink sunglasses, another cigarette between his lips. His smile intensifies. “There you go, psycho boy.”
Maehara looks down at the kiss shaped wound on the back of his hand, the chemical burn that will never subside. “I did this… to myself?”
“Well, I did. But I guess we’re the same person when it’s convenient to you,” Akabane rolls his eyes, voice drawling on. “You got some issues. I am those issues.”
“That’s insane.”
Akabane groans loudly, throwing himself back on the bed, irritated. “Again with this? You’re always in denial, deny, deny, deny! Well, here’s something that you can’t deny,” He sits back up. “Fight Club has advanced to the next stage.”
“Next stage?”
“Big things. On the global level. The theatre of the world isn’t ready.”
“What are you planning?”
Akabane gets off of the bed, somewhat taller than Maehara remembers him being. He bends down so that they are eye level and Maehara had never realised how similar in colour their eyes were. He blows smoke in Maehara’s face.
“Guess you’ll just have to find out when you wake up, huh?” The smoke, heavy and ashy, clouds Maehara’s vision until it darkens and the velvet seat is the most comfortable thing in the world and then he realises what this is, the sweet call of sleeping, one he hasn’t had for so long and he’s going under, oh yeah, off to the Sandman’s land and he can’t fight it and the last thing he remembers before everything falls through is the mischievous grin of Akabane, whose hair looks ginger in the dingy light of the motel.
In his dreams, Maehara only sees smoke.