“Ah!” says a faraway voice. Somewhere in the vast room there’s a young woman in a colourful kimono decorated with birds. She steps out from the darkness. “I thought I heard something. See?” A man steps out from a doorway — to a kitchen? — wiping his hands on his apron. He also seems shocked to see someone on the stage. “What do we do?” asks the woman.

“We have to tell them to leave, of course,” the man shrugs.

“Excuse me, honourable customer,” the woman calls out. I’m still screaming, unable to form coherent words. With a patient sigh, she approaches. Not questioning the overturned tables and chairs; she simply clicks her tongue and picks them up. “Sumimasen, okyaku-sama,” she tries again in Japanese.

Then she sees the boar. He stops ramming at the stage boards and regards her with an exasperated look that only boars can make.

“Aw, come on, lady, it’s way past sunset!”

“Demo …” she stares at the talking boar, horrified. “Kyou wa getsuyoubi desu ga … yasumi desu …”

“Oh, for the — You’re closed on Mondays?! Since fucking when?!”

The young woman is out of rational thoughts, it seems. She runs, screaming for the man. The boar sighs — “Be right back,” he says to me — and chases after the woman with an excited squeal. The clashing of pots and pans in the kitchen and the ear-piercing human screams bring me back to my senses.

I have to get out of here. But how? Half of my leg is gone. The muscles in my good leg have seized up. I can’t walk, let alone run, and when I roll over to drag myself with my remaining arm, I feel a hundred pounds heavier. I can’t do it. I collapse on the stage, eyes shut. Think. Something about what the man-boar said, about make-believe. No, this can’t be make-believe. The pain is so real, and there’s blood everywhere. It smells.

It isn’t. Just think about it. You have to try. You have to get out of here. It’s the only way.

All around me, the stage lights get warmer. They’re getting brighter. I don’t open my eyes, though, not yet. Just a little more. I need to concentrate. I have to imagine any place but here.

The stage lights grow brighter and brighter. The boar trots out of the kitchen and is instantly blinded. “What the fuck?!” His hooves are too short to shield his eyes. Luck is on my side. I squeeze my eyes tighter. I can do this.

Everything gets brighter and brighter, until …

Light. Warm, soothing light of a sepia-coloured sky surrounds me. There’s something hard underneath me, not unlike cold, smooth glass. A floor that stretches as far as I can see. Translucent and dark, opaque checkered squares alternate with each other. No walls, no ceiling, only the sky with its misting pink clouds. Down below me, beyond the clouds — green and brown farmland, reminiscent of the grid I’m lying on, on the cusp of a blue ocean. I start to cry at the beauty of the landscape thousands of miles beneath me, on top of my own tears of panic. “Home.” It is so far … too far to ever be there again.