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.

Run … run there … run home …

“I can’t,” I sob. “It’s so far down.”

You have to … run …!

The comforting, rational voice that may be all in my head is right. I have to run. And perhaps home is the safest place for me to be. I look down at my body. My arm and my leg are back. Why am I lying here when I have perfectly good limbs? I push myself onto my knees and immediately my body buckles under the weight. I cry out sharply as my body connects with the glass floor and cracks it. “I told you, I can’t!”

You have to.

Never have I felt so alone. It feels like something has been ripped away, and not just my arm and leg. “Come with me,” I weep. “I need you with me.”

Don’t worry about me. Get out of here!

A horrible bleating noise rips through the silent air. I can feel the high pitch and volume in the wells of my ears, like a loud, deep source of feedback. There it is. The boar. It is far away, miles away, but I know what that shadow in the distance is. Its eyes blaze green like fire. Its fiery bristles quiver in the wind.

“Ah,” the boar moans. Blood and bits of coloured kimono ooze from its mouth onto the checkered floor with every sentence. “Your eyes. He always liked your eyes. I hope they taste like salty caramel things, too. They’ll be a perfect addition to my home.”

Akki. The voice in my head sounds sad. Why are you doing this?