No show da pain. . .

"So I hear you're going to Japan pretty soon. What for?" Mel asked. I looked around at the crowd, then out past the mortuary's carefully clipped grass to the surrounding wilderness. Black mynah birds circled overhead. Their night-black sheen resembled the dresses and coats of the mourners. One of those critters hopped about on the lawn, looking for bugs. It looked up and gawked at me with its beady eyes, as if it recognized me. -What for? What could I say? All my answers sounded trite to even myself, compared to the waxy reality of Jerry's face in the casket.

Why?

"-To study tea ceremony. It's something I have to do, Mel. Don't ask me why. I don't quite know myself."

"Whatevers. I can dig it. It's a kind of discipline. Sort'a like martial arts, huh? You and Jerry were real tight in martial arts." "Yeah," I said, blinking away something that was caught in my eye. "He was my sempai."

The mynah squawked abruptly and tore off into the heavy skies, as if disappointed at my reply.

Then, slowly at first, then in a pelting onslaught, it began to rain. "See, what I when tell you? Stay raining," Mel nodded triumphantly. "Good. Was too hot, dis summer. Too damn hot."

That night, I had my first of a recurring series of nightmares. In the dream, a Demon of Death pursued me. He grabbed me and we flew up into the night sky, borne aloft with his golden wings, until I struggled and we tumbled back to earth. I tried to fight him with karate kicks and punches, but he shrugged them off and flung me to the ground. He pinned me down and began to choke me. Gasping for air, I grabbed at his smooth, golden mask, and tore it off. Behind the mask was a maggot-infested skull, smiling gap-toothed and hideously, its eyes barren of any light of life. I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth, and I felt myself slowly being choked to death.

In those dreams, the choking always woke me, and I started up in my bed heaving and gasping for air, sweat covering my body as if I was in an actual fight.

I thought that, however vivid they were, these dreams were probably related to a perfectly scientific reason such as sleep apnea, a common enough physical problem. Or, at the very least, it was psychological baggage from having to deal with the suicide of my friend.

Then again, Hawai'i and Asia also has a long history of supernatural tales of what is called the "choking ghost," or kanashibari. These malevolent spirits, like the Greek succubus which hid in graveyards waiting to pounce on unsuspecting wanderers, attacked a person at night, and sucked the soul out of a person's body through the mouth. If I was of a more superstitious bent, I would have believed it was a kanashibari, so vivid was those dreams of the Demon of Death. But I didn't want to place much credence in that possibility. I was too much of a modern-minded rationalist. Those things don't happen. It was only a neurotic dream, I repeated to myself. Just a matter of bad kim chee (pickled Korean cabbage) for dinner, and then dreaming odd dreams. Besides, I had a flight to catch.