_”One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: ‘This man is not to be locked up again. He is to come with me.” – Franz Kafka
___________________
May, 2022. Osaka, Japan.
The walls of this room are white, stark and utilitarian. The long row of rooms could be confused with barracks from the outside, stacked on top of each other and symmetrically placed. An old sofa from sometime in the 1980s is pressed up against a small window from which light streams in and illuminates the room. Jeffrey James Roberts sits there on the middle cushion, eyes closed, deep in meditation. One halogen dome light is set into the center of the ceiling, the only artificial light source. Electricity is being rationed now, though, and the question had immediately crossed his mind asking why we would put on a wrestling show here at all.
With God… and the son of God, however… all things were possible, or so we are told.
After all, he was here, too.
The Man who visited him in the States had arranged for this small apartment. Through the window, he could see the waterfront. It was a nice place by the standard of the new order, which was notably better in recent years after the ravages of conflict, but that progress was halted by this year’s events. Jagged craters from relentless bombardment dotted the streets outside, several nearby buildings were in ruins, and while being brought into the building, Jeffrey had noticed bloodstains on the concrete outside, no doubt remnants of a victim of the constant shelling that had taken place until recent weeks. Two guards were stationed outside the door, one male, and one female, both on high alert. At least, to their mind, it was high alert. Jeffrey had found it wanting. Sitting on this small, dingy sofa he discovered a small flaw in their plan. The window was locked tight from the inside, and the dirty glass was held in place with reinforced bars embedded inside. A key to the lock for the mechanism to open it, he reasoned, no doubt was in the hands of the guards outside. Or maybe The Man himself. There was no way to know. But it also didn’t matter. No one leaves this room unless the person with the key wants them to. That was the point.
Above the window on the wall, however, a small vent to the outside, rectangular in shape with light from the sun shining through metal slats, offered up something the guards hadn’t considered. The apartment itself was remarkably well-appointed. The sofa of course, with a white fabric single chair adjacent, a round breakfast table with four chairs around it, and a small counter with a toaster on top of it and a sink set into the middle, with a small waist-high refrigerator at the end nearest the wall. The guards outside peeked into the apartment once per hour, and in the in-between, Jeffrey had discovered a closet with several wire hangers. Within minutes he had pulled it apart at the ends and used some elbow grease to pull it into a long straight wire, nearly four feet long when fully extended, and at the end, he bent it slightly to form a small hook.
What the guards did not know is that in the days before, when things like standards and laws mattered, local statutes required there to be a latch mechanism on any building opening so that authorities could enter in case of fire or other emergency.
Jeffrey walked to the front door, listening for any sound outside, then pushed one of the chairs from the table over and under the doorknob. Climbing up onto the sofa, he eased the wire hanger through the slats to the outside and dangled it down over the window. After a few moments of manipulating the wire, he caught the latch and pulled hard, popping it counter-clockwise and causing the window, metal bars, and all, to pop out from the wall about three inches.
In a matter of seconds, he pulled the window open, slipped himself through the opening, and dropped down to the grass on the ground just four feet below the window. He landed in a kneeling position, then looked back up at the window and smiled. Giving a mock salute to guards who had no idea what was going on, he turned and headed across the field, crossing at the intersection of a four-lane road and passing a small sign which read, in Japanese, “Place of Honor”, a monument accompanying a lush green park.
Rushing through the park, he passed by a small ropes course set up for public use, where several teenage parkgoers were running back and forth, giggling and laughing as they traversed the structure, and a small group of similarly aged people waited just off to the side. Jeffrey sprinted past, taking great care not to be seen, then jumped over a short chain link fence into a clearing just in front of the sandy beaches of the river that ran through town.
Looking to his left he noted several small groups of people. Three young women lying on towels, one on a red towel, another on a striped towel, and the third on her stomach reading a book on a green towel. Standing about fifteen feet away were a man and a woman and near them a larger towel on the sand, upon which were their belongings, a backpack, blanket, and small container of food, and bottle of wine. And beyond them, a teenage boy and his father, the father reading a book and the son with his face locked onto his phone screen.
Behind them, turned perpendicularly to the fence was another sign, this one reading “Beach” in dark bold lettering.
Turning to his right, he saw more empty space than to his left, and with a glance back to his left one more time, he turned right and began to jog down the beach. Only a matter of time before someone noticed. He had to be smart about it. Stay away from large groups of people, and make his way out of the city.
Then, a thought occurred to him, and he paused, standing and looking back in the direction from which he had come. The Man had come to his holding cell a month ago, and when questioned, Jeffrey had pledged his unending loyalty to the Family. Down this beach, there was freedom, but an uncertain freedom. He could be gunned down trying to run, arrested, or taken back to a much less accommodating living arrangement. Or he could walk back, climb back into his room, wait to be taken to the arena, and engage in the task he had been assigned. The Man asked for his loyalty, and he dangled the promise of something other than solitary confinement in front of his face, and more than that, legitimacy. “A champion doesn’t get locked in a prison cell”, he had said. “He doesn’t fly coach, and he doesn’t ride in the back of an armored vehicle. Do as you’re told and you can live a life you’ve never lived, and something more. You can really live again.”
Jeffrey pondered this and looked up at the dimming sky, the sun making its way toward the horizon as it did each afternoon, and he was struck by an awful thought, the kind that cannot be taken back once it escapes into the open air of consciousness; it seemed to him that this was not a place you go to live. It was a place you go to die.
His concentration was broken by a sound behind him. He spun around and saw there about twenty to thirty feet back from the beach, a small girl busy at work building a sand castle. He looked at her as she smiled, humming to herself as she used her small hands to form castle walls and then began to fill her little bucket with moist sand she had gathered from the waterfront.
She didn’t notice the strange man slowly walking in her direction until he was within several feet of her. Jeffrey James Roberts stood there, not that she knew who he was. No one in this country knew his crimes, and maybe wouldn’t care even if they did. He looked around and didn’t see any adults nearby, so he stared at her and she looked up at him staring back.
“Hello.”
Her English was broken but understandable.
Jeff tilted his head slightly, then squatted down next to her.
“Hello. I’m Jeff.” He reached out his hand to her, and in her joyful naivete, she eagerly stuck her hand out and shook it, then turned back to her work. He watched. “What are you doing?”
“Building a sand castle,” she sighed. “I love sand castles. I snuck out to build it. My dad used to bring me down here. He had to go and fight.”
She turned her bucket over, forming a small tower for the end of her castle wall, and Jeffrey considered her and her tiny castle. She looked back up at him finally, turning her head slightly and squinting in the setting sun.
His instincts fought to take him over. His fists clenched and he ground his teeth together behind pursed lips until she asked him a question which broke his concentration.
“Are you sad?”
He smiled, a bit confused. “Why would you ask me that?”
The little girl shrugged.
“You look sad. My mom looks sad all the time. Everyone here looks sad.”
Inside, he chuckled to himself. A little girl, halfway around the world, was concerned that he was sad.
He stood back up, then reached his hand down to shake her hand again. “It was very nice to meet you.”
She smiled. “Bye!!”
He stood there a moment. “I want to run,” he thought. “To do what I always do, have always done, for my entire life. Escape, flee into the shadows. But this time, I stand my ground. I’m tired of running.”
He turned away and walked with purpose back in the direction he came from.
He had to go and fight._