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Showing posts from July, 2019

Aokigahara

She arrives dressed in all black and still clutching the one-way ticket in a small white hand.The bus is already a half kilometer down the road from where it dropped her off in the parking lot  The driver had left quickly, casting nervous glances at the trees as she'd disembarked and burning her with a look of sorrow. He'd known why she'd come of course, but that's only to be expected. This was Aokigahara after all. This was the infamous  Sea of Trees,  the place declared by the suicide manuals to be the  perfect place to die. There was an allure to this place (if one could be lured by death), and it had always been that way. Some say it started with the grandmothers who were left to die of exposure after their families judged them to be a burden. Others say it was more about famines and somehow less cruel. Nowadays though, it was where people came who were slowly being crushed. But whether that crushing came from societal pressure or from the shame of being unable to