Aokigahara

'I'm thinking positive thoughts,' says the voice from an orange tent in Suicide Forest. Since he hanged his alter ego in effigy, Mr T. Hashimoto has canceled all his psychiatric appointments. He lies on his back and mentally calculates his cortisol level. His crooked smile duels inconclusively with a crack in a coffee cup. He has learned that life is as long as a roll of pink ribbon from Mitsukoshi Department Store, stretching from trunk to trunk and ending in the arbitrary place where death waits. But here, under an old pine, the wind has cast a litter of new needles. And as the mist creeps closer, the whitecoats are dancing, delirious in the drugged air. First published in Takahe, New Zealand