Fiction #8, Kiyokoma Dayze
‘New adult’ fiction about a 24-year-old character creator recovering from a car accident everyone around her insists is self-inflicted.
You know those moments where you mess up and you drop something clumsily, or you make a tiny error in judgement, a miscalculation, and you comically shout, ‘GAH’?
Well, that’s what you do when you fuck up driving and stare into the face of your own extinction. Even when you can see a woman and a kid in the front of the car you are about to collide head on with, maybe a twelve-year-old girl, and a few smaller kids on the backseat, you are still yourself. You still make a ‘dumb old me’ face. You still go: ‘GAH!’
I am a really careful driver usually, so I should have been able to judge the distance between the truck and the oncoming car. I don’t know what happened.
It was a small error but I found myself saying, ‘no no no no nooooooo!’ as dread dropped to the bottom of my tummy and lay there like a cold hard gray flat stone, like slate, like a roof tile, like a flagstone floor, making me feel like I wanted to take a poop.
It was only a second. Time didn’t slow down, because it never does, but my brain sped up, and I even had time to be amazed by how many thoughts it could manage at once, particularly because I’ve always thought I was a little slow.
My brain realized I had three choices: I could drive forward into the oncoming car, and kill that whole family, or at least the Mum and eldest daughter, I could veer left into the lorry next to me and maybe kill that driver, or I could pull right—into the concrete wall.
I also had time to think about how it was a really bad design, to have a concrete wall next to the road. I wondered what was on the other side of it that necessitated such a structure. Was it a nursery school, with the playground right next to the road? Someone’s living room? Another road?
I hadn’t driven on that stretch before, and I had thought, prior to pulling out to overtake the lorry, that I was still on a dual carriageway.
Emotionally, I was a little annoyed and on edge, which was why I had decided to drive over to the factory for my meeting, rather than take the train. I wanted to be alone so I could cry and yell and scream really loud.
I knew I was going to die and with that choice taken away from me I felt strong and brave, because I knew I was going to do the right thing. I am usually so unsure of myself, but I was sure about my decision in that moment.
It felt great. I felt almost cocky. Sacrificing myself for a young family was a good option to have, if I had to die. My parents would be so proud.
As my left hand (inexplicably) reached out to turn off the radio, I felt my whole body relax. My hand returned to the 10 to 2 position on the steering wheel. My right hand went to the top of the wheel, gripping the leather. I pulled the wheel hard right, until it locked, and drove the car, driver’s side first, into the concrete.
I thought I had been killed instantly.
An Introduction
My name is Hayley, and I am the creator of a character named Kiyokoma. You might have heard of Kiyokoma. Zie is getting quite famous. Kiyokoma is a cross between a fox, a cat, and a small bear. Zie is neither a boy nor a girl, but everything and nothing. Zie is very joyful, and likes to help hir friends with their problems. Kiyokoma is ten years old, and lives with hir family in Puff Puff Land, which is on the clouds high above Mount Fuji. Zie has never been down to see the mainland, but dreams of what Japan might be like.
Kiyokoma has hir own television show on the Kiyokoma! Youtube channel, and a series of novels. I call them “novels”, but they are novels in Kiyokoma’s world, meaning they are quite short, and have lots of illustrations. The words are generally not a story, more advice and funny thoughts. I think of the pictures and words as snapshots of Kiyokoma’s days. The best selling “novel” so far is, predictably, about love.
For Kiyokoma’s television show, I use 2D animation. Stylistically, I like a clean look, lots of pastel colours, and kind of a childlike simplicity to the actual drawings. I’m a big admirer of San-X, the Japanese stationary company responsible for Mamegoma, Rilakkuma and Afro Ken. I started out animating with Toon boom, but now I use TVPaint, because it’s everything in one piece of software. I couldn’t afford it when I first began playing with the idea of a television show, but a few months after I launched Kiyokoma I had saved enough to buy it.
I still get excited every time I open it to work, which is every day, since Kiyokoma likes to do an episode every week, and I do two seasons a year of the show, in spring and autumn. The episodes are only one or two minutes long, but they require a lot of work on my part, with Kiyokoma dictating what to do and then relaxing most of the week while I slog away.
I publish the videos via Youtube on Kiyokoma’s website, and also promote the show on Snapchat, Tiktok, and Instagram. In summer and winter, Kiyokoma likes to write novels, which I have been publishing every couple of months, although now I’m in hospital obviously there has been a bit of a break.
Oh, and me. I am pretty boring compared to Kiyokoma. I am 5 foot three inches tall, with long (dyed) black hair, and blue eyes. I am petite and lucky to currently be skinny, although this is because my muscles have been wasting away in the ICU in the hospital for two whole months while I have been unconscious and then, for another week, delirious, and then for the last week, okay.
I was pretty pleased to be skinny anyway, but the nurses think it is not such good news. I have lived in San Diego, in the States, in Germany, in the United Kingdom, both in England and Scotland, and also in Hong Kong for a year, when I was eleven, which is where I developed my love for Japan, which might sound weird, but kawaii is very popular in Hong Kong, especially Hello Kitty.
Kawaii means cute. I loved the idea that these funny, cute characters came from Japan all the way across the sea to entertain me and be my friends (because I didn’t have any in real life).
As a kid, I always drew made up animals. In Hong Kong, I started to copy the Japanese manga and kawaiistyles. First, I traced the characters I liked out of comics, but I soon started to make up my own. I came up with Kiyokoma when I was thirteen. By then, we were living in San Diego, on the military base.
I always had a problem making friends, I guess because I was shy. By the time I had psyched myself up to talk to the other kids in my school, we were moving to another country, so I never quite got the technique down. I always hoped that Kiyokoma would become an international brand like Hello Kitty and then people would know me and Kiyo and want to be our friends, and I promised myself (and Kiyokoma), that I would do anything in the world to make that happen.
As we moved from place to place, and my loneliness grew, my longing became desperate. I had to make something of myself. Everybody had to know Kiyokoma, because then they would know me. Because then someone would remember me, and that I was here, and I lived in the world.
I have a secret. One I don’t tell, because I know people will say I’m arrogant, self-centred, vain. But I tell it to Kiyokoma, because zie is so young and sweet zie doesn’t have the words to take me down yet.
Here’s my secret: I want to write and draw about me, a plain, boring girl of twenty-three, but I feel unworthy. My story isn’t an epic adventure, a journey across continents, mastery and conquering and living alone in the wilderness. My whiny, high, girly girl voice isn’t brave or noble or true. It wavers in pitch and a lot of people say I sound really immature and annoying. My critics (for instance, the youtubers who troll Kiyokoma’s channel) say Kiyokoma doesn’t have any depth. They say that hir innocence and niceness is almost Nazi-like, like if zie ever had a bad thought, I, the creator, would punish hir and delete it.
Not Dead Yet
Waking up from a coma is like climbing out of your own eye sockets. I felt like I was very far back inside them, and I couldn’t reach to open the lids to get out. I could see that the muscles of my eyes were trying to made them blink. It was like my contact lenses had grown into the back of my eyelids and onto my eyeball, sealing the stupid things shut.
‘What the fuck is wrong with my lenses?’ I say.
I hear Mum mumble tiredly, ‘don’t swear’, before she realizes I am awake and she stands up and shouts for a nurse. I can hear her from somewhere very far below my eyes, which are sore.
‘Quick! Please! Come quickly.’ There is also the sound of footsteps; my Mum’s, which are very indecisive, and another set of feet which runs towards me. ‘She said something. Is she waking up? Is she okay?’
I am here, swimming in the sound of her voice, in the smell of my own bad breath, in the grease on my skin. I am have swum up close to my eyelids now. They are stuck together like glue. I try to pull them apart with my hands, from inside my head. They are the hands of my brain. I didn’t know my brain had hands before now. Water is rubbed on them from outside with something that feels large and pokes me. ‘Ow.’ I open them.
‘Her eyes are open!’
At first I see only white. I wonder where I am, then realize I’m probably in Puff Puff land. ‘Kiyokoma?’
‘That’s the character she draws!’ exclaims my Mum. Why is she so excited?
I blink some more, and when I open my eyelids from one blink, the whiteness coalesces into a hospital room, the end of a bed, my hand, a television monitor, a nurse, my Mum.
‘Hayley? It’s Mummy. How are you feeling?’
‘Umm.’ I can taste something awful in my mouth, so with my tongue I explore my teeth. Instead of the slick wetness of jewels, they feel rough and caked in dirt. ‘What’s in my mouth?’
‘Nothing, sweetie.’
‘That’s just her teeth,’ the nurse says. ‘With her mouth shut all the time.’
‘My eyeballs ache.’
‘You’ve got an eye infection, but we’re giving you drops to clear it up, darling.’ That’s the nurse again.
I try to move my left hand but something pulls on it, and something like a needle moves in the skin on the back of my hand. ‘Ouch.’ I use my right hand instead to feel myself underneath the blankets.
‘Try not to move your shoulder, sweetie,’ Mum says. ‘You broke it.’ As I feel around, she tells me, ‘You’re wearing a pot on your left foot. And you have a plaster on your thigh from a hip operation.’
‘Hip operation?’ I mumble. I feel upwards. I blush. I’m not wearing anything underneath my gown. I look down at my chest, and pull the blankets up over it. Mum helps me, and I shrug her off. I’m wearing my own nightie at least, my old favorite from Hong Kong with Strawberry Princess Moshi on it.
I frown. There’s some part of me I’ve missed checking. I realize. ‘Is Kiyokoma okay?’
‘Oh dear,’ the nurse says. ‘Hayley, who’s the prime minister?’
‘She’s not cuckoo,’ says Mum. ‘She’s just very involved in Kiyokoma’s life. Kiyo’s fine Hayley. You’ve been in a coma, so we got one of your friends to put up a message on your website.’
‘My friends?’ I say, dazed. I don’t have any friends. ‘What message?’
‘Just a message so people know you’re not posting.’
‘Me?’ At this I try to sit up, and the nurse holds me down and dissuades me. I lift my head off the pillow and shout at Mum. ‘It’s not supposed to mention me at all! I’m the secret creator! Otherwise it’s like Kiyokoma is fake!’
‘Oh for goodness sake, Hayley.’ Mum looks at the nurse, embarrassed.
‘Tell me what it says exactly.’
Mum tuts. ‘Erm, it says, Kiyokoma is going on holiday! Wish me bonnes vacances lovely Kiyokoma fans!’
‘Hmmph. Well at least it doesn’t mention me. Is the printers still taking orders?’
‘No, we stopped that for a bit. We didn’t know what was going to happen.’
‘What? That’s how I make money! It doesn’t even need me to be there, it’s automatic when people order Kiyokoma’s books! Who’s been paying my rent?’
‘Daddy took care of it all.’
‘How long have I been asleep?’
Mum looks at the nurse and the nurse says, ‘You’ve been in a coma for two months, sweetheart. Your Mum was really worried about you.’
‘Oh, no!’ I wailed. ‘Two months! What if all our fans have forgotten us?’
‘Hayley, you’re being really silly. It’s much more important that you’re well – ’
‘Is it Mum?’ I say, sarcastically. ‘Is it really? Shit, that means it’s almost Kiyokoma’s birthday, and we were starting to get attention from real Japanese character creators, talking about collaborations and having Kiyokoma promote other brands and stationary. But two months with no posts! Crap!’
There is a beat of silence, and the nurse looks at Mum. ‘Well, she seems fine. I’ll get the doctor for tests.’
‘Wait! How long will I have to be here now?’
‘I’ll wait for Dr Williams to say, but probably a few more days in the NICU, and then I should think with your injuries you’ll need physical therapy as an inpatient.’
‘How long will that take?’
The nurse shrugs. ‘Probably a couple of weeks.’
‘Urgh,’ I groan. ‘Can I have my laptop in here then? I need it.’
‘No,’ Mum and the nurse say, at the same time.
‘What?’ I cry, dismayed. ‘What am I supposed to do every day, lying here?’
‘You won’t be here for long now,’ Mom says. ‘You’ll see. It’ll go in a flash.’ She starts to plump my pillows, and sit me up, which hurts my back.
‘Can you stop doing that? It’s making me feel awful.’
She keeps doing it.
‘It’s just a fortnight, Hayley, that’s good isn’t it? You’ll get your strength back, and then you can be an outpatient!’ The pitch of her voice rises, as if this is so exciting!
I lie back on the now uncomfortable pillows and sulk. Waking from a coma sucks.
The ICU Psycho
I’m not a totally ungrateful, terrible person. Before the accident, I was always nice. I wouldn’t say I was friendly, because I kept myself to myself, but I was unfailingly polite.
To the point where I would still be thanking shopkeepers when they had already moved on to the next customer. To the point where I let the boy of my dreams stand me up over and over and over again (eight times in total) before I suggested that maybe he was too busy right now to spend time with me. I phrased this so he knew there were no hard feelings, even though I cried and barely ate anything for two months afterwards. To the point where I would generally stop speaking before I made my point because I was aware the sound of my voice might be annoying someone.
But over the next few days in the NICU, I find I can’t keep swear words inside my mouth. I’m sarky and unpleasant to everyone. I’m mean and bitter.
I apologise, and the nurses tell me it’s normal. They call it ICU psychosis. Patients frequently hallucinate both when asleep and awake, and when they are fully cognizant, their personality bites. One nurse, Sarah, tells me most ICU patients are really bitchy and indifferent. They often ask for things and then say, ‘oh, whatever, I don’t care’. They complain about everything, as if they are in a hotel and expect room service; some of them even hallucinate they are in a hotel. The nurses think it’s to do with not seeing the sun at all, for months at a time, in these rooms without windows; where everything beeps and flashes all night, and the dark is never fully dark.
I don’t think that’s why though. I think in all the car door metal and glass that scraped into the skin over my skull and created that big, juicy, subdural haematoma that almost killed me then gave me seizures during the coma as it dried and broke away and itched at my brain, also cut away a layer of acceptability about me, a polite membrane that covered the other, darker stuff. A lobotomy of my ability to lie.
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