Flash Fiction: Temple Games
In a place where death is a daily rhythm, a child learns to find life between the beats.
I grew up in the back house of the local temple.
Every day after school, I'd walk home, past the rows of old plantation broad shops, past the moss-covered rocks, under the rafters of old posts, up and over the stream that cut the valley road, the air thick of wet earth and flowers until I heard it.
The rhythmic pok-pok of the wooden mallet against the small drum my father struck during his funeral chants. It was a sound that cut through everything.
Pok pok
Like a person adjusts to the hum of a refrigerator. Every day, someone was dying, and that beat marked their passage. Not a lament, but a precise rhythm, as if death itself had a clockwork mechanism, ticking down.
Pok pok
In the main hall, as I reached home, I’d see across the courtyard, the procession of black robes, floating through incense, whispering chants. This scene was as natural to me as the coconut trees and the ocean to others.
Funerals in Hilo were a mix of serious, outwardly solemn and casual familiarity—faces tight with grief or stoic resignation, yet tinged with an undercurrent of ease and jovial connection. While people bowed their heads during funerals, I’d stop while chasing a rubber ball or spraying ant nests in the crawl space between the ground and see their somber faces turn to idle chatter about a cousin’s failed university entrance exam, or whispers about how someone's marriage was on the rocks. Jokes would slip through the cracks, laughter spilling out, a momentary burst of life before the funeral programming reset. The carpets in the main hall faded by the processions of many years.
Pok pok
There were moments when the temple was silent. On those rare afternoons, when no one came to mourn or pray, when the incense burners stood cold and the altar candles flickered out, the temple became ours. The place felt like it was holding its breath. That was when my friends and I would gather in the courtyard, inventing our own rituals to pass the time. We’d race down the stone paths between the shadows of centuries-old trees, daring each other to climb the steep steps without letting our hands touch the rails. We’d run circles in the main hall to see who could hold their breath the longest. Our laughter echoing off the walls as if to mock the void.
Pok pok
The air was thick with the scent of old sandalwood, decaying flowers and the red dust from the trade winds. With its twisting paths and shadowed corners, the place was a perfect playground. My father never said much about it.
He had a way of looking through things, past them, as if we were projections on a screen. Maybe he found it amusing, how we tried to carve out pockets of joy in a place meant for reverence.
Pok pok
Once, we snuck into the preparation room, where my father stored the items for ceremonies. Behind the heavy curtains, there were boxes filled high with white envelopes, each sealed with a red stamp, and bundles of paper lotuses stacked high against the wall. My friends whispered, urging me to open one, just one. They thought they carried money. I hesitated, but curiosity got the better of me too. Inside was a slip of paper, and on it, a single name.
Harada Michiko.
There was nothing else. No date, no age, no address. Just a name, suspended in the white space, like a thought half-formed. I didn’t recognize the name, but I knew what it meant. This was how my father kept track of the dead. Later that evening, during the chants, I heard him say it—‘Harada Michiko,’ and my chest tightened. Suddenly, the games felt different like we were intruding on a system we didn’t fully understand.
Pok pok
Over time, my friends stopped coming over. We got older, moved on to other things. But I still spent my afternoons in the courtyard, listening to the distant sounds, imagining my father’s hand writing in red ink, the names folded into neat sheets inside the envelopes. I kept listening for the distant pok pok, like a heartbeat echoing through an empty room, a signal that kept everything in sync.
Pok pok
Sometimes I’d find myself mouthing the names my father chanted, letting them linger on my tongue, as if repeating them could keep them from slipping away entirely. I no longer played games, but I’d still sneak into the preparation room, just to feel the weight of the envelopes, as if to understand what they carried. They all felt like mysteries, ones that I would never solve, lives that had passed through this world and left only the faintest trace behind.
Pok pok
I thought about Harada Michiko a lot after that. I wondered what kind of life she had, who missed her, and if anyone would still remember her name after my father’s voice fell silent. I never asked him about it, though. Maybe I was afraid of what he’d say, or maybe I already knew the answer.
Pok pok
The temple is quieter now, almost always silent. My father’s hands move slower, the gears grounding down. Some days, I help him clean the grounds, sweeping fallen leaves off the stone steps. I listen for the pok pok, even though I know it’s not as steady as it used to be.
I’ve thought about leaving, but it’s hard to imagine life without that rhythm, without the games we used to play among the dead. Maybe I’ll stay a little longer, just until the echoes fade away for good. Or I think, I’ll have to learn to take up the mallet myself, to keep the beat going. Waiting until the day someone writes my name on a slip of paper, seals it inside an envelope, and leaves it to rest among the others.
Pok pok
// Zero Strike