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auricTwo days ago, Alan was calmer and quiet, when the island was still fresh and new and the crash of the waves held some kind of peace and he had been convinced they were dead, drifting aimless and sunburned in the waiting room of the afterlife. The plane was still up in flames that roared in his ears no matter where he stumbled.
But time dragged on in funny ways and time has always been cruel like that – shells on the beach caught in its onslaught of the tide – it erodes. People started dying, just as it always has been with alarming speed. People just died. He could hear it when evening came to shield the sun. He could hear the cries.
It’s easy to let fury take the place of loneliness, trying so hard to prevail, the creeping tendrils of fear that wrap and hold his mind. Shadows stirring in the corner of his eyes. Often, it is then, saturated with a rage he cannot name that Alan finds solace. Clarity. But the truth is, he is young and he is stupid and they are all really just fucked, chasing demons through leaves and trying to find truths in a world engineered to spill otherwise. It doesn’t make a difference if it’s the Island now or New York then. It’s all the same. As he checks his wounds, his hands speak like age, too many calluses and too much dirt and longing to them when they reach to pull at his hair, the sky.
He smells water. He has smelled water for days, the salt on the winds. Head lifted and spine aching, he keeps moving. He could have sworn that he saw another half of the plane falling like a dying star near the shore right after he awoke. But so far, he hasn't been able to leave the clearing from where he first found himself in the moss, as if the grass wants him to stay.
In the distant mountains the trees sway and beckon. Smoke from an unknown origin, deep in the brush like sudden fog.
Here’s the trick: There’s the weapon you hold. There’s the thing you hold it to. There’s the thing you hold dear.
And sometimes the lines blur.
“This place is wrong,” are the first words he remembers saying (croaks, actually, sprawled on his back with ferns tangled in his hair) and later repeats like a mantra as he moves steadily towards the smell of the shore. He feels different here. He is. The canopy twitches and it feels human. The forest sees and it hears and the forest breathes with every twisted emotion he has ever felt. Today, Alan smells rain and the predatory nature of the sky is unclear. The blood in his veins, it trembles.
The forest watches. The forest waits.
Alan starts to run.
But time dragged on in funny ways and time has always been cruel like that – shells on the beach caught in its onslaught of the tide – it erodes. People started dying, just as it always has been with alarming speed. People just died. He could hear it when evening came to shield the sun. He could hear the cries.
It’s easy to let fury take the place of loneliness, trying so hard to prevail, the creeping tendrils of fear that wrap and hold his mind. Shadows stirring in the corner of his eyes. Often, it is then, saturated with a rage he cannot name that Alan finds solace. Clarity. But the truth is, he is young and he is stupid and they are all really just fucked, chasing demons through leaves and trying to find truths in a world engineered to spill otherwise. It doesn’t make a difference if it’s the Island now or New York then. It’s all the same. As he checks his wounds, his hands speak like age, too many calluses and too much dirt and longing to them when they reach to pull at his hair, the sky.
He smells water. He has smelled water for days, the salt on the winds. Head lifted and spine aching, he keeps moving. He could have sworn that he saw another half of the plane falling like a dying star near the shore right after he awoke. But so far, he hasn't been able to leave the clearing from where he first found himself in the moss, as if the grass wants him to stay.
In the distant mountains the trees sway and beckon. Smoke from an unknown origin, deep in the brush like sudden fog.
Here’s the trick: There’s the weapon you hold. There’s the thing you hold it to. There’s the thing you hold dear.
And sometimes the lines blur.
“This place is wrong,” are the first words he remembers saying (croaks, actually, sprawled on his back with ferns tangled in his hair) and later repeats like a mantra as he moves steadily towards the smell of the shore. He feels different here. He is. The canopy twitches and it feels human. The forest sees and it hears and the forest breathes with every twisted emotion he has ever felt. Today, Alan smells rain and the predatory nature of the sky is unclear. The blood in his veins, it trembles.
The forest watches. The forest waits.
Alan starts to run.
