Chapter 4 - SEVEN

I wondered whether I had learned how to fly. After making love to Andri in the War Scape, I landed, without a travel day, on an island surrounded by shallow reef water. Must have been a reactionary train of thought after the love making. Or maybe, my mind needed some space to deal with the intensity of the connection.

My tight, curly hair fluffed like fur in the tropical breeze, while my skin had already dried tight with a white sheen in the sun. When I found my reflection in the water, I noticed how my eyes were also wind burned, outlined in red, like I had braved a great sand harmattan, or flown there without wings. I refused to ask myself where Andri was. I didn’t want to know. So I kept singing to myself instead, to avoid thinking about her.

If Andri had not followed me to this new Scape, which resembled a Vacation Scape, she had lied to me. She wasn’t a mind trespasser after all. Andri must have been a figment of my imagination instead, or a figment of a past recollection, stored secretly in a corner of my subconscious. Perhaps I was too distracted by Andri’s exotic beauty to see the slightest connection. Or maybe, Andri had originated from a former vulnerability I had suppressed in myself for the purpose of forgetting it. If this was the case, Andri was the personification of a previous pain. Maybe a relationship break up. So I wasn’t about to recall her in this apparent paradise. It might have been a better idea to forget her altogether. Block her out from entering any train of thought, no matter how fast that train was speeding along towards another Scape.

Unlike my first impression of Andri, this island was familiar to me. As deserted as it was, I had seen it before. Or imagined it. A large, rocky mountain emerged above the palm tree line. I wasn’t thinking shelter, but I was thirsty and assumed a lagoon situated itself at the foot of the rocky terrain, containing water I could drink. The ocean timed its waves in foaming patterns creating a warm breeze upon my back as I walked away from it.

“Stay in the sun, always stay in the sun,” was advice that surfaced, randomly, as I walked into the shaded flora. The adage must have resurfaced from another Dreamscape episode, or from one of my previous lifetimes. It sounded sincere. And I believed I could apply the advice to much more than my current situation on this deserted island. If I stayed in the sun, I might see a boat crossing. Or maybe the boat would see me, darkened and dry, but alive in the sun.

My curiosity to explore the island in this Scape compelled me to keep walking. I sensed unknowns in the area and they would make incredible distractions. My recent episode in the War Scape had obviously expired. That Gamescape was over. And Andri was just another passing character in the game of these artificial lives. There were many others like her, I concluded, forcing myself to play the devil’s advocate, but none that seemed to understand my instincts so intimately. Wasn’t that the goal in a previous, origin lifetime, when I once possessed tangible realities like family, friends, and physical lovers? Another anomaly from the War Scape I couldn’t explain to myself - I could feel Andri as a physical reality more than a dream reality. There was an awkwardness to our love making. The scents were organic, like our skin could turn sour once we stopped.

“Stop thinking about her,” I spoke out loud, trying to find a song that could hold the distraction long enough to forget Andri.

“Don’t even say her name.”

Names inspired thoughts, and thoughts inspired Scapes.

As I sifted through the brush, I welcomed the distracting scent of charring wood filtering the salt breeze. My stomach reacted to this atmospheric change in the air with a pang of hunger. I was not the only one traversing the island, but also exploring it as a survivor, or so it felt to my instincts. Whoever created the smoke was doing so for the same purpose, cooking a meal to survive another day.

As I wander lusted, I wondered what specific train of thought transported me to this island. It might have been an afterthought because I hadn’t consciously thought my way there. I learned, by trial and error, that when I completely embraced a thought, as I had done with the War Scape, I was practically torpedoed to the Scape instantly. But afterthoughts could also randomly jettison me into a dream I was not motivated to attend or participate in. The intensity of the last War Scape must have inspired this afterthought, so I was trying to piece together the puzzle of this transition to the island. Perhaps my connection to Andri was so strong that the afterthought had focused on finding rest and a place of solace to reflect upon it. The island was Mediterranean in design, or possibly Caribbean. It was constructed as a warm paradise, the direct opposite from the cold, damp, war torn piazza from the War Scape.

But what explained the fire, the survival smoke slithering upwards at the top of the mountain, the smell of meat cooking?

As always, I resigned to follow my primal instincts. I was hungry, so my stomach would lead the way. And I was interested, so my curiosity would follow shortly behind. If I should encounter danger, it would be worth the risk to satisfy my hunger – the mantra of every castaway.

Where the forest met the rock, I finally found the lagoon, as I first anticipated. Cerulean blue and as placid as an iced over lake, I dove into it with my mouth open. I emerged refreshed. My hair had flattened against my back, and my skin had softened in the silk embrace of the water. I breathed in water happily and floated in my lightness of being.

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“Don’t think of anywhere else,” I instructed myself. I wasn’t prepared yet to leave this Scape, even if it was a reactionary travel. And yet, I found it difficult not to think of Andri’s hair floating over me like the clouded sky up above. The smoke at the top of the mountain seemed to create the clouds in the same hue as the rock mountain. Spurts of sunshine broke through to glisten on the water like tumbling jewels.

“Andri?”

When I called out to her, the name echoed through the caves. No response. No one from the top of the mountain peered over, or dove into the lagoon from the immense height to join her in the tranquility of fresh water.

After cupping more water into my mouth, I doggie paddled myself over to a rock to begin my climb. Not as treacherous as I first assumed it would be, I walked by a number of caves that appeared like they were hewn out with man-made chisels from a primitive people. Had I read about this place before, or visited in my origin lifetime?

In all of my previous lifetimes, origin or virtual, I had never ventured to an island alone. Not even a resort on an island. I had never experienced respite in any of these lifetimes, only personal tragedy under the illusion that I was happy. As I continued to climb, I anticipated a trick, a sleight of hand, or worse yet, a disappointment lurking at the top of the mountain.

The closer I climbed to the peak, the more I detected the salty flavour of the meat cooking over fire at the top. It was definitely an animal being prepared to eat at a civilized temperature, most likely a pig. I wasn’t sure why this thought came to mind first, but it did, and when I finally reached the top, it didn’t surprise me to see a pig on a spic. Surrounding the pig were a group of young boys. They were not primitive or native to the land. They were blond and white skinned, although many of them were tinted orange by the sun. Some wore face paint. Others wore tied rags to cover their privates. Upon seeing me, they reacted defensively with their spears. Although they were threatened by my intrusion, I wasn’t afraid of them, or their advantage in numbers. They were too young, too fictional, and I had realized then and there my mind had relocated me to a story I had read when I attended a traditional school in my origin lifetime, before The Final Collapse, before the Dreamscape Domination. When I waited for yellow busses to take me to school, and when I sat obediently in a self-contained desk.

“Are you The Beastie,” asked one of the younger boys.

I giggled. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to answer yes with a straight face, just to see how they would react. They would surely rush at me and push me from the cliff, or drop a stone on my head, just as they had done to Piggy in the novel Lord of the Flies.

“No, I’ve come to save you.”

“We don’t want to be saved.”

“Are you sure? I saw the smoke signal.”

“We want to stay here, forever.”

“Where are the other boys?”

I was obviously alluding to the democratic sect of group, the one in opposition to this band of hunters.

“We ate them,” answered the leader with leaves tied into his blond locks.

This story arc was not a part of the original story I had studied in high school. It read like an alternative ending, a “choose” which ending your preferred type of authorial offering.

“You ate the civilized boys?”

They nodded affirmatively.

“Why?”

“They wanted to be rescued. We don’t need to be rescued.”

At once I read their intention above their confession. They were not afraid of my authoritative presence. I was older than them, an adult, or so they would regard me in any other context but the island. But they weren’t staring at me with obedience, and they were not about to cry as they had in the original story, at the very end, when the military man found them after the island was set on fire by the hunters. Instead, they were sizing me up with their appetites. I was a delicacy much more in demand than the pigs on the island. The story had muted into something much more primal and ugly. So I changed my position.

“I am the Lord of the Flies.”

They shrieked back.

“I am the Devil of the island.”

They convened to discuss amongst their visible panic. I could hear “black skin” repeated numerous times in their debated arguments.

“You will obey my wishes.”

Now, all of them reacted obediently, almost in supplication. They knelt and began worshipping me. A gang of white skinned, blond boys extended their arms out in reverence of my godly presence. And then, the story mutated into another obscene direction. The leader’s face transformed to resemble him - Jonas. My own ghost of relationships past, Jonas, with his red beard in the frame of this young boy’s blond locks, strewn with leaves. Jonas, the man who hurt me beyond repair in an origin lifetime. My first love. A cruel, heart cracker.

I shook my head noticeably, to shake away the resemblance. The boy’s face had transformed back to its original pubescent one. Was my mind playing tricks on me? The prolonged silence reminded me they were waiting on my next command.

“Feed me my meat!”

The leader prodded one of the boys with his spear to cut me a piece. I pointed to a rock for him to place it before me, as they would a sacrifice to a deity.

“You cannot touch me, or else you will perish.”

He scurried back and I had to withhold a smile, as well as my anxious hunger. I needed to demonstrate spiritual control over physical sustenance first. I understood the story they were a part of more than they did, which made me the invisible author who controlled them with his creative imagination, who believed their story needed “to be.”

I retrieved the steaming meat and satisfied my hunger. Unsalted and without spice, it tasted more like burnt fur. The boys were too amateur to skin the pig properly.

“You will be rescued, but not by me. I am a Devil that curses. I don’t save, I kill.”

They inched back, almost to the brink of the cliff. I worried my words were too strong to control them without threat. They kept stepping back, even when I didn’t voice them. They would surely fall of their own accord if I didn’t scream “halt,” but I stepped closer to issue this command, they reacted with too much fear.

Once one slipped, others followed, while some voluntarily jumped to die by the same pattern. I rushed over to the edge to witness a scattered spill of fallen bodies, strewn about the rocky bottom, right next to the lagoon. Not one of them fell in the water.

In the distance, the thunder of a helicopter’s blades interrupted the peace of a blue sky. I decided I wasn’t going to wait for the rescue. I would escape into another Scape. This time, I was prepared to kill anything that resembled Jonas, my origin ghost, who continued to haunt me, even in a paradise.