Daniel groaned softly as both breath and consciousness returned to him. The fact that he couldn’t see wasn’t his greatest concern. Most troubling was the impossibility in his mind, thoughts darting as he tried to get his bearings. There was something layered over his recent memories, a singular sensation that made no sense. Falling.
He was driving to work, and plummeting. Glancing idly at his phone late at night, while wind whipped around with him in blind panic. It seemed like a delusion, a false memory glazed over his normal life combined with a distortion to time. There was no immediate sense of when this intrusion began, but it grew stronger as Daniel worked his way forward. Yesterday, or what he assumed was yesterday, was almost entirely blotted out by the terror of free fall that clashed with what few memories made it through.
He’d gotten a call from someone? The details were hazy and a dull headache now crept into the tortuous mental landscape. Trying to focus on his last memory only heightened the pain without offering additional insight. He begrudgingly surrendered, and the fog that was parting rolled back into place.
The young man only a few years out of high school briefly wondered if this is what it meant when life flashed before your eyes. If he really was falling to his death. No, Daniel thought. He felt solid ground beneath him. He was face down, a fact made clear as he struggled to breathe and choked on dust. Propping himself up by his elbows, Daniel dusted off his face and opened his eyes. What he saw made him scramble back, bumping into something hard.
“It’s an island,” Daniel said breathlessly, clutching at the tree he’d backed up against. He’d been prone near the edge, looking over it as he’d opened his eyes. It wasn’t water that met his gaze but open sky. Normally Daniel would have assumed he’d landed on a cliff, but that would require the land he was on to be connected to anything. Instead, Daniel only saw empty air surrounding him. He briefly considered if there was a column supporting the island where he couldn’t see it, but there simply wasn’t anything under him. “It’s a floating island?”
That was ridiculous. He laughed despite himself as an image of the stereotypical deserted island flashed through his head. It was almost there, a single tree, barely enough land to pace around. The tree wasn’t in the exact center of the island and contained no coconuts, however. The farthest the edge went from it was a dozen meters at most. All that was missing was the water and an unusually charismatic volleyball.
Daniel frowned as he took in his meager surroundings. Not only was this island nonsensical, but it was also odd. He could clearly see where he had landed, if falling was how he’d come to this strange place. There was only dirt around the tree, no grass. Two swathes of dirt had been burned, arcing out from the area he’d fallen. It was a familiar pattern, but Daniel couldn’t place it amid the absurdities that were assaulting his mind.
He sat against the tree and stared out at the sky around him. It wasn’t a poor sight. The unmasked golden light of sunset, or perhaps sunrise, was something to behold. More than that, how often do you see clouds from above? For Daniel, only once every few years. The last had been the plane trip to his father’s funeral, and he’d had to take a sedative for that.
His eyes fell to the ground around him, and another oddity was discovered. The roots of the tree were visible. This wasn’t uncommon for large trees. Surface roots could dive up and down across the surface in search of nutrients. These looked similar, but the smaller offshoots were exposed. All around the base of the trunk roots had been lifted out of the ground like a careless giant had tugged on it for a moment before moving on.
Daniel’s breath quickened as a rise of panic shot through him. It wasn’t the phantom giant, but the realization that he was trapped truly hitting him. Claustrophobia was always one of Daniel’s weaknesses. It didn’t matter if he was trapped by walls or open air, it was the obvious limits on his freedom that got to him. In this case, there was no sign of that changing.
There was nowhere to run. He was already as far from the edge as he could go. The tree at his back provided a measure of support, but it couldn’t shield him from the oppressive sky. Daniel was frozen in fear, stunned even as a knot of the tree dug painfully into his back. It was a vicious cycle between the need for escape and the world’s denial to him of any avenue. He closed his eyes and waited.
…
Eventually, the terror faded. Daniel hadn’t triumphed over his fear but had finally questioned his assumptions. Was he trapped? Was he even here? He couldn’t explain what had happened to his memory, outside of being drugged. As for this island, it could be an elaborate projection. Were his surroundings just screens showing a sky, making him believe he was kilometers up in open air while pixelated reality was right under him? He wasn’t sure if he liked that explanation more, but it meant there was probably someone watching him.
“H-hey!” he shouted, glancing randomly upwards where he assumed the hidden cameras were, “What the hell is this? Let me out!” A gentle breeze was all that answered him. Fans, Daniel assured himself. They’re using fans to do that. He ignored the fact that the air would have had to come from somewhere, and the ‘walls’ around him were unbroken.
Daniel planted a hand on the ground and stood up, pressure on his back instantly relieved. It didn’t help anything else. He glanced at the ground again on his way to the edge. From the impression he’d left while unconscious, it almost seemed like he’d been reaching out for something. Whatever it was is gone now.
“Damn it!” Daniel patted his pockets. He didn’t even think about his phone. Of course, it was gone, as well as his wallet. Everything besides his clothes was gone. The shirt and shorts were the last ones he remembered wearing. Oh, and his necklace, that was still there. Whoever put him here had taken everything else, but Daniel wouldn’t have traded that last item for his phone if he’d had the chance. He had a suspicion he wouldn’t have service, even if he did have it.
Daniel glanced over the edge. Height had never really bothered him, at least as long as there was a path back to the ground instead of just a fall. Large clouds lazily rolled by, obscuring everything below. The underside of the island was almost pyramidal, with the roots of the tree sticking out like a scraggly beard. It was impossible to tell how high up he was. If this was fake it was impressive. Daniel had seen theme park attractions do something similar, though this was another level.
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“Someone better start talking to me, or I’m going to do something stupid,” Daniel challenged, not looking up this time. He was pretty sure he’d fall a few meters if he fell off. Maybe 20 if there was as much distance below him as there was above to accommodate the tree. He held a foot over the edge, then brought it back. “Or maybe I’ll do something smart,” he said to himself.
Whatever had happened to the island’s tree had broken off a few branches, scattering them on the ground. Rather than throw himself off the island to uncertain futures, Daniel decided one of those would make a better proxy. “They can’t keep this up once I prove I’m onto them.” What exactly would happen when the branch bounced off the screen below him, Daniel wasn’t sure. He’d settled on some sort of illicit survival scenario as his best bet. Someone with enough money had brought him here for the entertainment value. Best case, he’d be drugged again and brought back home where no one would believe his stories. Worst case?
The branch was in his hand, held over the edge. If he was right, dropping it would end things one way or the other. If he was wrong, then he simply had no idea what was going on. Daniel was under no illusion that things weren’t bad, but he had a way forward. A way out. He let go of the branch and it fell. It passed the bottom of the island, falling further and further, until it vanished into one of the clouds below.
Rational explanations were suddenly at an all-time low in Daniel’s mind. The only things that could fake what he was seeing were more ridiculous than it all being real, and he was standing on a floating island. He’d dropped three more branches off the side to be sure, each one falling into the cloud directly below the island before he lost sight of it.
“This is insane.” Sheer incredulousness was edging out the lingering fear. It did nothing to slow his heart rate. He still couldn’t make sense of his memories. He couldn’t make any sense of this. How was an island flying? The tree looked like it had been pulled up, but there wasn’t a hook attached to the top or anything.
Daniel’s priorities had shifted from provoking his presumed captors to finding a way off this island. He circled the edge, careful not to get too close lest he trip on one of the snaking surface roots and fall. All he saw below him was the large cloud moving slowly off toward the sun. The tail end was almost clear of the island’s shadow, and in other directions, there were gaps enough in the cloud layer to see through. There was land below, so far below that he could only make out a faintly green blur painted between the orangish-white of the clouds.
Daniel returned to the tree and lightly thumped a fist to it. It was no volleyball, but he was beginning to warm up to the tree. It offered nothing to him but a break in the ground and the absence of a threat. Considering his current circumstances, it was all Daniel could ask for. “I wonder If I should,” he mused, looking at the large interior branches that supported the smaller blooming ones. This tree had an almost perfectly leafed dome of a kind he hadn’t seen before. The trunk was the normal brown-barked kind, and Daniel was almost certain trees like this existed somewhere. They did here at least.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Daniel grabbed one of the knots on the trunk, testing his weight before looking for another. He didn’t know what climbing it would achieve other than keeping him busy, which is what he needed. The closest branch was only a few hand-holds away, thicker than his arm and sturdy enough to hold him. From there, its evenly spaced brethren offered an easy path to the top.
A strange sensation washed over Daniel’s arms as he climbed. He’d expected to strain with the effort and he did. Rather than burning with it, his arms grew tense. It felt like he was lifting himself with flawless form, belying practice he hadn’t had in arboreal elevation. “This weird I can take,” he said as he reached the first branch.
Daniel’s brown hair poked out from the top of the green dome, the rest of his body braced below. He frowned as the effort yielded nothing but greater self-confidence in his physique, but if he was honest there were no changes there. It was probably adrenaline.
The sky around him was nothing but clouds and the setting sun, now almost below the horizon. He panned his gaze around and raised an eyebrow. Not every cloud was beneath him. Some were above, and some he could see by just looking out. One on his level appeared quite large. Before he’d considered it just part of the background, though in the hour or so he’d been running around this small island it had grown massive. Daniel felt his mouth grow dry and he realized the cloud was bearing down on his island.
He forced a laugh to break the fear threatening a resurgence. My island? he thought. If anything, it was Mr. Tree’s island. It might even be nice to see the inside of a cloud. The climb had left him with a building thirst, and Daniel wondered if you could drink just by breathing in a cloud. He realized that same reasoning would mean the cloud would drown him, and spent a few seconds designing a leaf-based filter mask in his head before scrapping the idea. He’d always been good with tinkering around a problem but lacked anything to do it with. If he was wishing for supplies, he might as well wish for a way to make a parachute. Or just wish for a parachute.
The cloud posed problems for Daniel. On one hand, it offered a change of pace. On the other, probably for the worse. It was another strange sensation that made Daniel eye the cloud with suspicion, something he couldn’t explain. It was like he knew the cloud was trouble, hiding danger behind its wispy façade. He probably shouldn’t be in the tree when it hit the island. Ducking beneath the leaves provided a sense of security the same way a blanket resolved a child’s fear of monsters. If there was something out there, he’d prefer steady ground.
Daniel regretted his decision as he found himself face-first on the ground for the second time today. One of the larger branches had given way on his descent, almost throwing him off the island as he tumbled down. He was on the side opposite the scorched earth that marked his original resting place, surrounded by scattered foliage. “Sorry about that,” he groaned, seeing a new hole in the tree’s leaf dome.
He turned over to look out to the approaching cloud. It was moving deceptively fast. When he’d climbed the tree it was far enough to not be worthy of notice. Now it was bearing down on him, an ethereal locomotive threatening to rush over the tree’s peaceful island. Daniel stood and brushed himself off. Small cuts from his fall, but nothing broken. Good, he thought, that’s the last thing I need.
The cloud was a few minutes away. Daniel could have occupied himself by dropping his freshly acquired sticks off the island again if he needed a reminder of how real the situation was. He simply piled them instead. The leaf parachute idea hadn’t completely left his mind. It’d take a while, but he didn’t have any other option.
Darkness converged on Daniel from two directions. The setting sun would eventually usher night, but the fog of the cloud screened out its fading light and got there first. Embarrassment colored his fear as he remembered his drowning concerns. People walked through clouds all the time in the form of fog. It just didn’t occur to him due to his logical side being busy with the idea of a floating island. It did mean he needed to find some other source of water. Thirst would be his most pressing drive soon.
The cloud finished its assault on the island, fully enveloping Daniel in a dense fog. Standing by the tree, he could barely see the edge. If he’d woken up in this, he’d probably have walked off the island without realizing it. “I need to find a way out of here.” As if in response to his voice, there was a purple flash deeper in the cloud bank.