I’m going to die. It’s been three days since I last drank water or ate. I haven’t seen a single river, stream, or puddle with fresh water; there hasn’t even been any rain on the moving island. My throat is burning up, my injuries aren’t healing anymore, and I’m going insane.
My mother, my two siblings, and my uncle, I can hear them all. Everyone is telling or asking me something. While I try to sleep during the days – to preserve water and energy – my mother’s voice rings through my buzzing ears. She asks, “Will we make it through this?”
My uncle-in-law, Culhane, would - after some hesitation - say, “Of course, don’t we always?” and he would mutter each word with a melancholic tone that did not belong to a joyful man like him. I can’t understand my siblings’ words, but their soft shy voices make me sob during the days that I slumber. Well, that was when I could cry. Even if I wanted to cry, I wouldn’t be able to jerk out a single drop of water.
The human body can’t last too long without water, so it seems that my due date is near. With a groggy mind and an excruciatingly painful body, I get up from below a giant tree, and grab my half-filled bag of crab meat. The meat was going bad; you could smell the crab’s stench from miles away. Despite this fact, no animals have approached me – neither large nor small. Hunger wasn’t my first priority, but it was, nonetheless, a concern, and without any other living inhabitants on the island, I was doomed to die of hunger or dehydration.
I start to walk, or wobble, or crawl. I'm not too sure at this point, but I was moving…I think. This whole dehydration thing was never realistically portrayed in movies, so the first thing I did after getting my weapons was to search for my car – such a waste of energy. I still had some useful things inside my KIA. My backpack, for instance.
The only thing I need now is a drop of water. Just a single drop, and I'll be able to cry one last tear before I die.
My walking comes to a halt, and I fall over. While I lay there, face-first against the ground, something slithers its way up my injured right leg. With a groan, I turn around and lay on my back. I grab my left-hand pincer and slash the slithering form of the porous flower that keeps on popping up all over the island. The hideous thing is everywhere, and no matter what I do or where I sleep, it manages to tangle and suffocate me.
Once again it failed in its endeavor but tomorrow, I might not be so lucky. The head of the flower next to me is wilting, and as it quickly loses its vibrance, the flower releases a clear liquid. It looks… it feels, no, it tastes just like water!
I take in as much water as possible before the dirt absorbs it, and when I can only get two drops of the clear liquid in my mouth, I start to wring out the plant in hopes of getting more. Nothing much comes out, so my arms reach out for the stem of the plant, but the water coursing through the plant's vines is red.
My mind is a bit clearer now. I prop myself up from the floor, and I dust my nude form off. Seeing that I am practically the dirtiest I've ever been in my entire life, a little more dirt wouldn't do much at this point.
With a set of motivated and cautious eyes, I start to search for more wildflowers. After walking for what felt like half a mile, I find a tree being suffocated by a nest of the malicious flowers. With my two pincers, I attack the nest of red wildflowers, and start to consume the water they expel after death.
I start to do that for the next two days; unlike before, though, I remain inland and keep walking north, or maybe south. I didn't have my phone to use the compass so I'm not really sure, but I was walking now, and during sunlight hours. I started to eat the dead plants as well, because no fruits or animals have crossed my path thus far, and although not as delicious as cooked crab meat, the plant seems nutritious enough.
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On my eighth day on the island, the earth started to shake again, and upon the first signs of turning, I start to run as far as my legs could take me in hopes of reaching the edge of the island. I was not going to drown! At least not today.
With a motivated spring in my step, I start to run even faster than any of my former track teammates have ever been able to. Maybe I've set a record.
My speed doesn't decrease for a good ten minutes, but I'm only human; when I hit the eleventh minute, my breathing picks up more and the best I can muster is a jog. The ground is no longer flat; instead, it is sloped upward, and for now the red ocean water hasn't caught up to me.
I didn't rest, but after 30 minutes I was practically slowly climbing up the forest path. The island was inclined to such an extent that the only thing below my climbing figure was the red ocean. I didn't look down because I fear that my arms would give out from the scare. The island resembled a mountain with trees extending from it horizontally. The crab meat bag fell off my back, and although it was starting to rot, food was food. It was such a waste. I don't look down though, because after just a couple of minutes of climbing, I would reach the clearing up ahead. My arms are growing weaker, and with every minute I use to rest, I notice gravity doing its job on the island and I.
My hands clutch the summit of the completely vertical island, and what I find atop is mesmerizing. When I look down, I notice that I am tens of miles above ground. I freak out from the astronomical height and get on all fours. I start to puke a black liquid because the site before me, and my arms begin to shake from the impressionable height. "At least I can puke now," I rasp out with my dry mouth and scratchy throat. My lips have remained sealed for the past few days, so my voice sounds like nails scratching chalkboard. I relentlessly cough after saying those few words. With a sigh I look towards the red glaring sun in the distance. My brown locks of curly hair dance in the breeze while I recollect the near-death experiences from the past week. Something about being on top of a sinking mountain makes me want to remind myself of other deadlier occurrences in my life.
The fear becomes overwhelming. I almost died from dehydration and was constantly being suffocated by murderous plants. These experiences remind me that on this island – as I transverse the vast bloody ocean – my death is more than assured. Fear creeps into every crevice of my being, and plants another seed of terror in my heart.
The world starts to shake, and I breath in the thin air anxiously.
It seems we have arrived at the last phase of the rotation, dear island. As the island's surface – the side with forestry – begins to fall atop the plate-like sea, I grab my two pincers and imbed them into the other side of the island. I'm familiar with the smooth and hollow ground of the island's underside, so I know that it will take more than a couple of stabs to fully imbed the hook of my pincers inside the ground.
While pulling off feats of impressive strength, I gain a foothold on the smooth side of the island and hold the handles of my pincers with a death-like grip.
The island starts to fall rapidly with the intention of plopping down face-first into the water like an amateur swimmer. The speed of immersion is too fast for my body to handle. When I try to raise my head, a pressure keeps me pinned against the shallow ground. I don't fight the pressure; instead, my muscles relax a bit. Big mistake.
Once the forest side of the island is completely submerged by the water, a wave crashes into me and completely overwhelms my fragile body. I let go of the pincers and dip into the water. I try not to suck in any water, but my instincts to breath kick in.
I choke, and while I try to swim to the surface, something catches my eye. It’s right next to me – a vertical slit. Like a reptilian eye the size of a house. I suck in more water and with a desperate shout beneath the sea, scramble to get to the surface. When I break the surface tension, I suck in as much air as possible and pant from my exhausted state. However, it seems I am not in the clear because someone or something drags me down. My screaming was inaudible under water, but if someone could hear my terror now, they would become deaf from shrill screams. My hands made their way to my throat as water gushed in. Unconsciousness takes over my mind once more and a comfortable void of darkness replaces reality.