Stranded

The man’s mind was a blank slate, a void where the memory of how he came to be stranded on this small island should have been. He had woken on the shore, his body battered and bleeding, with the ghostly echo of an incessant beeping ringing in his ears. When he closed his eyes, he saw flashes of fire and twisted metal, but the meaning behind these fragmented visions eluded him.

He spent the first day clinging to the safety of the shore, too afraid to venture into the unknown depths of the island. With his own hands, he built a fire, cracked open a coconut, and fashioned a crude shelter from the branches and leaves that lay scattered nearby.

Sleep did not come easy. His body ached, his memories were shattered, and the weight of his isolation pressed down upon him like a suffocating blanket. But he was not alone on this island. In the depths of the night, the rustling of leaves and the snapping of twigs from within the island’s dense, green heart betrayed the presence of other life.

The urge to investigate gnawed at him, but he fought it back. The noises could be easily explained by the movements of birds and the detritus they dislodged. And so, another day passed. And then another. Finally, after several days had gone by with no sign of rescue on the horizon, the man sharpened a stick and ventured into the forest.

He pushed through waist-high grass, ducked beneath hanging vines, and slid between the trunks of ancient trees. He stepped over fallen limbs, and then, quite suddenly, the forest opened up into a large circular clearing. Nothing grew there but long grass and a single, bare tree. It was an odd tree, with drooping limbs on either side and a roughly rounded wooden ball perched atop its trunk.

Shafts of sunlight pierced the canopy, streaming down like heavenly rays. The clearing was tranquil and green, and to the man, it seemed like a glimpse of what the Garden of Eden might have been.

He felt drawn to the tree, pulled by an invisible force. A sense of calm washed over him as he stepped into the clearing. The grass seemed softer here, the shadows more refreshing, and the sunlight more healing.

As he approached the tree, which stood taller than him but not nearly as tall as the surrounding forest giants, he became increasingly aware of its strange appearance. He wondered if perhaps it was not a tree at all but something else entirely. Something artificial. In fact, it almost looked like—

The snap of a twig beneath his foot shattered the illusion, and what had first appeared to be a tree spun around, fixing him with a piercing glare. From its splintered mouth came a guttural snarl, a sound that struck terror into the man’s heart. He stumbled backward, falling to the ground before scrambling to his feet in a panicked frenzy.

A nightmare creature bounded through the tall grass, its movements quick and predatory. As the man fled, he stole a final, desperate glance over his shoulder, only to be met with the sight of wild, feral eyes and a rabid, snarling mouth.

In an instant, the creature caught him, its claws snagging his legs and sending him sprawling. The sharpened stick flew from his grasp, leaving him defenseless. He was dragged towards the center of the clearing, his fingers scrabbling for purchase in the grass as he screamed, his voice raw with desperation and hopelessness.

Above the sound of tearing flesh and snapping bone, the distant rumble of a searching plane could be heard, a cruel reminder of the rescue that would never come.