Small, subtle, taunting droplets drizzling their way slowly through the short fuzz that stood on my head. I dared not look up into the sky, looking up gives me hope and I wanted none of that today. I could’ve probably lived without hope for the rest of my life, if you can call floating aimlessly on a raft of lashed-together logs on a sea of blue water and deserted archipelagos any kind of life.
I lie, of course, the isles are not entirely deserted. There are strange, bird-like creatures. They have the feet of cats, but the faces of deformed humans. In imagining them, I could understand why they would seem offensive to look upon. However, I find them rather graceful as they pounce and coo across the sands out of my reach. I tried to eat one of them once, but once I killed it the thing turned to ash in my hands.

It would seem I’m not required to eat anyway, for it has been a year without any sort of nourishment and I have yet to die. I wonder if I am alive at all. Is this heaven? Is this hell? Where am I, who put me here? And why?
Cruelty of some sort, for I am not happy. It is peaceful in this ocean world, however, so I am not truly unhappy. I am not truly anything, there is no emotion within me except for when I look up at the sky.
When I turn to the heavens I remember, then I weep because the memories are so fierce. Hope fills me, but so does regret and sorrow. I can remember all the love I had before I was put here, but I cannot for the life or death of me remember how I came to be here.
My raft hits a sand bank, the rains continue for a few more minutes. The sodden glow of ever-twilight breaks, the clouds disappear and I am wrenched with self-pity. How long have I been alone now? Without the sky, I don’t remember any friends at all.
I tried to die, I tried to drown. The water, no matter how much of it filled my lungs, would not kill me. I stayed for a while in the middle of the water, but I missed the dismal half-hope the sky lent me. I returned to the surface, found my raft and set adrift again.
For over a year, at least I think it was but time has lost meaning, nothing changed in my watery days. Something new lurks in the deep now, something large and dark. I can see it, swimming beneath my raft even now. For the first time in a long time I feel something, I feel fear. I will not be returning to the water any time soon.
Why should I be afraid? I am trying to reason with myself. Why do I even want to live? I could just jump in, let the beast do what it will with me.
Then I look up at the sky again, hope returns and I cannot bear the thought of oblivion. Someday, the drifting clouds tell me, someday you will see your friends again. Someday you will know love again, someday there will be other arms to hold you.
“When?!” I cry, but there is never any answer. I am waiting, I am always waiting. Is this how God feels? Out of touch, adrift, always alone? Who does God have to call a friend?
No one, not even one such as myself who is fully capable of commiseration. I am in limbo.
The beast beneath the waves follows me wherever I go, waiting for me to slip up. I try to want to go to it, try not to look up at the sky. Sky, hope…then the winds start to blow salt air in my face. When I look down at the water, the winds cease and the waves are still and I forget what I was thinking before.
No matter how still the surface of the water becomes, I can never see my face in it. The reflection is of a black mass, inhuman. I wonder if that is what I look like, but no. I can feel my eyes, my nose and mouth. What do I look like? Are my eyes blue? Brown? Green?
I don’t know, I don’t know if it matters. I don’t know anything anymore. I couldn’t adequately explain why I don’t just roll off this splintery raft and let the beast catch its quarry at last. I am so afraid, I wish someone was here with me. This world is so large, but it seems I have it all to myself. I lie again, there are the strange birds to think of.
I drift on in this endless sea that must mean something. Even its meaning is to dump me head-first into the realization that there is no such thing as meaning. Could anything be that heartbreaking? There’s nothing to live for here, I know that. Still, why can’t I bring myself to jump in? Let the beast in the blue dark devour me whole, dare I even to look down I can feel the shiver that means it will be a very long time before I venture a glance again.
I think this monster has a mind, a thinking one. It could easily rise from the water and consume me. Many of the endless twilight hours I spend in this world I think of why it does not, and whether or not I would struggle if it did.
I wish the sun would set, or rise. Something other than this eternal half-light, I can never see the stars. There is no sun, no moon, precious few clouds and a little rain. Still the sea-beast circles, and still I am alone.
Stupid birds.
I lie on my back on the most recent sand bar the raft has barged into. My eyes are closed, I don’t want the pain of the sky just yet. In a moment I will open them and feel the piercing agony that wrenches my heart in twain with dreams that may be memories.
The sand is warm against my back, I can hear the strange sounds of the birds dancing around me and feel the lap of the tropic waves on my feet. Tears roll out from my closed eyes as I anticipate the pain I am about to endure just to put a temporary end to the monotony. Bracing my self, digging my fingers into the sand, I open my eyes wide.
Maybe this is what it’s like to die, excruciating pain and memories raining on me furiously. My back arches, the sand scrapes along my naked body. I know the lesions from last time have scarcely healed. Sometimes I just cannot help myself.
Visions of strange times and faces come at me in a torrent. I can see them, were they my friends? Did I have friends? We are laughing, we are in front of a building. Three faces play over and over again. They must’ve meant something to me once, now they are only strangers long gone from my life now. I will never really see them again. I see their lips form a name as they look at me, but I cannot hear what they are saying. These visions are silent, like a corpse.
I wish I could remember their names, I can feel how special they once were to me. Where they are now, I couldn’t say. I don’t even know where I am. The shadows of the love I once felt for them is the most painful thing of all, it makes me wish I was no longer alone all the more powerfully. Reaching up for the sky I try to grab their hands. Save me, please! Save me from this place!
They don’t hear me, they don’t really see me. When they look at me, they look at a memory of me. I wish I could hear their voices, feel their touch, know their love again.
Unable to go on, I shut my eyes and return to feeling the sand bar beneath me. I look down at the sands and see blood staining the white grains. I have rubbed myself raw.
At least it’s something a little different.
I get back on the raft and push off the sand bar after washing my wounds with salt water. It stings, but it’s a good kind of stinging.
Sometimes I look to the horizons, which draw no memories, thinking I’ll see a ship or something against the dim backdrop of atmosphere. Once again I have no recollection of what I thought while staring at the sky, all I feel is the emptiness that takes me after each time. I feel like I’ve lost something that I never really had to begin with. All I had was hope, then it was taken from me. Now I dare to hope again, but that is all I can do. Look up and hope that I might be rescued.
I can feel the undulations through the water of the ever-present beast swimming in slow circles beneath me. He grows closer by the day and my fear mounts.
How can I convince myself that I have nothing to live for? It’s true, so why don’t I buy it? The sky holds only wistfulness for me, the sea harbors death in toothy jaws. I have no where good to go. So I float on my raft wishing tomorrow could be different, knowing it will just be more of the same. It is no wonder why I am constantly disappointed.
The rains come again, with lightning this time.
At last a storm has come. I stand on my raft as the seas toss beneath me and nearly throw me head first into the water. Lightning whips through the sky on the tail of the winds, thunder screams close behind the flashes and gales. My face is aimed upwards, but my eyes are shut tight. My heart thumps in my chest and my breaths come in short gasps, in but a few moments I collapse on my raft.
When I can move again, the storm has ended and the sky is mostly clear. The beast now bumps against my raft as it circles. In my fear I glance upward, but this is a bad move. The memories return with avengence, I scream. The beast swims faster in the water. My raft rocks back and forth rapidly. The light has changed. It takes me a while to realize that it is no longer twilight, but morning. The storm was night.
Like a deformed, grotesque love child of slime and fire the thing that might resemble a sun crawled over the horizon. I gag at the sight of it, it is hideous. My skin burns beneath it as its first rays touch me. My screams turn to shrieks of pain and the monster grows more and more excited with each revolution.
The pain is too intense, I look down into the water. There is the beast, oh God I am afraid.
Springing from the raft, the water hits me like acid. The last thing I see is the monster’s maw opening wide to receive me.
It’s dark, quiet, warm, dry. This is no monster’s belly, but I don’t care. Hope has left me once and for all, no more sky.
At first I am not sure what I’m hearing, then the syllables become more clipped. Someone is speaking to me.
It’s a name. It’s my name.
I am…