Amrit+S

Amrit S

**__ So Close Yet So Far __** As I carefully open my eyes I feel a blinding light creep in. Suddenly I snap my eyes open, where am I? It is the first of many questions that come rushing to me. Where am I? Who am I? What is going on?
 * Consigned to Oblivion **

I try to stand but as I do I feel my head throb and I fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I decide to sit up. I feel my head with my fingers, starting from the front and moving back. At the back of my head there is a mountainous lump; every time I touch it I feel a sharp pain. Now my setting is also becoming apparent to me. In front of me all I see is water. I seem to be sitting in sand and as I like over my shoulder I see trees not too far away.

Now that my eyes have adjusted to the sun, and the pain in my head has dulled, I decide to stand up. As I walk through the sand I realize I am missing a shoe and my clothes are soaked. I am wearing tattered sweat pants and a shirt that is riddled with holes and burn marks. As my eyes scan the beach something in the distance catches my eye. I start to run towards it. Bad idea. I walk towards it and as I get closer I start to speculate about what it is. When I get right up to close I realize that it is a part of an airplane. The thought makes my head swim. All of a sudden I feel a flash, images of me in an airplane. When and why was I in an airplane? More comes back to me. I start to remember myself sitting in an airplane with other people, people I do not know. Or do I know them? The more answers I get the more questions I get. There is also the question of who I am. I decide to continue to walk up and down the island, hoping to find items that will help me remember who I am.

As I walk I start to think about the other people on the plane. I start to wonder if they are okay and if they are on the island with me. I wonder if they know me, because I don’t. A part of me wishes I would find just one of them but at the same time I feel quite comfortable on my own. Just the thought of meeting other people starts to make me anxious. For some reason that does not seem new. After walking for a while I come across a part of the beach that has a lot more wreckage than the other parts. Across the beach I see items from the plane strewn across the sand and shallow parts of the water. As I approach it the items on the sand seem to just be more plane parts. I decide to search the water. items that better help my memory are much deeper into the water.

** Anxiety ** As I awake I have a pounding headache. At this point the cause of this headache is quite well known to me; I have suffered brain trauma. In addition to that though, yesterdays epiphanies seem to have amplified the headache. There has to be other people on the island. How else could there be so many bags? I decide to make my mission for the day to find the other people. I slowly stand up because I do not want a repeat of yesterday. I decide that first I should make a signal to possibly attract other people. At first I think of doing one of the most basic signal, a signal that everyone uses, I think that I should make a fire. To my dismay, the matches that I found yesterday are still waterlogged. They now just sit there on the ground, taunting me. I then decide that maybe a fire is not the best option. Instead of starting a fire I decide it would be best to just walk around and see whom I can find.

To deal with my headache I decide to check my suitcase to see if I have any Advil. As I rummage through my bag all I have is clothes, soap, toiletries, and my anxiety medication. There is also a postcard from Brazil with the sticker still on it. That really jogged my memory. Getting on the plane in Brazil, thinking that I would be home within a day. I start to remember my house in Canada and my mom, it is all so vivid. Unfortunately I still do not remember an important detail, my name. Since the postcard is brand new and the sticker on the bottle of pills is ruined I still cannot find my name. It is funny how small things like random memories and Advil are the things that are now so valuable to me. I start walking with a few of my possessions. After working for a while, I decided to call out to see if anyone would hear me. “Is anyone out there?”

Unfortunately, the only thing that resulted from that was that I made all the birds in the area fly away in a storm of birdcalls. There was also a chorus of monkey calls. I looked up at the canopy of trees that unfolded above my head. In the trees was a hoard of monkeys, feasting on the bananas in the trees. I also noticed coconuts in the trees. The monkeys make me feel very uneasy. Deciding to keep walking, I pick up the pace as to avoid the wild animals. Wild animals make me feel anxious. Seeing the fruit in the tree makes me feel hungry. After much thought, I decide to climb up the tree and get some since I have not eaten since… I cannot remember the last time I ate. I finally come across the banana tree that does not have any monkeys in it. When I go to climb the tree, I just slide right down the slippery bark of the tree. I then start hugging the bark with my legs around it and slowly push my self up the tree, grabbing a banana just in time before I slid back down to the ground. For some reason bananas bring up bad feelings but when I eat them, it feels amazing. Scanning the horizon as I walk, I see a person off into the distance. The person seems to be a girl about my age. As I go to call to her, I see two more girls, one to her left one to her right.

“What’s your name?” one of the girls asks me. “Good question,” I respond. “What do you mean? How do you not know your own name?” “After the plane crash I don’t remember much, just the stuff I have slowly remembered.” “Oh, well my name is Trisha, and this is Breanna and Tessa. We have been on the island a couple of days,” Trisha explains to me. “Do you have a plan to get off this island?” It first dawns on me, how am I going to get off this island? “No, I don’t have a plan. Do you have a plan?” “No, but I need one,” Trisha responds. “Um, I have one,” Tessa barely states. “I found a life raft on the beach.” “Well, why didn’t you say so?” Trisha says practically shouting. “But did it ever occur to you that we can’t just row our way back to Canada?” Without a response, Tessa just keeps walking. The four of us start making our way back to the beach to get the raft. As the sun dips below the tree line I start to feel more and more tired. As I go to suggest that we take a rest, I think back to when Tessa tried to make a suggestion and decide against it. Finally Breanna suggests it, “Should we get some rest?” “Yes!” I quickly explain before it can be dismissed. “Okay, let’s get some sleep,” Breanna agrees. I decide to just sit down right where I stand. I am extremely tired. The others take a couple steps out and do the same. When I lie down, I close my eyes and sleep comes to me instantly. That night I have nightmares. First I am in the forest and the monkeys in the trees are screeching at me. As I run fearfully to the beach there is a raft there, inflated and waiting for me. I get in and go out to the ocean. It is there where I float endlessly for days. I wake up in a panic. The first thing I do is grab for my anxiety pills. I find them in my pocket. I take one and feel the affects right away. As I look around, the others are all still asleep. I decide to take advantage of the alone time to find some food. I find more bananas, and as I eat them I notice the others simultaneously waking up. As they notice me I offer them food and they accept. They all look like a mess, but I assume that I do not look much better. “Should we head to the beach?” I ask. They all nod, so they get up and we start to walk. The awkward silence is killing me, but I continue to walk. I stare at my feet as I walk and start to notice grains of sand. As the trees become more sparse so does my energy. We are now on the beach, away from the canopy of leaves that protected us from the sun. We now have to circle the beach in search of the life raft. As if I need more walking. After what feels like, and probably was, hours we find the raft. We all get in and start rowing towards the vast ocean. It takes the strength of all of us to get past the waves. The pain of rowing is excruciating and with every stroke it feels like my back is breaking. Now that we are past the waves and water is no longer washing over me I can relax a little. Of course, my idle mind starts to think about my dream. I wish I could put these fears to bed but unfortunately we are four teenagers rowing a raft aimlessly in the middle of the ocean. There is no plus side to this story. … We keep rowing but I cannot handle this anymore, it has been days, maybe even weeks, I have lost time and hope. If it weren’t for the bananas that we brought we might have starved. I hope I never see a banana again. As I dream I realize one thing though, dreams do come true, unfortunately. To make matters worse, I have run out of my anxiety pills. I decide to just go to sleep. That night I don’t dream of anything, my mind is blank.
 * Lost in an Abyss **

When I wake up the is no longer moving. After taking a second to process this I stand up. The others are still asleep. When I look up I see an oddly familiar scene and a knot forms in my stomach. Despite the similarity, the mountains look mildly different. Then I have an epiphany; we are on the other side of the island. Unfortunately, this side looks just as godforsaken as the other. I sit down and put my head in my hands. How could this be? I finally stand up and turn around. There, clear as day, is another coast, but here there are houses, buildings, cars, and most importantly people. Could it be? Could we have been this close to the mainland the whole time? Something tells me I already know the. I get back in the raft with the others and start paddling to shore.

** The End **