Looking To the Future

Okay, so these past few months have been a little rough for me. I think that's been established. However, I've mostly come out of it now. I'm still depressed. I still feel betrayed, and I genuinely don't understand how she could have thought I was the person that she came to think I was. I understand her thinking it of me years ago, but I made a huge effort to fix my problems, and to make sure she knew how much I loved her.

Anyway, I am depressed a fraction of the amount that I was. In fact, I am turning this experience into a reason to get off my ass and try to do something. So, I'm writing a book. I'm not saying that it will be particularly good, but I am saying that this time around I am actually going to do it. I work on it every night, and I am pleased with how it's going so far. I have also instructed Shannon (my girlfriend) to not let me miss any days of writing.

I thought I might deposit the first draft of the first chapter here. Let anyone who cares to have a taste. This isn't all I've written, but I don't feel like posting the entirety of what I have here. Also, I'm not even going to try formatting it to fit nicely on the page, so it will probably look weird.

Here it is:

Chapter 1

The glare of the sun on the sand was blinding, and the boy finally turned his body to sit staring at the ocean, bewildered. After a few moments, he stood up, brushed the sand

from his jeans and looked around. The sand was pure white, whiter than one would think possible, and the grains stuck to his hands, glinting in the sun. He stood at the edge of the

ocean, and about ten feet from him, the beach seemed to end in grass, and a single palm tree stood, it's massive leaves lazily rustling in the wind. Then after that, more white sand.

More ocean. The island was a perfect circle, and he could only walk about twenty-five feet in any direction.At the base of the palm tree there was a man. He lay with his back to the

tree, and seemed to be asleep, reminding the boy of the way that Speedy Gonzalez might take a siesta in one of the old Looney Tunes episodes. The boy approached the man, but

didn't say anything. He looked around, trying to make some sense of what was happening, but there was no way for him to process this current situation. It was too nonsensical. Too

bizarre. He looked back at the man. The man was older, perhaps in his early sixties. His hair was grey, as was the close cropped beard that he wore. His clothes were business

attire, expensive looking.

Quietly, he said, "Hello". There was no answer. "Sir"? No response. Starting to feel a little frightened, the boy raised his voice. "Sir. Please wake up, sir." Still the man lay as he

was. The boy nudged the man's foot which was encased in a beautiful, alligator skin shoe. There was no sign that the man noticed. Suddenly terrified that he was hopelessly stranded

on a tiny island with a corpse, the boy hastily knelt beside the man, and watched to see if he was breathing. The man's chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm. There was life there.

Maybe no consciousness, but life nonetheless.

The boy sighed, stood up and walked back to the edge of the beach. He took off his tennis shoes and his socks, and rolled up the legs of his jeans. As he finished rolling up

the second leg, it occurred to him that he was still wearing the clothes that he remembered putting on that morning before he went to school. "I can't have amnesia", he thought.

"There's no way that I'd still be wearing these clothes if I went on a trip that I don't remember being planned, and then got stranded here. And why aren't my clothes wet? Or at least

stiff from the water"?

Shaking his head, he stood up and walked into the ocean, thinking of doing nothing more than wading a few feet out, and getting his feet wet. With the first step in he was

engulfed by the sea. Salt water was in his nose, his mouth, his eyes, and he flailed his way back to the top. Once his head was free, he felt about him and located the edge of the

island. Holding onto it he wiped the water from his eyes, and realized that he truly was holding on to the edge. There was absolutely no slope at all. The moment that the beach

touched the water it ended in a sheer drop off. He clung there on the side of the island, enjoying the calming warmth of the water, and letting his body rock gently on the calm sea.

The water was extremely clear, and he looked around him, trying to find the bottom, but there was none to be seen. There weren't even any fish that he could see. Only the rays of

sunlight, piercing deep into the green abyss were visible. Looking up, he scanned the horizon looking for any sign of other life, another island, a boat, a plane, anything. Nothing.

"What am I supposed to do," he thought. "What am I supposed to do?"

Something caught his eye directly ahead of him. There was something out there in the ocean, so small that he could barely believe that he had noticed it in the first place. It was

too far out to have any kind of form that would be recognizable to him, but it was there. He was sure of that. Letting go of the edge, he slipped out further into the ocean, treading

water, hoping to get a better look. Now it seemed to be moving ever so slightly. There was a small back and forth motion to it that was almost hypnotizing to look at. Squinting at it,

he began to see that it must be a piece of cardboard sticking out of the water. Discouraged, he turned his back to it to swim to the shore. As soon as his back was put to the piece of

flotsam a thought occurred to him. It was floating straight up and down. Why would a piece of cardboard not lay flat on it's side on the water? Why would it float straight up and

down? Quickly he turned back around and saw that it was now much closer. It's distance when he first noticed it was such that it was a miracle that he had noticed it at all. Now, it

was clearly recognizable as a fin. And it was clear to be seen that it was rushing towards him with a speed that he would have thought impossible, the water parting before it with a

violent spray.

In a panic, the boy thrashed his way to the shore, and clutched at the sand to pull himself up. He thrust his hands deep into the beach, and pulled as hard as he could. With his

body half way out of the water, the sand gave way, depositing him back into the water with a splash. "Oh, god", he cried out. Without looking back to see how close the fin had

gotten, he placed his palms flat on the sand, and pushed upwards as hard as he could. His body lunged out of the water, and his torso landed firmly on the beach. With a grunt, he

twisted and rolled his lower body so that it joined the rest of him on the dry land. Spluttering, and coughing out water, he lay there, sand sticking to him, the terror beginning to abate.

How long he lay on that beach, he couldn't say. He hadn't paid much attention to where the sun was in the sky when he had first gotten here, and so had nothing to compare it's

current location to. But when he finally stood up and looked out across the sea, there was no aberrant fin to be seen. Nothing disturbed the calm water. No sign of the thing that had

hunted him so recently. Exhausted, he walked back to the palm tree in the center of the island, and stood looking at the peaceful face of the sleeping man. He hadn't moved so much

as an inch. "WAKE UP," the boy screamed. "WAKE UP, DAMN YOU". The man slumbered as before, oblivious to the outburst. Unmoved. Uncaring.

"Fine," the boy said. "I'm eating all the food then". No answer. "All of it. Every last drop that that nice Eskimo couple dropped off. All the chicken. All the seal gizzards. They're

all mine. And I bet that they will totally be delicious". No sign of acknowledgement from the well dressed man. The boy turned away, and sat down on the grass on the opposite side

of the tree. "Oh, yeah," he exclaimed, as if just remembering something. "I'm also going to kiss all of the pretty girls they dropped off here. They can only be kissed once, and then

they have to leave. Them's the rules. That's what the Eskimo's said. One kiss apiece, then they have to go. I don't make the rules. I just follow them. They said that if you woke up,

you could kiss some too, but that if you didn't, well, too bad for you, man. Too bad for you." The boy waited a few moments. "Yeah," he said, and turned over on his side and went to

sleep.


***********

"Don't trust the red five."

The boy sat up, startled out of a deep sleep. The moon was high in the sky, but full, and it cast the beach in it's silvery, pallid light, making what little there was to see stand out

easily. He stood and attempted to brush all of the sand that he could from his damp clothing. The night was warm, but having nothing dry to wear made the slightest wind put his

teeth to chattering. Holding himself, he shuffled around the tree to where the well dressed man lay and stood staring at him. The man hadn't moved an inch since the last time he had

seen him. His chin still rested firmly on his chest, and his hands remained clasped above his stomach.

"Did you say something?" the boy asked in a voice raised just above a whisper. The only answer he received was the barely perceivable rise and fall of the man's chest as he

took in the night air and then expelled it. The boy looked around, confusedly. The island was small, too small to be hiding a third stranded soul, and this man was obviously not

conscious, but he was sure that he had heard a voice. Maybe the man had talked in his sleep, he thought. The words sounded like the sort of nonsense one would hear from a dream

talker, at any rate. And the man was dressed so expensively that it wouldn't be a surprise if he were a professional gambler, dreaming of the craps tables, laying bets and voicing

suspicions about a colored number that would ruin his winning streak. The boy smiled to himself and said aloud, "I wonder what the odds tell you about waking up in this place".

"The blue seven is a liar."

The boy spun around and yelled out, "Who's there? Who's out there? Is there a boat? Do you have a boat?" There was no answer, and he could see no boats in the

surrounding ocean. Now he was feeling true fear again. When the voice had spoken this time, he had been staring at the well dressed man's face. The man's lips had not moved at .

all, and neither had his throat moved in the way that a ventriliquist's does when he is attempting to speak without moving his mouth. The voice had come from someone else.

He walked to the edge of the ocean and crouched down, feeling the gritty sand against the palms of his hands. He stared out into the dark without moving, waiting for the voice

to return. He intended to at least pay attention to the direction that it was coming from the next time it spoke. As he waited, he looked into the water directly in front of him. In the dim

light of the moon, he could just make out a shape, no, two shapes moving below the surface. How far down was impossible to tell in this light, but as he watched, their figures

became clearer. They were rising towards the surface.

Within a few seconds the shapes became recognizable as being sharks. Suddenly, he remembered reading that the way that the Great White Shark hunts is to swim straight

up at it's prey, breaking the surface of the water, it's meal clenched between it's many jagged teeth. He pulled himself backwards with a gasp, removing his head from the space just

above the water. Breathing heavily, he scrambled backwards until his hands felt grass underneath them once more.

Very gently, a fin broke the surface of the water. Instead of continuing to circle the island as the boy expected, it remained in the exact position it was in when it rose above the

water. A moment later, a second fin emerged directlty across from the first, positioned as if the two sharks were facing each other directly, engaged in a kind of bizarre staring

contest. The boy did nothing, said nothing. He simply stared at the two fins, the only evidence of waking life he had seen on this strange, inexplicable day.

"The blue seven is a liar," said the voice. The tone this time seemed less interested in convincing anyone of a fact than it did the first time. The voice sounded accusatory, full of

rancor. "The blue seven wants the child to itself. The blue seven wants to grind the child's bones between it's nasty teeth. The blue seven will destroy, eviscerate, cause pain, wailing,

death, and worse."

"It is the red five who lies," the voice sounded identical to that of the previous speaker. Even the tone was the same. If it wasn't for the change in position on which colored

number was not to be trusted, it would have never occurred to the boy that it was a new speaker. "The red five tells his lies with purpose though, does he not? The red five tells

convincing lies about the blue seven so as to keep the child from his purpose, does he not? The blue seven knows the child's purpose. The blue seven sees the paths that lay ahead.

The blue seven has walked the paths."

"The blue seven has never walked in his life. The blue seven is a fish." The voice sounded triumphant now. "The blue seven has caught itself in it's own lies. How it lies, and

lies. The blue seven is so far from telling truths that it convinces itself of it's own lies. But it's nature will out. It will tear, rend, devour. That is the blue seven's way.

There came an audible sigh. "The blue seven used a figure of speech. The red five knows this. The red five makes accusations so that it can obfuscate the truth. The red five is

a disease. It is a plague upon this earth. The red five is the scourge of these waters, and it is the blue seven who keeps it from destroying all goodness. The blue seven keeps the red

five from devouring the light, and leaving the world in the pure dark, the abyssal blackness that it loves so much."

"It is the blue seven who wishes to devour the light. It is the---"

"Quiet!" the boy yelled. "Just stop! I don't trust either of you. And you aren't real, anyway." The boy stood up and walked closer to the water. He could see the two large sharks

now. They were in fact nose to nose with each other, mouths gaping wide, looking as if they wanted to tear each other to pieces, but neither of them daring as they were so evenly

matched. As the boy looked, he realized why they referred to each other by such strange names. The leftmost shark had a red five painted or tattooed on the top of it's head, while

the shark on the right wore a blue seven in the exact same spot. In fact, the two were identical in every way, shape, size, expression, and voice. Everything but color, and number

was the same.

"I know this isn't real, now," The boy said. "Even if I were to believe that sharks could talk, even if I were to allow for that, it still wouldn't explain how you are still alive when

you haven't been swimming. Sharks can't breathe if they stop moving. You should be dead!" He stepped closer to the sharks, and looked down at them. They both sat completely still

in the water, their eyes fixed on him. "You don't have an answer for that, do you?"

Without moving so much as it's jaw, the shark on the right spoke. "The blue seven has answers, but the child will not hear them now. The child will not listen now. The Blue

Seven will answer all when the child wants answers." At that, the shark swiftly turned and swam away, leaving the boy alone with the red five.

"Do you see now the way that the blue seven is? How it operates?" the shark asked, excitement easily heard in his voice. "Do you see that it was trying to trick you, to take

the trust that rightfully should be placed on the shoulders of the red five, and destroy it?" The eye of the shark was unwavering, never moving it's intense gaze from the boy's face as

it spoke.

"Sharks don't have shoulders," the boy said.

"Figure of speech", replied the shark.

"Please leave," the boy finally sighed after a moment of complete silence.

The shark did not reply, but merely sat in the water, staring at the boy. Abruptly, abruptly enough to make the boy jump, the shark turned and swam off in the same direction as

the first.

When the boy could no longer follow the trail of the departing shark on the water, he turned and walked back to the solitary palm tree. When he reached it, he put his back to it

and slid to the ground. He sat there, on the opposite side of the tree to the well dressed man, hugging his knees to his chest. He sat there and he cried until he slept.