The Isle

The Isle
Mark Arsenault


I have come upon this cave on the Thursday the 22 of October, my intent when writing these memoirs if you would like to call them that, is to provide an accurate record of the events that proceeded the disastrous crash of flight 191. To the best of my knowledge I am somewhere in the mid pacific between the Philippines and the Hawaiian islands. But my location is only the beginning of this stories mystery. Instead of confusing anyone who may be reading this god forsaken story of mine I will tell you what I do know up to this point in time. I know that this is a very big island; it has to be about the size of New Zealand. There are many different geographic regions on this isle, but it is not the geography that is truly interesting instead it’s the creatures rather monsters that inhabit it. Monsters that would turn the most hardened and formidable of men into cowards at their sight. Most of my journey, my investigation of this island has be fraught with danger and violence. But my first memory of being on this isle is a peaceful one. I remember sand, it radiated its comfortable heat onto my face warming my spirit. For hours I had been in the cold fridged waters which surrounded the isle, maybe that why the warmth was such a comfort. I woke up to the rhythmic and methodical beating of waves on the shore. The sand was so white that the sunlight would reflect off of it and burn my eyes. The beach stretched on for miles as did the endless sea which I could see no land masses in the distance on. Its water was so clear that 100 feet out I could still see the ocean bottom which was very shallow, for some distance, and was covered with a masterful array of brightly colored coral. Accustomed, my eyes were not to such a graceful and glorious setting. Behind me lay a lush tropical jungle which overwhelmed my line of sight blocking out any view of the rest of the island which I might have had. Such a height the trees were that they dwarfed the large volcanic boulder’s which bordered between the shore and jungle. This jungle also expelled a great variety of colors from various flowers and vines which overwhelmed the jungle floor. So there I stood wedged between 2 great unknowns the vast mysterious sea and the thick darkness shrouded jungle. Both of which were equal in complexion and mystery, but for that moment I decided against venturing into either instead I stayed in my buffer zone of the known world. For I was very tired at that point so I laid up against a palm tree on the edge of the jungle and rested in ignorance. People say that ignorance is bliss and I can say first hand it is a truly wonderful thing. But it was not long before the reality of my situation caught up with me. I believe it was that night that I awoke from my deep rejuvenating sleep, but truly I did not know. It could have been a day or two later, for I had fallen out of realization of time and reality. What I do know is that when I did wake up it was to a frightening. There on the shore there was a silhouette of some type of bipedal creature, I say a creature because it was to small to be a human standing only about 3 foot high. Yet at that distance and in the moon light which seemed to make the white sand glow with a radiant beauty the likes of which I have never seen before in my life; I could not see any specific features. All I could see was that the creature was standing on two legs. Then another little creature rose out of the water next to the first one on his left side. Two others joined them, they all just stood there watching me. It was an eerie feeling being watched by these creatures, they did not move at all. I began groping around on the ground in search of a branch or root I might be able to defend myself with. However there was a naive thought at that time in my head that they might be friendly and I did not want to scare away these obviously newly discovered creatures. I got hold of a heavy lava rock. Shivers ran down my spine as the creatures began to move towards me. They stepped onto the dry sand, and then a ray of moonlight illuminated their ghastly features. The head was round un-humanly spherical in its shape, no facial hair covered their sickly pale white colored skin. A pair of slits were placed where normal human nostrils should have been, and what should have been a noise had become a flat slab of skin on which the slits resided. The little monsters mouth smiled with greed as its cat like blue eyes fell upon my motionless body, revealing a set of razor sharp teeth stained black and red. I think even to this day the only human emotion I have seen those creatures, those ruined forms of life express was greed; cowardly in every form, for they would only pray on those who were unconscious and unable to defend themselves. The monsters approached me further and I could feel my stomach toss and turn with anxiety. My heart seemed to be crawling up my throat and my breath shortened the closer they came. Evil things of the night they where, now they had approached within feet of me and I could see their mouths open as if to plunge their gruesome little teeth into my flesh. As they did this small fins folded out of the back of their heads where there should have been ears and they emitted a rattling sound, like a rattle snake about to strike. I would not allow such a strike so only seconds before my body became a meal for these tiny savages I whacked the one closest to me on the head with my rock. It was a full swing, and I had heard a loud crack as the monsters head twisted around; leading me to believe I had broke its spine with one strike. The things small body fell limp onto the radiating white sand, the others ran for the oceans which I had expected them to do; for even if I had not been armed their numbers were not large enough for a pitched battle with me. At that time I did not think that the monsters would bother me again that night and I felt it safe to return to my rest. I thought they feared me, and they did; over the course of my stay on this island I would learn how fear is a tool which I could use with much effect to protect myself. Fear is one of the emotions which men and creature both share, it drives us and them to do things that which under normal conditions we would not usually do. I caution however against using fear as a motivator for it tends to turn the user into the monster from which he wishes to defend against. There are many different types of fear as I would discover on my trek through this island, the most obvious and common type is fear of death. Yet a weaker fear however one that can push us to ignore the first and most basic type is social fear. It is social fear that has allowed me to escape and defeat some of my most dangerous of predators, the human type that is. Yes there are other humans or at least there were as I would find out the next day. It was about mid day before I woke up, I was startled to find that the fish man’s corpse had been defiled; his chest and legs had all been eaten away and were now reduced to bloody stubs. Amused me this did, that the monsters would come back and eat their own dead before they even touched me. That was my first lesson in fear. After I got over my initial shock of the half eaten corpse I figured I might want to see if anyone else from the crashed flight had survived. I remember falling off the safety raft and that was how I ended up here. So I only guessed that the same current that pulled me to this island would have pulled in the safety rafts. With that thought I started off down the shore in what I thought was a northward direction. It was what I thought to be hours before I encountered anything interesting. Then on the horizon I spotted a bright yellow life raft, it stood about 10 foot high and had a covered top so it was not hard to be seen. Of course it was the first human made thing I had seen in days so the initial excitement was tremendous, it was like a beacon of light in the dark nothingness of this abyss which I have fallen into. As I advanced on the beacon I noticed something wrong, it had been torn to shreds. From the look of it there had been a pitched fire fight which seemed odd since I had heard nothing that night. I realized that it wasn’t a fire fight, as I looked at the interior of the covered raft. Gallons upon gallons of human blood filled the inside shreds of cloths had been pasted to the walls of the raft like papier-mâché by the dried blood. Flies buzzed around inside the yellow raft whose color had been stained red and black by the dried rancid smelling blood. Splatters of red could be seen even on the ceiling of the covered raft. This is what lead me to think that who ever had been taking shelter in this raft was executed, if there had been a fight of some type there would be more blood outside where the fighting might have occurred. Instead all the blood was concentrated inside the raft… this was not the since of a battle instead it was a slaughter. Bullet holes in the side of the raft told me there had been some weapons discharge, but the attacker’s fire was ineffective. I found that there were no holes on the inside of the raft only on the out sides. These rafts had been made out of a durable synthetic plastic as to not rip and tare in harsh weather; which was why the bullets had not be able to pierce the inner layers of covers which I predicted where a type of Kevlar. This also suggested that the attackers were using a low caliber weapon, much like the .22 caliber rifles in survival packs. That is how I first came to the rather scary and sickening notion that other survivors had committed this act of butchery. When they understood that rifles were ineffective the attackers had decided to commit their attack up close. They must have come into the raft and even after seeing the survivors cowering with fear still decided to slaughter them. The thought turned my blood cold with horror. What had turned them to this madness? I asked my self at that moment. Such a naive question I now know, but for me to have been able to understand their motivation then would have been condemned to become like them. How could any civil human understand the madness of anarchy? If you who read this, are in my forsaken cave maybe you know of what I speak; but if you read this from the safety of your home you could not. You who stand there between the pillars of civilization law and order, how is it that you could possible understand what motivates such men to this utter madness? It is that absence of law, it is the vacancy of order. For some men are good men because they truly understand the importance of being such; but humanity is mostly evil at its core. Jealous, greedy, merciless, uncaring creatures most men are and they are only good men in society because fear motivates them to be so. Such men who would be able to committee such a travesty of civilized morals you think inhuman… no they are not inhuman they are those that stared into the abyss of the jungle, and found no need for fear; they are the very life essence of most humans. I would run into these anarchists several times before the end of my travels. With a feeling of disgust I left the raft, further mystified by what I had figured out. As I left I noticed something that intrigued me. A large amount of tracks lead away from the raft into the jungle. I continued to stand in my buffer zone between the two great madness of that island staring into the jungle, looking into its shrouded darkness its brooding greatness. Looking into the imposing abyss which it was, little did I know that the abyss stared back into me. In me it saw a good man however, as I know now; I was incorruptible by the anarchy, the true freedom from morals which it offered. So I proceeded to penetrate its shroud of mystery, I trekked into the lunacy which it was. Once again I was ignorant of the peril which existed within it, the mortal danger I was in when I took that first step into the unknown. I wished to explore what I did not know and what I did not understand. I thought that if I was to chart the unknown, if I was to face that what I feared I could conquer its madness. And I could bring some justice to those who were so ruthlessly slaughtered by its lunacy. This was a silly thought yet what I did was right, it is only human nature to want to explore, and all considering that is the one redeeming quality which us human’s posses. When we deny ourselves this very basic desire, we are destroying the meaning of our existence. We of all the creatures which this earth contains are the only ones which can truly understand and therefore are the only ones that can sincerely explore. To stop exploration of any type is a horror worse then the slaughter committed by those men turned monsters. So there I went trekking blindly into the very jaws of death and apocalyptic anarchy. I followed the trail which the anarchists had made, for a good 4 hours. Before I came upon the anarchist encampment, the jungle had opened up to what previously was an elephant grass field. The anarchists had turned it into a muddy disorganized settlement, which was surrounded by a spiked palisade on which severed human heads were impaled. I could see a wooden cage in which they were using as a prison for captured survivors, for those that they did not just slaughter like pigs or sheep on sight.