Natural

   The Bont islands expand from one continent to the other, forming a natural bridge that connected the biggest landmasses of the planet. On one side, there was the port of Ventura, one of the largest and most populated cities in the world and the destination of Captain Kimura, better known to her friends as Feisty Flo. She had been one of the main colonists of the Dharma expedition but things had gone horribly wrong: creatures from deep within the jungle had destroyed the colony and killed every single person in it. She had been the sole survivor of the attack and was now attempting to cross the Bont islands to get to Ventura and tell the authorities what had happened.

 There were five hundred islands or so from one side to the other. Some of them were only a few meters long but others were large enough to have their own forests and volcanoes. As the continent she was leaving, he islands remained mostly unexplored except for he one closest to Ventura. She had to wait to cross during the day, as the moon prevented crossings during the night. For security, she would only sleep on the beeches and would keep a small inflatable boat she had known in the destroyed colony close to her. She had collected some items and put them there, including footage of what had happened.

 She would cross the thin sand bridges between island and have the small boat, the size of a lifesaver, attached to her waist by a rope so it trailed behind her at her own pace. The first few days and islands were nice enough. The weather was very warm and without wind. Finally, on the fifth day or so, so was caught in a small storm but didn’t sought shelter, instead gathering water from the sky in various flasks and thermos she had found back in the continent. The boat was beginning to feel a bit heavier but it was for him own good.

 She would food from fish she caught between the islands and when there were none she would eat coconuts or whatever plants seemed good to eat. What Flo didn’t eat were small berries or strange leaves. She didn’t wanted to have to endure a stomachache or food poisoning in such a journey. In one of the islands she found enough wood to make herself a spear (with a pointy rock from the beach) and a bow and arrow with part of the rope she had around the waist. It didn’t really work much but at least she was able to get the occasional sea bird for dinner.

 At night she wouldn’t eat anything, fearing the jungles of some islands to be infested with the same monsters that had killed her friends. Flo was afraid of them and the possibility of luring him into the inhabited continent. She would hate to be the one to bring them there. The idea was to warn them, not to condemn them.

 When she reached the island called Jall, the biggest one on the chain, she knew she was midway to her destination. The island was very large and would require several days of walking and certainly a more intelligent way to cross it as the beaches were blocked and it could only be traversed through the jungle. She slept the night she arrived on the beach of the neighbor island and crossed and first light. She wanted to take advantage of every single second of light during the day and was even prepared to go hungry for whatever time was necessary in order to cross the island as fast as she could.

 The jungle was thick and the environment was very humid and thick, as if it was possible to actually touch the air and even take a bite out of it. The scents were generally sweet but after two hours of walking, the air turned heavier even and it started to smell awful. Flo had to pinch her nose for a straight hour, only breather through her dried out mouth. She wanted to wait to have some water but couldn’t as she fell she needed it badly, not being able to wait longer.

 She stopped pinching her nose and the scent of sulfur invaded her nostrils. She grabbed the closest flask on the inflatable boat and drank fast but when she finished she didn’t kept walking. Flo realized that the smell came from small holes and gaps in the ground and that it was the ground itself that smelled like that.  She looked up and between the trees a volcano as majestic as any other feature of this planet could be seen and a plume of heavy smoke, pouring ashes onto the other side of the island, was coming out of it.

 Flo had to keep walking but then she heard a noise she had heard before, the sound of pincers opening and closing and before she realized one of the large animals that had attacked her village launched itself towards her. Her legs were apparently faster that her head because she had already begun running when the creature attacked. She escaped by a thread and ran towards the other side of the island, hopefully reaching the opposite beach soon. But she could only see jungle and more jungle and huge trees rising from the ground. They looked like palm trees but much larger and with lots of branches.

 She only stopped running when the ground around her began to shake. The volcano was causing an earthquake and it was better to stay still. Far, beyond some plants, she saw the creature that had gone after her being devoured by a hole in the ground. It squealed horribly and disappeared as the tremor subsided and the island calmed down. Flo was sweating a lot and could only think about her boat and seeing if she had everything. After that, she kept on walking.

 The other side of the island could not be very far but the more she walked the more it appeared the island was expanding or maybe she was walking in circles. She decided to climb one of the tall trees, leaving her boat at the base, in order to check out where she was and if she could see the ocean and the direction she needed to go to be on the good route home. She climbed with ability, having done it many times as she had built the village. She had done so with so many great friends and people that wanted a second chance at life, trying to begin again in a new place. But that had just been a dream and she was the residue of that nightmare.

 When she got to the top she realized that she was very close to her objective, having only change course a bit. She had to start walking to her left because if she kept doing what she was doing maybe the volcano would consume her too. Talking about the volcano, she saw that the ash cloud had grown bigger and was spilling ash all over the passage she had to cross. But that wasn’t the most awful thing she saw from there. She noticed something like rocks on the side of the volcano, big black rocks. But then Flo realized they were moving and were coming down the mountain. She had little time.

 Fast, she always broke a leg getting down and tying up the rope to her waist. She ran to the left as she had planned and didn’t stop until she reached a rocky beach and saw a blackened ocean. The light of the afternoon, red as blood, didn’t help to the image of the place. It looked like hell, as simple as that. And the demons were coming behind her so she just swam. The natural bridge had disappeared so she propelled herself hard with arms and legs and was soon tired but because the water felt thicker and she couldn’t even breathe properly.

 Behind her, she heard dozens of pincers opening and closing and that made her try even harder to reach the other side and when she did she realized her body was covered in ashes and was black as the night that was beginning to fall. Tired and breathless, she saw how the beasts attempted to cross the water but something prevented them. The ashes were apparently more toxic to them than to her. One of the creatures, the bravest no doubt, launched itself to the ocean and tried to sweet but it got turned into a big white lump that floated away into the open sea.

 The others were mad but not for long. Flo had felt the ground shake again and then saw fire pouring out of the volcano. Lava, just like water, bathed every single side of the island and she could feel the heat on her face. The creatures tried to escape but they had nowhere to run. She saw them die and she felt bad for them and didn’t know why. The lava slowed down and she decided to cross the island she was in and sleep later.

 Florence actually crossed three small islands during the night, her fears having been also consumed by the lava. When she looked back, two days after the disaster, she saw only that the volcano had stopped and nothing more. She then had the silly idea that maybe, just maybe, that island was the natural toll booth of this world and maybe that other continent had never been one to settle a foot on.

 She then turned around and headed on to Ventura, pulling her small boat with her and hoping for the best for the future of the human race.

Home

   The place had been abandoned for a long time, or at least that’s what could be inferred by the state of the house as a whole. Some glasses had broken, due to the wind or objects hitting them with strong force, moss and fungi had grown in the most humid places and every single object was covered by a very thick layer of dust, except the things near the terrace, through which the rain and the wind of many days had entered and sort of cleaned the space a bit. It didn’t look better as there was a lot of sand from the beach below and fragments of plants and other things. The place was a mess but there was some magic to it even like that.

 Formerly, that house had been part of condominium where only the richest people had houses by the beach, places where they could escape if they needed so. Maybe they had very busy lives in the city or maybe they just wanted to change views from time to time. There were even houses that were visited only once. But the one described was the last one of them all. The others were in ruins: they had been affected by the cliff crumbling into the beach or had just had less luck than the house that still stood there, almost defiantly.

 There were pictures of the people that used to live there or at least own the place: most of the photos showed a couple in their fifties, smiling or hugging and one where they kissed in some sort of celebration. There was only one picture of other people, most likely their children but it could be anyone as humidity had taken its toll on the picture and faces could not really be compared to the others. The point was that it seemed to be the house of people that were probably retired and had decided to have a place far from the chaos of the cities.

 The largest room was the living room, with the dining table just adjacent to it in a sort of platform that made way to the balcony, that had gone unaffected by the disaster that had claimed so many of the other houses. If a person could have been there, they would have seen a fiery ocean outside, a possible storm forming in the horizon and little to no wildlife in the vicinity. In the house, there were some small rodents and insects but no big animals, something had scared them off, or maybe the lack of people was unappealing, maybe they had learned to deal with us.

 Everything in this room was obviously expensive and that was obvious because of how it had stood against the wind and the humidity. The wood used all over the place was obviously of high quality as was the steel by the fireplace and even the fabrics in the furniture. The couple had probably spent lots of days planning what to buy and how to install it inside, how would it look best.

 But now, no one was there. Same for the bedrooms, which the house had three. The biggest one, of course, was the master bedroom that also had a balcony but smaller. The couple probably loved to look at the ocean every morning and talked about that view often. Or maybe, as many humans do, they never acknowledged their privilege, because when people already have something they’ve yearned for long, they decided to move on to some other things and the magic that used to exist is just lost. People are very hard to please.

 The bed and linen smelled awful but that was caused by the broken windows and the fact that rain had somehow created a giant puddle beneath the bed. It was almost a death trap because beneath that puddle laid all the pieces of broken glass from the windows. A human would have to be very careful walking around that room, as large as it was. There was a sofa there and a TV that had stopped working some time ago (there was no electricity) and a very large bathroom inside.

 It had a circular bathtub by the window overlooking the ocean and a lot of space for clothes and to be naked around. It should have been a really nice place to hang out as a couple or even alone. The glasses here had not been shattered yet so the room seemed less chaotic than the rest. The drawers were still filled with things the woman that lived there had bought but rarely used: many types of creams and lotions, bath salts for the bathtub, soaps in every shape, form and odor and several other things that would make a hotel manager blush out of embarrassment.

 The other two rooms were smaller. The one across the master bedroom was a bit larger and its windows were also shattered. It looked towards the entrance, were the cars would have been parked. It didn’t really have anything personal around except a teddy bear that was still sitting on the bed. It was impossible to know who had been the owner of that bear: there were no pictures in the bedroom and there were no other objects to relate it to. And the whole place was done in white, so one it was probably not a child’s toy but who knows, maybe it was.

 The last bedroom was smaller, also overlooking the parking area. That room’s particularity was the fact that it had a rather old computer on a table on the opposite side of the bed. There was a calendar besides it and a small cactus that was the only living thing in the room. It was strange to see that patch of green next to all the rather dull colors of the rooms. It was, without a doubt, a sign of life. But no one was really there to appreciate it anymore. There was even a small pink flower on top of it, but no one would ever see that. No way to know if they did before.

 Suddenly, the room shook as if another tremor had occurred but the force that was shaking the house did not come from below but from above. From the small bedroom, something could be seen in the sky, sort of a shadow slowly moving among the clouds but making the ground shake a lot. It was very high up and its shape or trajectory was very difficult to pin down. After a few moments the vibrations stop and only the sound of one of the paintings in the living room falling to the ground broke the silence. It had held on to the wall as long as it had been able to but the forces of nature had finally won.

 The last space in the house was the kitchen, which appeared to have been frozen in time. Everything there was just as if someone had come and clean it everyday since the couple had left the house. The pans and pots were very still in their places, also the glasses of wine and the entire silverware. It looked ready to be used but no one would ever use any of it again. It was nice to imagine what they had cooked in such a great place, such a clean and white space. Maybe they had thrown parties with lots of canapés and alcohol. Maybe they had been more intimate, and had just cooked meals for the two of them.

 It was weird not to see any grease of any part of the kitchen and the fact that there was no fungus in there but other parts of the house were just invaded by it. Maybe one of them was very into cleaning or had a special love for cooking. That was also interesting. Imagining who they actually were, what had made them laugh in that kitchen, what shows they liked to watch on TV, if they had eaten many times only the two of us in that dining table or if they had spent many nights feeling the night air in their faces and just looking at the ocean.

 The same ocean that now seemed a bit gray and that, strangely, was slowly pulling back. The few birds that remained it the bitch went away and there was only the house to face the destiny that had been set for the world. That house had known love, hope and laughter but also sadness and anger. It had been a house were some humans had decided to live and enjoy their time together but they had been made to leave and cut short what was going to be a long stay. They probably planned a proper life there.

 The ocean was coming back, tall and monstrous. The house, and many other houses inland and far from there, where going to disappear. And with them the memories of thousands, maybe millions of people which only dream was to have a place to go back to when things got unbearable, where they could be with the people they loved and just enjoy the simplicity of human life. But that was no more. That time in that place, came to an end in a moment.

The swamp

   It wouldn’t have been possible to do it in any other way. Theo’s arm had to be cut off and his brother Gary was the one that had to do it, as he was the only one medically capable to do such a thing. Of course, Gary was could not bring himself up to do it. His hands were shaking too much, he cried and sobbed and he just couldn’t do anything in his state. Instead, it was Jennifer that did what had to be done. She had no training and no real talent for such a thing but she did have the balls to do what no one else could do as she had been through too much and she had passed all tests possible.

 She refused to be a nurse to Theo and forced Amanda, who was Theo’s ex-wife after all, to do that job. Amanda was appalled that she had to be there to see that and to hear the person she had loved so much scream in agony and cry like he had never seen him cry before. He got close to him after Jennifer had put on the first bandage and cleaned the wound and put on bandages that were covered in the tree sap that they had found earlier. It was likely that the plants around them had some medicinal value and Theo should be the first one to take advantage of such valuable goods.

 That night, they decided to protect their little camp all at the same time. They couldn’t ask just one of them to make a watch because they knew that Theo’s screams had lured many dangerous creatures nearby. It would have been a better idea just to leave that place altogether but decided to give the poor man a night to rest before starting to move again. Besides they had no stretcher to carry him, so it was better if he rested and walked by himself the next day.

 However, he was still too weak to walk. He had vomited at least twice during the night and the tree sap had apparently not helped at all. Amanda decided to change the bandages, clean the wound, put on some new fabric over it and move along. She carried Theo with the help of Gary as Jennifer stood in front of the group with the rifle. She was very good with weapons and very skilled in hand-to-hand combat. They had seen her kill two men with her own hands, so they knew they had nothing to worry.

 Advancing through the thick jungle was difficult, as they had to move from lower to higher and the to lower ground again quite often. It was obvious that Theo was slowing them down too much. Jennifer looked at him with contempt every time she could and Amanda knew that she was right to feel threatened by his presence. If a creature sprung out of the water and killed them, it would probably be his fault. Because he had decided to be the hero some days earlier. Because he had decided that he was better than any of the others that had been there before, with them.

 Amanda knew what kind of man Theo was.

 At the end of that day, they really hadn’t done too much. Jennifer went up a tree and, after coming back, she told them she had been unable to see any lights or fire nearby. So no one was there with them, or at least no one with the ability to make fire. They were lucky to have Gary, who was an avid smoker and always had a lighter on him. The lighter was half full but they only used it to lit up a small fire and night, with the help of some dry branches.

  Of course, it wasn’t Gary who started their small campfire. It was Jennifer who did that as she had decided it was not the very best idea to let a person as unbalanced as Gary handle anything that could harm any other human being. He had been fucked in the head, or so said Jennifer every time she found Gary speaking alone and doing these annoying screeches. Amanda knew he had been hit in the head, at last that was what one of the guys that was with him and Theo told them. Besides, he had seen them all been eaten by one of the creatures of the swamp, so you couldn’t really blame him.

 The sounds all around them announced the presence of several life forms near them. It was imperative to keep the fire alive, as it was the only thing keeping all the creatures away. Again, the two women had no sleep at all and Gary didn’t close his eyes either, as he was incapable of since he had since his brother go through so much. Theo, on the other hand, had now come back from the dead and asked for water. He still had to be helped when walking but only by one person so maybe they would be advancing faster.

 As Amanda distributed a piece of power bar for each person, Jennifer ate her piece fast enough and went up a tree again. From there, she could see the eternal tapestry of the jungle: trees and trees and trees, forming a vast green carpet that covered a very good part of the entire planet. The other part was covered in water and there she knew colonists had at least one base, one place from which they could help them if they made it to the edge of the jungle, to the mangrove covered beach.

 But as she watched the trees and thought of her survival, she saw something interesting. It was kind of a glimmer, kind of sparkle somewhere to the south. She knew they had to keep walking east if they wanted to find the ocean but whatever was shining there, in the middle of all those trees, had to be something interesting. She thought about telling them and just splitting up but she realized they would never agree with her, they were too scared to even move and they knew that without her and Theo, Amanda and Gary could easily be labeled swamp food.

 When she came down, Jennifer redirected their stops towards the southeast, declaring she had seen smallest tress that way, so the path to the ocean could be easier through there. It was all a lie to cover her need to find out what was there with them, what did the swamp hide to them.

 Theo felt much better by the end of the following day and was very enthusiastic about coming out of the jungle pretty soon. Gary understood his attitude and he started to be less of a nuisance at night, even if he still refused to sleep, even a few minutes.

 Finally, one day they encountered what Jennifer had been wanting to find: it was a huge wall that penetrated into the water below them and rose several meters up. It curved and even if they were that close she knew it had to be some kind of dome. All of them touched the glass and it felt strange, not quite solid and its temperature seem to rise.

 Amanda was the first to scream. The wall augmented its temperature very fast when someone touched it. So when the woman left her hand there, she was severely burned. Theo helped her by pouring water on her hand and telling her she should scrub it all off before pustules started to emerge. The former lovers went down the vines and reached the water. It was very dangerous but they had to do it to clean the wound properly. Amanda was brave and did not scream at all.

 But that did not stop a gigantic monster to appear and try to eat her or, at least, her hand. It had lots of legs and eyes. Theo helped her going up the vines, as Jennifer prompted them to go faster and to follow them. They ran, as the creature broke several branches and slammed against the glass of the dome, which seemed not to raise its temperature when the creature touched it.

 Theo and Amanda reached their companions and stopped to take a breath but that had been a mistake. The creature managed to get close to them and expelled a disgusting tongue out of its orange mouth. The tongue trapped Gary and the others held his hands in order to fight the monster, Jennifer shooting to push it away. But the swamp won the round. Theo slipped and fell and Amanda wasn’t strong enough. Gary was pulled into the creature’s mouth and down into the water. Jennifer shot twice more but then she stopped.

 Theo pushed her and asked why she hadn’t fired faster and more times to which she answer they couldn’t waste bullets. Theo was on the verge of hitting her but then a loud sound interrupted them and their thoughts. The sound came from the dome. Suddenly, a part of the wall disappeared and they were allowed inside.

 They all walked in unsure of what that would mean for their lives. Bu they couldn’t stay in one place for too long. The swamp was a nightmare and that dome was the only thing reminiscing humanity that could be found around them.

 Maybe the dome was a trap and maybe they should have escaped faster. But, who knows, they may have survived to tell the most amazing story yet.

He was just here

   Raymond felt he sand between his toes and just kept on walking, not even realizing he was walking towards the ocean. To him, it didn’t matter anymore. His life was stuck on a loop and he had lived what he needed to live. He felt there was nothing more he could do or that he could get out of life on Earth. He had decided to think things by taking a walk and, unknowingly, his subconscious had already decided that it was time to end it all. The water reached his pants fast, and then his underwear. Then his belt, his shirt and finally his glasses. The current and the sheer strength of the ocean did the rest, taking his body from that cold, windy beach to the bottom of the ocean, from where no one would be able to take it for some time.

 He wasn’t someone people would miss and, although the ocean released the body, the police didn’t identify him for several months, as no one would ask for him. When they finally did identify the body as Raymond Bloom, it happened just because of a casual matter and not because someone was looking for him. The truth was he had no wife, no children, no parents and no friends. According to the information an officer was able to gather, he had lived alone for at least twenty years in a small attic on a very old building. The place smelled awful, as no one even knew the owner was dead. The officer found there some leads on who the man was and, maybe, on why he had done what he had done.

 Officer Jenny Marshall was one of those people who believe the best of every single person. It was strange for a cop to have such an attitude towards life but there she was, trying to cheer people up and making the best of her day every single day. She had been transferred recently and it was only the second post she had held ever so she wasn’t really assigned to the streets or to some interesting investigations. Jenny normally did the paperwork for every case and was in charge of keeping the archives in order, something she took very seriously. Deep down, she knew that her male counterparts loved to see her tie down to a job that didn’t lead anywhere but she ignored that fact and just did her work.

 Investigating the death of Raymond was assigned to her because she requested it. She told her boss she wanted to change her work a little and such a case would be perfect for her. After all, it seemed pretty straightforward and she could even do all the paperwork herself. So she convinced her boss and there she was on Raymond’s apartment, pinching her nose to avoid the foul smell of rotten food and trying to uncover the reason why he had committed suicide. To Penny, personally, it was not clear how a person could do such a thing. For her, life was sacred and no one had the right to take their own, even if they felt helpless and desperate. She knew there were always better options.

 She went through Raymond’s things and discovered that he had been published. The books did not look very nice on the outside but then she decided to sit down on the bed and just read one of the many stories the man had written in them. One was particularly moving; dealing with a ghost that saw how his childhood home was tore down to build an apartment building. She found very interesting but very sad too. She kept on looking for clues on Raymond’s house but she realize the only thing worth looking in there was his books so she put them all in boxes and took them to the station. She would try to find something in them and get to the bottom of the case, that way making everyone realize she could be a great agent and even a decent detective.

 Jenny started ready every single one of Raymond’s stories at work. No one really said anything to her because she wasn’t annoying anyone and she was doing her main job, which was taking care of the all the data. As she did that and on her free time, she would only read and read everything. Months passed until she had read every single piece of writing in Raymond’s apartment.  It was winter now and the last words she read from him where strangely appropriate for the climate: “I feel the cool breeze coming and telling me it’s time to go”. That was a short story about a man radically different from Raymond, with family and love all around him.

 The officer decided to let the case go for a while, so she went home and spent the holidays with her parents and her boyfriend and every other family member that had decided to come to the city for Christmas. She had a wonderful time eating and talking and dancing. She laughed a lot and wished for life only to be like that, full of joy and people whom you loved and who loved you. She realized Raymond’s writing had begun to depress her a bit but her family and all the love and special mood of the season brought back to her the best feelings and that nice warmth that only love can take to someone’s heart. And then, right in the Christmas dinner, she understood what had happened to Raymond.

 He had killed himself, not because he was weak or suffering in a too awful way. He died because he was alone; he had no one to take care of him or to even listen to what he had to say. And that was obvious just by reading what he wrote, as he said everything about anything he had ever thought about in life. It was amazing to read about so many things, but funny and serious, happy and sad, short and extremely long. His writing had been the way for him to externalize every single thing he had bottled up inside, as he ad never had anyone to properly talk and share his thoughts with. He had been trapped by his own life or, at least that’s what Jenny thought. Even if he was to blame, he had no choice.

 When the holidays ended, she wrote her report on the death of Raymond Bloom and decided to properly request her transference to the detective’s unit. She knew she could do more there and when her demand wasn’t accepted, she resigned the police. Jenny had learned from investigating Raymond that she needed to do with her life as she wanted, she couldn’t afford not living and not doing what her heart demanded of her. She didn’t want to end up like Raymond, all alone and talking to the books because there’s no one there. Unappreciated by the world and ignored to the point when, at her death, no one would ever think of grieving her. She wanted more from life and, eventually, she got it.

 Raymond’s books were donated to a public library and it was almost two years later when Jenny saw Ray’s name on the news. She was working with the FBI and now had a partner and was properly working the field. But during the investigation of a case, she saw the headline and bought the newspaper to find out what it was all about. Apparently, a book expert had been investigating the libraries of the cities looking for antiquities and particular books and so on. He had discovered Raymond, who had been an unknown author all his life, and declared he was one of the best storywriter he had ever found. He didn’t know that Ray was dead but he did know something else that Jenny didn’t: Ray hadn’t been as alone as she had thought.

 According to the article, the man had found several letters in the apartment Raymond had lived in, now turned into a posh flat. During the reforms on the place, they had found several letters and the expert had read them, discovering he had owned a dog for a long time and that he had died just about the time the author had stopped writing. Besides the dog, he had been in love with someone he described thoroughly in his letters, every physical aspect and some traits of characters. The letters, with such richness and passion, ended up being edited into a book that sold millions of copies, making the expert a rich man.

 Jenny was sad that Raymond had not been there to enjoy his fame and fortune. They eventually discovered he had committed suicide and that made his letters and all his books even more popular. Eventually, there was no one that didn’t know the name of the author and his tragic story. Jenny had thought, for a moment, that she had known the author but she realized she never did. She realized that no one had ever known him properly. He had been in love, that man who felt so alone and so sad. He had experienced life and life had not experienced him and Jenny felt that he finally understood why he had done what he had done. It was clear as water and she wouldn’t argue with it.

 Raymond became famous, as well as his views on life and his pain, which was painted all over his letters. But no one would ever know him as he was already gone and everyone had lost the chance to tell him “I’m here”.