Whisper Island

Rebecca ran fast, trying to get away from the smell; it was a rotten, infiltrating smell that would not go away. It wrapped the island in a film of putrid stench, locking onto the ground and air, the smell of something worse then death. The air was stale and pungent. Rebecca’s lips burned; her mouth was full of a bitter taste. She felt a pulsing pressure in her stomach-- as though she actually had food  to throw up.

Rebecca gasped for breath. She had to stop for a second because the air felt like hot iron in her throat and chest.  Her choked and muffled voice rang out across the beach. The stench! It bombarded her lungs, burning like acid on tender skin.
Once she had control of her lungs' rupturing protests Rebecca's feet began to fly beneath her again. Her long legs were swift and agile- she swayed with each jump to another rock. Her body was tense with muscles that were practiced and strong.
She dashed from rock to craggy rock, following the ocean that foamed and splashed at her feet, biting in its frigid coldness, playful in its derisive antics. To her right was a dense forest filled with impassable brambles. The leaves of the trees were painted a deep palpable green; the shades of the leaves those from a painters massive pallet. Under the unrelenting sun, the trees cast long shadows across the white sand.

Rebecca was on an island with an size unknown. She was being attacked by a smell that had no accurate name, description or origin.  She was half-starved and delusional. The worst part was that she had no idea where she was, or where she had been before... She had memories, but they felt foreign in her mind, as though they were some one else's.

When Rebecca had run until her legs felt like lead weights, she collapsed in a pile by the shore, letting her brown hair get soaked by seawater. Her breathing was shallow; she didn't want the awful air to touch her. She didn't want the smell in her nose. She felt violated. She was hopeless, confused and exhausted.  So she let sleep envelope her into its hungering embrace.

As the sun slipped below the horizon, Rebecca slept on the sand, the water lapping at her feet, her arms twitching with the nightmares that bit and tore.
She dreamed of fire and dancing embers.

***

Rebecca woke up with words dancing on the tip of her tongue. She sat up in the shallow pool she lay in, shivering. She muttered the words in a half-awake state: "Am I remembering memories that are not mine; or is this just a dream? Because now there is this place I remember-- a place built of black bricks, and charred by fire, famine, and death. There is this place I remember that is so vague I know I was never there. I have these vague memories; haunting ones. Am I all me or  am I only partially here? Who is it that these memories belong to? They are not mine. I have none of my own. I do not know who I am." The words poured out unheard, and then Rebecca forgot them. She did not remember saying them. They passed from her mind and her mouth as though they were not her own words.

The air was chilled, and Rebecca's upper lip trembled along with the rest of her body.  She tried to crawl away from the water, and her legs were shaky. She moved as though she was balanced on straws. Her head pounded. Her thoughts were not even coherent; just fragments of some picture that Rebecca grasped at but could not quite touch.

On wobbly legs, Rebecca moved away from the wavering shoreline and onto the dry sand, where she plopped down. Her stomach was tense and empty. Thinking was elusive. It slipped away. Her mind fought sleep. Her body fought exhaustion. Her eyes panned her surroundings in hopeless confusion. One question repeated itself with commendable consistency: where am I?

The question was empty; there was no answer to it.

***

Rebecca wandered the edge of the forest, balanced on the last of her strength. Here and there red berries grew off of tangled and wild brambles. They weren't much-- they were hardly the size marbles... But their taste was sweet, their liquid dripping on to Rebecca's parched tongue. In her stomach they settled like angles on a cloud. She gathered dozens of them in her dirt smeared jacket and sat back down in the sand. She ate them slowly; she was no idiot, and she knew that if she ate them too fast her stomach wouldn't be able to handle it.  She let the flavor last, as she watched the sun sink slowly behind the sea. Colors danced off the waters surface, reflecting heavenly pinks and purples.

When the last of the berries were churning in Rebecca's stomach, she gathered  her jacket and moved back by the forest. She rolled up under a rock overhang, placed her head on her jacket and dozed off.

The dream was like an invasion of her mind. It was so vivid and lucid that it felt realer then "real" life. But when Rebecca awoke she didn't remember the dream. It had faded away. There was only one trace of the dream left; an image in Rebecca's mind of a huge burned down building. The air around the building was clouded with smoke. A man stood by the corner of the brick building. He had a tall elegant body-frame, and dark black hair falling across a ghost white face. He wore all black clothes. Rebecca didn't know what to make of the image. She shook it out of her mind.

Considering where she was, she had different things to worry about then dreams.

***

Rebecca's third day on the island she found the wreckage. It was the remains of a boat; shattered wood, a torn sail, a broken mast. It was scattered along a rocky coast of the island, in a place Rebecca vaguely remembered being. She sat down and stared at the wreckage for the rest of the morning. She tried to remember if it was the boat she had come to the island on, but she couldn't.  She didn't remember who she was; all she knew was a name... Rebecca.  How she came here... she didn't know. Where she had been before the island... she didn't know.

When the tide began to come in and rise above the destroyed boat, Rebecca moved back to where she had found the berries.

Something began nagging at the back of her mind, a thought kept repeating: "I know who you are. Come to me, let me show you." The voice was a lucid whisper in the back of her mind. It had a soft and persuasive tone and rhythm. It was as soft as silk and beautiful. But for some unknown reason it filled Rebecca full of disgust and made her think of the stench she had smelled the first night.