A gull's wings whistle past your stern and you awaken to the bobbing of your hull over gentle swells. Turquoise waters stretch to infinity in every direction save for the faint tarnish on the western horizon. The air feels heavy from the cool salt-laden sea and hours evaporate into the haze.
Two days and nights you float here. The sunrise flickers like a match-head, setting the ceiling of your new prison ablaze as the dawn erupts into an inferno. Come midday, the sun wears away your spirit until you can barely sit upright; the cloudless azure skies blend with the ocean such that you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. And at night the moonless darkness is endless until twinkling bioluminescence blooms from the depths to match the stars. Thus completes the constant mirage of a world where no horizon exists, and up and down are merely a matter of perspective. Yes, for two days and nights you float here.
Your head throbs; your throat burns. A voice speaks to you, and on occasion, you realize the voice is your own. It tells you of your mistakes, commands you to return. 'There is a floating shipyard, you have seen such', it says. Yet the shimmering heat waves remind you of that abomination, and at nightfall, that lightless void is everywhere at once.
On the dawn of the third day, you slip from consciousness; it is the storm that saves you from dehydration.
You awaken low in the water, the rainfall having sunken the edges of your dinghy to just above the ocean's feathered surface. Whatever a breeze occurred, it had neither the strength to wake you nor the persistence to tip your craft. But wind must have passed, for that faint black tarnish on the horizon now rises dark and expectant before you. Its obsidian gravel beaches beckon you; its lush forests promise relief for your sun-scorched body; its mists have disappeared, for a predator need not shroud itself from prey it has already caught.
You steer the boat to sea again, your arms aching from a moments effort. Birds call to you from the shores. Still, you pull your oars. You remember the food, the shelter there. Modest, yes, but comforts in every sense. Still, you pull your oars. Shoulder blades groan and your stomach grumbles. Still, you pull your oars. Saliva tastes of chalk and the island invites you again; no need for persistence, it maintains the same calm tone in its offerings. Still, for whatever reason, you think you have a chance: a chance against the island's advances—as tempting as they are.
Something pings against the hull. You look down in horror.
Two hands, red as rubies, burst forth and clutch the oars against their locks. The shafts splinter as the shifting weight tips the boat to the shimmering waters.
Back in you tumble.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
TerrorA world unseen dies over and over. It shrieks at a pitch that you cannot hear. It rots with a stench that you will never quite know. It isn't a place meant for you and I, it is merely a bank for the dead and dying; a vault of visceral agony. I...
