Waterlogged, you awaken amongst brittle driftwood. Pain throbs outward from a swollen wound in your hand. An injury? A bite?
Before an answer comes, your focus floats as the sun dips under the horizon, sending a storm of color upward. Soon enough, the night will come.
"Shelter," you whisper to yourself, "find shelter." But the beach is unrecognizable. Rather than black gravel, a swirling palette of coral pink and orange sand stretches for miles. Logs and branches jut out from the sifting depths, motionless in their futile struggle against wind and waves. There are no bearings. So instead, you orient yourself away from the exposed sandy flats to paths leading inland—you follow the island's arteries to its heart. And eventually, they all lead to the abandoned boatyard.
You expect it to be strewn in ruin. Yet, it awaits you as if nothing occurred. Every building stands intact, even those you saw demolished.
You creep to the docks, pausing at rustling paper, jumping at squeaks or bumps in the encroaching nightfall. Your progress remains peaceful until you reach the open expanse and find that the ship masts are reassembled, reattached. But you do not inspect them, for another oddity clutches your gaze and forces you to follow its path. On the ground, leading up to the dock is a trail of black footsteps charred into the dirt, the concrete, even the asphalt. Your eyes trace them as they turn away from the slip and lead back to the lush inland.
As all traces of the sun disappear, you lose sight of anything further than arm's length. The darkness is tangible as if you can touch it, smell it, taste it. You settle into a slanted metal hut and nearly allow the wind rattled shack to carry you to dreams. However, just before your eyelids grow too heavy to lift, you startle yourself awake; for you realize the cross-shaped masts to the ships were indeed reattached—upside down.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
HorrorA 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...
