A New Day

     "You've got to trust me, and I know this will... craz.. but I'm telling the tr...." The voice that filled my head was beautiful, aside form all the crackling static that interupted her like interference on a radio. Interference sure would be a strange thing to dream though. I didn't know how I could tell that it was a dream, I just knew it was. "List... you need to rememb.... It's real. Remember..." The voice faded out, and I couldn't help but wonder what she meant. Of course it wasn't real, whatever "it" was. We were in a dream after all. Nothing was real.

     The voice came back. "We need mo.... power... I hope you can hear me J..."  I don't know why, but I got the chills when I heard her say that. It felt like a real person talking to me, not some dream person. I looked around, noticing my surroundings for the first time. I seemed to be on a narrow beach, forest behind and gentle waters ahead.  Well this was a nice place. I couldn't help but think to myself that I hoped this was the "it" the voice was talking about. I sat down, because that seemed the thing to do, and the voice came back again. "... Please don't die...." the voice left again, and it didn't come back this time. That was one odd way to finish a conversation, especially considering how little danger I was in.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

     The sun was bright  in my eyes. That wasn't too abnormal, the window in the bedroom of my appartment seemed to face the sunrise every day of the year. What was abnormal though was the feeling of sand under me, the smell of salt in the air, and the noise of the ocean close by.

     I thought for a moment that I was in the same dream as before, but when I sat up and looked around, everything was different. There was no forrest behind me, only the barest hinting of brush. The sand was different too, finer and darker. The oddest part of all though, was that the dream had lost the feeling of being a dream.

     "...it's real. Remember..." The words from the previous dream came to me, but I didn't think much of it. They came from a dream after all.

     I stood up and started walking down the beach. I still didn't believe it was real, but looking for someone else couldn't hurt. So I walked.

     And walked.

     After what must have been an hour of walking, I came across footprints in the sand. I about jumped for joy until i noticed that they were in fact mine. Well damn.

     I sat down in the same spot that I woke up at and thought. I was starting to get hungry, which was possible for a dream, but I hadn't once felt like I was in a dream since waking up.  The line from that last dream came to the front of my mind, as it had many times over the past hour, and I shuddered. Maybe this was real. But how'd I get stranded here? I had noticed a while ago that I was wearing the jeans I fell asleep in the night before, so it probably happened fast. More importantly than how I got here though, how was I going to get off the island?

     I stood again, realising that there was no time to be relaxing and contemplating these things. First things first, I needed to look over the island. I took me an hour to walk around the island at no particularly fast pace, so it couldn't be but  a mile across at most.

     I walked up through the brush toward the rocky section I had been avoiding until now. It looked wholely unpleasant, but it was one of the few places I hadn't been, and the only place that had high ground on the island. I'd be able to do some decent spotting from there at least. as the ground got more solid, I wished whoever had sent me here had remembered my shoes. The bottoms of my feet were going to be destroyed after today, and I shuddered to think about my condition in a week.

     Soon the rocks came up to my waist, then they stopped being individual bolders and just melded into a solid rock hill. I continued climbing, sweat now becomeing a problem of dehydration proportions. This was definitly what I would call a desert island.

     I nearly stepped straight over a ledge, and with a miniature heart attack, I fell backwards. fortunately it wasn't that far of a fall, probably just bruised myself up some. I scolded myself though. I needed to be more careful. That could have been my death.

     Carefully, I walked over to the ledge again and looked down.

     Sprawled out before me was an oasis, full of trees and, more importantly, water. I looked down on the oasis, which basically sat at the bottom of a deep hole set into the rocks. the far side of the hole had rocks overhanging it, and the forest on that side was much thinner due to the lack of light it got. Did I mention there was a waterfall? There was a waterfall. It came pouring out one of the cliffs to my left, ending in a large pond.

     If there was anywhere on this island I could live, it was here.

lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

     "Investigators still continue to search for John Carter, a young man who's dissapearance no one can quite comprehend. We have with us a few of the people who lived near John in his appartment. This is Anne, his neighbor. Anne, did John seem strange at all before he dissapeared?"

     Anne, a small woman in her thirties shook her head. "No, I don't think. I only saw him get out of his car when he got here. He seemed a little tired, but not much different."

     "And Anne..."

     The TV turned off with a small click, the screen going black. Sarah Carter looked over to her father with a questioning face.

     "I'm tired of hearing about it, ok?"

     "But dad, don't you want to know if they find him?"

     Sarah's dad brought one of his hands up to his face to rub at his eyes, something he did when he was frustrated or tired. He'd been doing it a lot recently. "Yeah, I do, but the police will contact us with new information before we'll hear about it on the news."

     Sarah turned back to the TV that was still off, not really looking at it, but not knowing where else to look for the moment. She knew that was only part of the reason. Dad didn't like hearing all the crazy theories about what happened to John, and he didn't like being reminded that he was probably dead. That was something the news seemed to bring up every time they talked about him.

     Not for the first time, Sarah found herself in disbelief at the situation. Not only was her brother missing, but it turned out he was secretly the ceo of two seperate companies, both of which were no small buisnesses either, for having started up within the past 2 years. Not only that, but one of the companies specialized in military research and development projects. 

     Once the media found out that he was actually someone noteworthy, they all started featuring the search for him. It had calmed down a little now that a few days of nothing happening passed, but he was still a subject of interest every 20 minutes or so. If john were here, Sarah thought, he'd have laughed and said something about it being a slow week in news.

     Reporters being who they were came by the dozens to question us about every little thing we knew about John and his career and his possible enemies and anything else relevant to him being missing. We didn't know much, but that didn't even seem to slow the questions down.

     "Sarah, don't you have a test to study for?"

     How? How can he remember this stuff with everything that's going on? "Ummm.... Maybe..." I got a pointed stare from him. "But I already studied for it dad! I'll do fine, can I just watch the news for a little more?"

     With a sigh, he tossed the remote to the seat on the couch beside her. "Don't stay up late."

     "Dad?" He paused in the doorway, about to leave for bed. "Do you think he's ok?"

     He was silent for a moment, just looking Sarah in the eyes. "Yeah, he'll be fine."

     He turned and left the room. Sarah flipped the TV back on.

     "...No one know's where he's gone, or how he went."