A Hopeless Journal for A Helpless Man

Chapter 3: Stars and Stripes

I stared at the moonlit jungle for a while in an attempt to try and calm my nerves, but my sheer panic was all too guaranteed. I had never tried to accommodate myself before, have I? To try to find peace through struggles. It was never found either way. The night in the jungle was the most silent thing I had ever experienced, yet I still felt anxious and desperate, my senses sharp as ever.

How could I find tranquility if moments of panic arose at every attempt to calm my mind?

That was when I saw it. A strange figure, hazy and ambiguous in the distance. Shunning itself from my vision. It was unclear, but enough to ignite a single spark of hope. I got up quickly and started to run, yelling.

"HELP!"- My voice was louder than I had expected. "please, I've been stranded!"

I kept running until I could clearly see it. I stumbled on some uneven ground covered by water and my sight on the figure was no more. I locked my eyes upon the spot where the mysterious figure had been and it wasn't there. It wasn't there at all. It wasn't FUCKING there! I fell to the floor crying then took a rock and had a brief suicidal thought.

I just wanted to end this, now and forever. I was forlorn. It was horrible enough with my constant thoughts, body and mind being ill, now there's hallucinations. This was evolving from a preparatory trifecta to an overwhelming and consuming nightmare. My mind grew as independent as my body. Soon I would be left as an unconscious being with no control over myself whatsoever. My stream of consciousness started to approach its delta, where it began diluting itself. It started to toy with me, as if it wanted me to be it's prisoner. Forever trapped watching life through another person's eyes. Even though I would have probably experienced everything exactly the same. The agonizing gripe and distress. The unpreventable eradication of mind and soul alike. Humans were made selfish and destructive by nature and their first target was always themself. He who has not felt pain cannot deal pain, for he will not know what to deal. Well, now I've felt everything, scrutinizing agony, worse than any other. Complete mind loss. Everything fails faster from the inside. Create chaos from the inside and he'll have to live and breathe with it. It will be within his skin, unable to exit.

The level of distress I was in exceeded my will to overcome it. It evolved with the situation. I'm starting to grow incoherent. Even I can't fully comprehend what I think of. I'm beginning to think it's better that way. I have never felt this type of abandonment. Leaving my thoughts because I can't understand them and because they're doing me harm. I feel I'm leaving myself at this point, detaching from my consciousness. Tragedy has found it's way onto me too easily and unrestrained. The sad truth was that my thoughts couldn't be abandoned for long. They would eventually pull me back whenever they felt the need to be expressed. Their want is excessive, increasingly excessive.

My mind, however, was also acute and attentive, for it enveloped itself on current, risk-filled situations. A tiger had just growled not too far away from me or near me. I couldn't make out it's location. His sounds came from everywhere and everywhere it echoed. Any and every direction was the wrong direction. I turned every which way until I could feel a figure translating from cover to cover, almost stalking me. I caught a glimpse of its glimpse on me. Then, knowing this, I began to run. I kept running and running and running. I was making my way through this vine, root, tree, trunk, log, branch, dirt, mud, and sand infested jungle hastily and desperately, for everytime I thought of the tiger I would feel him closer.

I panicked and ran on feel alone. It's safe to say the tiger never existed. My subconscious began to help me in an unhealthy way. Any help was taken at this point.

My running came to a halt. I heard the tiger no more, yet my fear was still predominant. I look down and realized that I was shaking. I had not yet recovered from the run. I kept looking down and then noticed something that caught my eye. I saw a footstep imprinted on the mud below me. Following the footstep there was crushed grass. Someone has been walking here and it wasn't me. Next to the crushed grass I saw some more grass. This one though, was peculiarly ripped along with the dirt that sustained it, showing signs of dragging. My mind grew silent for now, causing me to think better, less clouded. I started walking over to these oddities, and that was when I came across a tree trunk with a hand marked in red. As if someone had resisted and, by the looks if it, not for long.

This startled me. The thought that I wasn't alone. That my presumptions of this island being deserted were wrong. For all that I know I'm being watched, controlled, puppeteered. I'm terrified. There's someone else with me on this island. I bet Emmett thought the same.