Bermuda Island

1. The Realisation

Oscar Bailey woke up gasping. His eyes adjusted to the dimness of his surroundings, and he shook his head to rid it of the loud ringing. The back of his neck ached, and blood trickled from his nostril. The boy, still dazed and confused, wiped his mouth with a muddy hand, smudging dirt across his face. The boy wasn't too young, about 14, and with the awkwardness of an adolescent. He shakily attempted to stand up on his long legs, until he lost his footing and fell again. For the first time, he took in the environment around him. He had no idea where he was, and this made the boy feel vulnerable. He appeared to be in some kind of clearing, surrounded by thick trees and vines. Moss and leaves covered everything, and the air was damp and humid. When his ears stopped ringing, they were instantly filled again with the chattering and humming of thousands of concealed birds and insects. Oscar(he preferred 'Oz') suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of fear. He remembered a few things from before he woke up; screaming and loud screeching noises; his mother's terrified face as she clutched him; something hard hitting him in the face. The last memory he had, was waiting in line at the airport. He remembered nothing after that.

He wanted his mother. He would never have dared admit this to anyone back home, but the instinct was overpowering. He felt vulnerable and alone, and he so desperately sought the warmth and feeling of protection and love and security from his parent. He began to feel the moistness in his eyelids, and the ball of emotion in his throat. His eyebrow stung when he wiped his eyes. When viewing his hand, he saw a crimson smear along his index finger, he immediately clamped his hand above his eye, suddenly beginning to feel the stinging pain of an open wound. Oz began to notice other things around him. A torn beige cap, a Hawaiian shirt caught on the vine tendrils that dangled from the giant trees, A dented suitcase in the mud, and even a broken seatbelt. The boy began to inspect these things curiously, or perhaps just to give him something to do,  and discovered interesting objects. First thing of course, was the suitcase. The blow it had taken to it's side, had caused the top to crack open, and Oz poked his fingers inside, prying it open. There wasn't anything particularly fascinating about it's contents; folded shirts, underwear, socks, two 'political' books, and a laptop charging cable. The boy was rather intelligent, and prided himself on being able to take off his 'social mask' and find other uses for an object that might not be it's primary function. With the shirts, he saw bandages, and possibly nets; with the socks, he saw a sling, and with the laptop cable, he saw rope. He acted on this quite soon, and grabbed one of the shirts, wrapping it tightly around his forehead, and tying it with a double knot at the back. As he fuddled around the back of his head, he realised there was a zipped pocket on the inside of the suitcase. He opened it frantically, his hopes raising. He found some old sunglasses, a cheap pocket flashlight, an opened box of plasters, and some spray-on sun cream. So far, these were his favourite findings.

Oz had put two large square plasters over his head wound, underneath his shirt bandage, and wore the tattered cap on his dirty mop of brown hair. He attached the flashlight to a belt strap on his shorts, using the clip on the end, and stuffed the socks in his pockets. The boy had started bringing an idea he had to life. He found the largest shirt in the suitcase, luckily the clothes must have belonged to a rather large person, and began to fasten a sort of bag out of it. He put the sunglasses, the sun cream, the other shirts, and even tore out some of the book pages and shoved them inside the folded shirts. He found the broken seatbelt, and fastened it tightly around his waist, not caring about the great smears of dirt along his top. He grabbed a pointed rock from the dirt, and began tearing rough and small holes in his bag, He put the laptop cable through two holes that were in line with each other, and then fastened them on the opposite hip to his shoulder, tying the charger around his seatbelt. He ripped out some vines from the tree where the Hawaiian shirt had been caught, and entwined them, mirroring the laptop cable on his other shoulder. He also used more vines to create a sort of shoelace-drawstring on his pack, so that things didn't fall out of the bottom or the collar. A thought came to the boy, as he entwined vines and sticks. Was he all alone? He saw no reason as to why he should be, but there were no other signs that anyone else was anywhere near him. He then made it a goal to find life in this forest. Maybe this was an intelligent idea. Or maybe it was the mental workings of a lost boy, who was trying to distract himself from the situation he was in.