Forced Freefall

Chapter 5

It's amazing how the mood of a room (or area, in this case) is affected by the mere thoughts of those in the area who are engaging in conversation. It was not until my own thoughts wandered that I realized this. And the more and more I remembered, the more likely this conclusion seemed. If it was indeed true, I was delighted. Because I didn't need to be taught how to figure things out. It was almost the oddity of the thought itself that made me all the more happy I had discovered this flaw in the initial concept of language and speaking.

    I had been having many more image attacks, especially in the night, but I did learn to control them. Now, they are nothing more than anticipated daydreams. I can still see what my eyes see, but can also imagine an image or event in my brain. It is common now to be completely out of it at night, but before I truly go to sleep, I allow myself to completely be taken by the mass rampage of images flooding into and out of my imagination. It is not necessarily the best feeling, but I do enjoy getting a step away from the onslaught of nightmares I experience every night. Ever since that dream where Cliff tried to kill me, I have been biting my nails in my sleep.

    Sadie says she is surprised I still have fingers. But we have made tremendous progress on our... Settlement? Would you call it?

    Regardless, we have made a little treehouse on the big tree in the middle of the clearing. The branches are just thick enough to hide us from the naked eye, and we have added some dark brown and green to the wooden sides, as well as plenty of dead branches. In two hours, we will go see what there is at the plane. If they haven't attacked us in three weeks, we're leaving. I don't find it likely. They are just waiting for us to get comfortable. That is when they'll kill us. So I am up for about thirty minutes as soon as the others take watch. Even then, I sleep with one eye open.

    "Sadie," we were walking in the woods hunting. "I need to know I can trust you before we go on. Once we investigate and leave, we will truly be allied. And I do not believe we have properly introduced ourselves."

    Cliff was still unaware of our little conversation, and so we had gotten accustomed to acting as though it hadn't happened.

    "Well, here goes." She snickered. "My name is Sadie Dexter. I have been scheming with pilot Cliff Oscar to take a huge blow at our government, and I happen to have been pretty famous. No one knows I am alive, or if I am dead. I myself have no idea whatsoever of any controversy or controversial events taking place off of this island. Neither am I able to contact anyone that could give me such information. But that is not the reason I want to get off of this island. I want to overthrow the idiotic ruler Scorch. And I will do anything to do so."

    "Pleased to meet you, Sadie," I put out my hand. "I am Isaac Jordan, I was homeless before being accused of being an accomplice in a bank robbery. However, I was brave enough to rebel after watching all passengers except the pilot and two soldiers get thrown out of a plane in a Forced Freefall. The pilot and I crashed the plane after landing on the island in a parachute. Since then, we have gotten accustomed to surviving. Not much else."

    I stopped in my tracks. In front of us was Hugh's body, or corpse I should say. He was nothing more than clothes on bones. The prisons these days let us where what we want, to make themselves look generous. So Hugh is wearing a leather jacket and odd checkerboard-and-stripe designed pants. Instead of just checkerboard, the checkerboard pattern was also striped. It was also random, and if you looked one way or direction it looked completely different. Despite his confusing wardrobe, though, I reminded myself we were very low on supplies at the moment. I checked his body, only to find that all he had was a dark, thin, sharp rod and a note. The rod was a pencil, no doubt. But he had to have written something. So, of course, I read the note. It's not like I'm nosy: the guy's dead. His handwriting was quite terrible; even a kindergarden teacher would consider it insulting. But to do all my necessary research, I had had to shuffle through the little scrambled notes on the back of a library book, the rare misprints that could really unveil a secret, so I had eyes that could identify twelve different alphabets, each in several styles. The note read: