A New Life in Lawrenceville

Chapter 29

We spent the night sleeping in our respective caves. The shirt pillows were reasonably comfortable for our heads, though the solid ground remained uncomfortable for our backs. When I awoke the next morning, I saw Misty meditating at the mouth of the cave. I got up slowly and walked over to her. I leaned in and kissed her cheek. "Good morning," I said.

She smiled, though her eyes remained closed. "Good morning," she replied, "That is an interesting phrase."

"What is?" I asked.

"The phrase 'good morning'," she explained, "The phrase suggests the morning has a quality of goodness. However, it could also be that goodness has the quality of morning. Maybe goodness is the substance of existence and morning is the form it has taken."

I chuckled, "Perhaps." It was nice to hear her talking more like her old self. We had both been so stressed by all the events that have been going on, we hadn't really been able to just relax and be ourselves.

"So shall we go looking for food?" Misty asked as she stood up.

"I think we should," I said, "We need to find an alternative food source to those trippy apples. We also need to find a water source."

We walked down the side of the rock formation and made our way back into the thick forest. As I walked along in a new direction, I stepped over the gargantuan roots of the trees. I couldn't help but look and be amazed at their size. They seemed to be like towers reaching up into the sky, and their branches were so thick with leaves that the sky itself seemed to be green instead of blue.

"There is something very unnatural about this nature," Misty said looking around with me.

"In what way?" I asked.

"There seems to be no animal life on this island besides us," Misty explained, "Not even bugs or lizards."

I thought about what she said and realized that she was right. We haven't encountered a single living thing besides plants. There was also the apple tree that seemed to be growing out of the solid stone floor of a cave. These trees also seemed to be exceptionally tall. The whole island seemed to be just slightly off in some way or another.

I gazed ahead and saw our first lucky break. A stream was rushing along about twenty feet ahead of us. I ran up to it and knelt beside it. Misty ran up right behind me.

"I think we should set up a fire pit here," I said, "That way we can boil the water and use it for drinking."

"Right!" Misty exclaimed. She ran back in the forest and started gathering twigs.

I ran past her and yelled, "I'll get some stones from the rock formation."

I made it back to our cave and started gathering up as many rocks as I could in my pockets. I grabbed my shirt pillow and emptied the leaves to load it with rock as well. I started to walk when I felt my stomach rumble. I turned and looked back at the mouth of Misty's cave.

Those apples didn't seem like a good food source, but it was the only source we had. I decided to grab one apple for each of us just in case. I walked into the cave slowly, eventually reaching the apple tree under that same stream of light from the ceiling of the cave.

My mouth started to salivate, and the taste of the apple was still strong in my mouth from the night before. The taste seemed to get stronger the closer I got to the tree. I reached up and plucked two apples down from the tree and put them in my shirt pillow with the rocks. I felt an immense desire to throw the sack down and start ripping the apples from the trees. I imagined myself eating them one by one as days went by, never even stepping out from under the shade of that apple tree. I shook my head and continued to walk away.

For some reason, I couldn't stop imagining the taste of the apple from last night still being in my mouth. It was driving me crazy. It was making it hard for me to find the motivation to step out of the cave and go to Misty. I grabbed one of the rocks and started licking it. Strange as it might sound, I thought if I could get the taste of the apple out of my mouth, I wouldn't crave another one as much.

Oddly enough, I couldn't taste the rock. All my tongue could sense was the taste of the apple. Curious, I reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt. I sprinkled some on my tongue. Again, I could not taste the dirt. Everything tasted like that apple I had last night.

My heart was racing. My fear of those apples and what they are capable of began to increase. I knew Misty would probably start wondering where I am, so I started to walk back to where she was. When I found her, she had gathered enough sticks to make a fire. She also made a small wooden bucket out of the tips of one of the roots.

"I figured we would need something to hold the water in," she explained.

"That must have been hard to make," I stated.

"Not really," she said, "There was a fallen tree not far from here. The end of the root broke right off. Just needed to hollow it out, which I did by grinding a rock in the center of it."

We filled the root bucket and took turns holding it over the fire until the water boiled. We then let it sit until the water cooled and took turns drinking it.

I revealed the two apples to Misty and her eyes went wide. "I grabbed these just incase we got hungry," I said.

Misty said, "This will sound weird, but I can't stop tasting those apples in my mouth. Even when I was drinking the water, all I could taste was them."

I told her the same thing was happening to me. We stared at the apples for what felt like an eternity.

"We should probably search a bit longer for food before we give in and eat these," I said.

Misty nodded. We split up and looked around for other possible food sources.

I found nothing. It was almost dark again.

I walked back to our spot by the river. Misty came moments later and shook her head, indicating she found nothing.

I handed her an apple and took a bite out of mine.

My legs gave out and I fell to the ground. All at once, that same tingling sensation surged through my mouth and down my spine. Even the hair on my head seemed to feel the sensation. I lifted my hands up to look at them. They did not seem any different, and yet they felt as if they were not my own hands. I opened and closed my fists, but I couldn't feel them opening and shutting. It is as though I were operating some machine instead of moving my own body. I lifted my head up and stared at my feet. I bent my toes back and forth. I felt nothing. I lifted my leg and hit my heel against the ground a few times. I still felt nothing. Only that radiating tingling sensation that seemed to be traveling through the bones in my arms, and the ribs surrounding my lungs and heart. In my mind I thought I should be horrified at such an extreme reaction. Yet, I didn't feel scared at all. I felt like there was no such thing as pain anymore. I could die in this moment and be completely okay with it. I could live another hundred years and be okay with that too.

I looked over at Misty, who was lying on the ground. I assumed she was experiencing what I was. She turned over and started to crawl towards me. My hands moved towards her as she got close and pulled her to me. All at once we started kissing and removing our clothing. I remember nothing else from that night.