The Island

14. Hunting

Jordyn

The nightmares come hard and fast. I only know I'm dreaming because I'm bathed in a gentle type of warmth that can't be real in this frozen wasteland of night.

At first, I'm sitting on the edge of a pool of water. The entire scene fills me with a sense of deja-vu, as if this is half memory and half dream. I've been here before. The drooping trees around me reach towards the ground with arms covered in moonlit, white blossoms. Their petals cover the ground like snow. I hear the light twinkle of the windchimes from my memories, so the house must be nearby.

Suddenly, there are hands on my back. I feel the cool touch of skin through my thin outfit. I look over my shoulder as I fall forward towards the water, only to catch sight of Sam standing where I once was. He wears a uniform like mine, but that wicked smile of his complements the angelic clothes.

I hit the brick wall with earsplitting force, sending the water rushing around me to envelop my body. Serenity gives way to panic, and I flail my arms in an attempt to propel myself upward out of the darkness. The image of Sam dances above me, wavering as the water shakes.

No matter how hard I pump my arms, my body doesn't rise. My legs turn to cement beneath me, until I realize that something other than gravity is pulling me down. I tear my eyes away from Sam and look down. The outline of another person comes into view, and I search the shadows for a face. Black hair lines the even darker skin around the face, and as we pass through a beam of light, the dark eyes catch the moon and reflect it back to me like a cat's.

Kaia.

I'm helpless as I continue my downward descent. My lungs burn and ache, but I clamp my mouth shut, intent on not inhaling the murky water. Yet, panic fills my chest with shackles of iron, and I feel my lungs collapsing. Every inch we move downward is another nail driven into my coffin, and eventually, I close my eyes.

I remind myself over and over again that it's just a dream, just a part of my imagination. This entire scene has been designed, like the rest of The Island, to drive me to the brink of insanity. And it's working.

This is Sam's fault. He pushed you in. Sam did this.

Maybe so, but this is dream Sam. It isn't real.

It's real enough. He turned on you once. He'll do it again.

No, I tell myself, over and over again until the words bleed out into the water and I feel them vibrating under my skin.

The pressure around me changes, and suddenly, I'm free falling.

The hands on my ankles are gone; the water disappears. Instead, wind snakes itself around my body. I look down to see the ground quickly approaching.

Suddenly, the world around me changes. Instead of being surrounded by water, I'm engulfed in flame. It surrounds me, leading me to where to go, and so I sink to the ground on my knees. The orange fingers of the flame grip at my skin and crawl under it to assault my nerve endings. The pain wraps itself around my body. My skin melts away as I watch like plastic and runs down in folds of sunkissed red. It exposes my bones, thick and white.

I can smell the hair burning off my head and taste the acrid ash fill my mouth as I turn to nothing more than a charred pile of human.

Is this how my victims felt? Did they suffer so much?

I give in to the pain and close my eyes, only to feel hands wrap themselves around me. They touch the exposed bone and muscle and press into my organs. Someone repeats my name over and over, until my eyes shoot open.