The Island: Act One

ACT ONE - 1: No Man's Sea

A blinding flash blankets my eyes. A scream engulfs my ears in horror. Heat washes across my face. A blast of wind throws me back.

I fall...

My body is carried by the wind of a flaming heat. It is met by the ice-cold water, as my back hits the surface. The sea swallows me. Like a mouth opening around its prey it allows me in. I feel the splash of water rise around me quickly; blocking the wind of heat from pushing me any further, as gravity takes grip of the flaying water and brings it down upon me. The icy water melting through the burning flesh of my skin as I sink further into the ocean.

I can only see white. The flash still stains my eyes, while my ears still ring with the memory of explosion. I cannot tell if my eyes are open or shut. The heat may not have penetrated the water's shield, but its force rockets the water into a disturbed frenzy. Waves throw me back, while the ocean's own resistance throws me forward. At war with itself, I find myself in the crossfire of its malevolence. I let the currents of war take me, throwing me side to side, up and down. Then. My body restarts. As though finally listening to the crying calls of my brain, but not being able to hear over my ringing ears. My arms flap into action, throwing water behind me I thrust myself upwards. Kicking the water down I rise like a frog in a pond. A few leaps later my head parts the tidal water, body and legs following close behind.

Shaking my head violently, layers of water are thrown from my face. I push water downwards to keep myself afloat and shake the water from my hands. The ringing seems to intensify, and I feel my hands clasp to my ears to protect the drums from blowing. Blinking rapidly, the light blanketing my eyes begins to fade. The waves I feel are visualised in a blurry mess, as they fold over a small passenger yacht split in two. Fire rises from all over the yacht. A small plume of smoke rises into the cloudy black night. I watch as my only savour of drowning is too; dragged under by the sea. A small wave throws me back, and my face is pushed under the water. Inhaling what feels like a gallon of sea water I bring myself up and cough the water from my lungs. The ringing begins to fade, and I notice the sounds that surround me. The waves at war; the yacht as it creaks and cracks apart; thunder claps from above and the splattering of hail on water as billions of water drops throw themselves into the ocean – and onto my head.

Flicking the water from my eyes, I turn back to the yacht. Which I can now see in full clarity, as a giant wave climbs over the mess of a boat. A similar wave to the one that swallowed me into the ocean I can imagine, just on a much larger scale. It wraps itself over the yacht and pulls it under. Pre-empting the impact upon my own disposition, I duck under the surface of the water, as the remaining wave curls over me and throws itself into the ocean. Even under the surface I am pushed further down and back from the destroyed yacht. I begin to feel my jeans pull me down. It feels as though a rope has hold and pulls me down into the sea. But I fight back.

Pushing myself back up I rise above the surface, clear my vision and look around, away from the yacht and the direction of the tide lies a large island. Mountainous it rises high into the sky lying about five hundred metres from me. Taking a deep breath, I turn and swim towards it.

The waves seem to help, pushing me closer to the shore. Until the next wave throws me to the right, or to the left. Sometimes pushing me further back than I was pushed forward. My body is weak and frozen. Working on instinct I swim towards the dark shore. I can see nothing as water is thrown around me. The heat from the explosion has dissipated and for the first time, I feel the harsh bite of the icy wind. It cuts through my hair and eats through my skin like acid – only two hundred metres left.

My breath runs low, with each breath I take, I swallow more water and spend the rest of the breath coughing the water out. Hail hits me in the face as I drift closer. Exhausted, cold and battered I stop. Dipping my head under the water to escape the war of nature above the surface. Only to find that I have only narrowly avoided the one underneath. I see nothing. The ocean is a black void. Like the pupil of the Earth, I see into the soul of the ocean. All I see is death. It nearly hits me too. Gasping and releasing the air from my lungs as a plank of debris flies past my face, thin enough to take the head from my shoulders in one swoop. More follows, and I now battle the war of nature above as I try to stay ahead of the carnage that is about to unfold underneath – as above so below – only a hundred metres left.

Rising back up I swim fast, a new lease of life within me. A spark of adrenaline powers me forward. The slow death of freezing seemed to be acceptable by my standards but being cut in half by the shards of my own yacht does not. The wave carrying the debris along the tide towards the island, begins to pick me up and I am carried the last hundred metres by a rough wave. Throwing me hard into the damp sand, it sits impenetrable as my face is planted straight into it. Digging grips into the hard sand, I pull myself further up the shore, further away from the ocean. The tide comes in heavy and far, but with every push the tide stops a little further down my body. My cold, wet, battered body.

Clear of the tide, I lie in the centre of a beach. Hail still crashes down upon me; the wind stabs me with ice from every direction. The absence of floating causes my clothes to slowly stick to my skin. They are colder than I, and the dampness seeps through my skin, freezing my bones. Thunder claps above me as I breath in water-less air. And it is here I lie, for a time. Motionless. Frozen to the beach, as nature has its war above. As if in a fire, I stick to the floor hoping to avoid the smoke. Only the wind and hail can touch me here. But there is no fight left in me, and it is here I will stay...