#I’m floating in the middle of the pacific wondering which direction to turn in hopes of finding land | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thegoronman-blog · 5 years

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The Island

Hey Tumblr, I’m mostly up in here to post about writing and other stuff I make. My big thing is writing, and it’s something I’ve always had an eye for.

My first creation here is an odd prompt we had for creative writing I go off of with the name of the Island. We drew straws from a hat and got three things to work with, and a location. I got a poleaxe, a pickle, and some bones for some guy on an island surrounded by an electric fence that nobody could get past.

I was taking physics that year, and our teacher had done a demonstration about how pickles could conduct electricity, so I used that, I hope you enjoy.

I woke with a start. I screamed in my mind and then out loud. All i could see for miles around was fog. Where the hell was I!? I forgot to breathe and clutched my chest. I thought to myself for a moment. What happened last night?

Oh right

I said that i’d go for one drink.

Well regardless, I was on a island in the middle of nowhere with nothing but zombie smoke to look me in the eye. I began to wonder when the fog would clear. Stress was cascading through my arms now, and I realized where I was. The ground around me was all dirt, no grass. There were boulders and other stones complimented by trees that appeared to rise infinitely into the sky. Moss grew on these rocks, and the dirt was so moist and fertile that you could toss a flower seed onto the ground and it would grow naturally within days. I thought to myself again. Where was I? The landmarks I had were christmas trees, boulders, and grassless soil. I had to be somewhere up north, because nowhere else is there fog and big trees all at once. I decided to run for a while. Who knew where I really was? The edge of the island would surely tell me, there could be land, or people outside of it. I was starting to get my hopes up, when after about an hour of running or so I met the edge of the island. Or rather the edge of the island met me, as a massive wave leapt out of the water almost to hi-five me as I soon realized that the island I was on was elevated by a tall cliff face that was victim to crashing waves slurping away its rocky face. The fog on the island began to clear around the edges and it became easier to see, a luxury I desperately needed because that fog was incredibly thick. I stare out at the skyline. There was nothing at all for miles. I screamed to myself. I then cried for about five minutes as I soon realized that I had to have been all alone in this place. After I got myself back together, I took to both of my feet and turned into the forest. I could see my breathing, which was such a strange phenomenon to me because back home it was never cold enough for this kind of condition. I started feeling cold though, and I desperately needed warmth.

It was late into the morning when my hangover began to end a little bit and it became somewhat easier to think to myself. I had made a fire out of a few sticks lucky for me, because nothing on this damn island was dry except for the few sticks i found hiding under rocks. I thought to myself. If most of the world was charted, then how come I had never really heard of this place? I had read my fair share of maps, and never really heard of any pacific northwestern islands that were so far away from anything that you couldn’t see land off of it. I felt the chain around my neck grow cold. I ripped my necklace off and stared at it. It had been a gift from my soccer teacher when I was young. She had always reminded me to kick with the inside of my foot instead of the toe for the least amount of pain when punting it. She had always looked out for me adequately, a little more than the other boys during practice in fact. Whenever I cut my legs from sliding too hard on the grass, she would always patch me up herself before directing the rest of practice. It was some of the only maternal affection I had ever had. Mother had died when I was little and

A twig snapped.

The necklace fell from my hand as I rose to meet the sound. I shouted some gibberish at the top of my lungs and nothing replied. I turned around. Nothing there. But I felt called by the forest to move deeper into its bowels. I walked slowly and cautiously. It sounded like there was some strange kind of mongolian singing going on as I went. Then there it was, hanging from a tree and sticking out like a sore thumb, it was a massive bone that obviously belonged to the ribcage of some massive, dead thing. I went forwards softly stepping as I went. More bones began to appear as I stepped through the colossal forest, that seemed to deepen with every movement I took. Some of the bones were strewn about in the ground, some were stuck in the trees. Often they were suspended by ropes and grappling hooks. The singing in my mind grew continually louder as I reached its loudest point. The skull of some huge dead animal. By the soft contours on its surface, and the texture and shape of its teeth, I assumed it was a whale. Below it, a box. I knelt down to the box, wooden, with a tiny metal lock to guard whatever assuredly valuable treasure it held within. I picked it up, and opened it. The chanting stopped abruptly and my face was greeted with... a pickle. I laughed to myself, thinking that there was no way someone set up all of this and left only a pickle behind. And what was with the chanting from before? Was it only my mind? Or something making noise. I looked all around the monument and found nothing. Trippy. Must’ve been something to do with my hangover. I guessed it wasn’t over.

Early into the afternoon I got bored and started chucking rocks out to sea. One was big and heavy, and sunk just as well. One was light and curved, and made a small attempt to float on the surface before sinking right below. Finally, there was a smooth stone with perfect mass and ideal surface area that I chuckled as well as I could into the now tranquil sea. It skipped gloriously, one time, then two times, then three, four, five, six, and it would have made seven if not for the gigantic invisible electric fence that stood out where the open sea would begin. I scratched my head. Why is there an invisible electric fence, a pickle guarded by whale bones, and all in the pacific northwest. Some crazy person must be making my story or something. I threw a few more rocks at the fence to assure myself that I wasn’t hallucinating the electric spark that I had seen just before. I was right, there was most certainly some kind of invisible wall before me.

The day grew into a dark one, and I grew tired of the island. I needed a way off. But there was a huge fence blocking my exit, and no way to bring it down. I stared at the pickle that I had received earlier. It had a surprising amount of vinegar in it. I didn’t try it, though, I hated pickles. I hatched an idea. The huge whalebones I had seen before were all strung up. I could probably use the string to put the bones together and create a raft of some whalebone. But there was one issue, I had no way to get the string down from the tops of the trees. All had seemed lost.

I slept believing that I would die on the island.

I had a dream that it was a sunday, and that dad was making his world-famous pancakes for me before baseball practice. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a tradition, and traditions aren’t ruined by anyone but people who hate fun. At least, that’s how I saw it. The light of the morning shone behind my dad as he wiped sweat from his brow and picked me up with both arms. He would always look me in the eyes and say “You’re my son,” to himself. Nothing was better than hearing those words.

As I realized that I was laying on the incredibly fertile soil of the pacific northwest, I also found that my cheeks had been streaked by water, as if I had been crying. There was no way that could have happened, I told myself, as I rose to my feet by command of my stomach. It was breakfast time.

I was ripping through the corpse of a particularly fat squirrel I had found when i noticed something. There was an axe stuck in a tree nearby. As I got closer to it, I realized it wasn’t any old axe, but a poleaxe, rather. It had a spearhead, a weight on one end to balance it out, and an axe head on the other, that was filled with plenty of small knicks. The thing could do me well. It could even cut down the strings that held my whale bone. “AHA!”, I shouted, a lone man in the forest half naked and chewing on the innards of some dead and decaying thing.

The sun hit my forehead as my plan flew into action. The straps holding the whalebones had turned out to be quite sturdy, and it took all the force I could muster to cut them down. Rather hastily, I put my raft together, fastening the string into carvings I made into different ends of the bones, and making planks out of the flattened bones I had found. I did so until it looked seaworthy. It actually looked pretty cool all things considered. As for the poleaxe I had, i could use it as a paddle or, the far superior option, an oar. I also took a spare whalebone and both of those would be my way out. Using the incredible versatility of my poleaxe, I carved some wood bits into U shapes and tied them to the boat with all the strength I could muster. It was time to leave, but not before getting one thing. The pickle.

Staring out at the skyline, I knew that my raft had to suffice in my getaway. I stood, poleaxe and whalebone in both hands. I took my pickle in my hand and threw the whole vinegary mess up in the air. It was suspended for just a moment. I had one shot at this. I took my poleaxe and swung it on the hammer side as hard as I could. I was standing in a stadium as the announcer screamed “AND ITS GOING HOME”. I heard a whole crowd of parents angsty to go home cheering me on for giving them a reason to go. The game was sealed. There would be no more struggle for us. My pickle made it to the electric fence and found itself stuck to a branch on the wall. Electricity rushed to the especially salty and vinegary pickle and I watched for what seemed like an eternity before the pickle was glowing a stunning bright orange, and blew a hole in the fence large enough for me to get through, thank god. Having overloaded the electric fence, I was now safe to bypass the electric water. Putting both of my sticks into my raft, I lept in and prayed to the lord that it would stay in one piece on my way down. Again, with incredible luck, it remained so. I breathed an incredible long sigh of relief, and rowed my boat eastward, into the infinite horizon, and whatever land beyond that might have awaited me.

#creative writing #island #pickle

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