Castaway on the Island of Screams
The storm came with teeth, ripping the hull and flinging me toward a horizon I could not name. When the surf finally peeled me from the wreckage, the island rose like a dark spine of stone, jagged against the ink of night. I dragged myself ashore, lungs salted and stubborn, and listened as the trees exhaled in a chorus only fear could hear.
Days bled into nights with the same careful rhythm: a fire built from driftwood, a shelter that creaked with every breath of wind, and the island’s uninvited warmth pressed close enough to feel almost like a hand on my shoulder. The sands bore no footprints but mine; the jungle offered no mercy, only soft, ancient hints—the rustle of leaves whispering the same word over and over, a name I could not remember speaking aloud.
“I woke with the sea feeding me salt and the trees leaning closer,” I wrote in a notebook that should have stayed dry. “Every night the island counts silhouettes, and one by one they disappear.”
Food came in fits: a coconut that opened its shell with a whisper, a fish that vanished and left only a memory of fins, and fruit that sent a slow, dizzy sweetness through my skull. The island kept its own schedule, and I learned to listen to the clock of whispers—no clock at all, just a shifting sound that rose, fell, and then pointed my steps toward treacherous quiet.
On the third evening, I found a circle carved into the earth, pale as bone, with a single bone-white feather resting in the center. The feather quivered in the breeze, though there was no wind. A line of coral arches traced a path into the forest, and when I followed, the trees tilted inward as if offering a doorway I was not meant to pass through. Fear did not feel like a choice here; it felt like the only compass that worked.
- The island feeds on your memories and your fear; feed it back only with resolve and silence.
- Leave behind anything you think you own, for belongs to the shore—your name, your past, your last comfort—until you become something the island recognizes.
- When the night sounds stop, you must listen for the soft sigh of the ground inviting you to step deeper, not away.
That is what I did, step by patient step, until the heart of the island revealed itself as a hollow in the rock, echoing with a voice that was mine and not mine. I spoke to it as a survivor speaks to a predator: calm, direct, and finite. The reply came not as a scream but a promise—that if I stayed, if I offered my fear willingly, I might learn to live inside the island’s memory rather than be consumed by it.
Morning after morning, I watched the shoreline shrink and the island’s silhouette grow almost friendly, almost like a conspirator with a plan. The days blurred into a steady surrender, until I could not tell where I ended and the island began. And when the sun rose again, I found my name carved in the sand, not scrawled but pressed into the grains as if the ocean itself had signed a contract with me. I am not the castaway anymore; I am a shadow that belongs to this place, as the island belongs to me, until the next storm comes to set the terms anew.