You wake up to the sounds of birds chirping noisily all around you. The air feels extremely hot and sticky, and you can feel a layer of sweat on your skin as a drop beads up in your armpit and drips down. Below you, you feel... sand. You open your eyes.
Immediately, you wince and squint. It's already bright out, and it feels like late morning. You try to remember what happened, but the events of the past few days come in only blurs. You remember the plane ride to Guatemala. You were being sent there to help on a humanitarian trip to help as assistants at a medical clinic. Your parents had picked it out for you, and although you had protested, they had not given you any choice. You and your buddy Sam had been playing cards as the plane flew over the ocean. Wait a minute! Sam!
You sit up. Sand sticks to your back. You realize you are shirtless and wearing only your cotton boxers which are already damp and sticky. You've got a little bit of morning wood, but that starts to shrink. You see your heavy pair of jeans and flannel shirt lying in the sand next to you. It was cold the morning you left from the airport back home.
You stand up and brush the sand off your back. You look around. In front of you is the ocean, a dark blue mess of whitecaps and waves. You look out farther and spot... a dorsal fin. Sharks! You gulp nervously. Behind you are trees and plants, and you see a trickle of water ending in a small pool below one tree. To either side of you, the beach stretches far back until it gently curves away behind the trees.
You hear a shout from the trees behind you. Then there are noises of crashing, like someone running through the trees. You look around frantically for something to defend yourself with. There's nothing. The shouts get closer, until you see a figure run out of the bushes. He's tan and fairly muscular, wearing only a pair of synthetic boxers. He runs out onto the sand and looks fearfully over his shoulder.
Then he spots you and his eyes light up. "John!" he shouts, still trying to catch his breath. He leans down and takes some deep breaths. He walks up to you and you see that he's covered in small scratches and dirt. Like you, he has a shine of sweat covering his body.
After he catches his breath, he gestures for you to sit down. In fearful sentences he tells you what he saw.
"So I went into the woods to take a dump. I was just finishing up when I heard a crash and then I realized that there was a sound of something burning. So I followed the noise and..."
He pauses and gulps. "I saw the crashed plane and the pilot was dead in his seat. There was blood everywhere! How did we survive?!"
You shake your head in wonderment. "I barely remember what happened," you answer. "I must've hit my head or something because I just don't remember crashing or reaching the beach or undressing or any of that. After us playing cards in the plane, I don't remember anything."
He nods. "The same thing goes for me. This is really strange..." |