Ravager
03-24-2011, 08:37 AM
The sun is slowly setting in the distance, turning the clouds a fiery orange. The edge of the cliff is limned with a sublime glow, the grass rustling in a slight breeze. Some distance back from the cliff is a small forest, more a thicket of trees. I tell you this, because this is how it has always been here. I am unsure of exactly how long I have waited here, at the edge of the cliff, for some sign, any sign.
I am alone on this island. There are no animals here, no other people, and I have no recollection of how I came to be here. There is no shelter, but the storm never comes. And the sun, it never rises or sets. My body has changed as well. I no longer need to eat, or sleep. This place, despite its apparent tranquility is deeply unsettling. It is as if I do not belong here at all.
Thus, during my interminable stay, something changed. It was, as best as I can guess it, nearly three quarters of the way through my stay in this place.
At the edge of the cliff stands a woman. She is shrouded in white, many layers of clothing, fluttering in the wind. Her long dark hair flicks around like a live thing. She seems to be contemplating the horizon. Then she jumps.
She falls, her layers of clothing fanning out like streamers in her wake. By the time I reached the edge of the cliff she was gone. And I don’t mean dead. Just… gone. There were no marks on the beach below, no ripples in the ocean, no sign she had ever existed at all. Except for the fact that I had seen her.
I may have mentioned time has no meaning here, so trying to describe any length of time spent waiting is fruitless, except to say how long it felt to me. In this case, it was several hours later that she reappeared. Once more she stood at the edge of the cliff. She whispered something before leaping off once more.
“Save me,” she had said, in a breathless whisper.
I wondered how I might manage such a feat, there was no way I could cover that kind of distance before she jumped. The pattern continued. After the sixth attempt to save her (she seemed to be further away with each successive attempt) I gave up in frustration, cursing under my breath.
After that, she did not reappear for quite some time. When she did, she looked slightly different, her hair longer, wavy at the ends. Her clothing seemed a more pure white, composed of many more layers. She also turned to face me, in profile. I could see that she was beautiful. I also knew that I knew her. I could not say how, or why, I had such a feeling, I just did. It was as if I was trying to remember a memory that wasn’t there anymore.
Just before she jumped, she made eye contact with me. In that instant I saw so much and so little. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Despair. Once again, she was gone before I could get to the edge of the cliff. It was so very frustrating. If only I could remember, if only I were a little faster…
—
I cradled Zack’s ruined body in my arms. He had been everything to me. Then, in a split second, heavy rain and a drunk driver shattered our world. I was sure there were still bits of glass in my hair, but I didn’t care. All I cared about right now was Zack, and making sure he lived long enough for the paramedics to arrive.
His heart was still beating, I knew that much from the weak pulse and blood-soaked bandages. Knowing first aid is one thing, having to apply it to the man you love is another entirely. After the adrenaline had worn off, long enough for me to perform said first aid, I was pretty sure I was going into shock.
There was nothing else warm around, and the car was a complete write-off, overturned in the ditch beside the road. The amount of damage done to it by the impact and subsequent rolling was something he might have described as “epic”.
So here I sit, in the lee of a shattered car, under the pinging metal of the engine, my blouse ripped and bloody, and my fiancé wrapped in my arms. I’m also pretty sure I look horrible too, but that’s only a minor concern at the moment. I just hope the ambulance gets here in time. Already I can see the light behind Zack’s eyes fading.
—
Remember how I said this place was unchanging, well, I may have been a little hasty in that assessment. The edge of the cliff crumbled and fell into the sea, sending up a great plume of salt water. The woman was nowhere to be found. After more than a dozen attempts to save her now, this was somewhat disconcerting.
As time passed I began to wonder if I would see her ever again. Just as I began to despair at never seeing her again, she appeared once more near the cliff. She started several paces back from the fresh edge of the cliff. A fresh edge that looked like it had been weathered for centuries.
When she looked at me I saw that something was different. There was a careless streak of blood on her left cheek, and the train of her many-layered clothing appeared both damp and muddy, despite having no weather to make it so in this place. I began to suspect that she was not, in fact, from this place.
“Save me,” the same, pleading, breathless whisper. Once more I failed to reach her. As she fell however, her scarf flew off, floating slowly down to the ocean below. Where it touched the water a crimson pattern, almost a fractal, began to spread outwards, turning the ocean the colour of blood.
I found myself once more some distance from the cliff. She stood at the edge again, her face once more in profile, the careless streak of blood on her cheek, the train of her dress appearing damp and muddy. But there was something different this time, not something more, but something less. As her hair fluttered in the wind, I knew what it was.
Her scarf.
Her scarf had fallen into the water, and it had stayed there. I sprinted for the edge, leaping the last few feet. I saw her falling, she fell backwards, even though she had been facing forwards. Her many-layered clothing, no longer muddied or damp, whipped around her falling form. As she fell, I saw her face. She was smiling, but it was a sad smile, as if she knew something bad had to happen for something else good to happen.
I never saw her hit the crimson water. The cliff crumbled under me and I was once again distant from the edge. I began to wonder if perhaps this place was some kind of surreal prison, trying to keep me from following her. I ran for the edge, leapt over it, over the crimson waters, and landed flat on my face near the middle of the island.
—
How long I sat in the rain, weeping for my fiancé I may never know. My watch broke in the crash, its cracked face staring up me, almost demanding to know why I had seen fit to destroy it. I could feel Zack beginning to fade. His breathing was becoming shallower, his pulse erratic, and his eyes were beginning to glaze over.
I could feel the tears burning down my cheeks but I just didn’t care anymore. I was a wreck, and without Zack, life wouldn’t be worth living.
“Come back…” I wept. “Please come back. Please. I love you. I love you! Please come back, please. I love you.”
I continued saying that, like a mantra. I could feel Zack’s body shiver slightly, the only sign he was still alive.
—
If only I could remember her name. It was maddening. I knew that I knew her, I just didn’t know why, or how.
“Save me,” her breathless whisper echoed across the island. Subtle details seemed to ripple and change. The sun fell a little lower. The forest grew. The cliff crumbled. I found myself dressed in a black suit, the tails of a black overcoat flying behind me as I sprint across the distance.
She turns before she falls, her arm flying out. I manage to grip her ghostly fingers for a fraction of a second before she falls. So close. So very close. I wonder if perhaps I am repeating the same time over and over again until something goes right. But if that is so, why do I remember the sun being higher, her being dressed differently?
A playful laugh bubbles out of the forest behind me. Impossibly she is standing there, whole, unharmed. I do not not why this fact surprises me now, but it does. She moves swiftly, gracefully through the forest, never seeming to touch the ground. No matter how fast I can move, she always ahead of me. Always. If she makes a turn, I try to cut into it. I seem to close, then, impossibly, she is just as far away as she was at the beginning.
She is always ahead of me, always leading, impossible to catch. Untouchable. And yet, at the cliff, I touched, even if just for an instant. That gives me the drive to try harder. The forest thins and she slows. I still cannot catch up. It is as if this island wishes to keep her and I separate for eternity.
—
I can feel Zack dying. I do not how, but I can feel that it is not just his body shutting down, but his soul is about to leave. Every detail is etched with perfect clarity. The earthy scent of the rain, the metallic tang of blood. The soft pinging of the car’s cooling engine. The almost-black of the asphalt, the crimson of Zack’s blood and mine. The ochre shade of my hair falling over his face. The sweet scent of his shallow breaths.
I lean in closer to his ruined body, hair falling around his face, tears falling from my cheeks to his. I see the spark in his eye fading to nothing. Slowly, softly, I kiss him one final time.
—
We are at the cliff again, but once more, something has changed. She fades, turning into streaks of silver on the wind. I look down, down into the waters. Except that they are no longer waters but clouds. Clouds parting to reveal a ghastly scene beneath me. It is at once terribly distant and horrifyingly close.
She is cradling a body in her arms. Whose body it is I do not know. She leans over and kisses him, tenderly, but with great sadness. I already know he is dying, possibly dead already. I watch as she pulls away, slowly looking skyward. I know her face, I have seen it somewhere before. Like the woman on the cliff it is maddeningly familiar, and yet just out of reach.
I can see her tears, streaming silently down her beautiful face. A beauty marred only by eyes puffy from crying. No, not crying, weeping. This woman has just lost something incredibly precious to her, and I can see the rent it has made in her soul.
Ghostly words whisper up to me from her, and from behind me, in the forest, and beside me, on the cliff.
“No… please, no. Come back. Please come back. Please. I love you.”
I realise that the words are coming from all around me, that these three women, they are all the same person, the person below, cradling a ruined, dying body in her arms. Then, as the final spark of a soul leaves the eyes of the body she is cradling, I see that it is me. Everything suddenly becomes clear.
She is the one that does not belong here. She is neither ghost nor real here. She serves as my guide, not as a soul to save. From where I stand I can see, feel, her emotions.
Sadness. She weeps for me.
Fear. She is afraid for me.
Anger. She hates me. For dying. Herself. For living.
Longing. She wants me back. For even a single minute.
Despair. She knows she will never be able to love again.
Love. I can feel her love for me. Pure. True.
Her love is something more than the words used to describe it. Its power is primal, its force, elemental, its strength, eternal.
I am moved to tears. I do not deserve this love. I cannot even remember the name of the one that loves me so. The cliff is beginning to crumble once more, cracks spreading inland, to the heart of the island. I must make a decision. Now.
If I go back, will I remember?
If I go on, what becomes of her?
I cannot stay.
I realise that I am afraid. If I go back, and I do not remember, will I still be me?
If I go on, I fear what it might do to her.
I cannot stay, but I am paralyzed.
Through a crack beneath my feet I can see her, body and soul, just for an instant. Her name is Rebecca, and her love for me is so powerful it could outshine the sun.
My mind cannot decide, but my heart already has. I am walking away from the crumbling cliff, towards the forested heart of the island. I turn, slowly at first, but turning into a full blown run, towards the setting sun.
And then I jump.
I am alone on this island. There are no animals here, no other people, and I have no recollection of how I came to be here. There is no shelter, but the storm never comes. And the sun, it never rises or sets. My body has changed as well. I no longer need to eat, or sleep. This place, despite its apparent tranquility is deeply unsettling. It is as if I do not belong here at all.
Thus, during my interminable stay, something changed. It was, as best as I can guess it, nearly three quarters of the way through my stay in this place.
At the edge of the cliff stands a woman. She is shrouded in white, many layers of clothing, fluttering in the wind. Her long dark hair flicks around like a live thing. She seems to be contemplating the horizon. Then she jumps.
She falls, her layers of clothing fanning out like streamers in her wake. By the time I reached the edge of the cliff she was gone. And I don’t mean dead. Just… gone. There were no marks on the beach below, no ripples in the ocean, no sign she had ever existed at all. Except for the fact that I had seen her.
I may have mentioned time has no meaning here, so trying to describe any length of time spent waiting is fruitless, except to say how long it felt to me. In this case, it was several hours later that she reappeared. Once more she stood at the edge of the cliff. She whispered something before leaping off once more.
“Save me,” she had said, in a breathless whisper.
I wondered how I might manage such a feat, there was no way I could cover that kind of distance before she jumped. The pattern continued. After the sixth attempt to save her (she seemed to be further away with each successive attempt) I gave up in frustration, cursing under my breath.
After that, she did not reappear for quite some time. When she did, she looked slightly different, her hair longer, wavy at the ends. Her clothing seemed a more pure white, composed of many more layers. She also turned to face me, in profile. I could see that she was beautiful. I also knew that I knew her. I could not say how, or why, I had such a feeling, I just did. It was as if I was trying to remember a memory that wasn’t there anymore.
Just before she jumped, she made eye contact with me. In that instant I saw so much and so little. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Despair. Once again, she was gone before I could get to the edge of the cliff. It was so very frustrating. If only I could remember, if only I were a little faster…
—
I cradled Zack’s ruined body in my arms. He had been everything to me. Then, in a split second, heavy rain and a drunk driver shattered our world. I was sure there were still bits of glass in my hair, but I didn’t care. All I cared about right now was Zack, and making sure he lived long enough for the paramedics to arrive.
His heart was still beating, I knew that much from the weak pulse and blood-soaked bandages. Knowing first aid is one thing, having to apply it to the man you love is another entirely. After the adrenaline had worn off, long enough for me to perform said first aid, I was pretty sure I was going into shock.
There was nothing else warm around, and the car was a complete write-off, overturned in the ditch beside the road. The amount of damage done to it by the impact and subsequent rolling was something he might have described as “epic”.
So here I sit, in the lee of a shattered car, under the pinging metal of the engine, my blouse ripped and bloody, and my fiancé wrapped in my arms. I’m also pretty sure I look horrible too, but that’s only a minor concern at the moment. I just hope the ambulance gets here in time. Already I can see the light behind Zack’s eyes fading.
—
Remember how I said this place was unchanging, well, I may have been a little hasty in that assessment. The edge of the cliff crumbled and fell into the sea, sending up a great plume of salt water. The woman was nowhere to be found. After more than a dozen attempts to save her now, this was somewhat disconcerting.
As time passed I began to wonder if I would see her ever again. Just as I began to despair at never seeing her again, she appeared once more near the cliff. She started several paces back from the fresh edge of the cliff. A fresh edge that looked like it had been weathered for centuries.
When she looked at me I saw that something was different. There was a careless streak of blood on her left cheek, and the train of her many-layered clothing appeared both damp and muddy, despite having no weather to make it so in this place. I began to suspect that she was not, in fact, from this place.
“Save me,” the same, pleading, breathless whisper. Once more I failed to reach her. As she fell however, her scarf flew off, floating slowly down to the ocean below. Where it touched the water a crimson pattern, almost a fractal, began to spread outwards, turning the ocean the colour of blood.
I found myself once more some distance from the cliff. She stood at the edge again, her face once more in profile, the careless streak of blood on her cheek, the train of her dress appearing damp and muddy. But there was something different this time, not something more, but something less. As her hair fluttered in the wind, I knew what it was.
Her scarf.
Her scarf had fallen into the water, and it had stayed there. I sprinted for the edge, leaping the last few feet. I saw her falling, she fell backwards, even though she had been facing forwards. Her many-layered clothing, no longer muddied or damp, whipped around her falling form. As she fell, I saw her face. She was smiling, but it was a sad smile, as if she knew something bad had to happen for something else good to happen.
I never saw her hit the crimson water. The cliff crumbled under me and I was once again distant from the edge. I began to wonder if perhaps this place was some kind of surreal prison, trying to keep me from following her. I ran for the edge, leapt over it, over the crimson waters, and landed flat on my face near the middle of the island.
—
How long I sat in the rain, weeping for my fiancé I may never know. My watch broke in the crash, its cracked face staring up me, almost demanding to know why I had seen fit to destroy it. I could feel Zack beginning to fade. His breathing was becoming shallower, his pulse erratic, and his eyes were beginning to glaze over.
I could feel the tears burning down my cheeks but I just didn’t care anymore. I was a wreck, and without Zack, life wouldn’t be worth living.
“Come back…” I wept. “Please come back. Please. I love you. I love you! Please come back, please. I love you.”
I continued saying that, like a mantra. I could feel Zack’s body shiver slightly, the only sign he was still alive.
—
If only I could remember her name. It was maddening. I knew that I knew her, I just didn’t know why, or how.
“Save me,” her breathless whisper echoed across the island. Subtle details seemed to ripple and change. The sun fell a little lower. The forest grew. The cliff crumbled. I found myself dressed in a black suit, the tails of a black overcoat flying behind me as I sprint across the distance.
She turns before she falls, her arm flying out. I manage to grip her ghostly fingers for a fraction of a second before she falls. So close. So very close. I wonder if perhaps I am repeating the same time over and over again until something goes right. But if that is so, why do I remember the sun being higher, her being dressed differently?
A playful laugh bubbles out of the forest behind me. Impossibly she is standing there, whole, unharmed. I do not not why this fact surprises me now, but it does. She moves swiftly, gracefully through the forest, never seeming to touch the ground. No matter how fast I can move, she always ahead of me. Always. If she makes a turn, I try to cut into it. I seem to close, then, impossibly, she is just as far away as she was at the beginning.
She is always ahead of me, always leading, impossible to catch. Untouchable. And yet, at the cliff, I touched, even if just for an instant. That gives me the drive to try harder. The forest thins and she slows. I still cannot catch up. It is as if this island wishes to keep her and I separate for eternity.
—
I can feel Zack dying. I do not how, but I can feel that it is not just his body shutting down, but his soul is about to leave. Every detail is etched with perfect clarity. The earthy scent of the rain, the metallic tang of blood. The soft pinging of the car’s cooling engine. The almost-black of the asphalt, the crimson of Zack’s blood and mine. The ochre shade of my hair falling over his face. The sweet scent of his shallow breaths.
I lean in closer to his ruined body, hair falling around his face, tears falling from my cheeks to his. I see the spark in his eye fading to nothing. Slowly, softly, I kiss him one final time.
—
We are at the cliff again, but once more, something has changed. She fades, turning into streaks of silver on the wind. I look down, down into the waters. Except that they are no longer waters but clouds. Clouds parting to reveal a ghastly scene beneath me. It is at once terribly distant and horrifyingly close.
She is cradling a body in her arms. Whose body it is I do not know. She leans over and kisses him, tenderly, but with great sadness. I already know he is dying, possibly dead already. I watch as she pulls away, slowly looking skyward. I know her face, I have seen it somewhere before. Like the woman on the cliff it is maddeningly familiar, and yet just out of reach.
I can see her tears, streaming silently down her beautiful face. A beauty marred only by eyes puffy from crying. No, not crying, weeping. This woman has just lost something incredibly precious to her, and I can see the rent it has made in her soul.
Ghostly words whisper up to me from her, and from behind me, in the forest, and beside me, on the cliff.
“No… please, no. Come back. Please come back. Please. I love you.”
I realise that the words are coming from all around me, that these three women, they are all the same person, the person below, cradling a ruined, dying body in her arms. Then, as the final spark of a soul leaves the eyes of the body she is cradling, I see that it is me. Everything suddenly becomes clear.
She is the one that does not belong here. She is neither ghost nor real here. She serves as my guide, not as a soul to save. From where I stand I can see, feel, her emotions.
Sadness. She weeps for me.
Fear. She is afraid for me.
Anger. She hates me. For dying. Herself. For living.
Longing. She wants me back. For even a single minute.
Despair. She knows she will never be able to love again.
Love. I can feel her love for me. Pure. True.
Her love is something more than the words used to describe it. Its power is primal, its force, elemental, its strength, eternal.
I am moved to tears. I do not deserve this love. I cannot even remember the name of the one that loves me so. The cliff is beginning to crumble once more, cracks spreading inland, to the heart of the island. I must make a decision. Now.
If I go back, will I remember?
If I go on, what becomes of her?
I cannot stay.
I realise that I am afraid. If I go back, and I do not remember, will I still be me?
If I go on, I fear what it might do to her.
I cannot stay, but I am paralyzed.
Through a crack beneath my feet I can see her, body and soul, just for an instant. Her name is Rebecca, and her love for me is so powerful it could outshine the sun.
My mind cannot decide, but my heart already has. I am walking away from the crumbling cliff, towards the forested heart of the island. I turn, slowly at first, but turning into a full blown run, towards the setting sun.
And then I jump.