Creative Writing: Empire Island

The water curled around his neck like a guillotine and he frantically swung his arms back and forth to keep from drowning. The coolness ran into his mouth and past his throat as if to reach inside of him and firmly drag him into the depths, but his legs kicked out again and again, blasting jets through the water that buoyed him up to gulps of precious air. His hand, searching for something, anything, landed on a hard beam, and he instinctively gripped it tightly. Another hand was secured beside it, and he pulled himself up, heaving all his weight over the side and letting himself collapse on the flat structure that dipped as it absorbed his fall.

He tried to reach back into his mind and remember how he got here, as if he were like a ghostly

He rowed towards it, but a thought frightened him: just because you get to land, doesn't mean you'll be any less lost.

He shook his head and continued to row, getting into a pleasant rhythm, enjoying the arc of his shoulders and arms and the predictable resistance as his oars pulled his boat through the water, leaving behind a steady wake.

He reached the dilapidated dock and reached over the side of his boat, tying whatever could be tied to keep his boat anchored. There were little loops carved into the side which he fastened to the ropes, some so frayed he thought they'd melt in his hands at his touch. When sufficiently secured, he carefully tried to step over onto the planks that remained, allowing his leg to steady for a moment after some tremors and pulsing muscles. His feet slid gingerly along the planks, afraid any step larger than that would surely puncture the wood and plunge into the opaque

Maybe I was fishing, he thought. He could feel his powers of speculation return, but without his ego to supplant a critical center. There were thoughts, thoughts in search of a self.

Fishing, he thought again, I remember that. I don't remember who I am, but I remember fishing. Well, the idea of fishing. Maybe I was fishing and hit my head. How? Someone dropped something from my head from a bridge. My head hit a low bridge. Or I was the lone object on the water and lightning found me a convenient target. The fear of the damage that might have caused him was replaced with a temporary contentment in the fact there could at least be a rational explanation for his situation.

He continued to imagine possibilities, feeling some accomplishment when a new one presented himself to his mind. It was if it could fill the void of not knowing who he was or how he got here, like flicking channels endlessly on a TV, distracting oneself from the knowledge that there was nothing to watch.

He would have stood there longer, were it not for the chill that whipped across his body and forced him to hug himself to preserve