Ultimate Darkness

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Where am I? Why do I hear the sound of seagulls over me?

That very question also gave me feelings of déjà vu. However, I made no attempt to remember exactly.

Currently, it was daylight outside due to the fact that black had turned red only a few moments ago, which made my feelings of déjà vu stronger than before. My left arm was in a great deal of pain, but I did not know what exactly had caused that pain. All I knew was that the rocking motion of the surface where I was currently situated made the throbbing of the pain worse.

As I slowly opened my eyes, my vision was clouded with blurriness, so I tried to blink it away. I could make out a vast, blue ocean under the orange sky of dawn. The sun was just a tiny half circle, but it steadily grew bigger as time went on. Overhead, thousands of seagulls were flying around of some unknown reason.

When the blurriness finally faded, I looked down and noticed that my hands had been reddened due to sunburns. I also noticed the brown logs that were tied together with rope that was now damp underneath my legs. Beside me, there was a black backpack with a red border with unknown contents. Like the backpack itself, the zipper and straps were also black with a red border. The backpack did not have any tears, but there were signs that it had been open recently, suggesting that it was fairly new.

Looking outwards, there was almost nothing else in site. This was unusual because I remember hearing some kind of ships go by, but I did not remember how long ago that was. I only remembered that everything until now was completely black.

Why am I on a raft? Was I running away? In fact, who am I?

I was lonely out there. Since nobody was on the raft, this felt like it was the first time I felt lonely. On the other hand, feelings of déjà vu were creeping up on my body, as if this was not the first I found myself alone on a raft.

For some reason, I got a feeling that I had told me that I had left some place without any company, but I did not remember exactly why I chose to do so, if that was truly the reason to why I was on a raft.

Looking at my clothes, I noticed a gray t-shirt that was damp enough to make me believe that I had been out at sea for many days, encountering huge waves. I did not want to believe it though, as I thought that I would have been knocked off the raft. My black pants were in the same condition. However, I could not figure out why I had not gotten sick.

Why does all of this seem familiar, yet I cannot remember exactly when?

In order to find somewhere to rest, I headed straight, which was the supposed source of the seagulls.

A few hours later, I came across and island. Buildings replaced most of the vegetation. Each of the buildings appeared to have different styles. The building in front of my eyes had white walls that had a few spots of wood visible. The shape was not perfectly rectangular or square. The front part had a bit of a slant coming from both the right and the left. At the point where the slant ended, there was straight piece of wall followed by a slant that would have intersected the other one, which slanted towards the door. The blue, tiled roof extended a few inches beyond the tops of the wall and curved upward in the same manner as a quarter pipe. The windows of the building were extremely dirty, as if nobody had lived in it for years. Every other building had the same feeling.

On top of a mountain, there was a lighthouse that kind of looked like a toothpick from distance, whereas the buildings on the ground were a bit bigger, with the first one that I saw being the biggest.

I sat on the raft next to a pier that reached out to six feet into the ocean, wondering why everything felt like it was so empty. There were no signs that suggested that something had happened in recent years.