No. 303

The man washed ashore with the high tide. He crawled a short ways out of the water before he collapsed.

It was dark when he woke up. He coughed, spraying sand from his mouth. Rolling to a seated position, he tried to see where he was. In the moonlight, he could only make out a line of palm trees beyond the shoreline, bordering the edge of a black jungle.

The man was alarmed to realize that he couldn’t remember how he’d arrived at this place, or even his own name. A wave of terror gripped him.  He instinctively curled into a ball and worked his way into the sand.

Morning took a very long time to arrive.

Dawn brought a new visitor. A large lizard, about the size of a cat, had evidently sensed the castaway and had made its way down the beach toward the man. The reptile was about to take an exploratory bite of the sleeping human when a rock hit it in the head, ricocheting off the scavenger, and striking the man in the chest, as well.

The lizard scurried away, and the man woke up with a jolt. He squinted in the bright sunshine. There was another person on the beach. It took a moment for the man’s eyes to focus.

“You’re safe now,” said the naked woman who knelt down beside him. “I’m Wendy,” she told him matter-of-factly.

The man was elated for the company. He was still very confused, but perhaps she could help him. “What happened to me? Where am I?”

Wendy’s head tilted slightly. “You don’t remember?”

“No,” said the man. “Nothing.”

“I saw your boat,” she explained. “I was thrilled. Finally, a chance to leave! But, during the storm, it hit the reef,” she explained. “I didn’t see anybody make it off.”

“Except, I guess, you,” she concluded.

The man lay back down. “Nobody else?”

Wendy answered his question with her silence.

“Was there anybody else?” asked the man.

“I don’t know,” she told him.

“What did you mean, ‘finally, a chance to leave’?” the man asked. “And where are your clothes?”

“Oh, you noticed,” Wendy laughed. Then she sighed. “You’re on an island. It’s remote. I was shipwrecked here a little over two years ago. Your boat was the first sign of humanity I’ve seen, since.”

The man felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “Two years?”

She nodded.

“Come on,” she told him, changing the subject. “We’d better get back to my camp. That lizard will be the least of our worries if we don’t return in time.” She took his hand, and began to lead him into the forest.

He took one last look at the empty beach before following her toward the center of the island.

“I don’t even know my name,” he confided to her as they began down the path.

She didn’t turn around, or slow down, but he could hear a wry smile in her voice. “Then I’ll have to call you Peter, for now.”