WA-1 Draft 3

Loneliness. It wells up inside you like a fiery demon trying so hard to burst out of your heart, but at the same time trying to disguise itself by telling you it’s not what you think or know it is. Three hours on a lonely unnamed rock in the boundary waters on the Canada border. Watching every boat that passes you, hoping that it’s yours; knowing that it’s not, thinking that why would it be yours, they can’t see you, they don’t know you’re there. Even the spiders and ants that crawl over you have more of a family or connection to humanity than you do. Every tree has more friends that you, every bush has a better family. Loneliness. Like an overfilled pool. Reaching the critical level then spilling over into hysteria. Once it’s reached, can you ever go back, or are you scarred for life. Do you need a therapist for all your problems? Or can you handle them, until you erupt into a spouting volcano of doom and solitude? What do you do if you have to relive your worst fears for somebody you love? Can you cope with the loneliness for three hours if it’s out of ambition, or admiration? Is it as bad the second time? Or are you going to be left behind? The unknown soldier in the trench? That is the worst kind of loneliness.It’s only three hours you say? Well, let me tell you something. Three hours can be the longest period of time in your life if you don’t have anything to do, or nothing to hope for. There are only so many fish you can try to catch before they stop coming near you anymore. Only so many times you can carve your name into a tree for no one to see it. You could explore the whole island, but not when there is a towering wall of rock to climb, and no conceivable way around it. Only two hours left…It’s almost crippling, a surge of emotion so strong that the initial shock can cause tears cascading down the bearer’s many faceted mask. An emotional keep has been taken, a stronghold overrun. The troops of loneliness will strike at the opportune moment, when the defenses are being repaired, when the portcullis is raised. One hour left…You step off the boat, and watch it sail off into the distant sunset. Three hours of intense emotion. Bouts of insanity and cruelty are imagined and carried out…a soul fixed on one star in the sky, a lonely light in the universe. It seems brighter than it is. A light shining on a rock in the water. What could happen out there? Something bad, and no one knows until the shining light has suffered an excruciating death. Mauled by a mountain lion, then bled out for hours. Bitten by a snake, feeling the poison seep threw his veins. Losing feeling in his limbs, then finally passing out from the pain. No one would know. No one would care until three hours from then. They would never find you. Never. The loneliness is almost painful. Almost unbearable. Too much. Any minute now…But at last the boat comes, and all my worries sink back into the loneliest rock in the world. They stay there like a hidden predator waiting to latch onto an unsuspecting victim. To open the flood gates of loneliness in their heads. But you don’t have to worry about that until next time!!