Beat of the Jungle Drums
I hear them now; the constant beat on their tan surfaces echoing in my mind like a thousand trumpets. It is overwhelming, the sound too loud to bear. The drums...the beat of the jungle drums. Oh, how they play with me, nipping at the border between sanity and madness, daring me to step just one foot forward...
But I know better. The beat of the jungle drums cannot entirely dispel my clarity of thought, and even a sliver of my sane mind is enough to keep me from going crazy. I do not understand why they torture me so. The reason is lost to me now, like everything tends to be nowadays.
I turn to the rusted iron bars before me and clasp my cold hands around their equally cold surface and reminisce. Just a while ago, I knew why it was that the forest drums tease me...taunt me, but not at this moment I don't. Just a while ago, I knew why I was locked up in the middle of an unforgiving isle, left alone to deal with my own rising insanity, but not at this moment I don't.
My grim face manages to form a wry smile as I put all my weight on the strong bars. As I see my own, hopeless reflection in the mirror opposite my cell, I am suddenly filled with anger, and I rattle helplessly at the bars, thrashing them with heated fury.
But it doesn't do anything. "Nothing does. No one does."
As I think about what I had just said aloud, the only noise that my ears have heard in a long time, my memory comes back to me, almost too fast to comprehend that I do indeed remember once again.
The beat of the jungle drums pierced my train of thought as they picked up again, this time with much more momentum. I grab my skull in annoyance as I isolate myself to the corner of the dingy cell, away from the little light that peeks through the small cracks in the ceiling-away from reality.
Then I think...again. Where did it all start? No, not there-that wasn't too long ago, I think. But you wish to hear what happened, how this came to be, no? I will tell you. Please, just let me recollect a little longer. My moments of sanity are all too precious...
