Part 1: Tragedy
This story is about a boy who lives in a house.
It is near the ocean, and the boy would every day go out to the waves and stare out into the never ending horizon of water. He was lonely.
His parents were both killed in a plane crash. He was alone in his house, and nobody would come and visit him.
He lived by himself in this house, and the house was all alone. No other houses are around. That is because this house is about five hundred miles off the coast of Virginia, on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. He doesn't know this.
The only way to get food is from the plane that used to bring goods to the island once a week.
The boy has no idea what day of the week it is, nor the year.
He is all alone.
So a ten-year old boy is standing on the beach, looking at the burning wreckage of the small cargo plane that just crashed onto the right section of the island about ten minutes ago. He had been running around collecting seashells when he heard a strange crackling sound from the sky. Then he saw the cargo plane explode, raining down pieces of burning metal and gasoline. His parents were strolling along the beach when what was left of the plane smashed right on top of them. They were killed instantly.
He stood staring at the wreckage, wondering if this was a dream. Perhaps it was, and if it is, then the fire won't be able to hurt him. He walked as if in a trance towards the blazing fire. The intense heat burned through his nostrils, but he kept going. In fact, he would have gone straight into the burning wreckage and burned alive. Whether it was God or just plain luck, the wreckage exploded once more, and the hot blast of wind engulfed the boy, lifting him off his feet and landing thirty feet away, his head colliding with a palm tree.
When he came to and realized that it wasn't a dream, and he found the charred bodies of his parents, he began to cry.
If you have ever lost a loved one, you know how this boy feels. He cried and cried until he ran out of tears, and then he realized how alone he was. When he was six he left his home in Virginia, and they came upon this island. But now he must find a way to get off.
Part 2: Escape
The boy found rope in the basement of the house, and went searching across the two acre island. In the middle of the island, there is a tree that grows the tallest, and when you climb to the top, you can see the ocean stretch for as far as the eye can see. This is where we find the boy, gathering branches off the tree. He had worked up a sweat, and his hands were getting slippery. But he needed to find two more good ones. He found them, and then slowly climbed back down.
He used the rope to wrap the long sticks together. He then laid a tarp above the raft, and threw it into the water. It floated, and it could work. He rushed into the house, and looked around. He found his backpack and filled it up with plenty of canned goods. He needs plenty of water as well.
He then set up a makeshift sail, which he made out of another tarp, and then he set sail. The raft splashed across the waves, and he felt a strange joy seeing the raft sailing away from the island, attached to the rope he held in his hand. He never climbed onto the raft, and he was scared to. There it was, bobbing in the waves, beckoning him to come and sail away. But no, not today. He pulled the raft back to shore, and trudged back to the house.
He was scared. For all he knew, the ocean could go on forever. But the plane came from somewhere, and he was going to find that place.
But day after day, he always ended up pulling the raft back to shore.
And then the house burned down.
He didn't mean to, but the glass lantern fell off its hook when he accidentally bumped it, and the wooden floor was set ablaze. He barely escaped with his life, and all the fire reminded him of the most horrible day of his life, the day his parents died. It all seemed like yesterday, when it was actually five years past. It was the night that his house burned down, five years after the plane crash, that he threw the raft into the water, and finally hopped aboard.
And the small island he has lived the past decade of his life on shrunk slowly into the distance, what used to be his home.
But it's not a home without a family, is it?
Coming soon: Part 3: Water, Water, Everywhere