He watched big ships sail across the ocean, far on the horizon until night fell. Even then, in the dark, he still watched specks of light float calmly like ghosts, far, far away. Panda wondered where they had come from, where they were going; who they were… where this was.
They were great majestic sail boats, thick beamed and sturdy hulled. He had only ever seen the paper thin, athletic yachts that bobbed down in the local harbour. Never these great gallons, with what looked like cannons peering out from their ribs.
He could see the shades of black around him, and watched things move and dance, but really could tell of nothing more. They were just grains shifting over each other and mixing about. Panda turned his face up to the stars, clear, crisp, countless stars. He gazed at the moon, slim like a snakes smile, not offering him a drop of night time light to see by. He felt like he was galaxies away from his home, from his country even. While the beach was a familiar comfort, something that had been in-between his toes and rushing up to him for all his life and memory, the cold wind, the daunting amount of stars, the unfamiliar calls and cries of the wildlife; these were not anything he had ever experienced before.
His most important sense was his hearing, and he made sure to hear everything. The crash of waves, howls of animals, screams of prey and crunches of footsteps. He would reach around and curl his fist about some stone or wood, throwing it when those footsteps or growls came too close; which was often rewarded with a scream of surprise and unsure scuttles. He did not sleep a breath that night.
Just as it seemed that the animals had decided to leave him alone, the Sun started to stretch up into the sky, draining everything into a cold purple and chasing the weaker stars away. With the Sun giving him light to see by, even as weak and sleepy as this, he started see again. Panda stood and inspect the footprints of the night animals. There were teams of hoof and claw foot prints thrown about the sand, and it ran him a bad morning chill when he saw how many and how close they had actually been, every inch of sand had been packed down and something had been crawling within arm's reach of him.
He spent another lifetime along the beach, nights and days, horrible and deadly, every second and every turn; your life. He travelled West, always west, following the beach. He was hoping that a town or house will pop up out of the sand or the boats he had glimpsed on the first night sail back past him. He wondered, sometimes, as he crouch tense and bleeding, how long his maths teacher, or the top of his class would have lasted.
He was low, low, bottom of the barrel at school, better things to do he tells everyone, better things I can become. He gritted his teeth, not for the first time, at why it was only the unpractical book smart kids that got praised, why schools label students who had talents in other ways bad and useless. It offered him an anchor of sanity, thinking about school and friends, air conditioned class rooms and clean clothes.
He continued to dig into the sand, pausing and squeezing his eyes shut when a wave of pain struck. He had no idea why his body seemed to try and kill itself sometimes, unwilling suicide he thought darkly. Muscles that were strong from school sports pumped as they tried to bend to the demands even though they were weak with hunger and thirst.
Panda glanced about, he was convinced that he had slipped into madness, but he wasn't about to ignore the warnings his body was picking up on. He glanced up the beach, stopping in his dig for some buried, hibernating, ocean mice which he had watched other animals dig for and eat.
He was sure he was mad, but why, when he ate these scaly, gilled, mice did he fill up? Why, when he had approach the salt water drinking, sounded like lions, teeth like sharks, goats, the ones he had glanced up to see right now, why when he had approached them, (chanting, all in my mind, all in my mind), why when he had been attached, why had he bled? If it was all madness, then why was it real?
Panda absently lifted a sandy hand to touch his still fresh and bloody, wound along the back of his shoulder and arm. He watched carefully as the goat's young skipped about in the gentle waves and elderly bathed in the brief, warm sun. He quietly slipped into the trees, knowing that the goats didn't like to stray off the sand and onto the grass and leaf litter that carpeted around the trees.
He was feeling faint and a pounding headache had started to spread not only through his skull, but down his spine. He panicked, noticing other aches and pains, which, honestly, had been gathering in his body since the water carried him here. He was losing too much blood, he realised with a start. It had been nearly a day ago that he had been ripped open by the goat's jaws and the blood had been dripping slow and clotted like since then.
Stupid, stupid, why hadn't he worried when the bleeding had never stopped? He realised now that it wasn't even showing a hint of attempting to close over or scab. His bare feet fumbled and he just barely managed to catch a tree trunk and stop from falling. He couldn't pass out, he couldn't lie down. If he did, he wouldn't get a chance to bleed to death as he slept, because he would be torn apart and eaten before he had the pleasure of passing on his own accord. He could hear the giant vultures rustle about in the branches above him, watching him from their nests and perches. The goats also didn't like to come under the trees because that's where the vultures lived.
He needed to be awake, he needed to be healthy. He needed to be seeing and hiding from predators before they could sneak up on him. He figured that even though he seemed to be able to recover from death, it wouldn't do him any good if his body was strewn about numerous animals' digestive systems or smeared across the ground.
It happened about then, that he heard some annoying tune coming from deeper in the trees. No, it wasn't annoying actually, it was amazing, breathe taking. Panda drew towards it and followed it like a moth to a flame. Eventually, after a while of stumbling through the tight trunks of the beach side trees, he found them, a line of stick carrying, back packs perched along their backs, all singing a marching song together.
They started at him, covered in sand; sew through with mud, arms torn open; him. He started at them, ironed shirts; cotton socks yanked up, water bottle holding; them.
He collapsed. Some of them screamed, others went over to help him. The leader just rolled his eyes, another foolish tourist had through they could handle the two day nature walk on their own.
I came to realise that there was something of a language barrier happening between the hiking group and I. After many war's, see's, nan's and chi's I was pretty sure that these people were Japanese- eighth grade Japan studies was good for something after all, (besides the big boobed teacher who liked to lean over desks, hitch up her skirt, smack her lips and be caught in the toilets sucking on the PE teacher's neck.)
I didn't bother with wondering how the hell I had ended up in Japan. Because as it stands, there are goats prowling the beach like jackals and the car sized bird things that glare down at prey from their tree top nests.
I just want my home; I've wanted it since the first day in jail. I want the wind to carry my cigarette smoke away, I want the friends to run up and tackle me down, I want the cack faced Dutch lady who was getting her ninetieth sun cancer cut out. I wanted the douche bag grocery store loiterers who stubbornly wear their leather jackets in the midday heat, becoming shinny with sweat.
I want the festival girls who stare at the clouds too much and sigh as they day dream at the side of the class. I want the old war man who smirks at you and gets drunk before he's had time to become sober. I want the glum teacher who doesn't look too close at any of the black kids and lives in the drug dealer motel.
I want the button shirted, bespectacled documentary maker who was contracted to the town for six years to film the Wilder beast and nigh time birds. I want the deep eyed classmate who was just starting to talk to me, my friends, the air which has been ironed thin from the heat and the dusty streets of my beloved seaside city.
We walked with the sunset coming all around, smouldering across the entire heavens. I allowed myself to be pushed along, help, help, it's magnificent. Great bands of mist started to coil through the darkening air and beat against my goose bumped and crusty-with-dry-blood skin. A lady walking alongside me was fumbling as she stuck a crummy little band aid over one of many gaping wounds, a purple haired guy was offering me his water bottle and I gulped its tinted water down greedily.
Even after lights of a town came into view and the shelter of a roof tripped over my head. Even now, long afterwards, I cannot deny the images. I had died out there, when you have died and then painfully seizure alive again- you just don't glide away from your death place without scars. They remain with me like the yearnings of an addict, the feelings and the images; the pain and the animalistic instinct of survival.
My brain knew even now- no matter what the reptilian instincts said- that this was the best option by far. To hurry along with the strange group to where ever and walk in a way that hid my limp, I didn't want them to slow down just for my sake, because this was a blessing, this was guardian angles on a whole other level.
The first week was a hospital bed and a drowsy, heavy time, because they must have drugged me up. The second week was me lazily seeing the front page of a newspaper what sat on the nurses cluttered coffee table. Then the hours of fixated starting at the thing; Gol D. Rodger, smirking in his last picture as his executioners stood ready. This was a horrible, it had to be joke, someone must have printed it out as a joke and this isn't true. But it wasn't. Because I was stuck here- and the great pirate era had just begun. It's all melancholy now, and troubles and nights and crashing and dyeing fill my eyes now.
You begin to feel strange when you're surrounded by the delicate and slanted faces of the Asian people. After all, I was blonde and brown eyed and fair enough for the royal ball, but my arms were thick and my body broad with some black blood that's in there from somewhere. My face was rich in lines and the swelling curves that dignify the race of the African's.
The beach is the only place where I can sit and not feel the rising wave of insanity draw slowly towards me. I lived along the beach where I had come from- no; I live along the beach- blue and deep, gritty but pure. There is no doctors or speech tutors hanging around me, poking and prodding at me to check I'm still good and sane. There is a sprawling, spreading hurricane of black, black ink on the edges of my vision. When I concentrate on things, concentrate really hard, sometimes all I can see is squares of blue, white and that black, black ink.
It started when I saw the newspaper, I realise.
The waves do not bat an eye at the kid who is rolling his trousers up and easing into the foaming water. I watch his hands fly up when the waves spray up and fly droplets over him; I watch as with each crash of a wave against his thighs, he is slowly being peeled back.
To youth, to freedom, to that simple-minded joy that everyone cries when they learn they accidently forgot kilometres back down the highway which leads to adulthood. Maybe that's my problem.
I stand up, because I want to. I don't bother to wipe the sand of my shorts, because I don't want to. I throw myself into the sea and I wonder as I slip and slid around in the arms and breathe of it all- how many times have I died with this same sight and touch and smell? Now days, the ocean is the end of it all, the start of it all, the damn well reason for it all.
It builds you up until you've had enough, then it forced you to become. Something. Become something. You will become.
Now I don't see the black hurricane; now I've got whispers. But that's okay.