Trembling With Fear 11/01/20

A Strange Creature Looming by Sophie Kearing

At first I do little more than feel sorry for myself and wait to be rescued. But by my second day on this god forsaken island, reality sets in. I could die before I’m rescued.

A jungle animal could kill me. 

A tsunami could plunge this entire landmass under a deluge of shark-infested ocean. 

I could starve. 

I’m hungry enough to prioritize finding food. I am not hungry enough to target anything living, like the enormous beetles that are currently the bane of my existence, or the fish that venture close to the shore. I stare at a cluster of coconuts high in a tree. They don’t look very appetizing, but from what I understand, you can both drink and eat from a coconut. I have no clue how I’m going to get myself one of those gruff brown orbs, but I know that I must. 

I wander around in search of fallen coconuts. This is when I find the first body. It’s a dead man, belly down, the side of his face pressed into the loam. His features are arranged into the contours of abject terror. There’s a long, smooth trail originating from some unseen point in the jungle and disappearing into his mouth. Is that… a snake track? Is that possible? My mind races with imagery of a thick, muscular serpent winding its way into this poor man’s stomach.

I heave. Nothing comes out.

I heave again. My mouth is filled with a nasty, acrid taste. 

Though I can’t bring myself to search the man’s pockets, I do snatch up his machete.

The sun is setting when I find a coconut tree whose fruitful canopy is level with a verdant plateau. By the time I make my way to the edge of this fortuitous shelf, it’s dark. I manage to hack free a trio of coconuts with one hand and catch them with the other. I have no clue how to make a fire, so it’s strictly by jungle-filtered starlight that I crack into the stubborn fruit, drink its oily offering, and scoop out some of its fragrant innards to eat. I gag at the odd texture and taste. Well, I guess I can’t expect coconuts off the tree to taste like coconut cream pie.  

Come morning, I wake to a sour stomach. It’s the kind of feeling I usually get when I haven’t eaten in so long that I’ve transitioned from hunger to nausea. Or maybe I’m just really thirsty. I decide that I’ll put some coconut water in my stomach, then go to the stream for some freshwater. I stab one of a coconut’s three pores with the machete’s tip and take a few pulls. I make my way down from the plateau and head in the direction of a stream I saw yesterday. I’ve never approached it from this direction, so the scenery is all new to me. I trip on something. 

It’s a leg. 

“Hello?” I say, trembling. “Hello?”

 When no one answers, I push aside some glossy green fronds to uncover exactly what I suspected I’d find: another corpse. It’s a man on his back, his belly torn into a maw of shredded intestines as well as cotton threads from his clothing. I pivot away from the desecrated body only to stumble upon another. This one is a woman lying in the fetal position, eyes bulging, mouth pulled into a heartbreaking grimace. The seat of her khakis has been reduced to bloody tatters. A sickening trail leads to the woman’s backside. I clamp my hand over my mouth. My stomach lurches wildly. This time, I collapse onto all fours. I upchuck burning, coconut-flavored liquid. 

My vision hones in on perhaps the most important piece of this puzzle: coconuts. Some have been scooped clean, some have merely been halved and abandoned, but all of them are unmolested by the sun in this lush, shaded area. There’s movement in one of the unharvested shells. I take a closer look. The fruit is teeming with tiny white larvae. Not maggots, but something barely detectable unless by targeted observation. Strings of saliva, bitter with realization, stream from my mouth. I clutch my stomach. Sure enough, I feel something twisting in there.

“No, no, no, no…”

Just when I think I could not be any more terrified, I hear a faint, unfamiliar sound. I look up. There’s a strange creature looming toward the top of a tree. Its small head bears the needle-like pupils, flat nostrils, and prominent fangs of a snake. But it has black ears, tiny arms sprouting from its scaled flanks, and a crimson tail that looks like a scorpion’s. The sound is coming from its tail, which must double as a rattler and a stinger. 

A pain shoots through my gut. Something inside me has torn. I fall onto my side, hot tears streaming down my face. Now that the creature knows I’m not a threat, it stops rattling and carries on with its day. It plunges its razor-like “stinger” into a coconut. Its body pulses obscenely as it deposits what I can only assume is a batch of eggs. I wish I could vomit. But an excruciating sensation is spreading through my torso, and I’m paralyzed by the agony. I am rendered mute by the shock. 

I think of many things in my last few moments. I think of the snake tracks in the loam. They weren’t entrance paths, after all. They were exit paths. I think of the off taste of the coconuts. Finally, I realize that a jungle animal really did end up killing me. But it wasn’t the vicious attack of a wild boar or the hungry gnashing of a big cat that did me in. It was the lethal spawn that I’d unknowingly consumed with hopes of survival.