THE ISLAND
You dig your paddle deep, breaking the glossy surface of the lake. Your canoe skims along, cutting a crisp seam in the water. Dig again, twist change, again and again and again. The island seems to grow. It almost leaps forward to meet you. And now, caution abandoned, you ram the shore and leap without thought to the crunch of the pebbled beach. Silence. Only your labored breathing interrupts the stillness. You feel a trickle of sweat moving down your spine. Can the answer truly be here? For once and for all and finally, will it be over? You move forward slowly, bent at the waist, eyes flicking from here to there. You balance on the pinnacle of alertness. You are aware of a reassuring presence, the knife you hold in your hand. How it came to rest there so pleasantly is a mystery you have no interest in solving. That it is there is enough. Into the density of undergrowth beneath the canopy of trees you move. A path! You creep along it to a clearing, and
there she is. You die.
