Amazing Island

⚠️ Warning, this story contains graphic content, but like all literature it’s worth a read.

The secret was simple, make them believe that the island was amazing and they would do anything to visit. The government of Amazing Island knew that if they could sell this one idea and the people believed it that they would come at any cost. 

What you have to understand is that the people on Amazing Island were not amazing at all, they just held the secrets of making people believe that the only way to feel amazing was to come to Amazing Island 🏝. 

It took twelve months to pass before people started noticing something strange going on because the people who would visit would come home and try to imitate everything they witnessed on this island. It was like a cult, because some people wouldn’t come back at all. If they saw someone making a movie on the island, they would try it, if they saw someone break dancing on the island, they would try it. It was clear that something strange was going on on Amazing Island. 

People would report about strange lights from flying saucers, walking octopuses and spying spiders. Dolphins 🐬  that could speak many different languages, trees with giant fruit and humans with purple hair.

After numerous reports of some people visiting the island and never returning, Paul decided to go investigate. What he found on his journey was like a gateway to another world. He found himself in a trance when the natives of the island 🏝 kept serving him the coca leaf. Too much to handle, Paul found himself passed-out naked on the beach while the natives tied him to an abandoned barge while chanting in front of a huge statue shaped like a goat. Every time Paul would scream the natives got louder. This was the secret of Amazing Island, that remained untold. Kidnappings, sex slaves and human sacrifices to awaken savage gods. Paul screamed but no one could save him. Paul had never believed in God, he was an atheist his entire life until he became a captive to be sacrificed by the natives of Amazing Island. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed tribal women dancing half naked. Paul screamed for God to save him as the natives began cutting away at his skull. “Lord help me please,” he screamed noticing the blood dripping from his head. Not long after screaming for God’s help his country’s Navy came in to rescue him. 

Once the story broke about Amazing Island 🏝 no one ever visited there again, but what ever gateway they opened, it could be seen shining like a bright purple light in the night sky from afar. 

Beware when you see or hear about amazing things my child because behind closed doors could be a secret that might be too much for you to handle. 

At their altar there was a table with humans singing hymns. They painted a picture of utopia and drank blood sacrifices in the name of their king. Beware my child, for the pictures on their walls have changed colors over time and their gods are stolen. If you need proof follow the historical art. An amazing secret 🤐 for an Amazing Island 🏝.

Bounce

 I was content until my mental state collapsed...

It was like a voice that spoke to me when I was alone...

But it was the truth, actually most people are miserable... searching for something to keep their blood flowing...

I was no different from everyone else, I was a woke lonely schizophrenic, wounded from being out to sea for too long.

I thought I could walk on water but slipped and cracked my fragile skull on the ocean ice while a sailor named Peter left me for dead to save the ship.  

The truth is that sailors have no way off the ship in the middle of no where unless a helicopter comes to fly us back to land.

Gunshots flew by my face cracking the ice while I was trying to keep my balance and hang on to the helicopter...

Rescuing me from terrorist the helicopter landed on top of a building...

Unsatisfied while reflecting on the mental state of my people I jumped from the building, it was a skyscraper...

Falling...splat...I hit the ground.

Everyone who waited for this moment, everyone who knew I lost it just stood there and looked at my lifeless body put itself back together and bounce back up.

They all ran like hell, screaming like they’d never seen a man fall 88 stories and put himself back together.

I bounced back up, went home, cleaned my basement and said “screw it,” I opened up my own business in the middle of the ghetto.

My life was a train wreck, why end it myself, I survived an 88 story jump... “I must be here for a reason,” I said to myself talking down the robber who stood up my store.

I kindly told this fool, “What in the hell you ‘gon rob me, Super Jim’s Mart for? Don’t you know I just survived an 88 story jump. Do you need a job?”

He put the gun down and filled out an application. I paid that fool twenty dollars an hour to secure my store.

The truth was that the fall made me better.

It made me feel like if I could survive that, I could survive anything.

I became grateful after surviving that fall...

Humble is a better word...

I bounced back up and lived forever.

In the end, I was the last man standing...

Jungle Jim, standing on an elephant watching the sunrise, the only man on earth to defeat death and live to tell about it.

Every time I hit the ground, I bounced back up.

Bounce

Security

Take a second or two to wonder why the rose has thorns.

Pinch a nerve and feel a section of the body go numb while another part becomes stimulated.

A gun, a dog, a bullet proof vest, and surveillance only for a sense of security.

Whom or what are we afraid of?

A child wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to sleep with mommy and daddy.

Is a wall made to be climbed?

Does a world of threats teach us to sleep with one eye open?

A military guard stands watch.

Bodyguards hovering over the people with plenty.

A pathway through a dark alley with the thought of reaching a safe haven playing over and over again in the mind.

Will it ever end?

Will we ever get to stop running and hiding from them, it, he or her?

What will it take to be comfortable?

Confusion in the wild.

Darkness in the wilderness.

Is security equivalent to peace?

Where did all of these enemies come from?

Saying no to feel safe.

The boss parking in the back.

The hard glass where the cash is.

All for a sense of security.

The Revolution

 It was about mid afternoon and I’d just given change to a man on the street. I have no clue where the man came from but after I gave him the money he said God bless you and then he gave me his soul with assurance.

I then proceeded about my day and attended a funeral and watched a preacher shaving the wool off of his sheep. He later sold the wool to make a profit. I’m assuming the buyers were either sinners or heathens because he drove off in a sports car while they went home to get drunk and merry. I’m not sure where he went, but I’d been left to record with my camera.

I then turned on the radio and listened to two political parties battling it out—one had the hammer and the other had the purse. I’m assuming they were fighting for power. I then proceeded to take my memory card out of my camera when it fell to the ground, I had to drop to my knees to catch it. Startled, I noticed my hand had been shaking, I guess something was bothering me. 

While on my knees, I noticed that the camera was made in another country. I scratched my head because I’d just saw a spy who’d been watching and taking pictures of me making T-shirts without slave labor or drug money. The spy ran off and I heard that he sold the images of me and everything else to his country’s government. I’m not sure if they were an enemy or an ally. 

After this revelation, I realized that I’d been alone in this particular fight. I later took my pictures and released them for the world to see and unknowingly started a revolution. My road ahead was now clear that I was in the middle of a jungle surrounded by people trying to hold on to their paychecks and if I sold the truth then all hell would be unleashed. In the end, the subjects in the picture were clear but the background was out of focus. Some people were standing but their habitat had been destroyed. 

The Revolution 

The Doctor’s Museum

 The door slams, Dakota watches her husband slam his stethoscope on the table,  “What’s wrong Ajay? Why are you so upset?”

“All of my patients are dying and I’m tired,” he explained.

“Are they really dying...if you tried to save them?” Ajay’s wife asked with a straight face.

“Dakota what the hell are you talking about? Stop with the games. I’m a doctor, my job is to save lives and nothing is working.”

Dakota shakes her head, “Ajay, sometimes people just need something to believe in, it helps them heal. If they die, does that make it your fault?” 

Ajay looks at the pictures of his family “Mrs. Shaw, her family did thank me. They sent me a gift card with their whole family’s signatures on it. I’m loved by all kinds of people from many different races, even when I’ve felt like a failure. Some of my patients who’ve lived have even named their kids after me.”

His wife begins to cough.

“Are you okay?” Ajay says.

She starts laughing.

“The power to believe in something is what heals people Ajay. It’s what motivates us to make miracles happen. Medicine can only do so much. I can guarantee that if you can find what made you become a doctor you’ll feel much better.”

Ajay paused for a second, “It was the war in Vietnam, my father was on the front lines and the doctor said it was in God’s hands when he died, and I wanted God to save my father, but he died right before the war ended. I became a doctor because I didn’t understand the point of him fighting if he had to die so young. I was driven to make a difference,” Ajay explained to his wife.

“You wanted to make a difference out of a misunderstood equation. Think of it like a museum, a child walks through inspired to carryon the legacy of others. No one knows what a child will become and that’s the most powerful thing. The child develops this belief, and it never dies unless the child gives up. Your museum is yet to be discovered, and you may never know how some child will find it to have something to believe in. The funny part is that you might not even know where your museum will be found. It’s a win win situation for you Ajay, why give up now? Death is only the beginning of another journey. If your face is the last face that people see before they die, most likely they’re preparing your legacy on both sides. One will be of what’s left here and the other will be to rest up from all of the trials and hard work you put in on earth. Why give up when you’re giving each side something to believe in?”

Ajay smiled, kissed his wife and carried on with his practice. It was too late to give up now. Sometimes the patient is what gave the doctors their strength. Their ability to mediate between life and death flowed through each generation to provide more determination to overcome the odds. The doctor set the standards which gave people enough determination to create a Doctor’s Museum for the world to see. If crazy is misunderstood, who would be crazy enough to try and fix the misunderstanding? Most likely the person trying to solve the problem.

The Doctor’s Museum

The Losers Club

 The fire to lose sucked the life out of people and there was no one better at it than Edward and his brother Willie. These brothers were so good at losing that they started their own club. 

Willie approached the microphone that they would place on the bench and pickup, “Brothers, we are the scum of every sport, the reason for defeat. We die because we lose. When the game is on the line we miss layups, we drop passes and most of all we love to be booed. Brothers, I’d like to dedicate this first meeting to those who seek to separate us, those terrible winners who separate blacks from whites, democrats from republicans and girls from boys just so they can feel like winners. Little Jerry, it’s time to approach the bench and tell the story about how you got cut from the team.”

Little Jerry stood tall, “I knew the coach hated me because I was injury prone. So when I got healthy and he put me in in the fourth quarter I stuck it to him by missing the game winning layup and that cotton picking master cut me from the team.” 

The losers club cheered, they went crazy as little Jerry replayed the replay on his presentation screen.

“Look at his face fellas, look at me suck the life out of the most winningest team in college basketball history during Black History Month. My mother would be so proud of me,” Little Jerry explained as the losers club embraced him.

Edward approached the microphone in tears as they all cheered, “Good men, I’d like to first thank the losing president who gave us welfare and social programs to survive. I’d like to thank all of the women who try to get us for child support when we have nothing left. And most of all I’d like to thank every losing player cut from the teams that fuel those raging obsessed fans who give us hell. In closing, fellas, how does it feel to be forgotten? How does it feel to miss every winning shot? How does it feel to be assassinated for standing up to winners who cheat and take all kinds of supplements to make us look like the infidels? But most of all brothers, how does it feel to be losers? Brothers, there’s justice in losing.”

The Losers Club

The Goddess of Life

 It was a bitter cold winter night and I’d just listened to a man begging for cash for thirty minutes. I guess he didn’t believe me when I told him that I didn’t have any money on me. To be honest I’d been confused and left for dead myself. I’d just lost my first professional fight and after I paid all of my bills I only had enough money left to get through the week. Ironically, it was Black History Month and my dream of being remembered amongst the greatest was slowly fading away. No matter what you hear, the truth is that no one wants to sign a contract with a loser. I guess God must have had mercy on me because something strange happened to me that night in my dark room drowning in my sorrows. I’d been sitting in a chair listening to an old radio and that’s when it happened; I heard her voice. Her words were so inspirational, I had to find out who this woman was so I searched for her name on the internet with my phone. It turns out that her stage name was “The Goddess of Life” and her real name was Life Houston. I guess she was an up and coming gospel singer. Every word this woman sang gave me life. I swear, her words lifted my soul to the heavens. I needed her. I left everything, my house, my car, “everything”. I spent the majority of what I had left to get to her once I received enough information about her whereabouts. There she was, singing at a church in the slums of Liberty Ohio. It turns out that her father was a preacher and I got word from some of her followers that she’d never been touched by a man, they told me she was a virgin. I know this was none of my business, but I guess she was the new main attraction. In the middle pews I sat, a no good fighter who’d been battling a porn addiction, and obsessed with someone I’d never even met. The truth hurt me more than anything—I was not worthy of a pure soul so I left only to hear her voice singing as I exited the church. For some reason a tear fell down my face, for I never truly had a friend, my mother was an alcoholic, my dad was a womanizer, and my first wife gave birth to someone else’s child while we were married. Something changed in me on the day I heard her sing and I’m sure they noticed me in the pews when I got up and left. I never was a sentimental man, but “The Goddess of Life” saved me that day. She stood up there with her natural hair and no makeup, singing her little heart out. There was something about her spirit, all I needed to hear was her voice. Waking up in a hotel the next morning, I dusted myself off, picked up some good habits and aimed for my goal to make Black History. She gave me life, nothing more. 

The Goddess of Life