Renee woke up to see the vibrant sun shining into her face. She was no longer pressed into Jon; in fact, Jonathan was nowhere in sight. She put her left hand over her eyes to shield herself from the sun. David was still on his stomach. She moved away from him; she could feel his warmth, and in the sweltering sun it was the last thing she wanted. Her dried lips cried out for a sip of fresh Water, and just as she was about to get up for one the many wine bottles they had filled with Water the night before, David’s arm reached for her. He pulled her back down. She could have relented, but she didn’t. She was too shocked. As she lay back down, he pulled himself closer to her, and she once again felt the heat of his body. And his skin, now so crisp. The Cheshire Cat’s mouth whiskers were not white; they were red. It was as if the damned Cat were peeling off.

"Good morning, baby," he whispered into her ear. He kissed her ear lobe, taking it into his mouth gently, and Renee stiffened. His hot breath flowed against the side of her face. The scratchy stubble invading his face rubbed against her. He moved even closer, his eyes closed, talking in his sleep. Renee couldn’t wake him up. Truth was, she really didn’t want to.

That’s why she didn’t protest as cuddled next to her, why she didn’t utter anything but a soft moan as he ran a hand up her thigh. She knew she wasn’t the one he dreamed of; she knew that what she was doing was wrong. Her cross was in the crevice between her two tan breasts, wide and contoured to her rib cage as she lay down. One of his hands reached up to caress her.

This had to be another one of her dreams.

She knew it was one of his.

He continued to talk to her softly, saying things she knew came from the countless numbers of romance novels he had read in lickety-split time. Only when he began to describe what he wanted to do to her did she start to think about Jon. Jon didn’t weigh nearly as much as David; he was far less bulky, less muscular. Never before had she felt such unbearing, warm weight lay on top of her. He stiffened against her with the speed of a young adolescent, in a matter of seconds, until he pressed almost painfully into the space just below her belly button. Then he brushed his lips against hers, his eyes closed, still entirely asleep.

When she kissed back, however, he woke up.

It took him a second, it seemed, to realize where he was. She felt that unearthly Finger again, but this time it didn’t happen softly. It felt as if someone had jabbed a finger into her eye, and she felt it so profoundly that her eyes watered. He jumped away from her, groaning in the pain resonating from his tight back. He cuddled into the sand, trembling, hands on his knees, rocking back and forth. He started crying. Before he covered his eyes, however, he looked around for Jon. Renee definitely noticed.

"I didn’t—I didn’t—I mean, I thought that you were—Shannon—I don’t know what’s wrong with me!"

"David, just calm down—"

"I don’t even know why, but I find myself waking up on top of you…the way Jon’s acting…these dreams I’m having…all these dreams… on this fucking island…" He gripped the sides of his head, tugging at his short blonde hair. Then, "I miss her, Renee. I miss her so bad. I mean, she hurt me, but I loved her." They sat in silence for a long time, until David finally asked Renee how she was, and apologized profusely. He was so very sorry for what had happened.

"It’s alright."

"Why didn’t you stop me?"

She found herself lost in his wondering gaze. She shook herself from it, and looked away. "I thought it would be traumatic—especially now—if you woke up in the middle of the dream. That’s how it is with dream walking. Coming back to reality from a dream that is so real can sometimes have major psychological repercussions." She was thinking fast, her mind tumbling over and over. "When you kissed me, all I could think of to do was kiss back, seeing as how if I didn’t you wouldn’t have woken up. I was wrong. When you actually felt me respond, it triggered something. For example, maybe I didn’t normally kiss you the same way—Shannon did. What happened just now was a thankfully mild condition of shock—considering the state you woke up to."

Funny how she could be so cold. David didn’t notice. Or so it seemed.

"I’d say. Waking up on top of your bud’s wife on a deserted island isn’t normal."

"No."

"So you’re okay?"

"Yeah. I think the question is, are you?"

He looked all around him: from the adjacent plane to the sparkling sea, to the stretches of beach, to the fringes of the forest, and finally back to Renee, still sitting on the sheets in a white tank top and short shorts. "No."

As David got up to get some Water, Renee winced at the boils on his back. Some were so burned that they had turned black. His back, muscular as it was, looked like the surface of Mars. If he wasn’t careful, the skin would get infected, and then what would they do? She would have to use It to heal him. Sometime soon. Otherwise, David would die of some fucking infection. Or, even if they did get off of the island, he would get skin cancer. Those boils didn’t look good.

They sat on the sand together. He tipped his head back and chugged the Water, then, wiping the excess from the rims of his mouth, gave it to Renee. She sipped carefully. When she was satisfied, she set it aside. "Look, David, I think I have something to heal those burns."

He scanned her with his eyes, and again she got the impression that he had known what she was going to say. She fought the impulse to narrow her eyes at him. Instead, she brushed the hot sand from the bottom of her shorts. She searched through her bag for the simple sun block she had thrown carelessly into the suitcase. Only SPF 40, but with a little help from It, it would become the most fucking effective sun block ever used. Now, if she could just pull it off. She paid careful watch for the Finger as she approached him again. He knew. Somehow, he knew. Because she didn’t feel It as she sat behind him.

"Okay, now, just relax. This may hurt, but it’ll help."

Silence. "Okay."

She squirted some lotion on her hands, though both parties knew that it was just for show. She was kidding herself, but she still gripped to the remote possibility that he still didn’t know. Somehow, her secret was the only thing that kept her with a sense of self, a sense that she could, in fact, be useful to them. Most likely they would have died in the crash, all of them, had it not been for Renee. Did David know that? He might have thought that it was odd him, Renee, and Jon didn’t have as much as a scratch.

Then what the hell was that feeling, as if someone was holding her brain in the palm of their hand and squeezing? Paranoia, she assured herself as she began rubbing. She worked the greasy lotion over his shoulders and the nape of his neck. As her hands moved she tapped into her energy. The redness lessened. She moved over the boils gingerly. He didn’t make a sound as they shrank into nothing. His skin was once more restored to its beautiful state, and he leaned against her as she regenerated him. The pain dissolved slowly. When she was done with his back, she moved onto his arms. She finished healing his right arm, slightly squeezing the muscles. "Relax," she insisted. He was very tense. He couldn’t seem to help it. He apologized. Was it that morning? Or was it the fact that her ginger hands concealed the malicious smirk of the Cheshire cat?

Jon appeared from the woods, holding a Swiss army knife. His frizzing black deadlocks hung before his distraught face. Looming tall, the shadows concealing him, he looked so full of animosity that David jumped to his feet. "She was just putting some stuff on my burns—on my back," he muttered quickly. He moved away from Renee, but did not turn his back to Jon. There was just something wrong with his look, something not quite right about the light in his eye. That morning was hot, the sun as unrelenting as ever. Renee found herself sweating, not only from the sun, but from her agitation. Jonathan had not taken his anti-depressants in the last couple of days; if he had, he would have had to do it on an empty stomach, and that was simply too risky for them to attempt at that time. When he had to eat, he had to eat. Enough said. But now Renee was unsure it was safe for Jonathan. Or for her and David.

"Ya. I have burns, too. Will you put some of that stuff on it? You guys, I have something to show you," Jon started finally. A light had switched, something had changed, almost instantly. He put away the knife, into his pocket. Then, he started rummaging through the Water containers, gathering up things.

"Like what?" Renee asked meekly. Jon may have decided not to fight the battle, but there was still a war. She would still have to explain herself to him later…

They spent the entire day packing up essentials. They cleaved apart several coconuts, drying strips and putting them into knapsacks. They caught fish with the line and hook they’d found in the plane, and dried those out as well. They left them out in the open, on a suitcase in the sun. They had long ago discovered that they didn’t have to worry about birds snatching the food from them. There were none. Jonathan proposed his plan as they all drank some fresh delicious Water and eagerly bit into fish strips and small anchovies whole. A month ago, the idea would have disgusted them. Renee had been a devoted vegan, but things changed quickly as she found that malnutrition was nothing to be messed with. Again an example of regressing to the primal human being.

Turns out, Jonathan had taken an early morning pilgrimage to the Waterhole. But on his way, he got lost and ended up near a rocky outlook on the opposite side of the island. It gained height as it went out, and from the pinnacle he could swear that he saw a stretch of land. So faint that it could be a mirage, but the twinkling in Jon’s eyes encouraged the other two stranded hopefuls. It was their only chance, and by God, they clung by it with dirty, callused fingers. Though David challenged the validity of the sight –someone had to do it—it was worth checking out. They decided to grab a couple hours sleep, then head off just before sunrise. They argued about the way they would get there, Jon insisting that they go the safe way and walk along the shoreline, which would invariably lead them there, though it would be an indirect route. David wanted to take a shortcut through the fringe of dense forest that separated the island’s opposite sides. David’s way was risky, considering that they might get lost. However, they wanted to come back as soon as possible, so David won the argument: they would take the shortcut. Everyone carried a blanket and their own rations. Finally, they cuddled together, in a feeble attempt to drive out the shivers.

It was still uncomfortable for Renee to sleep pressed into Jon, but she dared not challenge it tonight. David slept on his back for the first time in a week, uttering a satisfied groan as he did. He didn’t ask her how the boils looked; he knew that they were gone. Because he had worn a shirt all day—he didn’t want to get burned again—Jonathan had not noticed. However, he saw the versatility of David’s movement, no longer hindered by the tightness of his burns—and referred to the "miracle cream". It wasn’t miracle cream. It was just regular ol’ sunblock, of course. Renee—and, not to her surprise, David as well—let him believe that it was just that: "Miracle cream". Renee knew that somehow, someway, David had known (not found out, known) of her secret all along.

Renee hadn’t seen how David touched Shannon in the last moments of her life, how his skin split in correspondence to hers; how he began to die as she healed. No, Renee had been too busy praying for a surge of energy. If she had looked she would have seen the odd way that he trembled as the very essence of Shannon left, the last traces of his wife’s conscious thought withering into blackness. She did, however, feel the way a Finger occasionally probed her mind. She had her own suspicions.

It astounded David, made him nervous, vulnerable. No one had ever been able to detect him.

Because, like him, she was not normal. Never had been.

However, neither of them, despite their abilities, predicted what would transpire as they slunk into the woods, cool dew slithering down the large tropical leaves. To preserve their Water, they licked the moisture from the foliage as they made their way. They ran their tongues across parched lips when a stray droplet fell from the canopy above. Even when the cruel sun came up, it viciousness was hampered, for they were in the shadow of the forestry. David led the way with an uncanny sense of direction. Jon was close behind him. To direct him, though it was clear that, for some reason, David didn’t need direction. Renee had a feeling that it had always been that way.

She brought up the behind, lugging her possessions with firm muscles. Funny how struggling to survive made one very brawny in a short time. She was in better shape than she had ever been. Same thing with Jonathan. He had not been able to smoke. His nicotine deprivation was making him more than a little agitated (there had been fights between him and Renee; she wouldn’t let him use his lighter to light his last three Marlboros; she had taken the cigarettes and thrown them out to sea to his utter horror). He had muscles now. David’s physique was improving, becoming even leaner than before. They sweltered as the sun made their environment humid and warm. Renee pulled out a rag and used it to wipe her face, staining it yellow.

For about half an hour of stumbling along roots and getting bitten by nasty insects, Renee feared that they were lost. Every turn, every tree, started to blend together. David assured them otherwise, so confident, but she wasn’t the only one who was afraid. In Jon’s eyes were the finest traces of doubt. If they were lost—how long had it been since they left? An hour? Maybe two? That was an awful long time to traverse an island as narrow as this one. Obviously, they weren’t making great time. Occasionally, one of them fell into a tree, or a wicked branch whipped someone’s face (mostly this happened to Renee as the two men pushed through the dense foliage. They would always apologize nicely, but it still pissed her off). Once Jonathan stumbled and fell flat into David, knocking them both into a thorn bush. No hard feelings, they assured. Through gritted teeth.

All of them were on the verge of screaming "Eureka!" when they finally reached a clearing.

It was more than just a clearing; it was a meadow. Jonathan patted David on his bloody back. "This is it. You were right, man," he said, in a warm tone. The warmest tone, in fact, that Renee had ever heard him use with David. Jonathan wasn’t an overly emotional person—unless he was onstage, that is. Onstage, he became a monster, yelling screaming, crying, swearing. In interviews and in real life, he was seemingly quiet and shy. A demon overtook him while he was performing.

And when he didn’t take his medication. Or smoke his cigarettes.

There was no telling when KoRn would perform next, but as the three stranded unfortunates sprinted into the clear meadow, their bags heavy against their backs, they could have cared less. Jonathan assured that they weren’t far now; they were a bit to the east, but if they walked along the valley a little ways, they should begin to see their destination. So they walked along, in a diagonal, heading across the meadow. The air was salty with ocean mist. Never again would they associate that smell with pleasure; no, that was a distant possibility. The recurring smell depressed David, for it was the smell where he had been arduously struggling to survive, the smell that had permeated him as his wife died. He had searched her mind, forcing himself through every crevice, for a trace of life.

Never when using It had he come in contact with such sludgy gray emptiness. Never. It had been as if his very boxy, large hands were sifting through slime, as if he had been eating her very brain in desperation.

He shivered as Jonathan broke into a cheery whistle.

Renee began to sing, though she panted. Her bag was pulling muscles in her back. The knee-length meadow grass itched her bare caramel knees. She was more humming than singing, but her calming voice soothed the other two travel weary adventurers. Her shoulders were shrieking in pain as the burden continued to slow her down. Focusing, she lifted her baggage with her mind. Her sore back began to feel better. A lot better. And she hummed a little more loudly.

"HEY! What the fucking hell?!" David cried, astonished. He leaped backwards, crashing into Jon. Renee was so focused on lightening her load that when Jonathan banged into her she fell smack onto the ground. Beneath the two men, their weight overwhelming. The grass that was once at her knees now scratched her face, dull blades. Insects began crawling through her slick black hair. She screamed when she felt something furry scamper past her, the claws of the dog-size animal sinking into her face. Blood clouded her eye as one of its nails penetrated her iris.

She screamed.

"What the fuck, David? What the hell was that—thing?" Jon asked, rolling off of Renee. He helped her to her feet. Her knees were shaking. She kept her hand in front of her face until she was sure her wounds had healed.

"I don’t know. It just like came out at me. The motherfucker bit me, goddammit." He pointed to two rather deep marks on his calf. The thing that had bitten him had done it with two very sharp front teeth.

Jonathan looked at Renee. "Well, baby, looks like we aren’t the only animals on this island after all."

Renee ignored him. She knelt beside David. Infection was the one word that flittered through her mind. "It looked furry—You alright, David?" He nodded as she checked out the wound. She ripped a piece of cloth from her own clothing, and wrapped it around his leg. By the time the cloth was securely tied, David’s wound was gone. "What do you think it was, Dave?" she asked. "You get a good look at it? I know it has paws. One nearly came down on my face." Ha. Nearly.

"Why, can’t you analyze the bite?" Jonathan asked. He was hoping that she’d fish up some biological mumbo-jumbo.

She just shrugged. "All I can tell is that it has two very sharp front teeth. It was a mammal. Could be an opossum, beaver, something like that. A member of the rodent family."

"Rodents. You mean, rodents, as in mice," David said. He shivered. He hated mice.

"Are you saying that that big thing could have been some kind of freak giant mouse?" Jonathan. Again.

"Perhaps. Noting that the ecosystem here is rather unorthodox, I wouldn’t say it’s an impossibility. But most likely it’s a beaver or opossum or something."

As they stood up and began walking again (David pretending to limp slightly), the same thought flittered through their heads, fueled by dawning hunger: whatever that thing was, was it edible? None of them ventured to suggest it, but Jonathan took out his Swiss Army knife. If he saw another one of those fuckers, he was gonna eat it. Jon was sick of fish. He wanted meat, goddammit, and there weren’t going to be any cow farms on the island anytime soon. He could just imagine the juicy tenderness of the meat, hot and filling, swishing around in his mouth. His stomach agreed audibly, rumbling in encouragement.

Sadly enough, they didn’t come upon the vermin again. When the sun was at noon, they spotted the precipice that Jonathan had seen. And they started running. Sprinting. David pulled ahead, so fast that Jonathan had to drop his backpack to stay several feet behind him. He was yelling something inaudible, frantically. Renee kept up with them, using It to pick up Jonathan’s bag.

Until everything fell apart.

It happened in a millisecond, but to David it seemed all too slow. He felt his feet misgiving him; a rock tripped him. The blanket of thick grass ended abruptly to reveal a ravine whose bottom blended into darkness. Before he could right himself he was pitched headfirst into the ravine. He fell for about ten feet. As he fell all he could see was the light above him vanishing. He searched for a scream, but there was nothing in his breath to herald more than a whimper.

No.

Something whipped his arm, and he reached for it blindly. A twig. He wrapped both of his gnarled hands around the thin twig, which he marveled could hold his weight. He had been bracing himself for the sickening crack of his body against the jagged rocks. Bracing his soul to become the sludge his wife’s had been. Bracing himself to once again taste the blackness he had so clearly foreseen.

"Help!" he screamed, in a high-pitched, shocked cry. When he looked up, there were two faces.

He realized why the twig was holding him: Renee was leaning over the lip of the crevice, her hand reaching down for him, her eyes shut tight. Her outstretched hand was shaking, the muscles taut. Jonathan looked at her for a brief moment and then screamed down back at him. "David! David! Dammit! I tried to tell you—"

"Jonathan!"

Jonathan suddenly disappeared. He was yanked back ferociously. David saw Jon’s legs as they swung out over the ravine, his yells echoing into the darkness. Renee swirled away, her black hair an arc, and screeched. "Jonathan! Jonathan!!!"

A hiss, as dry as desert sand, filled David’s heart with dread, along with the sound of Jonathan’s body being pulled across the ground. Then, the crackling of bones. An even drier sound met his ears when his twig snapped. Gravity took its toll. "Oh Shannon," David whispered. He took in a sharp breath and winced.

"NO! NO MORE!" he heard Renee cry desperately. David was yanked up, so fast that he got whiplash. His stomach dropped as if he were on a hell-driven elevator. Up, up, up to the lip of the ravine. His muscles spaghetti from shock, he pulled himself over the lip with his last tidbits of strength. Renee was ten feet away. Her eyes were white. Pure white, her dark almond irises gone. On the other side of Renee, farther into the valley, was a humongous black snake. How long it was, David had not the mind to guess, but it was big enough to wrap around Jon and squeeze the life out of him. His head was in its wide mouth, and the cracking of bones were Jonathan’s skeletal system buckling under the sinews of the snake. Renee sprinted towards it. A dozen large rocks arose from the sea of yellow grass, Renee hollering in fury as they gained speed, every one soaring towards the serpent.

"Renee!" David cried. In the dust next to him was the knife Jonathan had been carrying. He shot a picture of it into her mind. Renee instantly swirled around. David chucked the knife at her. It would have stabbed her in the chest—had she not diverted it. It arced upward, the blade glinting in the sun, before it landed square in the serpent’s fiery rouge eye. The rocks pounded against the snake with several sickening thuds. The serpent loosed its grip on Jonathan’s head to hiss once. Then, its head dropped on top of Jonathan’s limp body. The creature’s taut folds parted, limp. Renee sprinted to the animal’s side and freed Jonathan. He was unconscious. Sharp teeth marks from the snake bordered his face, slimy with saliva. He was a package of skin and flesh, his bones shattered. He wasn’t breathing.

Renee collapsed next to him. David stumbled to her side, tears sprouting in his eyes. He caught Renee as she nearly fainted. "Renee, come on, you gotta do this. You gotta." He closed his eyes. Probed Jon’s mind. "He’s not dead—yet." He guided her unsteady hand over his body. Slowly, Jonathan was healed. His bones reassembled, his rib cage once again rising in his chest, organs forming from ruptured tissue. But he still wasn’t breathing. Renee was weakening. "I can’t do it," she squeaked, her eyes returning to an almond. She sounded like a child. "I can’t."

"Yes, you can. Just get him breathing again."

She rubbed her hands together.

Nothing.

She prayed for something, aloud this time, David’s strong hands squeezing her shoulders. And she found something, nothing more than a brief surge. It was enough. Jonathan coughed up oozing blood a couple of times. Winced. Then, taking in air shallowly, fainted again.

Renee collapsed in David’s arms. Her eyes closed.

Jonathan couldn’t live long with his remaining wounds. But David could. He did what he had done—or tried to do—to his wife: he took Jon’s wounds, and made them his. Absorbed them. He hadn’t even known that he could do it until he had done it to Shannon. He had to do it again.

This time, he did it for Renee.

He placed his hand on Jonathan’s chest.

The pain heightened gradually until it became intolerable. The only thing that kept David going was watching Jonathan rejuvenate. David gritted his teeth when his arm snapped. The jagged bone flew from his own arm, right through the Cheshire Cat’s grin, blood spurting into the yellow grass. He crumbled to the ground. Pain erupted in his face, red and hot, as the wounds from the snake’s teeth arose in his own face. He laid there for hours, panting, the insects crawling into his wounds, making them sting as they crusted. He could only hope that Renee would wake up; and that, when she did, she would have the energy to heal him. Otherwise, he would die. Jonathan was fully healed, but there was no telling when he would surface from oblivion. David found himself listening for the snake beside them to reawaken, or for another one to come along, searching for a feast. Was this how it would end? Was this how it was supposed to go for David, Jonathan, and Renee? David knew, from reading her, that Renee’s eyes had never turned white when she used It. What did that mean?

The pain began to mess with his head. Above his face appeared myriads of green, red, and purple. Interesting, he thought. And laughed. Laughed so hard that he began to cough up blood, and had to turn his face to the side. The ants crawling all over him reveled in the crimson, as if it were tequila and David were throwing a pool party.

Hehe.