Fiction-stars

We are on an island that isn't quite real. It's a projection of an island, from very far off, kind of like the two dimensional universe in which we live. The key to the whole project is convincing ourselves that the island isn't a projection, but is, in fact, a functional island on which a person can gather pineapples and coconuts, build reasonable shelters from palm fronds and occasionally make a pass at one's neighbor.

I'd like to tell you more about the island, which is actually quite fascinating. However, the part that everyone always winds up interested in when I talk to them about the island is that all of the inhabitants, myself included, are dead. Honestly though, that's probably the most interesting thing I can tell you about being dead though. The primary difference between being dead and alive has to do with sleep deficit. When you're dead, you always feel as though you're getting just under six hours of sleep a night, which makes you a bit cranky and consequently you always feel as if you're in some kind of daze.

Being dead, you never actually catch up on your sleep. Of course, the real shi-ty part is that the resulting tiredness makes it pretty much the only subject that anyone talks about. Being tired isn't like having your leg shot off, which happened to a person or two here back on the mainland, where you can see the results and empathize. Everyone is always stopping over to ask about the shelter and how the tides are, but before long they're telling you just how tired they are as if you are not exhausted yourself.

I'm losing track of my thoughts, which is precisely the type of thing that you do when you're tired. It was last week, I think, that a few of us were out hunting one of the wild pigs that live on the island. We were all very, very tired. We tracked the pigs into a gully with a waterfall in it that was a limestone green, spilling among the rocks like the hair of young women that we'd once loved. We built a fire using sticks and fronds and a set of matches that someone had been awake enough to remember.

In the evenings on the island, if it's really an island at all, we talk about the places we'd been when we were still alive. One woman, who's name escapes me right now, always talks about the summers she used to spend in Nebraska, the summer thunderstorms that would roll in with curtains of rain and pools of lightning in the sky. We can tell stories like that for an hour or so, passing the time as the smoke plies its way through oceans of darkness. Eventually, someone mentions that they are tired. We set up our sleeping bags, or put our coats behind our heads and gaze up at the stars. None of us can sleep, so we sit in the silence, trying to think of what stories we'll tell another on some other night under the sky. The truth of the matter is that none of us have done anything, our memories too are projections, sent from a very far away place, maybe the very stars that lie above us. I am so tired.