I want to present my story to the local community. The idea was inspired by the upcoming The Forest, Rust, Lord of the Flies, Fontrier’s Dogville, and also that letter where “wooden houses are bent” and “gouge out an eye”… and in general a lot of other things.

During the crash, parts of the plane scattered a considerable distance from each other. I flew in the one closer to the tail, although now the tail lies on the next hill. A burning turbine landed nearby. There were probably a hundred passengers on this plane, but few survived the fall, and those who survived fell into the hands of the aborigines. We usually find them tied to posts and stabbed to death, or only their bones remain – the rest is eaten by the savages.

The first people I met on the island were these three – Karl, Otto and Martha, fellow survivors. I’m lying pinned down by the seat, an oxygen mask is lying next to me. I realize what’s going on. Smoking wreckage, sun overhead, unfamiliar jungle around. There are some things everywhere: bags, clothes, cosmetics, underwear, phones, pencils, my glasses, one of the glasses is closed. And corpses.

For the first time I got out of my hometown – and on you! Next to me is someone’s burned head. It’s strange, but I feel neither fear nor disgust. Everything seems to be in a fog. My ears are ringing, and I muffledly hear someone shouting:

-This one seems to be alive. Get him out.

Four hands help me get out from under the seat. They wonder if I’m hurt. No, I’m fine.

At that moment we had no time for dating, but later I find out that the pretty girl in a skirt and with a bob haircut is Marta, and the shaved boy’s name is Otto. They were the ones who pulled me out. The one who gave the instructions was Karl, a stubbly guy of about twenty-five or thirty. Immediately after the fall, he got hold of a pistol somewhere, which allowed us to avoid the fate of being eaten by cannibals.

So, I successfully survived the disaster with only scratches and bruises. After further digging through the rubble, the four of us are convinced that there are no more survivors. With our consent, Karl outlines a plan of action. First, collect everything useful that survived the crash: food, medicine, clothes, and so on. Secondly, determine our location (we are sure that we are on an island). Next, we don’t know how soon help will come, so we need to find a suitable place to stay for the night, and besides..

We are interrupted by some noise. I notice movement in the forest. Otto and Martha look at each other. Carl takes the gun.

-So, you two stay here, and you – he gives me a sign – follow me.

We are approaching the forest. Karl shouts loudly: “Hey, who’s there?? Come out, you have nothing to fear.» Nobody answers. Among the trees I see silhouettes of people. Karl shouts: “Come out, otherwise I’ll shoot.”!»

There are about twenty of them here. The only clothing they have is a loincloth, they are holding spears with stone tips, their dark skin matches their milky eyes. They silently watch. One of them points his finger at me and says something.

We get closer and see: this place seems to be their camp, there are several huts, a fire, some drawings are scratched on the boulders. In the middle of everything are three pillars dug into the ground, to which other passengers of the plane are tied. Killed passengers.

-“Fuck you,” Karl says quietly, almost in a whisper.

One of the savages, shrieking shrilly, rushes at us with a spear. After hesitating for a second, Karl shoots. Shoots again. Cannibal falls dead. Silhouettes move between the trees, showing uncertainty.

Karl yells: – well, let’s! Try to reach me! Well, who would risk fighting a white man??

I grab the spear of the fallen, preparing for the next attack. Savages, however, act differently. At first they slowly retreat, facing us, and a moment later they are already running as fast as they can, hiding in the forest.

We carefully explore their site. The thought suddenly occurs to me that we may not live long enough to see the rescuers arrive. However, I am in no hurry to share my pessimism with Karl. He looks at the rock paintings left by the savages. One depicts plants, animals and people with spears running after them – apparently a hunting scene. On the other there are also people with spears, but here they are sitting in front of a large fire. Above the fire is a man with only one eye open.

Karl looks at this man. Then he looks at me.

I tell him it’s time to go back. Marta and Otto were probably scared by the shots.

-“Hell, if they attacked,” Carl says, checking the magazine, “I just wouldn’t have enough bullets.”.

We meet two more survivors when we are looking for a place to stay for the night. We understand that the savages may return and it is better to move as far away from the crash site as possible. Having loaded four bags with what we can carry, we leave.

There are two of them. They settled on a hill near the wreckage of the plane. A woman of retirement age, who appears to us as Greta, sits hunched over on the ground. An old man lies nearby. Greta says his name is Friedrich. He is disabled and cannot walk. His wheelchair lies among the rubble. In addition, he was injured in the accident. He is unconscious, his torso is wrapped in a bloody bandage.

“I gave him some herbs and he felt better,” she says. – Thinking it helped, although I don’t understand medicine.

These people are joining us. We build a stretcher from a fragment of a wing, which Karl tells me and Greta to carry. Now the old man’s weight is added to the heavy bag of supplies.

Soon, having found a suitable place, we decide to set up camp. The provisions that survived the crash will last for two to three days. After consulting, we decide to stay here until help arrives.
This is how we spend the next couple of days. We sleep on the ground, covering it with bags, rags and dry grass. We try to constantly keep the fire burning. Martha and Otto sleep hugging each other – it’s easier to keep warm this way. I’m constantly shivering, even during the day, in extreme heat. Am I really sick with something?? I’m talking to Greta.

-“It’s just stress,” she replies. – It will pass soon.

Greta herself spends most of her time caring for Friedrich. She tries to improve his condition by alternately giving him medications from the first aid kit and herbs collected in the forest. She wakes him up to give him medicine, the rest of the time he sleeps. In his sleep, the old man sometimes mutters something incoherent.

Otto found a rabbit in the forest. The guy constantly carries it in his bosom or on his shoulder. One day Otto tried to feed his animal some of our supplies. Karl found out about this and spoke out sharply against the squandering of provisions. This never happened again.

Having a lot of free time, we tell each other about our past. Carl, for example, was a car mechanic and he misses his job and his girlfriend. Greta often talks about her grandchildren. Marta remembers her family fondly, especially her father.

As for me, I never had a father. My whole family has always been my mother. She was with me all my childhood, now she is constantly in hospitals. If one disease is cured, another will appear. The medical bills are exorbitant, but she pays them herself. She didn’t tell me where her money comes from. I myself would never have paid them with my salary as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital.

You may not believe it, but I love my job. Although the pay is low, I find some peace in seeing the sick. And there are almost no problems with them. Except for the time when one of them stuck a broken spectacle frame into my eye..

However, conversations like this help us maintain an optimistic mood in the camp. We all experienced the crash differently, but over time everyone calms down, and even my chills gradually disappear.

I don’t remember at all what happened before I got to the island. That is, I remember who I am, I remember the people I knew in that life, I remember my town. But I can’t remember how I got to the airport, how I got on the plane, what I was doing, when the accident happened, who I was flying with.

Karl tells Otto and I to go back to the wreckage and bring back anything we might need. He himself
decides to go hunting, and returns a few hours later, all tired, dirty, having spent two more cartridges, but without prey.

The three of us are going on the next hunt. It’s getting towards evening, and the longer we wander, the darker it gets. By the time we meet Hans, it’s pitch black, so it’s not surprising that he mistakes me for a savage and tries to kill me.

Before the crash, Hans was a small office clerk, and the more surprising is how he survived all this time alone. This guy is a real killer. He built himself a spear from a mop stick, duct tape and a tin can, which he cut with a can opener.

We find him because he lit a fire. Thinking that this is a cannibal camp, we carefully sneak up. I gave the spear that I took from the savage killed by Karl to Otto, so now all I have as a weapon is a cobblestone. Despite the fact that we are moving almost silently, Hans detects us.

I only see a silhouette flashing by the fire, and the next moment his homemade spear is flying over my head. Karl hisses at us to surround the parking lot. I move along the forest belt and hear a shot – it’s Karl – and then swearing is heard from the other side. In a familiar language.

-“Yes, these are our own,” says Otto.

We get closer and see that this is really not a savage. He is wearing a man’s white shirt and expensive trousers, rolled up to the knees. A bullet wounded him in the arm. She’s stuck inside and he pulls her out with his fingers. We help cauterize the wound to stop the bleeding and give him water.
He was roasting some small animal on the fire. Karl orders it to be divided into four. There is no point in going back to camp in the dark, so we decide to spend the night here.

I wake up before everyone else. Morning, cloudy sky. First of all, I go out of my way to the side of the forest belt. You have to look carefully at your feet – Hans said that he had placed several traps around. It’s a miracle that none of us hit one of them at night.

A man sits at a metal table in the middle of a field. I recognize him immediately – gray hospital uniform, stooped, heavy gaze, gold-colored glasses with thin frames. I’m afraid, I know what’s going to happen, but I still wonder if he needs help.

His gaze makes me want to fall through the ground, through the marble floor of our hospital. Damn, of course he needs help, he’s mentally ill! He breaks the temple of his glasses in half. Now he will stick it in my eye, but I still come closer..

I shake my head, blink my only eye several times, and the obsession passes. There is no hospital, iron table or patient. There’s a savage standing in front of me. He is tall, his face is painted with some kind of war color. Before I have time to come to my senses, two of his fellow tribesmen appear from behind and grab me by the elbows.

From the direction of our overnight stay, I hear screams and sounds of struggle. Hans stabs one of them with his tin, Otto swings him away with a spear, Karl bludgeons them with a pistol. I was grabbed and quickly carried away. There is no chance to escape, but I resist, and this slows them down. The third one, the one with the painted face, runs nearby. One of my captors gets tired of fighting me and punches me in the back of the head. It’s getting dark in my eyes. The third one is angry at the one who hit me.

Suddenly one of those independentcasinosites.co.uk who are holding me steps into a trap. The third one immediately grabs my elbow, and they continue to drag me, leaving me wounded. It occurs to me that it would be nice to have another trap here now. And sure enough, my second kidnapper stumbles and falls so that the trap closes around his neck. The last savage, muttering curses under his breath, leaves me and runs off into the field through the forest belt.

I return to my people, who have already dealt with the rest of the attackers. They’re fine. Otto takes a spear and goes to the cannibal who stepped in the trap. Karl is breathing heavily.
Suddenly Hans snatches the gun from him. We tense up, but he aims at the fleeing savage. He has already run a hundred paces away, his head flashes between the trees. Hans shoots. The savage falls with a bullet right between the eyes.

-He would have brought the others to us,” says Hans, returning the pistol.

-Hey, what should we do about this? – Otto stands over the wounded man with a spear.

Finish him off, Karl replies. We pack our things. We need to leave. Otto stands hesitant, and then sharply hits the savage in the chest with a spear. Then he hits him again in the stomach. The wounded does not die.

-“Die already,” Otto yells hysterically, delivering blow after blow. – Finally die!
He, covered in blood, catches up with us on the way to the camp.

On the way back we manage to catch a wild boar. Everything goes quickly: Hans sets one of his traps, they use me as bait. I throw a stone at him, he rushes towards me and falls into a trap. My companions immediately attack him with weapons. Four of us drag the carcass to the camp, it’s so heavy.

Boar roasting on the fire. Greta volunteered to cook it herself. She added salt found in the rubble, as well as some of her own herbs for taste. Karl and Hans, after consulting, say that we need to move the camp. Hans says there’s a river in that direction and it’s a great place. Thus, by the evening of this day we are in a new place.

-There is no telling how soon rescuers will appear, Carl tells us all, so we must be prepared to do whatever it takes to survive.

He says from now on everyone will try for the common good. We will strictly distribute responsibilities in our community. The plane’s food will run out soon, so we’ll have to hunt. We will also probably have to fight with the natives, so everyone should have a weapon. There are few cartridges, the pistol will only be used as a last resort.

-And also,” Karl points to Friedrich, “if he doesn’t wake up soon, we’ll have to… alleviate his suffering.

And the old man gets better the next morning. He is almost recovering, however, he is still confined to a wheelchair and is of little use. He says that he became disabled during the war. And in general, Friedrich constantly remembers the war. Says he was a soldier.

Greta is in charge of cooking. She keeps experimenting with food additives and one day it ends up giving us all diarrhea. Honestly, we’ve all been sitting and doing business in the bushes for about forty minutes. But no one gets angry or offended, because worse things can happen, and in general, she’s a good cook. Only Friedrich mutters something, saying that even during the war he was fed better. For this, Karl orders his ration to be cut in half.

Greta even somehow looked younger on the island. She grows her own grass and mushrooms behind the camp. Sweat caused the mascara to smear on her face, giving her look a sinister tint. She drags me to her tent. Having rolled one of the dried plants into a ball, the old woman gives it to me. Put your hand on your lip, she says, it will become easier.

On the very first morning in a new place, another unpleasant incident happens. Supplies from the plane are really running low. Fast food, bread, some meat, candy, chips… We don’t really guard it. Rabbit Otto, having decided to have a little fun, climbs through it all, rustling wrappers and bags. He is eating a piece of bread when Karl’s knife falls on him from above. The blade pierces the small body and gets stuck in the plastic box below.

Otto takes his breath away. Karl calmly pulls out the knife, wiping it on the white hide.
-This creature stole our provisions – he throws the corpse into the bushes. Otto, with his head down, obediently returns to his work.

We have several tents, pillows and blankets. With this we somehow arranged our homes. True, the tent was not enough for me, I sleep on straw, covered with a blanket.
Martha and Hans have sex in the forest. I saw it myself.

Hans goes exploring every day. He climbed a high mountain nearby and says he saw the sea. He also saw many savages in the area. They eat white people and paint a one-eyed man on the rocks. He’s sure it’s me they want. Karl agrees with him. “You better deal with this quickly,” they say for some reason, but I don’t understand them. – You are putting our community in danger."I look at them. The herb the old woman gave me makes me dizzy and my throat burns. I really feel better, but my arms are getting weaker and I can’t think clearly. Spitting a wad of drool at their feet, I go to lie down on my straw.

I don’t know how to fight, I don’t know how to hunt, I don’t know how to cook. All I know how to do in life is calm down psychos. The only job on the island that they trust me with is washing clothes in the river. We found soap on the plane.

Sometimes one of us goes hunting, but Hans came up with the idea of ​​placing traps in the forest that bring more prey. Hans checks them every morning. Today he returns from the forest and says that some other animal injured his leg in the wolf pit. He couldn’t go far, you just need to find him by following the trail of blood and take his body. Hans asks Karl for permission to take me to help – two people can’t drag away a heavy carcass.

Hans never leaves his tin spear, and now he’s also armed with a bow. He uses a slightly modified woman’s bag as a quiver. Besides that, he has a knife in his belt. I don’t have any weapons on me.

We go the whole way in silence. Hans rarely talks at all. We quickly discover a hole with sharpened sticks at the bottom. There really is a bloody trail from her, along which we need to move.

Two savages. Very young guy and girl. The guy is armed with a spear. They stand in the middle of the edge and do not notice at all how we sneak into the forest at a distance. Hans chooses a better position. Takes a bow and arrow, draws it, takes aim. These two are standing, chatting carefree about something. Suddenly Hans changes his mind and says to me, loosening the bowstring:

-Come on, go check it out.

I don’t understand what he wants. He looks me in the eyes and repeats: “Go”. Why doesn’t this surprise me? No choice. This is, of course, dangerous, but not so dangerous as to object to Hans. I obediently get up and head towards the savages.

They stare at me in surprise when I come out to them. The guy grabs a spear, although he clearly doesn’t intend to kill me. Having hatched their huge eyes, they yell something, first at me, then begin to argue with each other.

-Shut up! – for some reason I say. They fall silent.

-Throw the spear, I continue. The guy doesn’t understand my language at all, but he obeys. funny.

“On your knees,” I say. He gets down on his knees. I take the spear and go around him from behind. He’s shaking all over, but doesn’t resist. I know somewhere in the forest Hans has us all at gunpoint. I wonder if he’s having fun. I’m having fun, for example.

After holding a sharp spear at his neck for a while, I still do not kill the savage. Throwing away the weapon, I go back to Hans. Well, were you satisfied with this check?? As if in response to me an arrow flies out of the forest. Behind me the guy falls dead. The girl screams, but the next shot kills her too. I don’t even turn around.

Hans tells me to go to the beast’s carcass. He himself lingers and catches up with me later. Two severed heads swing from his belt.

Karl is seriously concerned about the danger of a savage attack on the camp. Now everyone in the community, except me and Friedrich, has a spear, knife or bow. There was a proposal to fence the camp with a high wall. Anyway, they will find us sooner or later, and then it will obviously not be superfluous.

As a result, we all cut down trees for several days in a row and make huge stakes out of them, one and a half times the height of a man. We dig stakes around the perimeter of the camp, creating something like a fort.

Hans says there are a lot of savages in the area, most of them live over there, a day’s journey from us. This guy goes into the forest at night and returns in the morning with new heads. He coats these trophies with resin and places them on a makeshift rack nearby. He kills everyone: men, women, old people, children. With a proud look, Hans puts another head on the shelf, and behind him the creaky voice of Friedrich says:

-Well, hero. Killed everyone? Well done… – there is a tremor in his voice. – And killed the children? Well, you can certainly be proud of yourself.

Hans looks at the old man contemptuously, then returns to his business.

Every day is now the same routine. I wake up to Martha’s moans – she does this five steps from the camp fire, alternately with Karl, then with Otto, most often with Hans. Like in prehistoric times, when there was no concept of “family” and men and women had connections with everyone in search of the best candidate for procreation. This is how Martha explains.

There was no use for Frederick in the community, so he usually just sits and whittles various crafts out of pieces of wood. Karl allowed food to be spent on him, although it clearly annoys him. The old man often grumbles, is rude and snaps. He once called Marta a whore. She smiled, walked around him from behind and, placing her hands on his shoulders, ran her tongue along his ear. Friedrich winced.

Greta grows several, probably dozens of varieties of her plants and mushrooms behind the camp. Her clothes have turned into rags, her hair sticks out in all directions, making her look like a scarecrow. She constantly smokes some kind of grass, which is why she walks staggering, and her speech sometimes turns into an incoherent stream of words. She lets me try it too, but it makes me sick. In her tent she does something with herbs, and after that she goes there for a while only wearing a respirator. We have already made it a rule not to go into her room at all, otherwise we could easily inhale something and be away from it for several hours.

I help the community by fulfilling the whims of its members. Karl asks me to clean his shoes. Greta gives me another rolled-up cigarette made from who knows what. I let some smoke into my lungs. “Okay, okay?"she asks. Not really, I answer. “No,” he says, “okay,” and, humming some song, he walks back with a staggering gait.

Martha walks around with me when she’s bored. She ties a rope to me like a leash, leads me along and chats about everything. Remembers his family. It is very important to have a loyal, responsive family in your life, says Marta. Now we have our own family here, and everyone in it has their own role. She says I’m like a little brother to her, and Greta is like a mother. Hans is our provider and protector. “In the wild, it’s the strongest who survive,” she says. “Hans takes trophies from defeated enemies to show his strength to the community.”. Friedrich would simply call him a maniac. "Grandpa? – Martha answers. – He is the weakest link in the community. There are no disabled people in nature; wounded animals do not live long – they either die themselves or are killed. It is unnatural that Friedrich is still alive.»

Sometimes Hans or Otto take me into the forest with Karl’s permission. This time I’m checking traps in the forest with Otto. He’s a sociable guy, but he barely talks to me. All the traps are empty, and on the way back we come across an anthill. So Otto comes up with his crazy idea.

First, he watches for a long time as the ants scurry back and forth, dragging branches, crawling into the anthill and crawling out. They are not very large, about the size of a finger in length. Otto takes one in his hand, looks at it thoughtfully and with a click sends it back to the ground.

-Give me matches, he says. I’m holding out the boxes. He picks up a dry stick, stained in places with resin, and sets it on fire. He throws the resulting torch into the anthill. Ants, hundreds of ants are running away in fear from their burning house in all directions. Otto looks at it with rapture.

In the camp he expresses his thoughts. The forests here are very dry, we have been on the island for more than a week, and we have only seen rain once. Set one tree on fire and fifty more around will catch fire. There are a lot of savages, we won’t be able to cope with them in battle, but if we burn their forest, they will have to leave. Hans likes the idea of ​​starting a fire that covers several square kilometers. Karl doubts: “If we destroy their settlements, won’t they become even more evil?». Opinions in the community are divided. Friedrich is not participating in the discussion. With a contemptuous snort, he expresses his position on all this.

Life goes on as usual. The camp is safe as long as the natives don’t know where we are. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive in the forest. If earlier we came across them one or two at a time, now they move in groups of several people. And every time we get closer to the camp. Hans can no longer fight them alone. We have to be smart. Greta, for example, found a practical use for her trash.

She met me by the river and, taking me by the hand, dragged me into her tent. There’s a fire there. She puts on a respirator and tells me to stand still. I obey. An old woman throws a handful of a plant into the fire. I’ve never seen anything like this before. She stands in a respirator and watches. Smoke quickly spreads through the tent. I feel sick as soon as I smell it. My head is spinning, my legs are trembling, my throat begins to burn unbearably. Unable to stand on my feet, I fall onto the damp floor, touching something with my hand, and it crashes next to me with a ringing sound. Before I lose consciousness, I manage to notice how all the members of the community gather around me with curious looks.

I dream of how I rise above the forests and seas, plains, above this entire island. I see wild tribes scattered everywhere, angry, fighting and killing each other. No savage sees the truth, but everyone is waiting for a savior. The Savior who will one day appear on a falling star, he will be weak, pitiful, he will have a disfigurement on his face, but it is he who will unite the tribes, stop wars and lead all the inhabitants of the island to a new bright future. Until then, the tribes will continue to kill, burn, eat each other and destroy everything around.

When I come to my senses a few hours later, the essence of Greta’s idea is explained to me. You can’t defeat a horde of cannibals in open battle, and this nonsense knocks a person down in less than a minute. We’ll spread it around the camp and set it on fire when they arrive. The smoke should stop them and we’ll just cut the savages while they’re unconscious. This seems like a good idea to everyone, only Friedrich notices that if it rains one day, all the grass will become damp and useless. He also adds that slaughtering sleeping people is the lot of cowards and bastards.

Hans figured out what to do with the trophy heads. Near the camp he installs something like a totem – a wooden pole, on which he hangs them. Hans explains that he saw similar structures in savage villages. They worship something like this, and there is a chance that this totem will scare them. Friedrich, hearing this explanation, laughs: “Come on, guy. Admit that you just like it.".

The totem is gradually acquiring various new things. Someone nails a fur hat to him. Otto scratches small drawings with a knife. Frederick made various wooden figures – soldiers, shards, Buddhist monks, crosses, etc. d. – and Karl hung them all on the totem. Martha puts her skirt on the statue, which looks completely ridiculous. Greta walks around and splashes animal blood on him, muttering some spells inaudibly under her breath.

No one in the community disdains to eat what the old woman grows outside the camp. Smoking her herbs has become a habit for me, although it gives me more discomfort than pleasure. I sit in the evenings in front of the totem with a rolled-up cigarette in my hand, exhaling dry puffs of smoke through my nose. Ugly, pain-distorted faces, smeared with resin for preservation. I look at them, they look at me. Sometimes they talk to me. They talk about the emptiness that awaits everyone living on the other side. I feel sorry for them. They look for us, we arm ourselves and kill them. I don’t understand why we do all this. Yes, we had to start a war, but how quickly everyone got the hang of it! One of the tar heads picks up my thought. War is the path to the abyss, she says. Violence begets violence. An eye for an eye and everyone will go blind. Each of the savages was born for cruelty. Since childhood, they killed their own kind, burned them alive, drank blood. They live ankle-deep in warm, sticky blood, eating, sleeping and mating in it. Another head, or rather not even a head, but a skull with sagging pieces of skin, continues: “The path to salvation lies in the renunciation of hatred. Forgiveness is a great human act. We all, both the community and the savages, need to forget about what we have done, lay down our arms, hug each other and repent. And then, when it’s all over, we won’t see an abyss, we’ll see a great light. This is what survival is all about. The strongest should not stand above everyone, as if he were their master and owner, he should selflessly use his strength for the common good."They say that salvation must come from a person sent from heaven. Man with one eye. I.

Karl makes the final decision after another incident with savages.

He returns to camp, out of breath and red with rage. In the forest he came across a group of aborigines. There were about ten of them, they immediately surrounded him, so there was no chance to escape. The pistol would have enough cartridges for half of the opponents at best. Karl immediately realized that it would not be possible to scare them off by shooting one of them – they no longer felt a panicky fear of this weapon, and this would only anger them.

He immediately decided to shoot himself, but couldn’t. The natives watched with interest as he stood with a pistol to his temple, not daring to pull the trigger. He stood there for quite a long time, his whole life flashing before his eyes, until one of them finally got tired of it. The savage simply knocked the pistol out of his trembling hand with the shaft of his spear.

Without a weapon, Karl immediately felt naked. The opponents came close, forcing him to shrink into a small ball of life. They pressed, he retreated. Stumbled and fell. Fierce faces bent over him. Someone kicked him. The savages discussed something. Another spat on him. A third person urinated on his shirt. The cannibals laughed. Karl lay there, afraid to move. And then they left. Without even hurting him, without scratching him.

Karl, puffing with anger, tells us this. Then he silently grabs Martha and drags her into his tent for obvious purposes. When he’s finished with her, he swallows a couple of Greta’s dried mushrooms. After a while, having collected his thoughts, he convenes the entire community. He speaks now calmly, coolly. Says he made the decision to burn the jungle. Tonight.

The weather is suitable: not a cloud in the sky, the wind blows in the opposite direction from us and the camp. Dusk is gathering. Hans prepared a couple of dozen arrows with tarred tips. There is a preparation for a fire nearby – we will light it when everyone is ready.
Why do I so much not want the community to accomplish its plans??

We are standing on a high steep hill from which the entire valley is visible. Somewhere out there, in the jungle, hundreds of savages live, are born, fight, build their huts and hunt animals. Everyone is here now: me, Karl, Otto, Hans, Greta, Martha, Friedrich in his carriage at a distance. Here is the totem, and all the heads of those killed by Hans are turned in that direction. With their empty eye sockets they seem to beg for someone to stop this.

The fire is lit. Out of the corner of my eye I notice how clouds begin to gather in the sky.
Hans sets an arrowhead on fire. Aims. He releases the string and it returns to its place with a whistle. The arrow flies into the night. Her light is gradually disappearing from sight. It seems like an eternity passes before a fire breaks out somewhere out there in the forest.

Martha rejoices. Greta rolls her eyes and starts muttering something incoherent. Hans immediately fires another shot. I just want it to rain.

He launches one burning deadly projectile after another into the sky. Lights flash in different places of the valley, gradually covering an increasingly larger area. I’m starting to feel like I can feel this heat even from here. This is a real glow, as if morning is coming and the sun is rising from the horizon. The sky is brightening.

Friedrich involuntarily compares this with the panorama of a burning city that he witnessed during the war. He laughs. A feeling of euphoria sweeps over the community.

Flames reflected in the clouds. Or rather, these are no longer clouds, but huge black clouds. A drop of water falls on my shoulder. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but I know what’s about to happen.
Shower. It begins modestly, with rare imperceptible drops, but after a moment it collapses with all its might. Somewhere out there, the aborigines are probably praising the heavens for this. The fire is nipped in the bud. The rain drums so hard that you can barely hear Karl screaming in anger, grabbing his hair and ordering something to the others, actively gesturing. I’m watching this silent movie and I’m having fun.

I must have a stupid smile on my face because Karl notices me and gets even angrier. He grabs a gun and approaches me. Demands that I get on my knees. I obey.
Everyone gathers around. Karl has me at gunpoint. Hans whispers something in his ear. We’re all soaking wet. The gun is wet and water is dripping from it. Maybe he doesn’t shoot anymore.

Standing above me, the community deliberates and comes to the conclusion that since the savages need me so much, then if they give me up, the cannibals will cease to be a threat. This is the community’s only hope and everyone agrees. Besides Friedrich, this one stands aside and watches.

Karl says if they need me, let them have it. Then he puts a bullet in my forehead.

Already now, having acquired infinite wisdom, I can look back and say that this is what it all led to. I was clearly not part of their pack, I was the odd one out, a by-product that no one wanted. They were running wild, and it was only a matter of time before they decided to get rid of me. Everything that happened to me was destined. I had to go through this humiliation, learn a valuable life lesson, die, and then be resurrected as a different person.

This is the beginning of the second coming. I was resurrected on the third day. Now there are two bullet holes in my skull. Carl pushed my dead body down the hill. I lay in the jungle for hours until the savages found me. They weren’t surprised by what happened. I was taken to their village. I was looked after by a local shaman – a tall old man in a wolfskin hat, on his neck a necklace of human teeth that chatter together when he walks.

His face is the first thing I saw in my new life. He sat next to me around the clock. For a couple of days after the resurrection, I could not get up because my whole body hurt after falling from the hill. During this time I realized something.

The community must answer for its actions. No, I don’t hate them and I don’t want revenge. I still think hate is a vice that we have to give up, they just have to pay. It’s only fair. Since I am now the new Jesus, that means everything I say is true. But I think that the idea of ​​forgiveness is fundamentally wrong, that talking head was wrong.

While I’m lying there, the shaman is constantly chatting to me in his language, although I don’t understand a word. One day I get bored and shout at him: “Just tell me like a human being.”!“He gets very scared, after which he suddenly says something in our language, then, as if having come to his senses, returns to his dialect.

From what I understand, it appears that a large group of white people are approaching this valley, possibly armed and with transport. The shaman also brings me various rubbish that the savages found on the rubble and brought to their home. In them I find something that confirms my thoughts about the community.

I really wasn’t like them. They invented a new life for themselves, isolated themselves from reality, and in their world there was no place for me, because I was the only one happy with my past life. I was on that plane for work – I and several other orderlies had to escort a group of mentally ill people to a new clinic on the other side of the Earth. Friedrich, for example, was never a military man, he only dreamed of military service. He suffered from insomnia caused by pain in his legs. This pain tormented him at night for months until he decided to get rid of the extra limbs with an ax. So he became disabled and ended up in a hospital.

Hans was a clerk in the office of a large campaign. When the crisis hit, everyone had to tighten their belts and prepare for difficult times. We worked three shifts, spent the night in offices, only had enough money for food. Sometimes I didn’t see my family for days. It was necessary to keep within the plan, which was constantly growing, the authorities were putting more and more pressure. Hans finally couldn’t stand it anymore. He lost his temper and beat up his boss, and then attacked his colleagues. He was taken to a mental hospital.

I learn all this from their medical records that the shaman brought me. They were all sick. Karl and Otto are crazy. Karl broke the windows of an expensive car with a wrench in his workshop. The court took away his apartment as compensation to the owner, and the mechanic himself was taken away for treatment. Otto managed to open a cage at the zoo and release two tigers. He loved animals.

Greta had a large mansion, which she bequeathed to her relatives. They loved the mansion, but not so much Greta. The old one didn’t think well, so it wasn’t difficult to hide her in a nursing home or hospital, paying whoever needed it so that she wouldn’t be discharged ahead of time. All that was left was to choose between these two options.

Martha was also unlucky with her family. She didn’t have a mother. She was sexually abused by her father since childhood. She was afraid to tell about it, but she hated her father. One day Marta blabbed to her friend at the institute. He wasn’t confused. He gave her a shotgun and said that problems need to be solved. And the problem was solved – the father with the shot scrotum was taken to an ambulance, and she, screaming hysterically, was taken to an obvious institution.

Reading all this I understand why they liked life on the island. They found each other. The past was partially erased from their memory, leaving what they liked. And this truth can destroy their idyll.

Finally, I’m ready to leave the den I’ve been in for so many days. The hut in which I was kept is located in the center of a savage settlement. The rain is drumming outside.

When I go out, all the natives are already waiting. They look at me with surprise. The shaman comes out after me and loudly announces something. All the savages bend the knee. Shaman kneels. They bow to me.

The natives are ready to follow me. The first thing they want is to destroy the community. Let this be the first step towards a new world. There are dozens of these people in the camp, hundreds on the island. Their faces and their totems are turned towards me. I’ll lead them to camp.

My crusade begins. All this army, men with spears, war paint, in loincloths and without them, they are following me, ready to kill anyone on my order.
Noticing the savages, Hans immediately shoots a burning arrow at Greta’s grass spread around the perimeter, but from the rain it is damp and useless. All community members grab bows and take up defensive positions in prepared positions. We are getting closer to the camp. They don’t even notice me until I start talking. I explain that if they don’t lay down their arms, things will get much worse. They don’t stand a chance.

They’ve bulged their eyes and look at me like I’m a living dead man. I have a hole in the middle of my forehead, tied with a bandage. Their fighting spirit has disappeared somewhere.

The savages are clearly eager to shed blood, but this will not happen without my command. I tell the community what I learned from medical records. Their faces show how the past manifests itself in their memory, but they refuse to believe. To prove it, I throw them their medical records. Although this is a sin, I have to admit that it gives me pleasure.
It’s like they’re fading away. None of them even think about fighting anymore. Greta mutters something under her breath. Martha is crying. Karl stands motionless. He looks as if he is arguing with someone and trying to argue something in response to a weighty argument. The savages are waiting.

This is the first time I’ve seen Hans show emotion. He’s angry. So angry that he grabs a knife and runs at me. One of the savages with a sharp movement pierces his leg with a spear, and Hans falls next to me.

Here it is – punishment! And this is just the beginning. I don’t know whether God or other higher powers sent me to earth, but I apparently lived up to their hopes. As if to confirm this, the sound of operating equipment is heard above our heads.

Angels appear. Angels on helicopters. Some with machine guns and bulletproof vests, others in white coats. But something goes wrong. Apparently, this was not part of the prophecy of the savages, and they are confused and try to attack the angels with firearms. I scream and wave my arms, trying to stop it, but they don’t pay attention to me. Angels shoot, savages run into the jungle.

God comes to me. He is in a white coat, with a gray beard and a suitcase. I’m trying to explain myself to him.

-Well, well, my dear, calm down, he says, injecting me with a syringe with something. – It’s all over. We’re flying home.

They were delivered here a couple of hours ago. Someone from the management reported this to the media, and a crowd of journalists formed at the main gate. They’re making noise outside the window, but these walls let almost no sound through. Even if a bomb exploded on the street, it is not a fact that it would wake up the duty officer. Six of them lie in the main chamber. They are all psychiatric patients. One, according to rumors, even had to be tied to the bed with belts.

The seventh lies separately. Just in case, he was placed in a room with soft walls and put in a straitjacket, although he did not show any aggression. This guy is missing one eye, so you’ll recognize him right away. He was an orderly at a psychiatric hospital, but was never a patient. Although now, most likely, he will have to be treated.

Doctors walk along the corridors, chatting among themselves, spreading rumors. They say he was shot in the head, and the bullet went through the skull without hitting the brain. Wow! They also say that on the island he went crazy and thought he was Jesus. Well, this is not uncommon for our establishment. In general, it’s amazing how these people were able to survive there. This island was full of warring tribes. In order to find survivors, it was necessary to dispatch several search groups and a special forces company in helicopters! Our employees are amazed to hear about this story. Doctors haven’t talked to the survivors yet, so we don’t know the details. And yet it is clear that these people are heroes. What kind of courage and fortitude does it take to get through this?!