The Island

This is an excerpt from the book I'm writing. Random and in the middle, but whatever. Probably my favorite part.




I drove to the first field I could find, the rat gnawing at me. Every doubt I had about coming back was free, causing any damage it could. The need to swallow the doubt, to cage that rat once again was intense, the only feeling against the rat.
Calmly, I forced myself to walk until I reached the middle of the field. When the point was reached, I laid down. What my eyes beheld, were my friends, who had always been there, through everything. Andromeda, Sagittarius, Cassiopeia, and even more constellations were in the sky. Always there for me, they were. When I built, they were there. When the hot sun beat down on me, they were there. Out of everything we went through, the stars stayed by my side.
The constellations formed a new cage for the rat, as they always did. Yet I knew the rat would be free again, just as it always had. I looked back to the sky, envisioning my island; the sun, beating down on the trees and farther under the brush, attempting to reach the ground, or the sand, as white as snow, slowly being devoured by the aquamarine ocean. Those thoughts were then overshadowed by others; visions of crosses being burned into trees, and churches being erected in the middle of the beaches, terrible, terrible visions. That’s when I felt a new presence next to the rat. It was fear, but fear isn’t something you can’t touch, or hold. Its smoky tendrils wrapped around me, consuming every positive thought I had. There was no cage for this being, nothing could contain fear.