Author’s Note: You get the weirdest ideas when the wrong lyrics come to mind…

 

The Suicide

Elicuanan

 

   When you are tired, hungry and far from the land that spawned you, you tend to see things. That was what I told myself that stormy night. After seeing things that aren’t there, you start thinking things as well. Bad things.

  

But what I saw before me wasn’t the fault of my mind, which was rapidly spinning off into madness than nothing would be able to cure. It took me a whole hour to actually believe that a woman was really in the forest, lying beside me, in the damn tropical rain.

 

   I won’t go into the sordid details of how I got here, far from the beach resort. It’s more to save face than to save time. But all I can remember was that one minute I’m in my canoe, in the middle of a picturesque sea in one or some other island in the seven thousand plus other islands of the Philippines, and the next minute I’m over turned, swimming and fighting against a sea that wanted to claim me and a storm that wanted to defeat me.

 

   I washed up here, in some island. There are seven thousand more, I cannot even imagine what this island’s name was, nor if even had a name. And I’m trying to get mainland.

 

   The keyword here would be trying.

 

   That led me here, despite the fact that the cold of the rain and the warmth of the tropics are making me shiver and sweat at the same time. I can imagine a cold coming on and it bolsters my resolve to get off this island as soon as possible. The armchair law recants itself in my head and I can only snarl back.

 

   “Sebastian! Sebastian!”

 

   Startled, I had turned to see a figure emerge out from between two trees, sodden with rain and torn by plants. She turned this way and that, her reddish-brown eyes seeing and unseeing through the blinding sheet of tropical rain.

 

   I rushed towards her, crying out, “Hey wait!”

 

   She either didn’t hear or didn’t understand me then, because she kept on looking around, past the trees, above them, into the branches, everywhere but towards me. Her wavy jet black hair flashed in the sodden air, spraying around the water droplets that had accumulated on them. There was mud on her right cheek but she made no move to wipe it off, it was as if she couldn’t care less for her appearance. All she need was to find…

 

   “Sebastian!” she screamed finally before collapsing unto the mud. When I reached her she was already unconscious.

 

   I had half-dragged, half-carried her to the shelter that I had made a few hours ago. She lay there and I could see in what a state her clothes were. She was wearing a housedress that must have been light blue and pink before. But right now, one sleeve was torn and was hanging on by a ghost of a stitch. The lace at the ends were frayed and looked like they had caught on to thorns. The dress, if I could even call it that, was like the rest of her body, caked in mud and dried blood.

 

   Her face was distinctly Malay, a little low browed and fierce. There was nothing delicate in her features, as if these facial attributes were simply mixed together through a thoroughly mixed ancestry. I could make out a slight sharpness to her eyes. Her cheeks were tough and darkly colored. Blemishes covered her nose and cheeks. Her mouth had a stubborn frown, set as if carved into her face. Her overall appearance was sad, whether it was because she was born that way or because she looked that way, I could not tell.

 

   She slept uneasily and I listened intently in hopes of understanding this woman who suddenly fell into my world. But of all the gibberish that she started murmuring, I could only understand one word.

 

   “Sebastian...”

 

   Sometimes she would say his name softly, with a slight smile. She would caress each syllable as if it were a precious child that had been gone for a long time. She would repeat it until it sounded like a soft melody, an ancient love song with the only words being “Sebastian, Sebastian”

 

   Sometimes she would say it roughly, with a frightening scowl. It sounded like it was wrenched painfully from her throat. Like the banshee like screech she made a while ago, in anger, in pain. But above all this, she screamed it in betrayal.

 

   I tired of this and settled into an uneasy sleep as well. It was broken by thunderclaps and the sound of “Sebastian!” being screamed out into the unhearing night. The last memory I had of that night, and of that woman was her singing a soft wordless lullaby in between bitter sobbing of “Sebastian”.

 

   I dreamt of the sea. The deep greens and blues all mixed together in a wild cacophony of life. I was swimming through it, and I looked above and beyond. There was no air, no land, simply the sea. And the sea throbbed with life and I could feel the sea’s heartbeat merging into my heartbeat. The sea and I were one for that millionth of a second. And when I looked up in front of me I saw her; Floating towards me with her red-brown eyes questioning and her jet black wavy hair floating about her like wild sea wings. And in that dream, she turned and she swam away, quickly, as if she were made of water. And I could hear the soft wordless lullaby.

 

   I awoke to the feeling of being dragged somewhere and when I opened my eyes, the villagers had placed me in the medical tent already. I was saved.

 

   It took me a few days to get over the dehydration. But I will never get over that woman. The moment I could talk, I started asking for her. But all of them would say that there was no such woman with me. They had found me in my shelter, shivering, alone. Seeing that was no use, I started asking about the island they found me on. They stared at me blankly and said that it was just another island.

 

   I gave up that time. I just returned to my resort and stayed to the end of my vacation. Somehow I didn’t feel that happy anymore. My friends took this as a trauma from the unfortunate canoe trip and took me to places far from the water. But that was where I wanted to go. Somehow, some part of me was convinced that she wasn’t lost; she was still simply looking for Sebastian.

 

   I’m at the airport now, writing this. My friends have gone to the counter to finalize the tickets; they knew I was a little out of it. But one of them came back and brought me a newspaper. I turned the pages listlessly; it didn’t really interest me at all. It simply provided me something else to look at other than the white, blank wall. But a small article at the bottom called my attention.

 

   “Unidentified Dead Woman Washed Ashore, Authorities Suspect Suicide”

 

   The tiny, gory picture of the woman face down on the sand awoke something in me and I looked closer. She had jet-black hair, and a dark blue and red housedress that had loose lace hanging off of it. Seaweed clung to her hair like highlighted strands of green in the midst of the ebony tendrils.

 

   I read on, but as I did, I had a feeling that she had found her Sebastian.

 

The End