The Island of Desperation

                There was once a woman inhabiting an island hundreds of miles off the coast of Argentina. The island’s embedded greenery was unfathomably vivid and perfectly balanced with a spectrum of tropical flowers. There was only one thing missing; her beloved. Her beloved lay deceased on the mossy, fertile soil of the island. She wept besides his decaying corpse daily yearning for his resurrection, but it never came.  One day, while longing for her beloved’s return; several spirits arose from the still, abandoned waters and stood next to the woman. The woman lifted her proverbial weights and found herself stunned by the spirits’ aberrant presence. 

                “We have come to bring Adam home,” the lead spirit informed with ethereal eloquence.

                At first the woman’s thoughts were tangled with puzzlement, but as soon as the spirits began to carry her beloved’s body, her thoughts became untangled and were brimming with loss and heartbreak.

                “What are you doing?! Get your hands off of him?!,” The woman interjected emphatically.

                “We have to bring Adam home.”

                “His home is here! He belongs with me!” she said firmly.

                “The time has come to let go, miss... Let go.” The spirit said in a delicate whisper.

                The woman let the spirits claim her most treasured possession on the island. She painfully glanced behind a towering palm tree as the spirits submerged into the abysmal waters with her beloved. The woman found herself experiencing emotional anguish. She could no longer ignore the agony. She had to search for a solution to cope.

                When the spirits were completely out of sight, the woman ran through the island, weeping and shoving dewy leaves from her path. After running through a mile of leafy wonders, she found a circular piece of empty land. The woman approached the center of the land and sat herself down in a fetal position. Hysterical and hopeless, she got up and accidentally stepped on something sharp. She grasped onto the sharp object and found the solution to cope.  

Reviews

[Matt Pellegrini]

I don't think it is a coincidence that your story's setting is sort of a lush, utopia with a woman and a man named Adam. The setting and name conjure up Eden and Eve. And while what I thought what you did in the end was interesting--giving an origin story for self-harm in the same way original sin got its origin through Adam and Eve--I thought the little bit you did with the woman not being able to "let go," when one is moving on, either moving away physically from us or dying and leaving one for good has the most potential to be a developed theme.

I think if you ever look to expand or rework this story a bit, that would be one thing to consider. The feeling of wanting to keep one's loved one forever is universal and completely understandable. But how each person deals with it, either letting go or fighting to keep what they love until the very end is what makes the scenario unique and interesting.