Leanna O’Regan slept soundly on the floor of the orange conical, inflatable life raft, her back to the wall of the raft and her arms wrapped around her torso. Her long, straight black hair had fallen over her face, but she was completely unaware of the dark strands covering her eyes, nose and mouth. The mid-morning sun outside the raft shone brightly through the opened door, lighting up the interior of the fabric raft and sending a shaft of light across the gently undulating floor and up the wall opposite the entrance. The raft turned slightly in the rising waves of the vast Pacific Ocean it bobbed on, moving the column of light across the wall opposite from where Leanna was resting in a deep slumber. It rested on the limp figure in a light grey uniform across from Leanna, propped up against the round orange wall. 

Leanna coughed in her sleep, having breathed in her hair. Her arms released her torso, and a hand moved across her face, sweeping aside the choking hair and revealing her peaceful, resting face. Her eyes fluttered slightly, and she stretched her bare legs out straight, pressing her tennis-shoed feet against the edge of the entrance. She scratched her waist between the white t-shirt and shorts she was wearing, and let her hand fall in front of her belly. She yawned and let her eyelids flit in the reflected light of the sun beaming into the raft, and groaned slightly on acknowledging the inert figure sharing the raft with her.

“James… hey, James. What’s for breakfast?” she mumbled, lifting her head with a sour smile on her lips. She then opened her eyes wide in sheer terror, seeing the wildly staring face in front of her, it’s mouth wide open. Leanna shrieked and stood up in a flash, pressing her back against the raft wall and stumbling frantically towards the raft’s entrance. She stopped herself from jumping out of the raft when she saw that James’s blank stare was not following her, and instead she stepped carefully towards him, bending down and looking at his silently screaming face. She tentatively put a hand on the one knee of his bent legs, and getting no reponse from James, she grabbed one of his limp arms and felt for a pulse on his wrist. Alarmed, she reached across his knees to place her hand on his chest.

“Gawd, James! Your heart is beating like a hummingbird!” she said as she looked into his dry, empty eyes. “James! What’s wrong with you?” Leanna shouted at him. She grabbed him by the ears and put her ear next to mouth, listening carefully. “You’re hardly breathing! Is this some kind of seizure?” she said, still alarmed. Holding James’s head by both sides, she tilted his mouth up into the shaft of light to look down his mouth and suddenly let go of his head, as if electrocuted. She fell backwards onto the floor of the raft, and James’s head fell back, his eyes now staring at the point in the center of the roof. The light of the sun glinted off the square blocks of metal embedded at the back of James’s mouth, replacing the molars on each side of his lower jaw. Leanna could barely see that from the metal inserts, various wires ran up to the roof of his mouth and punctured his upper palate.

“What’s that in your mouth? What kind of implants are those?” Leanna whispered, now completely frightened by the inert young man sharing the raft with her. She carefully approached James again, and gently pulled his head forward again. “I had heard something about this on Preacher Bob’s radio broadcasts a while ago, but I just thought he was getting carried away again.” While she held James’s head, she found the hard bump between his jaw and ear lobe, and massaged it a bit, trying to figure out what it was. She pressed down hard on it with her thumb, and in an instant, James was blinking hard and breathing heavily, his legs stretching out straight in front of him and his arms grabbing around Leanna.

Leanna wriggled out of his blind embrace and jumped back as far as she could from James, warily watching the young man regain his senses and shake his head. He put his hands against his temples and started to cry in pain, pulling his legs up to his chest and rocking back and forth. Leanna’s expression of fear changed to pity, and she returned to the distraught young man, running her hand over the tight, short curls of his black hair. James calmed down as she gently stroked the top and back of his head, and he stopped rocking and moaning. He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes and took her hands in his, and didn’t say anything, although his lips moved as if he were trying to say something.

“James, do you know what happened to you? What are those things in your mouth?” Leanna asked, caution creeping into her voice. James just shook his head in response, and let go of her hands, looking away from her out the raft entrance to the glittering waves outside.

Leanna stiffened a bit, and a scowl started to form on her face, replacing the one of compassion. “Of course, I see now what Preacher Bob was talking about,” Leanna said, backing away from James and looking with him outside of the raft to the bright sky above them.

“The Evil One replaces sight with light,
A broadcast sent from man to man afar.
Without a voice a message travels fast,
A siren screams from minds untethered at last!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***