ISLAND - Part 1

Living on an island is hard, thought Jerry, for the first of what would undoubtably be many times that day.

He blinked his eyes against the rising sun, then closed them tightly as he strained at the waist to sit up from where he had slept, lying prone in his body-shaped depression in the sandy beach.

As he rose from the beach his body curled slowly upwards, joint by aching joint. When he had grunted himself into a seated comma he paused, like he did every morning, to let the grains of sand fall from his back and hair, where they had accumulated through the night.

As they did every morning, most of the grains chose to reunite with the rest of their friends on the beach. But, also as always, a not insignificant number chose to make a detour on their trip downward, slipping between the tender patch of skin at his lower back and the waistband of his tattered khakis. Far from finding any shortcut back to the beach, these grains instead ended their trip lodged in and around his crack. Jerry assumed this outcome was as unfortunate for the sand as it was for himself.

Starting every day with this little tragedy was one of the reasons that living on an island was hard. The snakes were another.

Sighing gently - Jerry wiped the sleep from his eyes with his sand-covered fingers, and then attempted to wipe the newly deposited sand from his eyes with the same sandy fingers that put it there.

"Where's my pokey stick?," Jerry asked to no one, blinking back sandy tears.

As usual, no one didn't have much to say.

"Fuck it then."

He went to wash his abraided eyes in the salty ocean.