Paradise

This speech also turned out to be a challenge to write. The assignment was to write about a tropical paradise with certain criteria. The objects that were assigned to be in the speech were: 1 man, 1 woman, 1 animal, 1 book, 1 object that you needed, and an artful way of getting to and from the island.



Screaming, I stared into the headlights thinking that these were my final moments. The horn trumpeted in my ears, and the rain overpowered and flooded the street. The driver slammed on his brakes and the truck began to twist sideways over the thin layer of liquid below, while I stood there and screamed in utter disbelief and fear of the incoming, unstoppable, five ton piece of metal on wheels. I could see that the underside of the truck was headed directly for my chest. I could not move. I begged my body to do something, anything; even collapsing would be satisfactory. But any command registered by my mind was quickly drowned by fear. I breathed, continued screaming and my voice cracked into falsetto and then back down. The truck finally made contact with my body, slamming me dead on; my now limp body flew towards the ground. The intense whiplash flung me with my head leading. My head made contact with the ground first, bouncing off the ground, my body then landed after and I could feel the ground scraping my back as I moved backward with the truck. Finally my body came to a stop. I couldn’t see anything; all I could feel was the cold concrete on my back, the rain tapping on my body, and the throbbing explosion of pain in my head. I tried to move, I tried to breath and neither succeeded. With every palpitation of pain that flooded into my head, I slipped farther and farther away from reality.

I was submerged under water, I opened my eyes and they burned from the salt as they tried to focus. I pushed myself up from the water, inhaled, coughed for a bit and inhaled again. I waited on my hands and knees while I watched small drops fall from my nose and chin into the blue water below me. After a moment, I looked up to see a golden beach, followed by a border of thick, green forest. I stood up and walked towards the beach, and inhaled once again the fresh tropical air. Once on the sand I turned around to look at the water that had transported me here. The bright blue ocean seemed to go on forever, without any trace of life anywhere. Enjoying the silence, I stared at the liquid perfection for a moment, when behind me the trees began to move and rustle. I flipped my body around as fast as I could. Hoping that my time here would not be ended by some wild beast, I prepared myself to run. The giant green leaves parted at exactly the same time and a tall, slender woman emerged holding a rather large carpet bag, and an umbrella.
“Ah, so you’ve arrived,” She said “Well it’s about time. Dear me, we didn’t expect you to come all wet. Ah well, we’ll have to get you cleaned up once we get back”
“Get back where? I mean, where are we? And, are you…?”
“Please don’t ask so many questions. Follow me.”
“But I mean, you’re… you’re… you’re”
“Please don’t mumble, yes I am to answer you.”
For some reason I felt that this woman deserved my trust, maybe because she claimed to be Mary Poppins, or maybe because she was just another human here. I decided to follow her, silently because everything that I ended up saying was shot down for being rude in some way. After a good five minutes of fighting through dense jungle, we emerged into an opening, and inside there was huge tree with a tree house built about thirty feet up. It carried a vague resemblance to the tree house in “George of the Jungle”. Mary Poppins took the bamboo elevator while I was forced to climb up the rope ladder. Once in the tree house she began to speak with a man.
“Well he finally came, took much longer than I expected, I was just leaving when I heard him coughing up a storm.”
“Well all that matters is that he’s here now, and he’s here to relax. I mean who knows how long he’s got before he goes back? It’s our job to give him a good time, just be nice to him.”
“He’s all wet, they sent him by water, Frank. I’ll have to get him into the bath before we do anything else.”
“That’s cool, just tell me when I’m good to go.”
I ended up taking about an hour long bath while I read a book by C.S. Lewis called “The Screw tape Letters”. Once I had finished I was escorted by Mary to a huge chair on the edge of the tree house overlooking the entire jungle. The moment I sat down Jazz music began to play, and a voice rang out singing “Fly me to the moon”. I then realized who the man was, I was being sung to by Frank Sinatra while I was sitting on the edge of a bamboo tree house. I relaxed and let the music flow through my ears, and a small monkey swung down holding a glass of Mimosa. I thanked him, took the glass, and watched him bounce away into the tree house. I closed my eyes and relaxed, then suddenly I found it hard to breath. Choked almost, my head began to pulsate waves of pain, I wrinkled my forehead in an attempt to veil my distress. I bent forward and the music began to fade away, ‘The hell kind of paradise is this?’ I thought. I dropped the glass of Mimosa and began coughing up blood. I squinted my eyes and heard Mary say “We hope you have enjoyed your time here.”
When I opened them again the pain had amplified by an innumerable amount, there were doctors and nurses running around the room. I tried to scream, tried to find a way back, but every form of communication was lost. A long tube protruded from my mouth and I could feel the air running through it every couple seconds. The pain was overwhelming, I wanted to clench my teeth, but the tube prevented me from such an action. My fingernails were digging into my palms, blood dribbled out of my mouth and a nurse wiped it up and yelled at someone behind her, my head hurt more than anything I can possibly describe. And suddenly, all was black.