The Death of 1977 (Book 3)

The Island of Hispaniola

Some days and some moons later. Sometime after all the smoke has cleared. Time passes, and it moves along like the rushing of the wind:

He was a small, portly black boy with the looks of a ten year old. His dreadlocks hung partially over his eyes which in turn always seemed to cause his vision to appear blurry with every waking morn. With only a brown rag covering his midsection the child blundered out of the mouth of his cave home and onto the bright morning shore where the sun glistened down upon the white sands of the beach.

The little barefooted boy stepped lightly upon the hot sands towards a large rock that towered well over a hundred feet above him. Leaning up against the rock was a sharp pole which the boy promptly grabbed before heading further down the beach where the roaring waves brushed against his feet until he arrived at a nearby lagoon. The lagoon itself was a peaceful and secluded slice of the island that the boy held in the highest regard. It was always the first place he went in the morning and the last he visited at night before turning in. The rest of the island, from his standpoint, was inconsequential. Nothing existed beyond the lagoon.

As he approached the lush, blue pond, the boy, with his pole, stopped short of the sparkling water to take a long gander upwards at the glowing, blue sky and the sun that shined within it. At the edge of the lagoon the boy could already see the pupfish swimming carelessly inside the luscious, blue water. The deeper he ventured towards the lagoon the more distant the sound of the sea's waves behind seemed to become. With as many pupfish as his eyes could see all at once the boy couldn't seem to make up his mind as to where to begin. He just randomly picked one particularly clear spot within the water and started spearing. With not much precision in his aim the child stabbed his spear into the water as hard as he could in the hopes of tagging at least one or two fish for breakfast that morning.

It took countless minutes for him to poke one before it managed to swim away leaving only a trickling trail of blood in its wake. Time and time again he shot at the water before at last managing to snag one. With a subdued smile the child pulled his spear out of the water before taking the fish off its sharp end and placing its quivering body on the ground behind him.

another fish and another after that one. One by one he gathered the two fish and sat them beside the already dead one before

his spear straight in. The boy had stabbed something, and it was quite large. He had to think for a moment or two and remember the size of the thing to begin with. Its

body went flying backwards onto the ground. The boy looked up to see a form bubble up from out of the water. Gradually, he sat up to gain a more precise view of what was taking place. At first thought he figured it to a much larger fish that he had managed

the figure that was slowly drifting towards the grass. The boy took one of the arms that was covered in a mess of seaweed and heaved it out of the water. Before long, however, even more of a

legs seemed to be attached. The boy just stood and stared down at the gooey and decaying cadaver with blank eyes before he turned and looked back at the sea behind him. He then knelt down and examined the corpse from side to side and from front to back. Its eyes were completely white; no pupils could be seen within them. The clothes, or what

appeared as if it were about to fall right off from its shoulders. From the neck the boy went back to the face, namely the mouth. He boy opened wide the mouth to find nothing but

without muttering a single word the child reached down and dragged the half body by the arm out of the lagoon and onto the beach for about half a mile until he reached his cave. At first, the cave was dark. The darkness continued for nearly an entire minute before light could be seen. Inside a small corner of the cave

were all stored. He then sat and stared at the dead man and his unusual mouth

to cover his nose and mouth. Its abundant stench seemed to engulf the senses in a way that burning flesh hadn't before. Even the smoke itself was leaving the cave as small whispers could be heard inside the boy's residence. Not even he could