The volcanic island on which Tobias sat scribbling a note with his unfavored hand has gone through many names over the decades, which is why I will not puzzle my readers with supplying its current calling. With the island's owner now fled, it was due to fall into new hands in a matter of months and be called a different thing for the seventh time that decade.
Centered in the bay between East, West, and Central Benediction, the volcanic island was the perfect spot for villainy, scheming, and unhealthy reclusive behavior, complete with likely toxic sulfuric fumes. But, besides being in the middle of everything, its location served Tobias a purpose; predictability.
The sea flowed into the large bay and circled the same path every day, as it had for eternity. The current traveled around the small reef at the mouth of the bay and swirled first along the pristine white beaches of the East, towards the industrial front of Central Benediction, and eventually meandered to the black sand of the West before slipping back out to sea.
Tobias, despite the decaffeinated, groggy fuzz of his visions, trusted in those currents to aid his escape.
On the inside of a cardboard bandage box that he'd torn apart for a canvas, he used a chunk of basalt to etch a streaky and difficult-to-read message. His cheeks were red with frustration and focus as he struggled to close off the note. His left hand trembled with the effort of directing the basalt over the board, unused to such labor.
"Bring m... morphine," Tobias murmured, scraping the word tediously over his canvas. Sweat trickled down his brow and freshly salted his burns. "And burn... gel... and water... and food... AND coffee, and..."
He stopped, biting his blistered lip, and crossed out the last 'and'.
"Please... come..." He gave an anguished moan and shook out his hand before reclaiming the makeshift pencil. "... Discretely."
I can vouch that Tobias MacClain once had the finest cursive handwriting I have ever had the pleasure of envying. The journals preceding the injury of his right and favored hand were written in a font so fine and elegant, that if it weren't so depressing to read, I wouldn't have hesitated to frame a page and put it on my wall.
The bandage-box note was so far from this level of paragon that when I found it sodden and limp and reeking of fish and engine grease in the East Benediction Dump, after much digging, I almost kept searching. I'd mistaken it for a child's homework, tossed from from the nearby elementary school where the little rascals were still learning to write.
I took the carboard home and dried it, and now the note is kept underneath piles of papers, folded into a hidden compartment in a locked box that I have since buried in an unknown location, because it was too dreadful to lay eyes on. I have rewritten it for my readers with my typewriter, which is much easier to look at:
PLEASE DIRECT THIS MESSAGE TO P.O BOX #267, EDUCATION DISTRICT, EAST BENEDICTION.
I HID WHEN SNOWPEA CALLED AND TOLD YOU OF ME. I AM NOT DEAD. I NEED HELP. PLEASE BRING MORPHINE AND BURN GEL AND WATER AND FOOD AND COFFEE AND
PLEASE COME DISCRETELY. TELL NO ONE. I TRUST ONLY YOU (AND TEDDY).
I WILL EXPLAIN.
COME AT ONCE.
Tobias grimaced, hissing air through his teeth as he read over his work. It would have to do, he decided. He folded the cardboard into a long, squashed roll that was reminiscent of a scroll, but much less elegant, and shuffled around the inside of his bag to find a bottle.
There was only one, and therefore, only one chance for this S.O.S to work. He took a wad of bandages and poured the rubbing alcohol onto them, then wound them tight around his leg. Unable to bear the stinging and the compression all at once, he caved to loosening them, then soaked another wad. These bandages he wrapped around his face and head, and the last ones took to his right hand. When all was sparking with the torturous teeth of alcohol, he lay stiff as board on his back, fists clenched, and waited it out, squeezing prickly tears out with his whimpers.
Eventually, the agony subsided to dull throbbing as he told himself with the faintest of breath, "It must have helped."
The bottle of alcohol, however, was not yet empty, and Tobias's back and side not disinfected. He tore a scrap from his ruined suit to drench in the foul, foul liquid. At the very least, the fumes were beginning to make him faint, which helped to slightly mute the burn of the cloth during the next round of his cleansing.
The hero tilted the last drops of the heinous—but helpful—draught onto his ribs and sucked in his breath as he waited for the prickling sensations to subside. Once all was done, he picked up his carboard scroll and drove it into the bottle, holding the glass with his foot. Inch by inch the scroll shuddered through the opening until it clinked against the bottom and he fastened on the top.
His eyes raised to the blue of the water, to the blue of the sky.
Without food or drink, his stamina was weaning quickly. Though his powers were nearly useless now, Tobias was crafty. Perhaps he did not have a three-course meal or a bottle of Pinot Gris, but he did have medical bag that was reliably over-prepared, and though most of the resources had been exhausted, there was one last trick.
He watched the fishing boats and shipping barges chug along in the distance, wisely skirting far from the volatile island and held his last trick pensively on his lap. The current would take the bottle towards the East at first, it was true, but if it was not picked up, it would eventually wash right out to the ocean, and so would he. This was the only chance that he had, he believed, and he had to take it when the time was right.
He opened the case on his lap and took out the syringe, fitting it carefully with its needle, and flicked out the trapped bubbles of air. Adrenaline would stimulate his visions, undoubtedly, but he needed to spare it.
The strategy that Tobias used to deploy his S.O.S, though it was not fast, was clever and effective. It took three days before a squirt of staling adrenaline in his blood in the early-afternoon peak water-traffic hours revealed to him his window of opportunity. There was no time for him to wait for a better chance; ninety-percent odds had never failed him before. With his shield crutch to escort him, he hobbled over the sands with his bottle and a triumphant, mad grin and came to the perfect spot.
A chunk of basalt jutted from the island from a long ago eruption. It snaked into the sea where it broke the gentle lapping of the bay waves, causing the ripples to split into different directions. Tobias heaved himself along the formation, straight to the point, where he climbed up a pile of the same bland black rock that was everywhere. He switched his shield to his right wrist and lodged it into a crack in the rock to steady his balance, then raised the bottle in his left.
Not yet.
He pulled his arm back.
Not yet.
Distantly, across the water, a small fishing boat was having engine trouble. Though Tobias could not see rescue in their future, he was beginning to see it in his. After one last moment of waiting, the probabilities of his bottle being found reached a peak and began to diminish and he hurried to hurl the message as far out into the currents as he could. If he'd calculated the odds correctly, which he always did, his bottle would clink against the hull of the drifting vessel within the hour, and the owner would climb from his or her smoking engine room to investigate.
Though Tobias could see no further into this future, he was certain, as he edged back down the pile of rocks, that fate was in his favor. And on this occasion, as he returned to his crescent of rock to curl up and sleep the time and doubt away, his motto seemed right.
Saepe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit. Often, it is not advantageous to know what will be.
On this occasion, it was not knowing that allowed him to sleep, and it was not knowing that kept him from giving in, because all he had left was hope and faith.
No, Tobias did not know if rescue would come, but with nothing left for him to do, the pressure fell away and his bloodshot eyes drifted to a close. In this case, as his message was picked up as a piece of litter and dumped, unread, in the fisher's waste-bin of fish scraps and diesel-soaked rags, it was indeed advantageous not to know what would be.
