The Well

Naomi was so very thirsty. She could feel the dryness in her mouth as she thought of the choice before her. “I have to make a decision soon,” she said, as she licked her cracked and blistered lips. She could taste the blood that had clotted at the corner of her mouth and scowled with disgust. How long have we been stranded on this damn island, Naomi thought. She tried to piece together the time since the cruise liner sank. Had it been one week or two? The only thing Naomi knew with certainty was that the human body could not survive two weeks without water. Naomi was in a race against time. As she lifted herself off the sandy floor and dusted off her dirty jeans, she looked up at the sky and admired the brilliant Azure sky all around her. Naomi never believed in God and thought of herself as a staunch and strict Atheist, but today, for the first time in her adult life, she looked to the sky and pleaded with God... “please, if you’re up there...help me.” She sobbed to herself quietly, feeling completely defeated. She shifted her gaze to the edge of the trees where she had buried the bodies.

Eight tiny mounds of sand sat in a row; one for each of the stranded passengers that drank from the well. The first one to change and die was her youngest son, Dylan. Dylan was four years old when their vacation aboard the cruise ship began. He had been so excited to see a dolphin and had hoped to see one on the way to the first port in St. Kitts and Nevis. Naomi wondered if they were anywhere near their original destination and caught herself thinking of the future that had been stolen from her. Naomi had been so thrilled to finally take a vacation and she could not stop the tears that ran down her face as she walked over to the sandy graves of the ones she loved. Naomi looked down at the lump where her baby boy lay. It was so ridiculously small. “Why did this happen to us”? she yelled out to no one. Dylan barely survived the entire ordeal, and Naomi had been the one to swim for their lives with him on her back, to the small island that would become their final resting place. Tears ran down her face as she looked down the line of graves and she found herself tempted to lick at them to wet her mouth, knowing full well that they would not quench her thirst.

When the passengers first found themselves stranded, it had been her husband Nick who had found the well. While the others searched the exterior of the island for a possible food source, the task of finding drinkable water went to Naomi and her family. Nick had cleared the path of branches and debris through the jungle with a large piece of driftwood he had found on the beach, and they searched the jungle until the sun was blasting its rays above them in the center of the sky. Naomi had followed behind him, holding tightly to Dylan’s hand while they searched for anything that could lead them to water. The island was dense with jungle trees and plants that covered the earthy ground. If the situation were different, Naomi might have enjoyed its beauty. What seemed like hours of walking was concluded with Nick’s excited exclamation that he had found something.

The well was out of place, Naomi remembers thinking. It sat in the middle of a clearing, protruding out the Earth like a giant thumb. It was small and its stones were covered in vines with translucent Ivy leaves. Naomi closed her eyes and felt a shiver trickle down her spine. She thought back to those weirdly glowing leaves and remembered the fear that prickled the hair around her neck when they had found it. She knew, even then, that they should not have taken a drink. The water had been as strange as the ropes of leaves draped over the walls of the well. It glistened in the sun, yet had a milky, almost astral look to it, as if it were made of the universe. Nick had turned to investigate the area and Dylan glared at the water in awe of it. Naomi had tried to stop him. Something about it had not felt right. She had tried to stop him, but Dylan was too engulfed by what he saw. Before the warning left her lips, Dylan had plunged his tiny hand into its basin, scooped up the water, and put it to his lips. Naomi recalled the happy look on his face as he continued to drink and her heart dropped down into her stomach. They had all been thirsty and this had been their first ray of hope that they could survive on the island. How she wished she could have stopped him. Nick took an empty bottle found washed up on the shore and filled it with the starry water, and then took a swig. He had offered some to Naomi, but the nagging feeling in her gut told her not to drink it. She had refused to drink and watched her husband and son wearily on the journey back to the beach.

The change happened quickly. Dylan had been walking back to shore with Nick in front of him and Naomi followed behind. She had been looking at the back of his head when suddenly it seemed as if her vision had glitched. Dylan was suddenly shorter and stouter. He turned to Naomi and his face was rounder than it had been only moments before. “Mama, what that”!? He exclaimed. She watched him look up at the trees and found herself shocked at the realization that Dylan now resembled himself as he was at two years old. Naomi had gasped and rushed to pick him up, calling out for Nick to stop...that something was very wrong. She recalled the fear and shock she felt when Nick turned to them, and he had changed too. Nick, who had been thirty-eight years old when they washed ashore the island now looked to be a young teenager. Nick did not immediately notice the change. Naomi stood frozen as she stared at her young husband and even younger son. “Nick...is that you”? Naomi had whispered. Nick had looked down at his much smaller and younger body and jumped back, horrified at his own being. “I... don’t understand. What is happening to me”? Nick protested. Naomi had shouted, “The water! You both drank the water from the well. Oh, why did you drink it, Nick”? The confusion and fear she felt that she and Nick felt that day seemed to loom in the front of her mind now.

Back at the beach, the other passengers had gathered, trying to make a fire when an older man looked up and followed Nick and Dylan with his eyes, carefully studying the boys. Naomi would never forget the look of shock on their faces as they realized what had happened to her family. The group asked many questions and speculated as to why and how something like this could have happened and no one had any idea how or why the water had regressed their age. The remaining passengers had expressed their fear and unease, yet no other water source had been found on the island. This left Naomi to reluctantly lead the others to the clearing in the jungle. The group drank from the well, one by one and Naomi was surprised to find that not everyone was fearful of the well. She thought of Cathy, an older woman in her sixties who seemed so excited for the possibility of youth again. The group changed that day and only Cathy seemed to be enjoying her new youthfulness, but that next morning Naomi’s world was changed forever.

Naomi woke to find Dylan, who was toddler-aged the previous day, as a newborn baby. Dylan was found lying on the sand, in clothes that wrapped around him like blankets, and he was not moving, and she was devastated to find that Dylan was dead. Naomi remembers gagging at the stench of him and realizing that he had died in the night as she restlessly slept. Nick had also seemed to have aged backward and stood on the beach, his adolescent self. Over the next few days, one by one, the group aged back in time by half. Naomi remembered the sobbing and yelling that occurred that week as the group realized their deaths were near. Naomi had spoken with Nick and tried to ease his fear, but she hated herself for blaming him. If only he had noticed the strangeness of the well and its water, she thought. During the days that followed, she watched Nick as he regressed to toddlerhood, and she could not bear to think of what would come next. Naomi had said goodbye to Nick four days after Dylan had passed and she felt the pain of her losses with each passing day. For the next few days, she woke to find a newborn baby on the sand and watched her fellow castaways die as infants. Naomi was horrified by the effects that this warped “Fountain of Youth” had on her already dire situation.

Naomi had gone back and forth on whether she would succumb to the fate of deteriorating to nothing; thirsty and alone, or drink from the well, only to die helpless as a newborn baby. Naomi thought back to that time for a moment longer, wiped her tears away, and begrudgingly made her decision. There would be no one left to bury her tiny body, she thought. As Naomi made her way to the clearing where the well stood, she thought about her husband and son and hoped there was a God so that, perhaps, she would see them again soon. She circled the well for a few moments and looked down into the water, glimmering in the sunlight. As Naomi lowered her hand into the water, she wondered what death would feel like. With nothing left to lose, Naomi swung her leg over the side of the well and jumped in. The water was surprisingly cold considering the heat of the day. She took a deep breath and forced her body into the water as far as she could go. She held her breath for as long as she could manage and then broke through the surface of the water, gasping for air. She cupped her hands and took a long, deep drink. Climbing out of the well, soaked and cold, Naomi walked to a soft patch of Earth a few feet away and waited for the inevitable.

An hour passed before Naomi succumbed to the change. She watched as her body began to firm and shrink to her fifteen-year-old self. Feeling defeated and exhausted, Naomi walked back to shore and prepared herself to face her death. After a sleepless night, Naomi rose to find that her body was still that of her fifteen-year-old self. Confused and irritated, Naomi did not want to drag out this life any longer, so she marched herself back to the clearing, determined to drink the well water to guarantee her demise. As she approached the clearing and looked down into the well, she gasped. The well was dry.

What was she supposed to do now but wait for the thirst to kill her? Through the confusion of not aging backward as the others had, she had not noticed that her lips were no longer dry and cracked. She prodded her mouth with her tongue and found that it was wet, and the thirst that had plagued her for weeks was gone. Year after year passed and Naomi never thirsted nor hungered for anything again. She remained a youthful teenager trapped in the mind of her thirty-year-old self, always returning to the well just in case it filled again, but the well, covered in glowing leaves, never filled again with that strange, starry water. As time passed, she wondered how long she would live like this and if she would ever die, but time yielded no answer, and she remains eternally youthful, satiated, and isolated on the tiny island, forever reminded of the family and future lost to time.