The silver sea-plane’s wings slit the air like fine razor blades through pudding. As the pontoon slid atop the water the propeller slowed, and the wings of the metallic bird reached its inevitable stop.

A small man with tanned arms and sunburned wrinkled eyes, shouted from his perch on the edge of a lacquered dock “The plane boss! The plane!” A tall man arose from the words that fell silent like snowflakes upon the dock.

He was wearing white khaki’s, shiny brown-roughed-leather shoes (with tassels) no socks, a white Tony Bahama polo shirt with rolled up sleeps and only the bottom-half of the buttons occupied so graying black hairs erupted from the chasm between the shirt and his neck. He looked like a tourist waiting for his strawberry daiquiri without the falsely pleasant nervous grin; which is a meek attempt to quill speculation about his sexual preference when fellow bar patrons notice his beverage of choice.

To be succinct his movements were majestic. His appendages moved with such swiftness and confidence his feet literally glided across the white sand and smoothly painted dock as he approached the plane.

There, the man stood next to the tanned man-child half his side as the door of the plane opened downward onto the dock and metallic “music” with distorted guitars, double-bass pedals, and incoherent screaming that seemed to be its own language came floating out of the door like waves of smoke. Such a cacophonous sound castrated the tranquility of silent nature, and banished peacefulness into the woods to starve eating only the morsels of joy from its own decaying carcass stomach until it withers and returns to the earth.

“Welcome to the cynical, phony-less, Emo Island” the Bahaman shirt wearing man named Mr. Roarke began, “please allow Tattoo here to take your bags” (pointing to the sun-burned midget).

“In your room’s you will find that the windows have become painted black and the drawer in your room contains a vintage used copy of the Emo manifesto—Catcher in the Rye by the immortal JD Salinger. Also, in your room is a brand new flat-screen TV with a brick to use at your discretion, in an attempt to rebel against fraudulent consumer culture. In your bathrooms you may find razorblades dull enough to cause a dramatic bloody scene, but not sharp enough to kill you, as we assumed you desired.
If any of you feel inclined to draw attention to yourself feel free to use it, and remember always across the street this is a suicide free zone, please. Most importantly, remember your difference from society is celebrated, here you feel at home among fellow misfits, so you can flourish in your non-ambivalent identity free of the judgmental eyes of society. Don’t forget you are all different. Thank you for your stay here.” Then Roarke departed the group of the black clad, and whispered under his breath “if different was the same then that’s what you are” before engaging in some odd snickering/coughing simultaneous expression.

He forgot to mention the black mascara left in their rooms along with the black hair dye changed, from the Hydrogen Peroxide and colorful eye liner from Cosmopolitan magazine convention. The make-up still remains only a different kind.

The group of the black masquerading coterie with little sister borrowed pants, converse shoes and uniform hair cuts seemingly cut with the aide of an irregular bowl created in a ceramics class by the trembling fingers of recovering alcoholics and crack fiends, followed the shortened man into the infirmary where they were issued the uniform of the emo. Then they followed in line towards their uniform grey rooms, each equipped with a stereo slot to insert their Best-Buy purchased IPOD’s, still smelling of plastic wrapping and consumerism.

“Hello all” begun the shrunken man as the approached their rooms, “I am Tattoo…I’ve been in the island getaway business for nearly 40 years from Fantasy island to Pope endorsed Pedoph-isle (created by Adam Carolla), which was in my opinion one step below Chernobyl in the way it ended. Now I’m on the ground floor of the experiment in resort vacations for the unique, the different, the apathetic–the Emo. Here as my bosses said, you can communicate about the spiraling apathy of your soul, and celebrate your break from the norms of society. Oh here we are.” Tattoo arrived at their cabins, which seemed vaguely familiar to the Emo’s as if they were simply the painted over, stucco siding homes of their youth; made artificially to look used like a trendy factory slave-labor sowed worn down pair of jeans.

(The weary harlequin notions of difference and uniqueness cover the nebulous face of universal human similarity).

As they entered their rooms the wind rippled the shallow water, and the waves recoiled inwardly to the heart of the ocean, leaving the shoreline shallower then it had been when the plane first arrived. The wind blew down a deformed coconut in a tree out in the distance amongst the other trees, and the coconut landed against a pointed rock and fragmented.

Their first night on the island the wind penetrated the walls, like a lobotomy to conscious, the Emo’s then felt dizzy and frightened from the brashness of the wind, an unseen concept in their prior culture.

(The locals say at night from that day on sometimes they could hear, even a good two miles off shore, the same incoherent screaming and distorted guitar riffs echoing in the calm night, as they all play different songs from their rooms, yet the echoes all sound the same.)

At breakfast they were served ordinary cornflakes and whole milk, while watching reruns of 1980’s movies like The Goonies and Breakfast Club on a large projection movie screen in the mess hall.

This removed from society the hatred of the conforming seemed to subside, so in order to keep the level of emoness elevated everyday black and white bandannas are parachuted in crates onto the island like rice deliveries to the Vietnamese. Since the shipping process can be damaging to the sanctity of the materials blood of J.D. Salinger in tiny homemade pickling jars, is shipped in it as well, along with a little Chinese boy in each crate who rubs Emo CD’s against the bandannas to ensure optimum emoness. Any lack of this religious process could result in coherence of thought and a deeper self-awareness. In a sense, the bandannas (and emoness in general) were like alcohol to them obscuring logic and destroying rationalization. No one knows where the little Chinese boy goes from there legend has it in some savage satanic frenzy out in the jungle in the cloak of night the Emo’s dismember the boy leaving the uneaten part of his carcass for the vultures.

***

Charles came to that island from a normal town on the outskirts of Chicago where he felt that there was something more to life, but could not tell what it was.

Feeling alone and numb to the world one day, he devoured the tinder log of teenage angst—Catcher and the Rye. After reading the novel he felt he was different from everyone and acted accordingly: in a quasi-arrogant I’m better than you but still seek your approval sort of way. This is what led the boy to his bout with emoism. A condition that pervaded every aspect of the boy’s life from his clothes to his speech, the boy’s slender body clung to the girl tight pants and rendered him “sexually indistinguishable.”

When the boy heard of this island, run by the duo from his favorite childhood television show, seen only in re-runs and box-sets, he had to sign up. The boy needed something, as everyone needs something, here so minute amount of acceptance and empathy.

The boy was not different, he simply wished he were different and an attempt to become it had made him the same as everyone else in the most fundamental ways.

During the night his subconscious splices reels of film from his past to be projected on the innards of his skull to sees glimpses of who he once was. After waking up, and a moment of wakefulness passes, he seeks to recreate the dreams in real time and follow the imaginary path to find out who he truly is. He aims to remember the dream the moment he awakes the moment before wakefulness comes in but he irrevocably forgets the dream within a second as apparent self-awareness hits him.

Without dreams what are we? Charles thought. What kind of person must I be if I can’t remember my own dreams? Why am I this way? How can I know myself if I can’t remember myself? Ambivalence began to seep into every article of his life, like butter on the fingertips that can’t be washed away, lingering eternally.

Days on the island were routine. The death metal/slasher/post-hardcore/screamo/emo/not really music, music was always present. The boys talked to each other at first and over time the conversations began to dissipate. Many of them soon realized they had little to say to one another; after all one can only talk to themselves for so long before they either shot up a convenience store or start an emo band.

One day during a supply run shipping in Ibanez guitars with neck pick ups removed for optimal shredding, combo amps permanently set on distortion and foot pedals labeled “INSANE,” and double bass drum pedals without drum sets, the plane began to cough a malignant grey into the air that engulfed even the most intense shredder on the island. They all begun to wheeze and cough like four-year olds smoking Cubans’.

Most of the shredders were hospitalized for a week after that incident. It seems that someone had planted a time-released weapons grade gas in Hitler-like attempt to “cleanse the island.” Many still maintain they saw Pat Robertson jump out of the plane as it crashed into the profound blueness, but such tales are pure speculation.

Those who survived this (sadly some did) ones like Charlie became stronger for it like a person who has recovered from Ebola or Chicken Pox.

(In memoriam: one Tattoo died that day when struck by the plane while swimming. He was a chauffeur, concierge, lover of Mr. Roarke, an inspiration for working actor midgets, and for some personal savior and messiah.)

In theory this should have bonded the survivors but this did not come to pass. Charlie came to realize how exceedingly normal he was at the island in conversations with himself/others. This upset him a great deal and he began to carve a knife from the guest soap emblazed with the anarchist logo; eventually he sharpened it so far only the “tm” of the logo shown. He kept it in his sock out of fear from the others for his realization of sameness. Needless to say fearing an emo is like fearing a Ferris wheel I mean it’s a fucking emo, they harm only themselves.

At night time he didn’t sleep anymore, restless thoughts about his futile search for purpose broke through the darkness. The few hairs on his face began to grow long, and his oddly shaped hair began to grow coarse and he smelled like 24/7 crack addict hooker, because he used all his soap carving shanks. There was now thirty seven taped to his body. He scratched his neck feverishly and no longer could hear the metallic voices and decaying soul subject matter emanating from his Best Buy purchases.

One day during a re-screening of the Breakfast Club he snapped, he wandered off into the mountains high above and there he met a man in a wool poncho smoking a tobacco pipe in the humid 90 degree summer days wearing high black boots, jeans with eternal grass stains, and a yellow sombrero. He called himself “The Pablo.” They began to sort through some things together and eventually realized that a mass Jonestown like murder/suicide of the whole camp was the only answer. The Pablo had enough surplus weapons and ammunition to massacre a small Asian communist village.

When Charles carried the weapons down to the village he began to question himself and no longer understood why he was doing this. “If I kill them it only ends lives not the condition” he thought. So Charles created a different plan and when he was done planning he giggled feverishly and began to have a seizure from his chuckling: He was to kill the Jesus of the Emo, JD Salinger.

Charles ventured up the mountain to discuss this with “The Pablo” when the anti-Christ/Pat Robertson appeared manning an F-15 jet plane. On the nose of the plane were the bumper stickers: Gays are unfit to even watch the WNBA…Foundation for the assassination of “communist” rabble rouser Hugo Chavez… [And] fuck ghosts they scare the shit out of me. Two planes flanked him one manned by some mysterious henchmen wearing a Yao Ming jersey, and JD Salinger himself screaming “I will kill the beast I have created!” They firebombed the island and soon the fire they created engulfed the island leaving no plant sacred and not a single emo safe from incineration. Charlie and The Pablo, whose really a Yugoslavian refugee named Billy, died in each others arms atop that mountain. As Pat Robertson flew off into the sunset of burnt oranges and lavender blues, the sky melted into melancholic colors as existence became nothingness.

Salinger was dead he kamikazed his plane into the dock before the collapse of the word, and the henchmen seemed to just disappear. And it was just Robertson then floating in nothingness with a VCR and a 700 club greatest moments tape [kind’ve an oxymoron]. He shot himself upon realizing this; his final words were “We are what we are, and when we realize that we only strive to be what we are not …” then the gun fell.

After this, the religious prophets chuckled, Buddha laughed and Mr. Rogers hurled a trident at his corpse.