The Island Birds

"Hello friend or Savior!”

Wallace was in no shape to be anyone's savior; he could barely stand upright on the mysterious beach which he had only arrived at an hour earlier. The words of the message appeared blurry from underneath a cracked pane of glass, presumably to guard the yellowed sheet of paper from rain. All of this was affixed to the side of a beached motorized yacht, now coastal wreckage-as-monument to the frail man standing before it. “The Golden Corona” was painted on the jutted remnants hunkering over the dark sand. Still, the badly-damaged vessel was in better condition than the battered raft that had barely carried Wallace to the island. He had struggled against an unforgiving current for hours before arriving at the Corona, and he was weaker and hungrier than he'd ever been in his life.

“Please help yourself to one of the bottles of freshwater I’ve left for you.”

Wallace was already on his third bottle, having thrown up a good bit of the water from the first. All of them, around thirty in number, had been placed in a neat row at the base of the yacht. Had Wallace been the sort of person that paid attention to world events, he would have recognized the boat and known its owner. In some circles, The Golden Corona was as famous as the Argo.

“There’s a building on the northwest corner of this island. It’s a real building made of concrete and steel. The biologists that used to live here have vacated this tropical prison, but I’m here now. My name is Rylan McCay. I have one warning for you: don’t eat any of the birds. They carry a very rare disease. I have plenty of information and research here that will explain everything. Get here as soon as you can.”

That was the end of the note. The words were as much of a premature admonishment as they were a promise. The caws and cackles from inside the forest of the island, which otherwise appeared bereft of fruit and other such nourishment, had given Wallace hope for a meal after days without. After the initial scout which led him to the Corona, he was going to set out for a hunt, hopefully build a fire close to a source of clean water - if there was any to be found.

The letter quelled his imagined feast, but this information was like rising up for oxygen. If Rylan had survived on the island more than a week or two, then perhaps there was a life to be had here. At the very least, there was someone with whom to await rescue.

Wallace judged the sun and headed northwest.

He couldn’t have known it, but Wallace’s trek mimicked, almost step-for-step, the exact course Rylan had taken the previous summer. The surrounding currents had put Rylan on the same basic path. Only in his case, the Corona was heavier than the life raft, and had found purchase on the beach quicker.

An explosion at sea had killed everyone but Rylan, transforming the Corona into a powerless scrap adrift on the Pacific Ocean. After two days, he had to ditch the remains of the crew to suppress temptation to feast upon their spoiled meat. But fate brought Rylan to the very island he’d been seeking, though its secrets were still a mystery to him then.

It took Wallace about an hour to reach the northwest corner. Wallace’s legs were still cramped from dehydration, and the sun grew brighter and more intense as it began to set. Once he was within range, he cut into the island through a thicket of trees. The bird noise was much louder once he was under the forest canopy. The discord was jarring after so many days of silence, but Wallace had a mission and a destination.

For his part, Rylan had reached his grim destination months earlier. Before he had even spotted the island, a seagull landed on the edge of the Corona, signaling that land would be nearby. Rylan devoured the diseased bird immediately, all but its beak and toes, and thus became an unwitting host to an angry mob of viral parasites.

A quarter mile into the island forest, Wallace met up with a trail which led him to a small, one-story building. It was grey and cylindrical, perhaps decades old. Moss and vines covered the lower part of one side, but it appeared that Rylan had cleared the growth away for visitors, revealing a large metallic door which he’d propped open a few inches. Wallace grabbed the edge and began to pull it toward him.

Wallace never got a good look at the thing that Rylan had become since he’d started down the path to decay. He'd barely had time to set the trap: water to keep his prey alive, a siren song disguised as a welcome letter. Rylan's face and body had been remarkably changed by the poison inside him, poison which both killed him and kept him alive.

Wallace had obeyed the letter’s instructions, he'd ignored the island birds. Rylan-as-creature would have sensed it if he had, and then it would have had nothing to eat. It grabbed Wallace’s hand from inside the building, ripped his whole arm off with a torturous snap. The malformed and insane birds cried out from above, alarmed by the screams that followed.

Just Like the Candy

There used to be a place in Putnam, West Virginia called Howdy's. It was kind of a bar, kind of a music hall, and definitely a club - at least for the locals that ended up there most every night. It was a perpetually dim, borderline dank, concrete-floor-covered-in-sawdust kind of place. Bluegrass music reigned supreme at Howdy's, but they also were known to host local rock bands from time to time, so long as the group knew how to play at least two Allman Brothers songs.

One listless Tuesday night, a man walked in the front entrance. The door was propped open as it usually was during the summer, inviting a Teays Valley breeze, if any were to be found. The man looked over the room a bit. He'd seen plenty of dark dives like Howdy's, but he never got tired of the musty smell of stale beer and old chewing tobacco.

The man spotted a young woman in a yellow sundress standing alone by the bar, tapping her brown boots in time with the jukebox. He walked straight up to the woman. Something about the way she was made up told him that she was waiting on somebody special. But the way she stood taller when she noticed him approaching her indicated that she wouldn't mind his company in the meantime.

He introduced himself.

"You mean like the candy?" she asked. There was a Jimmie Rodgers tune blaring out of the speaker above them, which was a disorienting factor in the man's game. He shook his head, not understanding what she meant by the candy remark. She then held up a finger like "hold on" and began digging through her purse. Finally, she pulled out a small piece of candy wrapped in gold cellophane with the words "Werther's Original" written across the front.

He smiled, and she smiled back. The woman seemed to believe he was smiling because of the odd coincidence, her having that exact brand of candy in her purse. He didn't mind that she thought that. But the truth was that he didn't know where he'd come up with the name. It wasn't meant to be cute or anything. He just thought that "David Werther" sounded boring enough to not sound made up.

She leaned in and told the man that her name was Amber, but he didn't care about that. They all had names.

Motivation

Most actors, even ones that you might recognize from TV shows or movies, aren't able to earn livable wages as actors. In fact, less than 10% of actors belonging to the Screen Actors Guild are able to meet the requirements to qualify for health insurance. It's a cutthroat industry, one with too many performers scrambling for too few roles. Because of this, nearly all actors are forced to supplement their income by stealing lunch money from children after their parents drop them off at school.

There are several approaches that actors take to rob these tiny targets of their lunch money. Some work in groups, locking a kid into a "shove circle" or corralling them into an inescapable trap. Others prefer to work alone, utilizing so-called "diva methods". Solo approaches range from forceful begging to outright brute force. However, many actors prefer to craft clever grifting schemes, ones where they con children out of money by way of some sob story, or promises of vast returns on shady investments. This approach, not only less aggressive, has the added benefit of sharpening theatrical skills.

The wide-scale theft of lunch money has gotten so problematic in Los Angeles that tax programs have been created specifically to fund meal vouchers for thousands of schoolchildren. The actors, as brazenly shameless as you'd imagine, show zero remorse in public. City plumbers and tax accountants alike have grown to distrust all entertainers in equal measure.

Greta Peeler was one such actor trying to make a name for herself in L.A. You may have seen her guest starring on your favorite murder mystery, or perhaps praising a certain brand of soft drink during a commercial break. She'd certainly paid her dues, logging many hours in acting workshops...and even more hours skulking behind brambles near elementary school playgrounds. However, thus far the only name she'd managed to make for herself was "Dragon Lady", a name designed to strike fear into the hearts and minds of children everywhere.

Greta longed to join the lucky-though-small group of performers that earned their entire salaries from acting gigs, those who could afford to brutalize children just for the fun of it. But as time passed and circumstances mounted, she began to give up on her dream. A twisted ankle caught from a botched mugging forced her out of the lunch money game. In order to pay her rent, she finally acquiesced to a receptionist job for one of the more famous plumbing firms.

As time passed, she even stopped taking the classes that had guided her for so many years, halting her study of Stanislavski's method of emotional recall, as well as her Brazilian jujitsu training.

Things settled into normalcy until one day Greta's boss, Angela Fulccilio, exited the elevator in front of Greta's reception area with a small child following behind her. The little girl was sniffling, obviously carrying the sort of virus that constantly plagued children her age. She locked eyes with Greta and immediately recognized her school playground's most infamous assailant.

"Good morning, Greta," Angela said. "This is my daughter, Kalissa. She's out sick from school for the day. I hope she won't be much of a distraction."

She said this last part more to Kalissa than to Greta.

The kid was still staring at Greta, eyebrows low. Kalissa was smart for her age and calculated the situation quickly, that the mean woman who was now apparently going by "Greta" had switched over to spending the daytime hours at her mom's office, rather than terrorizing Kalissa and her friends for lunch money. But what was this new game?

"Draaagon Lady," Kalissa called out to her former bully, taunting. She was smart, but she was also 7 years old.

Greta's eyes widened. Looking to the child, she said in a voice a bit too loud, "Oh, that's a funny name, sweetie!" Then to her boss, "I think your lovely daughter has me confused with somebody else."

"No, I don't." Kalissa stuck her tongue out at Greta.

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't." Still 7.

"Yes, you--!" Greta slammed her hands on her desk and jumped up from her seat. Angela recoiled, throwing a protective arm across her child.

Sensing a bad scene, Greta smiled brightly. "I'm terribly sorry," she said. Her eyes darted around the office lobby for an exit path. "I have to check on something in...the. I have to ask somebody about...the-"

Greta scurried away from them, off toward the break room as Kalissa forcefully coughed in her direction. Angela gave her daughter a scolding look before ushering the sick child into an empty office that had a couch and a TV.

In the 2nd floor break room, Greta tried to compose herself over a cup of green tea and a few breathing exercises she'd learned from a vocal coach. One of the firm's hotshot plumbers walked in for coffee and made a couple of jokes about her looking "flushed". Ever the actress, Greta gamely smiled and laughed.

"You just never see these punchlines coming, do you?" the hotshot plumber asked.

"I never do!" Greta enthused, dying a little more on the inside.

After a while, she returned to her desk and tried her best to concentrate on calls and schedules. Kalissa found several opportunities throughout the day to peer out of quarantine to stick her tongue out at Greta. It was easy enough to ignore at first, but then the taunts turned into paper airplane assaults. Greta retaliated by miming throat slashes and quietly mouthing death threats at the girl.

At lunch time, Angela had Greta go out to fetch Kalissa a Happy Meal, which Greta had to convince herself to not sprinkle hot sauce over. She regretted her diplomacy when she returned to her desk and sat directly onto a wet stack of used coffee filters. Psychological needling had given way to biological warfare; death and destruction would certainly follow. Greta washed the grounds off her skirt in the ladies room, dried it as best she could, and wrapped the hoodie she kept around for too-cold A/C days around her waist.

Five o'clock eventually neared, though the tension in Greta's shoulders stayed rigid. Days at the office were always long, but this one had been a marathon on a burning tightrope.

And then on her way out, Angela marched the brat back up to Greta's station and announced that Kalissa would also be out of class the following day. The kid had somehow allowed herself to get sicker so as to push this little ballgame into extra innings.

"Cancel my 9am with the faucet people. I've got to take her to the doctor, but we'll be in by 11."

"Sure thing, Angela," Greta said. Nonchalantly, she turned her head to mask a twitching eye.

Kalissa stuck her tongue out again. As she and her mom walked to the elevators, she leaned her head back and cooed behind her, "Draaaagon Laaaaady."

Greta had trouble sleeping that night. She watched several old Law & Order episodes, noting each and every hapless bystander or junkie informant. Day player roles Greta was apparently all wrong for.

She dreaded the notion of returning to the office the next day, stepping back into Kalissa's line of torment. She considered calling in sick herself. A part of her hoped that Kalissa would simply feel better in the morning, at least enough to return to school. But a darker, more urgent place behind Greta's blank stare hoped that the child would take a dire turn for the worse, and spend a few days in the emergency room. Nothing too terribly serious. Maybe a burst appendix or something that would leave the brat with a permanent limp.

The next day started off quietly, though Greta could feel sour vibes in the air. She'd been bracing herself for more immature affliction. Her neck was sore again. But then Angela entered through the elevator carrying a sleeping Kalissa. She made a shushing face toward Greta, as though that was even necessary. Unconscious kid was the way to go.

After shutting Kalissa in the spare office again, Angela explained to Greta that her daughter's illness wasn't life-threatening, but the doctor recommended that she stay out of school for the rest of the week.

"She was up all last night, the poor thing," Angela said.

"Yeah. Awful, terrible thing." Off her boss's look, Greta quickly added, "Being sick, I mean. It's really terrible."

"Well, the worst part of this is that she's missing play practice all week. They might have to recast her."

"She's in a play?"

"Yeah, The Wizard of Oz."

"Oh?"

Greta envisioned Kalissa as the perfect embodiment of the Wicked Witch of the West. Cold, calculating, and willing to foster the worst fears of her victims to unrestricted panic. Or perhaps she would better serve the school's production as the evil witch's hapless sister that was introduced as a clump of viscera crushed underneath a fallen farm house, and had no lines.

Angela sighed. "I guess they can find another Scarecrow. Ah, well. It'll save me the trouble of sewing straw onto a blouse." With that, Angela walked off to her office. Greta figured that she would have gotten somebody else, Greta probably, to make that costume anyway.

Scarecrow...the heart of the play.

Greta sat back down at her desk and looked down the hall to Kalissa's quarters.

They must really be desperate.

She kept looking down the hall, thinking of the sick, little beast that would soon begin to feel better and resume her personal torture for what would feel like eternity. Maybe the kid would tire of the stupid pranks her limited imagination could conjure, and simply tell Angela about the trail of extortion in Greta's past. God knows there were plenty of witnesses she could call forth. If she got fired, Greta would be forced to pick on younger and weaker kids for lunch money. She wasn't in her twenties anymore.

Greta shook her head and tried to find something productive to do with her hands.

You know, besides wrapping them around a little girl's throat.

An angry, hoarse laugh escaped her. Shaking her head, she retrieved a stack of files from a drawer and whisked them off to the archives room.

Greta didn't realize it then, but Kalissa was driven by the same passion for acting that Greta had felt at that age. Her behavior was the direct product of immense creativity and an unflappable focus. The girl didn't just idly watch TV shows and movies; she studied the myriad of expressions and eye movements on the actors' faces. She continued this research in the real world, mimicking gestures and voices to her friends and teachers. Kalissa was a natural extrovert, and her mind found hope in appreciation.

Greta did find these things out about Kalissa eventually though, after she was coerced to coach the girl for the Scarecrow part. Kalissa couldn't help herself and exposed Greta's past to her mother - not as a criminal, but as an actress.

Begrudgingly, Greta volunteered line readings and explained motivation to Kalissa until the little devil was well enough to return to regular rehearsals. After the performance, everyone agreed that the Scarecrow was the standout of the show. Some of the other parents took notice of the improvements, and asked the former Dragon Lady to coach their kids too.

When did all of that happen? After Kalissa put a handful of bugs in Greta's egg salad, but not too long before Greta Peeler was energized to start auditioning again.

The lunch money muggings in Los Angeles eventually faded to nothing more than an occasional, brief warning to the kids during morning announcements. Then one day they just stopped altogether.

Some say it was because of all the streaming services that produced more original programming for actors to go after. Some say it was because of the billy clubs and jackknives the kids started carrying for protection. You can count both things as contributing factors, but it's clear that the current truce is likely only a temporary one. Any great actor will tell you, after all, you must maintain your craft.

Lesser Known Examples of the Mandela Effect

The Mandela Effect is a phenomenon wherein a large group of people remember an event or detail from the past very differently than how (or sometimes even IF) it actually happened. The effect is named after Nelson Mandela, a political activist who many people falsely believed died in prison during the 1980's, when in fact he survived to become president of South Africa, and lived on until 2013.

Some famous examples of the Mandela Effect include the memory that the hoity-toity Monopoly mascot, Rich Uncle Moneybags, had at one time sported a fancy monocle (he never has), or that the popular children's book characters the Berenstain Bears were originally named the Berenstein Bears (they were always referred to as "Berenstain"). Many popular films have famous lines that are actually quite different than how they are routinely (mis)quoted, such as "Play it again, Sam," from Casablanca, and "Luke, I am your father," from The Empire Strikes Back (revisit these films if you believe these examples to be correct).

This effect can be disorienting to a person, sometimes leading an individual to believe that the past has somehow been altered, or that they have somehow crossed over into a parallel universe with subtle changes (such as in the Ray Bradbury story "A Sound of Thunder", where time travelers return from the past to find a disturbingly different world than the one they originally left). To some folks, their memories are indisputable facts, and the only explanation to combat contradictory evidence is to refute reality. This of course is a ridiculous over-reaction to new information, but the internet has provided the perfect forum for such behavior.

When I became aware of the Mandela Effect, I was instantly fascinated by the phenomenon, seeking out as many occurrences of it that I could. Some were surprising: I actually DO remember Curious George, another famous kid's book character, having a long monkey's tail that would aid him in his misadventures. But he never had a tail! Other cases proved surprising only in the sense that I didn't know so many memories could be so wrong. Many people apparently believed that the comedian Sinbad had once played a magical genie in a 1990's feature film called Shazaam (Sinbad himself publicly responded to these claims, confirming that he hadn't). But every instance of the effect, whether surprising or far-fetched, tells a story about the group of people stuck with the erroneous memory, and provides a unique look into our society's evergreen fascination with nostalgia.

Along my journey, I was astonished to see that many examples of the Mandela Effect, truly remarkable ones, had yet to be reported. Some of these lesser known inconsistencies were notions that I myself had foolishly held since childhood, others were false memories (easily disputed) that I would often overhear in conversation. I have compiled them here for your inspection, and perhaps as future evidence for myself that I have not slipped into another dimension. Enjoy!

1. Many people would be surprised to learn that Gallagher, the surrealistic 1980's stand-up comic, was never featured in a Saturday morning cartoon called The Sledge-o-matic Factory. Former CBS executives should perhaps accept some of the blame for this one, having the bone-headed idea to air a series of short animated films about sledgehammer safety...featuring a wacky Gallagher-like character named McGallagher.

2. The title "The Wizard of Oz" refers to the wizard that Dorothy is seeking in the magical land of Oz. The abomination that she creates along the way is always only referred to as "the monster" (as it is in the terrifying book from the mind of L. Frank Baum). It's a common mistake, but worth noting!

3. What most children of the 1990's might remember about Striped Fruitania candies were the psychedelic colors that they would see after eating them. In fact, "Fruit Stripe" (where on earth are they coming up with "Striped Fruitania"??) was a brand of chewing gum that featured five delicious flavors and caused only mild auditory hallucinations.

4. Several folks have a distinct memory of watching a disgruntled child who had failed to get a ball into the 1st bucket during the Grand Prize Game plunge a switchblade deep into Bozo the Clown's abdomen sometime in December of 1984. Upon reviewing the archival footage from that entire month's episodes for myself, I can confirm that the girl made it to the 3rd bucket. Also, it was just a regular kitchen knife.

5. If you happen to remember a certain lively teddy bear that regaled you and your friends with adventurous stories and jaunty tunes, then you should probably go ahead and stop looking for it in that old box you keep in your attic. It turns out that "teddy bear" was actually a traveling scamp that your parents paid to watch you on weekends, eventually ending his own life in the backyard while you watched from the window of your father's study. You can still taste the chocolate from the stolen candy bar that you were eating at the time.

6. Even that old box in your attic makes for a perfect example of the Mandela Effect. Go on up and check it out for yourself - it's just a dirty ottoman from some poor schmuck's living room that serves your twisted mind as a trophy of your first victim. Pretty neat trick, huh?

7. Despite steel insistence from many ardent fans, Universal Studios never produced a prequel film in the Jurassic Park series, rumored to have been released during the long lull between the 3rd and 4th films. Furthermore, large beasts known as "dino-saurs" never ruled the earth. The fossils we sometimes find today were hidden deep in the ground around six thousand years ago by the one true God in a brilliant test of faith for His creations. Repent your sins and join the Everlasting Glory!

I expect to see a few of these lesser-known examples of the Mandela Effect pop up on the internet any day now, perhaps as part of a Buzzfeed list or some other form of "click-bait". However, I can't help but enjoy the fact that at least some of them, and I think you know which ones, will forever remain our little secret!