Isla Wnifu (Waifu + Knife) is an island zoo full of genetically-engineered creatures. They’re kept within terrariums stacked in the walls of tall, overgrown, roofless rooms. The island has a trashed-out feel and I get the impression it’s regarded as dangerous or forgotten. But it’s somehow mine (or at least within my purview) — I am, unusually, allowed in this unusual place.
I’m swimming just offshore in rocky shallow water with a girl I mostly know from Twitter, KC Crowell. As afternoon turns into evening we start making out, and I’m trying to balance on the sharp sea rocks while she floats above me — it’s difficult, awkward, and uncomfortable, but c’mon… makeouts.
Dusk is fading, and I peer out into the darkening ocean, past concrete arches that look like freeway ramps, to the distant lights of the small boat that must take us home. We’re nearly set when I realize there’s a laptop that needs to be taken, and many more clothes (jeans, jackets) that should also come. The prospect of swimming across a long stretch of dark ocean begins to seem frighteningly risky. I start to scavenge from the crumbling anterooms of the bizarre creepy-crawlies, thinking maybe KC and I can seal the pants and make a floatation device.
Just as I’m heading outside again though a splintering wood doorframe, crewmen from the boat round the corner — I’m deeply relieved we won’t have to swim for it. The leader is a short Asian guy, the one who I’d previously made a deal with to transport us. I’d forgotten the other half of our deal… the men are carrying a massive whale tusk, as thick as a human being, long enough for six men to hold it aloft. It’s the second of a pair… and the extent of our deal. It dawn on me that that boat, these men, who I was so grateful to see a moment ago, could’ve left us behind without much fuss at all.