face melting (Island part 2)

The deadly face melting leaf of the deadly face melting plant, Amorpha cutis-fundo, landed squarely in the middle of my forehead, and burned into it a deep purplish-blackish leaf print.  It was my scarlet letter, proof I came from a strange background.  Growing up I tried to hide the mark, I was embarrassed and ashamed.  Kids would shriek and throw stones at the hated devil-face, the name I was given.  On more than one occasion I was pummeled mercilessly by small hordes and bastions of mischievous miscreants, simply for having that scar.  It was during one of these assaults I first met Susan Leonard.  She was the leader of a particularly ornery group of oafish assholes.  I was but a first grader, and her group were sophomores in High School.  Every day I would walk by the local seven eleven type store, I forget the name now it has been so many years.  Something like fast and easy mart, or the fast and sleazy as I would often call it.  What a place for bands of angsty teenage dipshits.  There were always at least a few out front, trying to fish for booze and cigarettes.  Frustrated with their failed attempts at procuring their beloved contraband, Susan's group was anxious to lash out at society, their fellow man, and most unfortunately for me, any young, vulnerable goober stupid enough to stroll past the fast and sleazy without at least a fat friend you could easily outrun.  I rounded the corner of Billings St, and took my usual turn onto Main, it was then when one of Susan's stooges spotted me.
"Susan, check it out.  Do you see what I see?  It's that devil-face kid.  No wonder we can't get no fuckin' brews the luck that kid brings.  I oughta kick that ugly lump, and teach him a lesson."  some burly, blundering bastard declared.
"You know what Shane, I think you should sock some sense into that slimy, salamander-skin face of his."  Susan slyly slithered.  Shudders ran up and down my spine, I tightened my grip around my backpack straps, swallowed a big gulp of saliva, and tried to remember the words of Dagmar, my German foster mother.  "Stop your fretting child, life ain't petunias, its thorny roses!  But roses ain't just thorns!"  This was a thorny rose type situation I was in.  But I wasn't seeing much rose, just a bunch of thorns.
"Fart faces!" I howled with all my might.  There was only one way out of this situation, running certainly wasn't an option.  That is what they were expecting.  I flipped the back pack off my back and held it in front of me with my arms locked.  Digging my feet hard in to the ground I began a dead sprint toward Shane hoping to knock him over.  A kerfuffle they were after a kerfuffle they would get!!!  I could see nothing except the black fabric of my backpack and all I could hear were my own howls of rage, confusion, and fear.  "Kerthwack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Shane did a quick side-step, save for his right foot.  I was tumbled to the pavement faster than a cheetah can run.  That was the least of my worries.  The feet of many a forlorn, booze-thirsty nitwit were soon smashed down on me.  What a whooping.  Lost two teeth and broke my wrist in the fall.  Susan's cackle rang in my ear, all else was silence as far as I was concerned.  Sure an oaf kicks your ass with his steel toed boots it sucks, but a strikingly beautiful babe's espadrille stings more.  And that is what she was, gorgeous.  She was the rose, Shane and the others the thorns.  How could the rose betray me?  Vengeance, the word spelled itself out in my head, and I had to have it.  My remaining teeth were what had to bring it, for the rest of me was too pummeled and broken to exact it.  Susan geared up for another stomp, and I was ready for it.  I grabbed at that dazzling ankle with everything I had, every desperate cell in me was churning at max capacity.  Eureka!!  The ankle was mine, now bite you fool, bite goddamnit, I thought to myself, your window is closing.  I took a bite out of that leg like it was the finest pastrami sandwich in the finest New York deli.  Oh if ever a leg could taste like heaven, this was it.  

"YOWWZZZAA!" Susan's scream was ferocious. Shane even shuddered.  Susan wrenched her foot free, at the expense of another of my teeth, but I didn't care.  Vengeance had come, the rose was mine.  A few more extra vigorous kicks and I was home free, sirens were blaring by now.  The fucking shits scattered faster than a Hippo's. 

Island

I write this story from a hut on an island in a lake in an island surrounded by a lake that is surrounded by none other than an island.  The final island is surrounded by the ocean.  I only tell you this to emphasize my isolation from the world.  There are three species of plants living here with me (they eat the sun, and sometimes flies), a lot of bugs: mostly biting flies (they eat me, and feed on frog blood), some frogs (they eat the flies; the flies sometimes eat the frog dung that is made up of flies for the most part, fucking cannibals).  I eat plants.  It is quite a tidy ecosystem.  Sometimes I introduce outlanders to the ecosystem by shooting birds or flying mammals (bats for the most part, sometimes when I am exceptionally lonely, and hallucinating on frog sweat, I pretend the bats are flying cows, but that doesn't count as a part of my ecosystem).  Before I stray too far from the subject of my island's ecosystem, let me not forget the mention of my gut flora.  They eat whatever I eat, and help me turn my food into shit.  My shit feeds fungi, which I forgot to mention earlier, but now I have.  I think that finalizes the food chain here on my island.  Let's get to the main subject of this story, how I got here.  I was the Captain of the once noble ship: the USS Wanderer.  We were a mighty crew of three.  Me, the cook: John Stark, and the first mate: Susan Leonard.  Let me describe each of them, how they died will be detailed later.  Me:  I was born to atheist missionaries, trying to spread the word of no God to the indigenous peoples of Outer Island, the outer island of the three earlier mentioned islands.  I was born because my Ma brought one year's worth of birth control on a two year mission (My Dad brought two year's worth of lust).  I was three months old by the time we had returned to the mainland.  They called me Nature's Blessing.  Short version was just Nature.  My folks both died about two weeks after we had returned from outer island.  Some sort of jungle fever caught up with 'em, the docs had never seen the like before.  On the mainland, one of the docs raised me.  She was an interesting lady, a German, real cold and calculating.  Taught me discipline and mathematics, but that was about it.  The rest I learned from John Stark and Susan Leonard.  They were both about ten years my elder, and fascinated by a strange kid with such a hippy name.  I was strange, cause my face was disfigured in the first three months of my life while I was still on Outer Island.  That place has a nasty ecosystem: Jungle cats, venomous snakes, large bearlike creatures with giant fangs, poisonous plants, and, yes, the fucking biting flies.  My face got melted by one of the nastier varieties of plant on that Hellhole.  An atheist missionary has an easy job of getting people to believe there ain't no god...