I walked into my history class with a small cup of coffee in my right hand and took my seat in the middle of the rows next to my other friend Jinyoung.

 

“Morning.” His head was angled down, looking at his phone.

 

“Hey.” I sat down and set my backpack beside my chair. The classroom was set up like a lecture hall with eight rows of tables and connected chairs in a slanted manner with stairs leading up to the highest row. It was like a movie theater without the large movie screen in the front. Sometimes we watched small clips depending on our topic for the day, but for the most part we listened to our teacher lecture and completed a couple of papers. Now all we had was today’s last topic before the final next week and then we’d be free.

 

“How are you?” Jinyoung looked at me once he put his phone away.

 

“I’m fine…actually I had that dream again last night.” I slowly looked at him.

 

“Really? The same dream?”

 

“Sort of. It was like a continuation of the other two dreams I had the two nights before.”

 

“What happened in your last dream?”

 

At that moment, our professor walked into the room and greeted everyone.

 

“I’ll tell you later.” I said quietly after greeting our professor.

 

“I’m sure you all are very excited to know that next week is our final exam.” Our professor smiled. Everyone in the room chuckled and some cheered quietly.

 

I smiled as well. One good thing about our history professor is that he had a good time teaching our class and was clearly interested in the topics.

 

“I have gone over your term papers and was very pleased with the most of the results. As you all understand, research is a major part of our class along with writing, and I can clearly tell who did their research and who didn’t. I will hand out your papers at the end of class today. As for today’s topic, it is a special one and very highly debatable, so I will be open to any opinions that arise when we talk about it.” After pausing to glance at his notes, he looked back at us and walked a little closer toward our tables. “Everyone has heard of The Bermuda Triangle, right?”

 

Everyone either nodded or made some noise of agreement.

 

“What kind of information do you know?”

 

A student behind me raised his hand. “It’s mysterious.”

 

“Well obviously.” Our professor rolled his eyes a bit, making a few of us chuckle. “Why is it mysterious exactly?”

 

Another student raised their hand. “Ships disappeared while sailing inside of it.”

 

“That’s correct.” Our professor replied. “Not only ships, but planes as well. And does anyone know what the peculiar thing is?”

 

Silence filled the room.

 

“These planes and ships disappeared without a trace and didn’t send out distress calls. When rescue planes and ships were sent out to look for survivors or pieces of the missing machines, they all came back empty-handed and very confused. One of the rescuers even said, ‘It’s like they flew away to Mars!’”

 

Some more quiet chuckles sounded after his sentence as our professor moved back toward his podium.

 

“Because of these occurrences, scientists named the area ‘The Bermuda Triangle’ because it stretches across the Atlantic Ocean between Miami, Florida, USA, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Now I’m curious to hear about some of your theories on this matter. Please name me reasons why the planes and ships disappeared.”

 

Several students’ hands went up around me and our professor called on them one by one, writing them on the board behind him.

 

After about a minute, our professor politely asked everyone to put their hands down and stepped away from the board so we could see the results.

 

. Atlantis

. Different gravity

.Wormhole

.Aliens

.Elaborate hoax

 

“Interesting results.” Our professor nodded at us. “Exactly what I was expecting everyone to come up with. But there is one theory that I mentioned a few moments ago that seemed to slip your short term memories.”

 

Another stream of silence filled the room.

 

“…Mars?” Jinyoung shrugged next to me. I don’t think he meant for our professor to hear him, but our professor’s eyes focused on him and pointed at him.

 

“That’s correct! ‘It’s like they flew to Mars!’ Did anyone consider that somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, there is a transporter to another world?”

 

No one said anything.

 

“…that’s crazy.” One student in front of me shook her head a little.

 

“It might be.” Our professor nodded at her. “However, it’s a theory that scientists haven’t discarded.” He moved to his laptop on his podium and clicked away. “I am going to show you a ten-to-fifteen minute video clip about the Mars theory of the Bermuda Triangle. It was created like a very short film but the theory still stands. Please direct all of your attention toward the screen now.”

 

The projector above us and the main button on the side glowed bright blue. A blue screen slowly came into focus on the big screen and then went black. What appeared next was a single word in bold:

 

Juliet

 

Then the word faded and the screen faded into a tropical scene. A man was lying on the beach as if he had just been washed up from the sea. His compass was lying right next to him and as he came to, he grabbed the compass and looked at it. The dial was shaking and not settling on a single direction. The man looked at it confused and slowly stood up. Then he walked into the jungle part of the island he seemed to be on. Through the green leaves and slight, lush brush below his knees, he saw a woman a short distance in front of him wearing a long, white dress. Her long dark hair flowed in the calm wind. The man couldn’t see her face, but he was intrigued enough to approach her and talk to her.

 

“Excuse me. Where am I?” He asked her.

 

She glanced at him then slowly turned away and walked toward an open field. Confused but enchanted by her beauty, he followed her and looked around. The field was full of sun-tinted golden grass floating in the gentle wind. A single tall tree offered the only kind of shade from the warm sun.

 

“This is paradise.” The woman answered, looking around the area and admiring it.

 

The man looked back at her. “Do you live here?”

 

“I’ve lived here for a very long time.” There was a tint of sadness in her voice and her eyes slowly moved to the golden grass below her.

 

“Is there anyone else?” The man asked.

 

The woman didn’t answer.

 

“You must be very lonely.” The man slowly reached over to touch her wrist.

 

She slowly looked at his hand and met his eyes. “I was never lonely. Just waiting. Waiting for someone to come and find me.”

 

The man smiled a little. “I’m someone.”

 

For the next few minutes, the man and women sat under the healthy, tall tree and talked for a very long time. Soon the man was lying in her lap and grazing his fingers across the side of her face.

 

“I’ve never felt so happy…I could die.” The man confessed while smiling.

 

“Will you stay with me then?” The woman asked, hope filling her calm eyes.

 

“…yes. I will.” The man nodded. Suddenly his vision started to blur and the image of the woman started to faded away. His vision went dark in only a few seconds. He felt like he was falling. He blinked several times and tried to see through the sudden darkness, but all he could feel was his body sinking faster than an anchor thrown into the ocean.

 

Then the screen cut to only blackness until some text formed in the center:

 

The man was on a boat to visit the Bermuda Island in 1968. His ship disappeared into the ocean directly in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. The film you have just witnessed was his story to scientists who discovered him washed up on the beaches of Puerto Rico. He explained to the scientists that he had seen the heavenly island and beautiful women in under an hour. The scientists informed him that the year was 1974. He had been missing for six years.

 

Our professor turned off the projector and turned to face us. “Please tell me your thoughts on this film.”

 

The room was stone silent. I let out a small breath and continued to stare at the screen in awe.

 

“Wow.” Jinyoung said.

 

“Wow indeed.” Our professor chuckled. “I can see how surprised everyone is. Unfortunately, the man was sent to a mental house because he lost his mind thinking about the visions he saw and research on how to get back to the place he discovered. It would take him a few years of insanity and dismay before he ended his life. He simply didn’t want to deal with the stress and hallucinations anymore.”

 

A small murmur passed between the tables.

 

“Now we will go into more of the history behind the ships and planes that disappeared in the triangle.”

 

As the professor lectured and drew diagrams on the board, I stopped listening to him and started thinking a lot about the film clip we just saw. It really intrigued me and perked my curiosity about the triangle and its mysterious aura.

 

Once the class was over, our professor passed back our term papers and told us to study well for the final. I left the classroom with Jinyoung and we made our way toward the college cafeteria to eat lunch.

 

“That was pretty intense today.” I mused.

 

“You’re still thinking about the film?” Jinyoung smirked.

 

“It was just so unsettling. That man went insane…”

 

“Yeah, I would too.”

 

“Do you think the Bermuda Triangle really is a time portal to another place?”

 

“Like a wormhole?”

 

I nodded as we entered the cafeteria.

 

Jinyoung shrugged. “I don’t know, man.”

 

I could tell he was more focused on eating lunch than discussing school topics with me, so I stopped talking as we got our food and moved to our usual table next to the glass windows.