The Dark Atoll: The Castaways: Book 1

by Marilyn Foxworthy

I was here though. This was actually my home more than the other people here. My family owned it. These people were castaways, not me. I might not have a way to leave but in a way, I belonged here, not them. Of course, if they had been in trouble and needed my help, I’d help them but as I thought about the things that they had done, the societies they had built, and the culture of abuse that they had adopted, I started to feel like they were unwelcome interlopers.

  What would Pops say about this? He was a generous man and didn’t like anyone to suffer. He also hated the idea of people being mistreated. So far, the only ones here who I had met that weren’t mistreating others was Allie and Christie. What would Pops want me to do? He had always said that if I wasn’t sure what to do that I should ask myself what he would say if I had been able to ask him, and that if I did what I thought he would have said, then he’d never fault me for my decision; even if it wasn’t what he would have wanted. What would he say about this? I started to picture the discussions.

  I’d say, “Pops, I got this situation.”

  He’d say, “Well, tell me about, Son.”

  I’d say, “Um, well, to start with there’s these two girls. Yeah, they say they love me. At least one of them does. The other one can’t say much yet.”

  He’d say, “OK, that’s a pickle. Come here and let’s see what we can figure out.”

  I’d say, “Um, that would be great, but you aren’t really here and I kind of need advice right now.”

  He’d laugh and say, “Ah, then we won’t waste time telling you to figure this out on your own. Since I’m not real right now, I’ll just tell you what to do. OK, first, about the girls. Find a way to communicate within their context. Use an object lesson to explain that what you’re doing is not what they’re used to, even if it looks like it is. Give them a new frame of reference for interpreting your actions and words. Next, go for it. You’re a big boy and they’re adults, even if they are a little wacko. Be gentle but hell, you’re stuck there, and you might as well get started acting like a husband. Get serious and start fucking each other’s brains out. They told you they want it. Find a way to get going. It’ll make things easier than if you are all acting like you have to wait for something that you can’t identify. That girl Allie already kissed you like she was going to eat you and has no trouble saying that she wants her hunky boyfriend’s cock fucking her slippery pussy. She climaxed within seconds, and you didn’t even play with her tits. I’d say she’s ripe and you better pick her before tomorrow. And do it enough times that she won’t forget you in the morning. I don’t know what to do with the blond but what a body that one has. And that tiny bit of yellow fuzz above her clit, my gosh! It makes you want to eat her. Then you got other problems. Good going on the shock and awe fight, by the way. Florin keep that up. Take charge. This is your island paradise and these people are trespassers. Well, maybe some of them are refugees and you know we’ll take care of those, but you have to start making a distinction. Cut up the map if you want to and give them a sanctuary where you won’t bother them if they stay on their side of the line. Don’t let them make the decisions. And don’t give them all the best land. If you don’t have what you need, you can’t do what you need to. If they have all the good stuff, you have no resources to start running things in a better direction. You understand what I’m saying? Don’t be mean but be ruthless in doing good.”

  I’d say, “Thanks Pops.”

  Well, I thought, that sounded like a good plan. Quit being so afraid of the girls and get used to having sex. Create a strong family bond and learn to communicate and work together. Establish a base here at this house, and when we were secure, start transforming the country of Jensen-Land into what it should be. Those who didn’t want to become citizens would be allowed to live in peace somewhere else. But first things first. Family, then security, then citizenry.

  First, I need to work on communication and trust. An object lesson to describe our situation. I needed to change our reality. I needed to do some time-traveling.

  Emotional Time-Traveling was a technique whereby we go back in time metaphorically and change events in the past by reinterpreting them and then move forward to a present where we perceive things differently than we had. It was a powerful technique for emotional healing, and it was just what was needed. It was easier to do by yourself but if Allie and Christie could understand it, it could change things dramatically in a very short time. I’d try it. And maybe I could get both of them to remember how to talk in more complete sentences. I could understand them fine, but it was weird and sounded like they were cave people…not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  I went back to the beach and found the three fish that Allie had caught and took them to a spot on the sand in front of the house. I found a stick of driftwood and laid the fish side-by-side, about two feet apart. The one in the middle I beat with the stick until it was an unrecognizable mess of guts and flesh. Then I called the girls.

  I yelled, “Allie, Christie, can you come here for a few minutes?”

  The two of them appeared on the porch of the house and I motioned them to come down to the sand.

  When we were together, I had us stand around the fish in a circle.

  Christie stared at the three fish and as I started to try to explain what I was doing, she held up her hand and stopped me. She stared at the ground and frowned, keeping her hand raise in a sign for silence. I didn’t know what she was thinking but I’d wait as long as necessary.

  Finally, she said, “I see. I love you now. Can I kiss you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she stepped toward me and pulled herself into my arms and I kissed her. It was nice. Um, real nice.

  My brain, as little of it as here was suddenly, said, “Um, caveman can’t think now. Florin want zugzug with Christie.”

  I was having trouble um, thinking.

  As the kiss continued, Christie let her hands roam over my back and then my buttocks. I did the same, my hands exploring her as our tongues caressed between our lips.

  She whispered, “Touch me,” and took my hand and placed it on her breast.

  I started gently fondling her, her wonderful breast beneath my palm, the nipple hardening and reddening at the summit. Soon, Christie had her hand on my crotch, stroking my penis, and I strained not to climax. I hadn’t learned any control yet, and I was afraid that I’d start coming in her hand any second. I think she sensed that too, and a moment later she broke the kissed and squatted in front of me and took me in her mouth. It was too much. I erupted in orgasm with just the head on my penis between her lips.

  Christie didn’t seem surprised or taken aback at all. She just held me in her mouth and stroked my shaft with her hand until I was done. Then she stood up and smiled and pressed herself against me again, still stroking me softly. It seemed to be my turn now, so I reached down between her legs, running my fingers over the little tuft on yellow hair and stroked her on the outside of her vulva until she climaxed with a shudder and a moan and minute later.

  I was breathing heavily, still sliding my fingers around Christie’s slippery sex when Allie pressed her breasts against my arm and her crotch against my thigh. I pulled Christie against my body with my left arm and put my right hand between Allie’s legs and rubbed her gently until she too had a convulsive orgasm.

  I wanted to keep going. I rubbed Allie faster and more firmly and she pulled herself tight against me, crushing her breasts against my upper arm and I went back to kissing Christie with as much passion as was flooding my body right now. I wasn’t thinking anymore. Now I was the caveman. Part of me wanted to stop and um, something. Um, explain or talk or something um, stupid like that. But instead, I pushed Christie backward so that she lay down on the sand as I followed her to the ground. She spread her legs and I moved between them. She knew exactly what was going to happen and as she took hold of me and slid me into her pussy she groaned in pleasure and I kept going until I was pressed against her pubic bone. Wow. She was hot and wet and ti
ght and wonderful, and this was all new to me.

  Allie had followed us down and was on her knees beside me with her legs apart, my right hand still cupping and rubbing her mound and labia. Soon, I had two fingers up inside her, searching for her G-Spot, grinding her clitoris tenderly with my thumb.

  Christie seemed to be climaxing already, and Allie was right behind her. Allie collapsed first, falling backward onto the sand where I couldn’t reach her anymore. That left my right hand free to start playing with Christie’s nipples again. They were so hard, and so beautiful. Big raspberries, puckered and juicy in the middle of a small pink areola no bigger than three times the size of the nipple itself. I was thrusting slowly but picking up the pace and the seconds went by and I could feel myself ready to climax again soon. I bent down and sucked hard at the wonderful breast and then Christie arched her back and screamed in pleasure, and I stiffened and filled her with my semen.

  We rested for a minute, and then Christie looked into my face and smiled, and I pulled out and lay on my back in the sand. It took us a little while to recover.

  When we had regained ourselves, we sat up and made a circle around the three fish again. I started to say something but again, Christie stopped me. I didn’t know what was going on with her, but I wasn’t complaining. That was awesome. Um, I still didn’t have much blood carrying oxygen to my brain yet, but we’d had a breakthrough and I didn’t even know what it was. It would make what I wanted to say a lot easier though.

  But Christie wasn’t going to let me say it.

  The busty blond said, “Allie, see? It’s all OK now. That fish is how it was. This is how it is. This one is how it will be now. See? At first, everything was the way we knew. When we were kids. The world was just what it was, and it seemed fine. Like this fish. It was the world and it was what it was. But when we came here, when the stuff happened and the world blew up, the whole world got mushed, like me, like this middle fish. It’s all splattered and gross. It isn’t supposed to be that way. Florin told us he’s sorry. He wishes that he was here to take care of us. But he couldn’t be, obviously. He didn’t even know us. That’s not his fault. But now, it isn’t that way anymore, see? There’s a new fish. It isn’t mushed. Yesterday I was mushed. This morning I was drowned. Now, we’re all alive and the whole fish is new. No, I mean, the whole world is new. Wait, don’t stop me. This is so important and so cool. I remember so much but I remember it and it doesn’t hurt me now. The thing is, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. I don’t even think it was supposed to be the first way! Oh, watch!”

  Christie took the first fish and threw it as hard as she could into the bushes.

  She said, “That was the world before. It’s all gone. We can’t live there, and we can’t go back, because it doesn’t exist, and it wasn’t that great anyway.”

  Then she dug a small hole in the sand and scooped the ruined fish into it and buried it.

  She said, “The bad things that happened with the coaches and everything wasn’t supposed to happen. It was wrong. Somebody stomped on the fish and the guts splattered out and that was our world. They mushed me and they mushed the whole world. I wasn’t supposed to get mushed and if Florin had been here, like he wanted to be, it wouldn’t have happened. But he came and he told me that I could come with him and now we can have a new world that isn’t gross. That one can be buried, and we can forget about it. Well, we won’t ever forget it, but it doesn’t hurt me anymore.”

  She paused for a second. I had expected this to help but not so quickly and so thoroughly. I would have taken an hour to explain all of this, going slowly, trying to convince them bit by bit to accept a new reality. I would have kept reinforcing it for weeks or months. But Christie just understood. She went back in time and saw her world, before the cataclysm. Then at the moment of the cataclysm. Then she watched as things fell apart. But as part of that, she injected the thought that it should have been different. She accepted that if I had been there that things would have been different. She explored how they would have been different and integrated the idea that they could be different. A little while ago, the world was what it was; she was broken and defeated and humiliated to the point of nonexistence emotionally. Now she saw that it wasn’t supposed to be that way and it wasn’t the only option we had for reality right now. If it had been different in the past, and if the middle period was a mistake, we could fix that mistake and the reality now was better than either world she had known in the past. A little while ago her reality was that the world would always be horrific and she was as good as dead; but now, the reality was that everything had changed, and she was alive. It’s really something that has to be experienced. Describing the way this worked was a very poor attempt to teach something that had to be seen. Christie had seen it.

  She took a calming breath and said, “It’s good now. Florin, I love you. Thank you. Wow. I see it all. It’s like magic. Like my whole life is different. Like the whole world is different. All of those things really happened, and maybe I don’t even remember some of them but that doesn’t matter. Everything got broken and now it’s all being fixed again. Florin, where did you come from? And, we’re like really married, right? With Allie?”

  I said, “Yeah. But Christie, are you OK? I mean, because we, you know?”

  She smiled and said, “Because we made love? Yeah, that was great. I mean, we had to, right? What else would have made any sense? Sitting around being weird, like we were afraid of each other? When I saw everything, I knew that we just had to, because we’d just want to. I liked it.”

  She frowned and then said, “Oh, because you think I wouldn’t like it because of what happened to be, being mushed?”

  I said, “Well, yeah.”

  She said, “It’s bad. Really bad. But I never had sex before. They put things inside us and stuff like that and it got to where I didn’t even care but I never had sex. Not with a person. It wasn’t breeders, so they didn’t have sex with me. They just, I don’t know what. Just humiliated us. For a long time. And told us to never talk and just do what they told us to. And sleep on the ground and not touch anyone. Wow, that’s horrible.”

  Allie said, “Florin killed them. Five of them. Jack and Bubba and three more and even Coach was really afraid.”

  Christie looked at Allie in wonder and said, “Really? He just killed them?”

  Allie said, “Yep. They looked like that bad fish. He had guts all over him.”

  Christie said, “But Allie, did you like it?”

  Allie said, “It was awful, but I wanted them to die. Mostly because of you.”

  Christie said, “No, not that. Sex. Other people called it ‘doing sex’ and it made sex sound bad but it’s not bad. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. We need to say it the way it’s supposed to be. The way that we can talk now. ‘Have sex’ or ‘Make Love’ or ‘Fuck’ together. It’s not bad.”

  Allie said, “Oh that. Yeah, I liked that. We did it once before, before we went to trade day. But today was better. I want to try that stuff next time. You know, like in the movies. The good ones, not the bad ones.”

  Christie said, “That’s all I did. And um, it does taste kind of good. Like peanuts. But I want to be touched more. When he touches me, I feel really good.”

  Allie said, “Because you know he won’t hurt us. I like that too. So now, can we have sex all the time? We can, right? We’re done, aren’t we? All married and a family, and can have sex whenever?”

  Christie said, “That’s what I want to do. We had our first time and it was really good, so it’ll just be better from now on.”

  Allie said, “It’s getting lighter again. Like yesterday.”

  For a while, the three of us lay on our backs on the sand and just rested together. I thought that it would be a good idea to do a lot more of that, just lying here and resting. All of us had a lot to rest from. All of us had been in a constant fight for survival for 18 years; even longer for me because I’d had a couple years of warning. Since then, I had b
een busy training and preparing and studying and working to store supplies and rescue those that we could find. The girls had been literally fighting for their lives. Neither of them had really survived. Christie was emotionally dead inside until an hour ago, and Allie had coped by forgetting what happened every morning when she woke up. She had forced herself to have no idea about time passing. There were still plenty of parts of her left in there, but I was sure that she had been full of stress hormones for half her life, at least.

  Yeah, it was time for a rest. We needed to just lie here until we couldn’t stand it anymore. It was time for a vacation.

  I said, “Girls, I think we’re OK now. Safe, I mean. For the first time since we were teenagers, we’re safe. As long as we have food and water, we’re OK. No one is going to bother us. And being together is forever. If I ever find a way to go back home, you will come with me. Christie, from now on we can’t choose to stay or go like we could yesterday. From now on, we always stay together, no matter what.”

  Christie said, “You weren’t really going to leave me, were you? Now that I know you, I know you wouldn’t do that. I didn’t really have a choice.”

  I said, “You did have a choice. A real choice. You could have decided to stay and not get in the boat with us. But, if you did choose not to come with me, I would have stayed with you until you decided that you wanted to come. I wouldn’t force you but if you chose to stay behind, then I would choose to stay and keep you safe. I wouldn’t abandon you. I could have. I could have chosen to leave you, but I wouldn’t.”

  Christie said, “You let me walk into the ocean and drown myself.”

  I said, “Well, first of all, I didn’t know that you were going to drown yourself. You don’t need my permission to let you do anything. We make choices and there are consequences.”

  She said, “You let me pick what I wanted to eat and there were no consequences.”

  I said, “Weren’t there?”

  Christie thought for a minute and Allie broke in and said, “Oh! Oh! Oh, there are always consequences. Oh. Um, Christie, when you ate a grape, the consequences were that you got to eat a grape but also that another grape was put in front of you. If you ate some fish, then more fish was put down for you. No matter what you picked, you got more. That’s a consequence, right? If you didn’t eat a grape, then another grape wouldn’t have been put down for you.”