by Daniel Hurst
I hear Michael’s footsteps above me. Soon he will be standing on the other side of this grate, laughing at my pathetic attempt to break for freedom, and telling me to turn around and go back to the room.
My body is shaking. The tears aren’t far away. This is the final straw. I give up. I can’t take it anymore. I’m done.
Then I suddenly realise something.
I haven’t tried pushing yet.
I put my palms against the grate and push my hands forward as strongly as I can.
The grate drops away on the ground beside it, as easy as that. It was push, not pull. Like a stupid door. A fifty-fifty chance but I always pick the wrong option first. But it doesn’t matter now because I am out.
I haul myself to my feet and look around. I can hear the ocean to my left, but I can’t see it through the darkness. But I can see the silhouette of the dense vegetation to my right, and I know that is my best chance for a hiding place before Michael comes out of the house and comes looking for me.
I sprint towards the dark foliage, the moonlight showing the outlines of several palm trees along with numerous overgrown bushes and even some kind of wooden structure sitting on the edges of the jungle. After spending so long in that dark room, and a frantic five minutes in the crawl space beneath the house, it is just a relief to see anything and as long as I don’t see Michael behind me then I will be okay.
But I know he can’t be too far behind me and I know what he will do if he gets his hands on me. He hadn’t hesitated to kill his partner and I doubt he would hesitate to kill me either. I have a feeling that after my escape attempt, he wouldn’t even care about waiting for whoever is coming for me in the morning.
He would kill me himself.
And he would enjoy every second of it.
I reach the treeline and slump against the body of a palm tree, my arms hugging its sturdy frame as I try to catch my breath and figure out where the best place to hide is. But then I hear the sound of a twig snapping behind me and I don’t have time to pick a spot.
I just have to hide.
Now.
#Hide&Seek
Michael Wright
I’m going to kill her. I don’t care that it’s against the rules. I don’t care that I’ve been told to wait. I certainly don’t care about the person who is coming to this island in the morning. Because whoever it is isn’t here right now and so isn’t having to put up with this nonsense from the prisoner.
Emily has managed to escape from the room by going under the house and unless she is still somehow under there, then she is now hiding somewhere on this island. Fortunately, it’s not a big place to hide but I’d still rather not have to go traipsing through a load of dense jungle just to find her.
I have already disabled the motorboat’s engine, so she won’t be able to use that to make her escape. There is still the small boat in the outhouse but it would require a lot of effort on her part to drag it to the water’s edge and even if she could manage it, there’s no way she could do it without me seeing her.
So unless she is planning on swimming to the next island, which is at least five miles away, then she is stuck here with me. Or rather, I am stuck here with her.
I continue around the perimeter of the beach house, using the torch that I found in the kitchen to check for any sign of her beneath the building. The whole base of the building seems to be sealed off, which is sensible considering the likelihood of flood water running up this beach one day, but it also means that Emily might be trapped under the home after all.
Alas, I soon discover the grate that has been pushed out of its frame and see the hole that she must have crawled through, so now I know that she is definitely hiding somewhere amongst the palm trees and the thick vegetation behind the house.
I don’t have much chance of finding her out here at night-time, even with my torch, but I have to try. Besides, the sooner I do locate her then the sooner I can get my revenge for her ruining what should have been a simple job.
With the beam of the torch in my left hand guiding me, and the sense of security that the gun in my right hand is providing me, I begin my march towards the ominous silhouette of the overgrown jungle ahead.
The light catches the side of the outhouse and while I don’t imagine for one second that Emily would be stupid enough to try and hide in there, I decide to check it anyway just to rule it out. If she is in there, then it will be a bonus and my imagination is already awash with ideas about how I could punish her in that space.
The fish-hooks would definitely come in handy.
I reach the outhouse and lower the torch to the ground in front of me, pausing and listening out for any sound from inside. I am aware that I’m not the only one who could potentially use the fish-hooks as a deadly weapon, so I don’t just want to casually step into an ambush.
There is no sound from inside, which means she either isn’t there or she is very good at keeping quiet. I decide to find out which one it is.
Raising my gun to the wooden structure, I fire off three shots at various heights, leaving three large bullet holes in the side of the building as I do.
I don’t necessarily expect to hit her with any of those shots, but if she is inside, then she will be struggling to keep quiet now. The adrenaline from several bullets flying over her head will see to that.
I hear a few items falling to the floor inside the outhouse but nothing that sounds like a dead human body. But if she is inside here now then she certainly knows not to come rushing out at me with a couple of fish-hooks in her hand. Not when I possess a much more convenient weapon.
I step into the doorway and shine the torch inside. I see the body of the boat in there, surrounded by the familiar tools that I spotted earlier. I see a spade lying on the ground beneath one of the bullet holes in the side of the building and realise that must have been one of the things that was disturbed a few moments ago.
I carefully move around the small interior of the structure, checking inside the boat, as well as in any other potential hidey-hole that Emily could have squeezed herself into. But there is no sign of her here. Even all the fish-hooks seems to be untouched on the walls.
She isn’t here.
Which means she’s in that jungle somewhere.
Any hopes of this being a quick exercise are dashed as I turn and leave the outhouse, the torchlight guiding me when the full moon is obscured by a cloud overhead. I’m not afraid of the dark, I just find it inconvenient. I wonder how Emily feels about it now that it is the only thing that is helping keep her away from me.
She must be frightened, wherever she is. Hiding in the undergrowth. Clinging to the branch of a tree. Hoping that she isn’t disturbed by any of the wildlife that frequents this island.
The thought of Emily running out of the treeline, screaming at the top of her lungs as a snake wraps itself around her neck, is a pleasant one but it’s wishful thinking. She most likely will remain safely in her little hiding place and not come out until I find her and drag her out of it myself.
But it’s just a matter of time until that happens.
I look up at the overhanging leaves of the palm tree beside me as I move past it and into the thick vegetation that covers most of this island. I feel the overgrown weeds attempting to hook and entangle my feet, but I step over them all, at the same time ignoring all the thin branches that stick out and scratch my arms as I fight my way through them.
If it is difficult for me to get through here, then it must have been just as tough for Emily and so I doubt she can have gone far. Then again, I can’t underestimate how desperate she is to get away from me. She did pull up a couple of floorboards after all.
I push on into the foliage, cursing under my breath and hoping that every step I take is getting me one second closer to the moment when I can grab Emily by the hair and drag her back to the house. I am starting to see why somebody would be willing to pay so much money for me to pluck her out of the ocean and take her back to this island for them.
She didn’t deserve to die in that explosion. She deserves a slower, more painful death than that.
Whatever she has done before, it’s clear that she is an irritating yet resourceful young woman, so I’m probably not the first person to be left feeling angry at her actions.
But I am going to be the first person to put an end to them.
I hear a twig snap nearby and pause, trying to decipher the exact location that it came from. Emily could be on the move. I’m sure the gunshots rattled her. If not, then the sound of me crashing through the jungle towards her sure will.
There are no more sounds other than the rolling of the small waves on the shoreline and so I carry on. I’m suddenly aware that even though this island is small, there is still potentially enough space for her to continuously avoid me. If she is clever then she can keep doubling back on herself, always keeping a safe distance between me and her.
It would be tough to do that in daylight but, under the cover of darkness, it is certainly possible. The thought of having to be out here all night is not a pleasant one, so I refuse to entertain that idea anymore. I will keep on her trail and she will be forced into a mistake. Either she stays in one place and I eventually find her, or she keeps moving but eventually runs into me.
Either way, Emily Bennett will not be seeing the sunrise over this island in a few hours’ time.
#GoWild
Emily Bennett
I didn’t realise that coconuts could grow to be so big. The only ones I‘ve ever seen before were in photos and television shows and they certainly didn’t look anything like the one I am holding in my hands right now.
It’s huge.
I tripped over it as I was running through the dark jungle but when I looked back and saw it lying there on the ground, I realised it could actually help me.
I know Michael has a gun. I just heard him fire three shots somewhere behind me. So that means I need a weapon too. And judging by how heavy and dense the object in my hands is, I think I might just have it.
Of course the coconut won’t be much use to me if I can’t figure out a way to hit Michael over the head with it and so I need a plan. I can hear him fighting his way through the same dense forest that I passed through a few moments ago and so I know he isn’t far behind me. It won’t be long until he bursts through these trees and aims his gun at me. That means I only have a couple of minutes at best to find a counter-measure of my own.
I hear another twig snap beneath me as I move forward and know that it is just another opportunity for Michael to gauge how far ahead of him I am. But it’s impossible to avoid making any kind of noise in such an overgrown area and I should just be thankful that I am able to make my way through it at all.
I had been tempted to hide in the outhouse that I had spotted at the back of the main beach house but figured that would be the first place that Michael would look for me once he had discovered that I had escaped. So instead I had ventured into the jungle that seemed to cover most of this island. I can hear the rolling of the waves on the beach all around me, so I know that there can’t be much more land on the other side of the palm trees to explore.
Ideally, I need to find whatever boat they had brought me to this island on, but I hadn’t seen it in my haste to escape. Presumably, it is at the front of the house and so I had gone the wrong way by running behind it. Not that it is necessarily my best option anyway. I’m probably safer on land than trying to steer some boat out into the open sea.
I catch my arm on an overextending branch and do well to suppress the yelp of pain that tries to escape my throat. I clutch my scratched limb and while I can’t make out the details of it, I am certain that the branch has drawn blood. But it is nowhere near the amount of blood that Michael will draw from me if he catches up with me.
A loud crash behind me tells me that Michael is closing in and by the sounds of it he is getting angrier by the second. I can hear him cursing and it only adds to the fear about what he will do when he finds me. I am in no doubt now that it is me against him and not me against whoever it is that is due to come here in the morning.
Because if I don’t kill Michael then I won’t be around to see the morning.
I see a small clearing up ahead, but in my haste to break into it, I get my foot tangled in a twisted vine and fall to the floor. The coconut rolls away from me and comes to a stop at the base of yet another palm tree. It’s funny, I used to think of palm trees as being a sign of paradise. But I feel that if I ever make it off this island then I will only ever see them as a reminder of all the horrible things that can happen in a place like this.
The fall knocked the wind out of me, and it takes me a couple of seconds to get it back. As I lie on the ground, I feel the stinging sensation on my arm where the branch sliced me a moment ago, and I have a morbid desire to see it so I can assess exactly how much damage it has done. But it’s still too dark underneath this canopy of overhanging palm tree leaves.
There seems to be more light in the clearing just ahead of me and so I go to stand back up to push on towards it when I hear the sound of someone walking towards me from behind.
I freeze instantly, praying that he can’t see me as I lie here in the dark undergrowth.
But then I hear laughter and I know that he can.
It’s over. He has found me.
I’m dead.
‘There you are. I thought you would have gone for the boat, but instead you chose to have a little lie down’ Michael says, his voice dripping with a strong sense of self-satisfaction.
My fingers grip at the dirt beneath me. I’m angry at the person standing behind me but just as angry at myself for falling over and making the capture even easier for him. But he hasn’t made another move towards me yet. He is clearly just enjoying the moment. Or getting his breath back after pursuing me through this mess of greenery. I’m exhausted, so maybe he is too.
Maybe I still have a chance.
I look at the coconut lying on the ground, within easy reach of my right hand.
If I can just get hold of it. If he can just come close enough. If his gun doesn’t fire before I have a chance to strike.
That’s a lot of ifs.
‘Come on, get up’ he tells me, but I don’t move. I want him to come to me.
I hear him chuckle again and then I hear him coming closer.
My right hand slowly reaches across the ground towards the spherical shell that already surprised me with its weight. Now I hope to surprise Michael with it too.
I hear him right behind me now and just hope that he won’t decide to empty the rest of the gun’s chamber into me before giving me the opportunity to stand up.
‘Where did you think you were going to run to. You do realise we’re on an island in the middle of nowhere right?’
I ignore his comment and keep focused on getting my hand closer to the coconut without him noticing it.
‘Okay, that’s enough fun for one night. Stand up and let’s get this over with.’
My fingertips touch the rough, furry edge of the coconut. Michael takes another step towards me. He’s so close now. I can hear his breathing settling down. He has already recovered from the exertion of finding me. He must be feeling so good right now. So in control.
Unlike me. I am angry and confused and, most of all, I am alone. I’ve lost my boyfriend. The love of my life. The man who made me happier than I ever thought I could be.
I’ve also lost my best friend. A woman who inspired me, challenged me and, best of all, understood me. My only real friend in this superficial, artificial world of social media influencing.
I am hurting. I am afraid. And I want revenge.
My hand slowly wraps itself around the body of the coconut as the rest of my body trembles with rage.
Then Michael reaches down towards me and goes to pull me up by my hair.
And that’s when I spin around and hit him as hard as I can.
#GodBlessCoconuts
Emily Bennett
At first I thought the loud cracking noise was the coconut bursting open. But now I realise that it was actually the sound of Michael’s skull when I struck it with the blunt object.
Not wasting a second, I quickly pick up the gun that he dropped when I hit him and aim it at his body.
He is lying on the floor in front of me and there is a small trickle of blood running down the left side of his face. He isn’t moving and I suspect he isn’t breathing. But I need to get my own breath back first before I check on his.
If Michael doesn’t wake up, then he will be the second person that I have killed in my lifetime. Does that make me a serial killer now? Of course not. I’m just a girl fighting for her life. Anybody else would have done the same in my position. It was kill or be killed and I’m still here. But that doesn’t mean my trembling hands and my racing heart rate aren’t giving away the fact that I’m way out of my depth.
It was easier the first time. Poisoning someone is a lot different to hitting them over the head at point blank range. I didn’t have to be in the same room as my first victim and certainly didn’t have to look down at his dead body lying stiff and unresponsive in front of me. It definitely has a more visceral feel to it when you kill them in person.
I’m going to be sick.
Taking my eyes, and the gun, off Michael, I rush to the side of the nearest palm tree and vomit into the overgrown vegetation behind it. I can’t see what is coming out of my mouth, but I can taste it and my eyes are watering at the bitter burning, deep in my throat.
After a little dry heaving, I feel like my body is spent and I lean against the palm tree, wiping my eyes and waiting for the unpleasant sensation in my body to pass. Through tear-stained vision I see Michael’s body exactly where I left it, and even though I want to run away from this dark part of the island as fast as I can, I know I need to confirm that he is actually dead.
I raise the gun and notice how much my hand is shaking as I hold it. But my finger is on the trigger and no amount of nerves will stop me from pulling it if Michael suddenly rises up and lunges towards me.