(Also, I'll be hold a little contest of my own, starting of Friday. Stop back by then, or hit the follow button, to enter for some fun books and critiques!)
Paradise?
I’ve read this magazine two hundred and seventeen times. The same number of days we’ve been stuck here. The airline seats still don’t recline far enough, uncomfortable even with the mound of sand I made a footrest with. I would have preferred to make a hammock. But it wasn’t like we got to chose what landed here with us. At least seats were better than some piece of engine—what would we have done with that?
“So I think we’re going to need to do something about them. Again.” He dropped into the empty seat next to me, as annoying as he’d been two hundred and eighteen days ago. He took the armrest again, too.
I waited for two waves to crash and hiss back from the shore before us. The no-longer-glossy magazine was advertising a very caffeinated, very cold Coke. I could almost taste the fizz of carbonation.
“They smell like tactise.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.” His long sigh was even warmer on my cheek than the humid morning air.
“What do you think we should do?”
“Move. Around the other side of the Island. Upwind.” He shrugged. Somehow, despite hours of sun and island heat, he was still pasty white. It wasn’t healthy.
“They’ll miss us, if anyone ever comes…” I trail off, knowing how ridiculous that hope is. If they were going to find us they would have by now.
“Look, we’ll be more comfortable there. And, well, away from them.” He waves a hand behind the joined chair—row thirty A and B. Our eyes meet for a moment before we both glance behind us.
Lined up, in as careful of rows as we could make, were long mounds of sand, thirty two in total. Rough crosses marked each.
“Maybe, I guess, maybe you’re right.”
(300 words, on the nose. Just in time for Halloween :)
