Already Dead

This came from a writing prompt with a group I meet with locally, the prompt was the first and last line of dialogue. Hope you enjoy it : )

-s



Day 6

“Shit, my cell phone won’t work.” Dee called over her shoulder to the three of us still lying on the cliff side. She stood at the very edge holding it up to the sky. In any other situation these words might denote some sort of inconvenience or an irritation even. But here, to the four of us, there was nothing less then devastation laced thick within every syllable.

I suppose my personal devastation must have been written on my face or dripping out of my eyes because I felt Elle’s strong hand close over my shoulder.

“It’s okay Em.” He said, his voice was so impossibly hoarse that I was surprised he could speak at all. “We’ll find something else,” he lied, “besides, we’re no worse off than we were before this little pilgrimage, right?” I managed to nod and wiped my eyes with my scabbed palms. Once I was calmer Elle stood and addressed us all as a group. “Alright, we’ve got about two hours before the sun goes down, you guys wants to set up camp here or hike half of it in the dark?”

I knew what my answer to this was, I hated the dark even in the safety of my own home, and I’ve never known dark like it is on this godforsaken place. The clouds have been rolling in and threatening to open up on us all day. If they didn’t roll out a safe place to step on will look exactly the same as a plunge to my death. Black, dark, nothing.

Those of us that survived the impact of the plane crash must have known it was more than likely that we would all die out here. We addressed each other only by letter, we didn’t bother to talk about home, tell stories about the past or share dreams for the future. As it stood now our lives had one purpose and one purpose only; to get off of this island.

Six long days ago there had been thirteen of us, thirteen, out of the two hundred or so that had been on the flight to Africa. Natalie and I were travelling with a group from the church, on our way to a small village festival to spread the word of Jesus. Six long days ago I believed in such things. I think I lost faith the moment I realized I was still alive. Poor Natalie was looking at me, I asked her if she was alright, she said nothing. I don’t know how I ever thought that she could be, the seat in front of her, Elle’s seat, had come off of the hinges. There was so much blood, her head was still turned in my direction, eyes wide and glassy, lips slightly parted as if she was trying to tell me something. The second time I asked if she was alright I already knew she was dead. I don’t know why I asked. We had spent the entire night before the flight fighting over the window seat, she won. Well, she got the window seat.

The woman travelling with Elle, the one I assume was his wife because of the matching gold bands they wore, didn’t die in the impact but she never made it off the plane either. Her death was not a quiet one. When I looked at her I thought it a cruel miracle that she was alive at all. I think she was a pretty woman, I was too busy pouting over my aisle seat to take notice of her before the crash and afterwards it was impossible to tell. The serving cart that the stewardess used had crashed into her. When I thought about this it seemed to be the most random and yet most perfectly determined thing in the universe. It could have hit anyone in the aisle seats. The drawers of the heavy metal thing fired out, one of them was stuck in the right side of her rib cage, I’m not talking about a small corner jabbing her, at least half of the drawer was in side her body. Another drawer had beaten in the side of her face, tore the skin off revealing a hanging jaw and shattered cheek bone, her ear was in the drawer floating in the blood pouring from the hole left in it’s absence. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, what she did was much worse.

She gurgled, almost like an infant would, the sound was high and cheerful. Her right eye was completely out of her head but not hanging, just sitting outside the socket in it’s perfectly circular form. Her left eye darted around frantically trying to get a peek at her body. “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.” Elle was saying as he frantically tried to hold parts of her together. He had climbed out of his seat that had crushed Natalie and knelt in front of her. Hopelessly his eyes connected to mine. I got out of my seat, amazed that, aside from a dull throb in my back and neck, I was fine. I knelt beside her, the bloody side and started to sing. I knew a thousand hymns, they were written across the backs of my eyelids, imprinted onto my brain, but when I opened my mouth an old song my father loved fell from my lips. “So you think you can tell, heaven from hell, blue skies from pain, can you tell a green field…” I sang it through three or four times, surprised that I still knew the words, she gurgled along with me. Elle and I just watched as she didn’t die. When I started the song the last time Elle asked me to sing something more up beat, nothing came to mind immediately. I looked around for anything to trigger some song, the woman’s gurgles became higher and even more cheerful when I stopped singing. Eventually my eyes fell on what was left of Natalie. She was still looking at me so I choose one of her favourites. “I backed my car into a cop car the other day, he just drove off, sometimes life’s okay…” a few lines in and Elle closed his hands around the woman’s throat. By the end of the first course she was dead. I must have known what he was planning to do, as the gurgle stopped I was singing “we’ll all float, all float on, all float on.” An hour before, if asked, I would have said that Elle would burn for taking the woman’s life rather than leaving it up to god’s will. But in that hour, in my mind, Elle was an angel.

There were a few things that connected Elle and I. One reason was simple circumstance. His chair that flew back, crushing my friend, could have easily went forward, crushing him instead. The cart, that choose that exact instant to jolt left, killing his wife, could have easily choose the next instant and killed me instead. I often think that in another reality Natalie and Mrs. Elle spent the last six days sleeping in tents made of parachutes. Another reason was reality. Elle and I understood the situation we were in; we understood that we would all die out here. It might be today, it might be months from now, but it would happen eventually. That didn’t mean that we weren’t going to try, take turns lying to each other that it would all be okay, our only purpose in life now was to try. That’s why we hiked the cliff with the only other two survivors.

Six or seven hours ago Dee let out an excited squeal. Dee had been in the first class section of the plane, she didn’t say much to any of us but she did her share of the work and never complained. She was constantly checking her cell phone, a force of habit. She told me, in one of her rare talkative moments, that she was used to receiving close to a hundred text messages a day. Her excited squeal was at the sight of one bar on her service icon. One bar that held for one second exactly. This gave us reason to hypothesize that if we could get to the highest point of the island we may get service enough to make a call for help. It was the closest thing to hope any of us had since the day after the crash when we realized no one was coming for us.

“Let’s move.” Jay said, he was the first of the three of us to get to his feet. He took Dee’s cell phone and mashed the key pad roughly before letting out a loud groan and passing it back to her. “Let’s just get back to the shore and get the fires going.”

“Can’t we just start a fire up here?” I asked, still looking at Elle. I had only known any of these people six days but it took only minutes to decide that I disliked Jay. He was the kind of large guy that stood close and looked down at you, menacing not only with his size, but his self appointed superiority.

To look down on me now, Jay first had to walk the eight feet or so back to where a sat and then hunch over at his waist. “And if someone comes?” This was a question but he didn’t wait for an answer. “What then Em? We’re supposed to fly to shore to meet them? Fuck that, I’m not missing my ride home because you’re afraid of the dark.”

His ride home? I could have laughed but there were no laws out here, nothing to stop Jay from beating the crap out of me, not the fact that I’m a woman, not Elle, although he would try, not Dee, she shuttered and flinched every time Jay spoke. “I’m tired Jay.” I answered honestly, “and ten luxury liners could pull up on the shore, wouldn’t make one lick of a difference if we slip off the cliff side trying to get back in the dark.”

“I agree with Em.” Elle said, “It’s not worth the risk.” He dropped his backpack off of his shoulder, it was one of the unused parachute packs, we could make a shelter in case the rain decided it wanted to fall.

“Either way we’re taking a risk.” Jay hit hard on every syllable with his tongue, hissing almost at the two of us. “And we’re wasting your precious daylight arguing about this now let’s move!” He reached out quickly, grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. Elle started toward him, for second I thought this would be the moment they finally killed each other.

“Em!” Dee hollered from the same spot she had been standing in since we got to the top. Her voice louder than I’ve heard it to date. I shook my arm free from Jay’s grasped, he let go easily, shocked by Dee’s loud call. Her cell phone was flying through the air toward me. I caught it mid air. “Did you ever see the movie Alive?” She asked me. I nodded, not understanding her point. “The first time I watched that movie you know what I thought?”

“What?”

She smiled. “That the lucky ones died in the crash, don’t know why it took me so long to remember that.” She spread her arms wide, looked to the sky and fell back. There was no scream or other sound, nothing for a full fifteen seconds. Then, with an unmistakable crunchy splat, Dee joined the lucky ones.

None of us moved at first. Thirteen became three. Five do to injuries from the crash. Three had the genius idea to swim to safety, they were still insight when they went under. Two played the game of ‘edible berry or make you shit until you die berry’ and lost. Now one fell off of a cliff. I looked at the other two survivors and wondered what death awaited us on the island. I only prayed that I wasn’t last.

“Let’s move.” I whispered tightening the laces of the sneakers I had burrowed from a dead boy. He was maybe thirteen or fourteen. The shoes were a little too big but I needed something better then my floral pink sandals. I felt bad leaving him barefoot, even gave him the sandals before deciding that was just in bad taste. Elle and Jay said nothing as we gathered what we brought with us and started the path back. No one, not even me, wanted to sleep on the cliff anymore.



Day ten.

Jay was acting strange. Even by current situation standards. Last night I awoke to the sound of talking in a rapid nonsensical speech. I peeped out of my parachute tent to see him sitting by himself at the fire. “He’s a fucking fraud anyway, doesn’t know shoulder pads from shin pads, the grill went out, the grill went out, hope everyone likes it rare, don’t sleep under the table Danny, who’s deal is it? Put up the blinds, I’m little your big...” It went on and on. I watched for a little while, aside from being horrifying it was the most entertaining thing I’d seen in over a week. There was nothing I could do about it though, I wasn’t going to Elle’s tent to wake him and risk Jay spotting me in the process. Eventually I wrapped a burrowed sweater around my ears and went to sleep.

After we all awoke in the morning he seemed very docile, quiet even, not like himself at all. He seemed fine energy wise, he went into the forest with Elle. I stayed on the shore to keep the fires going, we had to go deeper and deeper every time. It was not a short trip but they carried a lot of logs, twigs and other things to burn. Some spike edged leaves that creates a dark thick smoke, dry moss in case one the fires went out and so on. We built a row of fire pits along the coast line of the island, we were diligent to tend the five of them on the east side where we camped, the plane was on the west. Elle buried the dead in the west, all but the three swimmers and the cliff diver. Most of the bodies on the plane were still on the plane. We buried some, burned the rest after we raided the plane for everything we could use. We buried Elle’s wife, some of the survivors had family members or friends they wanted buried, so we buried them as well. I didn’t ask to bury Natalie. I thought about it, wasn’t sure if she would want it that way or not. But she was so crushed that at best I could only hope to get most of her out of the plane, seemed to me that all of her should stay together. In this place I was her next of kin, I chose cremation and we burned the plane. The smoke was black and think, it seemed to hang over the island for days, but no one saw it.

There was some luck in the past few days. I wouldn't go as far as to call it good luck but it wasn’t bad luck, just luck. We found a spring the day our water supply from the plane dried up, we boiled the water in glass bottles over the fire to sterilise it, we still had to ration our intake. It was a long hike to the spring, we carried back as much as we could and by the time it was drinkable we were lucky to still have half. Our food supply, which had once consisted of things we took from the plane (meals that hadn’t be served yet, snacks people had brought with them, things we found in suitcases) now consisted of nothing at all, save a bucket of gummy bears I had burrowed from the same boy I burrowed the shoes from. But Elle was a good hunter, he would disappear for hours, returning with meat skinned, cut and ready for the fire. Sometimes it was rabbit, sometimes pheasant, even once came back with a parachute slung of his shoulder filled with boar meat. He fished, we had no luck catching anything, he wanted to try the front of the cliff. I had no qualms about expressing my fear of that spot. Dee’s mangled body was probably still bleeding at the base of it. Jay gave a thousand different bullshit reasons for not wanting to go, but Elle and I knew he was just as afraid as I was of seeing what had become of quiet, pretty Dee. Elle went alone, he was good like that, he never let me see the dead. He covered the bodies and took them away, apparently he didn’t even want me to see the fish corpses, he brought back six or seven of them beheaded, de-finned and skinned. I’m usually a picky eater, of course I would eat anything to stay alive, but my mouth was so taunt and dry all the time that it all tasted the same to me.

Out here there was no such thing as personal taste. The clothes I wore had come from the suitcases off the plane. We were all packed for Africa and the nights here go cold, I burrowed a few sweaters, socks, a raincoat, things like that. It didn’t matter if I liked it or not, the raincoat that Elle used had belong to a large woman. It was fuchsia pink with yellow smiley faces. The food we liked was irrelevant. The music we listened to was whatever somebody happened to whistle of sing. The books we read had been someone else choice. I found the books tragic, no matter what genre it was, pages were still dog-eared where the dead had left off. Sometimes I pick up where the dead had been and read them out loud. What I liked, didn’t like, enjoyed, believed in, none of it mattered, not out here. Who I was? Not important. Out here I was simply Em, the castaway. In a lot of ways we were already dead. Even in the unlikely event that we get rescued and go home none of us could ever really go home. Our lives would consist of two distinctively different halves, the people we were died on the plane even if our bodies survived.

“Hey Em?” Jay called to me, he was separating the burning supplies among the different fire pits. I was behind him restarting the two that had gone out. Elle went back into the woods hoping to hunt but he seemed less sure of himself then he was two days ago. “Want to hear a joke?”

That was six whole words and he didn’t curse at me. Strange. I turned to him, he stood with the sun at his back, I held my hand to my forehead to cast a shadow over my eyes. “Sure.”

He smiled brightly, this was not his usual ‘I’m smiling because I could crush you’ smile, it was warm and eager, in an eerie way it was friendly. “Why do you put the baby through the blender feet first?” I dropped my hand and got back to work, stalking the moss under my tepee of dry branched, flicking one of the lighters we found. “Come on, Em, it’s a joke, Why do you put the baby into the blender feet first?”

“I think the more appropriate question is why would you put a baby in a blender at all.” The small flame caught the moss, ‘old man’s beard’ Elle called it. I blew at it lightly as it began to climb the sticks.

The stomp of Jay’s feet came quickly at me, “Stop being a bitch and just ask me why.” He was hovering, cursing and his eyes were slanted in a hate filled glare. I was comforted by this, it was the Jay I knew, so I asked why. “To see the expression on it’s face.” He could barely finish the sentence without bursting into a fit of laughter. I said nothing, the fire was going now, I had to give the sticks a minute to burn before I could add a substantial log. So I picked up what was left of my moss, along with the lighter and moved on to the next one. “Hey, wait, I got another one.” He called once he caught his breath.

“I don’t want to hear it Jay.”

“What’s funnier than ten dead babies in one garbage bag?” I knelt beside the other extinguished fire and tried to look too focused on building my kindling tepee to hear him. “Come on Em, ask me what.” He urged, coming closer, I discreetly scanned the tree line for Elle. “Ask me!” He screamed loudly.

“What?” I yelled back, I would listen to whatever disgusting punch line he had if it would shut him up. “What Jay? What’s funnier than ten dead babies in one garbage bag?”

“One dead baby in ten garbage bags.” He roared, louder this time, falling back on to the sand, he laughed and rolled around.

Maybe if he hadn’t of been such a jerk since the moment I met him I would have felt sympathy for his fleeting sanity. I would have cared that he was going mad and tried to be nice. Instead I just looked at him long and hard. “You’re disgusting.” I said when the laughter continued.

He was fast, only his mind was going not his body. Before I realized he was out of the sand I felt his painful grasp on my shoulders. “Disgusting?” he was half screaming, half laughing, “Disgusting?” He shook me. “We’re all disgusting Em! And we’re never going home!” He must have just now been figuring this out. I suppose Elle and I had the advantage in that we never thought we we’re going home. “We’re too far, too far gone!” He raved, I was getting nauseous, much longer and I would vomit all over him. “We’re not even human anymore, do you have any idea what he’s done?” He stopped shaking me and waited for my answer, I didn’t even know who he was talking about. “Death won’t set us free, he’s seen to it, there’s nothing human inside of us.” Again he was laughing, wilder than before. “Well there is, something human, it’s just not us, not what we want, we need it but we’re damned, damned, damned!”

“Jay!” At the sound of Elle’s voice Jay let go of my shoulders and turned quickly toward him.

“Do you have any idea what he’s done?” He asked Elle.

Elle nodded slowly, he looked past Jay and at me before throwing me a plastic bag he carried. Inside the bag were worms, slugs, beetles and I believe one snake. Or, what we on the island call, ‘supper when Elle has an unsuccessful hunt’. “I know Jay, I know.”

“Em didn’t want to hear my punch lines.” Oh, sure, he was docile now, robotic even. I watched carefully, the forming bruises on my shoulders we proof enough that that could change in an instant.

Elle waved a hand at me to tell me he was alright as I got closer. He began leading Jay down the beach. “Em’s a girl, you can’t tell her those jokes.”

“They weren’t dirty jokes, Elle, you want to hear?” Their voices were fading as the walked further away.

The sun reflected something shinny that Elle was trying to conceal. His knife, a hunting knife that had been in one of the suitcases was at his side. It was just a precaution, Jay wasn’t that far gone that we had to kill him, was he? I watched even more carefully than before. There was no sound but the wind in my ears, but you didn’t have to hear an argument to see it. The two men stood with their toes touching, arms flailing, I caught loud words but nothing that I could form a cohesive sentence out of. Jay turned and pointed at me before raising a fist at Elle. Elle’s knife came up but it was too slow. Jay's punch landed first and Elle went down.

Elle never stood a chance. Jay was so much bigger than him, he was on him in a second, hands on his throat. Everything that happened from there was pure reaction. I wasn’t thinking, had I of stopped to think I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it. I grabbed a branch from the fire pile, it was thick and heavy, I ran to them faster than I knew I could move. Jay was screaming; “Damned! Damned! Damned!” as Elle was turning purple. I swung.

The cracking sound of Jay’s skull seemed to bounce out into the ocean. He slumped into the sand beside Elle. I knew he was dead, there were bits of skull and brain tissue in the thick stream of blood that poured from his head, but I kept swinging. Thirteen became two.



Day Twelve.

The lord taketh, the lord giveth. Those words were starting to make sense to me again. Elle buried Jay yesterday morning and had the first successful hunt in days yesterday afternoon. Another parachute of boar meat. We ate well last night, drank large cups of water. Rationing didn’t seem as important. I think we were both giving up. We didn’t even bother to keep the fires going anymore. Sometimes I thought about asking Elle to kill me. The only thing that stopped me was that I could see in his eyes that he wanted to ask me the same favour. I knew he would do it for me, just as he knew I would do it for him. So neither of us asked. Didn’t seem fair to ask that the other one be the last.

We had reached the point where our only dream was that when the end does come it will happen quickly. Neither of us wanted to descend into madness like Jay. I was afraid that Elle was starting down that road already. Sometimes when he looked at me I saw things in his stare that gave me chills. Only sometimes. It was like lust but it wasn’t, if I thought it was lust I would just have sex with him, what else do I have to do with my time? But that wasn’t it, I had a strange feeling that it was much more complicated than that. I hoped I died before he snapped completely and gave into what ever was making him look at me that way.

The morning of day twelve I was laying in the sand reading out loud, a harlequin that had been dog-eared on page two forty-five of two ninety-two, the poor old lady I burrowed it from had been so close to the end. And there it was. I blinked six, seven, eight, times, it was never supposed to happen. I was sure it was the end. But there it was. A ship. It was so far out that it looked about the size of a quarter, but it was slowly getting bigger, it was going to come right by us. “Elle!” I screamed running to the fires. “Elle!”

He came out of his tent, his eyes heavy with sleep and his knife in the air. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Look!” I pointed out to the ocean. He blinked, nine, ten, eleven, times. “Help me!” I was throwing everything we had into two fire pits, these ones were going to be big. Elle just continued to stare at the ship. “Come on! Help me!” I screamed at him.

The look was in his eyes when he turned around. “Leave them out.” He whispered it so lightly I wasn’t sure I was hearing him right. “Don’t start the fire Em, I’m too far gone.”

Hearing him speak the same words Jay had spoken before he tried to kill us only made me work faster. The wood was good and dry from being on the beach the last two days, I stuffed all of the dry moss underneath and searched my pockets frantically for my lighter. “Give me your lighter!” I shouted after I failed to find mine. “Elle, please! Your lighter!” Someone heard me, someone up there, I didn’t need him, I found my own lighter. I knelt back beside the fire, my hands were too shaky in my excitement, took me a few shots to get it lit. A small flame climbed into the dry moss before I went flying back and Elle stamped it out. “What are you doing!” I demanded, back on my feet quickly, ready to tear him to shreds.

“I can’t go back Em, I can’t go back. I can’t go back, I can’t go back.”

I never should have asked, I should have found something to hit him with quickly and lit the fire. But he was my friend, he brought me food and for the most part, kept me from having to look at the dead. I calmed myself, walked to him and summoned a controlled voice. “Why? Elle? Why can’t you go back?”

It happened fast. Elle was stronger than he looked. He pulled me to him front on and took my right arm in his hand, lifting it to his mouth. “Why?” He asked me with that same crazy look in his eyes, the look that I understood now. It was never lust, I was way off, it was a craving alright, and a craving for my flesh, just not the sexual kind. It all made sense. Jay didn’t go mad because he lost reality, he went mad because he found it. The meat didn’t taste the same because my mouth was dehydrated, it tasted the meat tasted the same because it was the same. He sunk his teeth into my forearm, I screamed so loudly that I was surprised the people aboard the ship didn't hear. When he dropped my arm a chuck was missing. My blood was dripping down his chin as he spoke. “That’s why I can never go back.”

end