Castaway

 

Please help me.

I’m stuck on this island, my boat is stranded. My shipmates are all dead. This will be the end of me if I can’t get away. Please, help me. Help me.

Ben Torkelson

He added the coordinates he had calculated from the stars.

His last bottle was thrown into the sea. The waves carried it away. On one side the ship was stuck to the rocks underneath, the rocks the storm had thrown it onto months ago. On the other side a deep abyss went into the darkness in the clear, transparent water.

He stood on the bridge, looking at the island in the falling darkness. The Rock. The silhouette made it feel threatening. A strange sound from somewhere in there. It couldn’t be a bird. There were no birds.

He walked down to his cabin, into the lower chambers. One staircase led further down to where the water came in. He had dived down there several times to get the cans and the bottles. The liquor helped the first days and weeks, but now it was just making things worse. There was hardly any left.

He looked out towards the sea, towards where he had come from. To where he had chosen to live. He turned towards the rock. It was black in the darkness of the night. Once again he heard the sound.

A rumble, like if it came from somewhere inside the rock, as if the rock itself was alive.

The next day he went in to the island with his little boat. There was no more food on the ship, and the island offered nothing, nothing at all, just rocky ground and stones. Even the fish seemed to flee the area, even the whales seemed to stay far away.

He climbed up on the highest point where he had build a pile of wood from the ship, looked out. There was something there, far out in the horizon. Sails. He rubbed his eyes, looked again. A ship was coming.

He lit the pile. The smoke was dark and thick. The fire was burning vividly. The sun was going down.

The ground shook.

The ship was turning his way.

The ground shook harder. Rocks started falling from the mountain walls. Cracks opened under his feet.  He ran down to the shore, got his little boat out on the water.

The island behind was trmbling like a leaf in a storm, made the waves rise high His ship moved. Cringed. Sunk into the depths.

His little boat jumped from side to side. Big rocks were falling from the island behind him.

His fire was out. 

He kept rowing, out into the waves, away from the cursed island he had been stranded on for so long. Into the hostile sea. Into the night. into the darkness.

He held on to the rip of the boat, Hunger and exhaustion took over. The sea and the boat faded away.

…

-There he is! Get him up here!

Daylight. Men climbing down a ladder. Ben was too weak to climb, to weak to even get up on his feet. They pulled him up, got him up on deck.

He held on to the fence, looking out on the sea. The island was sunken in the sea as if it had never been there.

 

 

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