Castaway

ii

After that, I'd let myself drift. Both physically in the ocean, and emotionally between broken thoughts.

The island eventually came into view and now...

Well, here I am.

I suppose I deserve to let my life end like this, the way I let my brother's life end. It's only fair.

I'm not even sure that I'd want to live on after what I've done. I'm a... murderer.

So I suppose I'll just lie here and give in to stupid, awful fate. I just hope that my death is peaceful and quick. As my body starts to go painfully numb, alerting me that the end is probably near, I try to think of the happiest moments of my life.

All of which included Everett.

When he was born, his chubby face smiling up at me for the first time.

When he convinced me to learn to ride a bike with him and we fell into a human pile of laughter.

Watching him win his motocross competitions.

These moments bring a small smile to my face, but no matter how hard I try to keep them away, the bad memories come too.

When Everett was diagnosed with lung cancer. He'd almost died a few times. I remember sitting quietly over his hospital bed once, when I thought he was asleep. I was eleven at the time and he, only eight. He turned to me with his eyes wide open. I hurriedly wiped the tears out of my eyes, "Hey buddy. How are you feeling?"
He just looked at me solemnly for a moment. "Promise me," he croaked suddenly.
I leaned forward in my chair,
"Promise you what, Ev? I whispered.
"Promise me," he paused. "That you will keep living happily if I die."

The tears began to roll down my cheeks again.

"Promise me, you won't be too sad." He continued. "Promise me you won't... shut down."
I just sat there and kept crying.
He waited quietly for a few minutes until I managed to pull myself together.
"Promise me." He repeated, staring deep into my eyes, straight through into my soul.
I looked back into his.

"I promise."

• • •

My eyes fly open, the words echoing through my head.

Promise me you won't shut down.

And thats when it hits me. I'm doing exactly what Everett never wanted me to do, would still never want me to do; to give up.

And that's what finally does it. I snap out of the haze I'm floating in and mange to slowly stand up. I'm soaked right to the core and shivering violently.

I realize that I need a fire. Quickly. Then I'll be okay.

The only problem is that I have no idea how to start one without a lighter.

I manage to amble slowly up the shoreline and into the thick woods of the island, before trying something that I saw briefly on a survival show once upon a time.

I gather a pile of small twigs and try smashing two rocks together, waiting for the spark to appear, to no avail. When it becomes abundantly clear that nothing is going to happen, and that I'm not getting any warmer, I get up and keep moving deeper into the island, which is obviously not huge, but definitely big enough that it would take a few hours to explore.

After bushwacking for a while, all the while getting colder, I come across what seems to be... a trail? It's thin and overgrown, but it's definitely there. Everett sometimes talked about animals walking in the same area over and over, so often that it became a kind of worn-down trail. A game trail, he'd called it.

I start following it towards the center of the island.

I follow it for what's probably around fifteen minutes until I come to a clearing and when I realize what that clearing is, I want to jump up and down and run in circles, I want to scream with joy.

But, all I can to is gape, because in front of me is...

A campsite.

It's not like the neat provincial campgrounds around Eaglesburg; it's rustic and messy with a small rocky fire pit off to one side and a withered rope tied between two trees on the other. I know it probably won't help my current situation in any way, but it gives me a tremendous amount of hope; people have been here before me, and maybe they'll come again and take me back with them.

As I walk the perimeter of the site, I find two other small trails that branch off and decide to follow one.

And whatever shock I'd felt when seeing the campsite is immediately washed away when I turn a bend and find myself staring at a cabin.

A goddamn wooden cabin.

Its small, perched on the edge of an ever-eroding cliff looking down on the waves where I had been only an hour earlier.

I stumble stupidly to the entrance and crack the loosely-hinged door open.

Yes, yes, yes.

In one corner, a kind of platform sticks out of the wall with a wooden stool creating a sort of makeshift desk. On the other side of the room, a similar platform with a rotting mattress makes up what was once must have been a bed.

At first glance, that's all there is to it, but when I look again I notice a small slab of wood creating a shelf just above my head.

Without hesitation, I reach up and feel a variety of objects.

Hell. Yes.

I bring them down and spread them all out on the floor.

The first thing I take notice of is the match box. I snatch it up and open it.

There are seven left.

I hug them to my chest as if they'll run away should I let them go.

I move on, scanning the other objects. There's a portable candle that looks like it's only been lit a few times, an empty first aid kit, a book missing the cover page, and a photo of a woman holding a child. They look... happy, which makes me smile.

I breathe deeply for the first time since I'd hit the Arctic waters, my lungs expanding and contracting twice before I look around the cabin again, feeling a new sense of purpose wash over me.

I might actually survive this.

But then I walk up to the desk and find the piece af paper.

It's obviously old, like really old. It's brown and crinkling and when I try to pick it up, the corner of it disintegrates between my fingertips. On it is written a letter with messy, scrawling penmanship.

I read it.

Mistake number one hundred and one.