Real Horror Stories

Carl...

My eyelids lift at the sound of sloshing ocean. My jaw pulses. A large lump on my right cheek feels like a throbbing mountain to even my slightest touch. Feels like I've been punched in the stomach, repeatedly. I raise my Hawaiian-style shirt to the sight of crimson bruises and lower it to discover droplets of blood staining the floral pattern. It's from my nose.

The passenger's luggage now looks like junk after the collision -- lots of clothes, several briefcases, papers, food and cans, even a few musical instruments, distributed to the trees, sand, and lapping tides.

Some of the fuselage rests in the forest tops, straggled along the canopy, hanging like ornaments in the tall verdure.

"Hey stranger," I hear Kendra's voice, shockingly seconds after turning to check things out.

I gesture with my eyes about our solitude, wiping my nose with the shirt. Since it's already bloody.

"Where is everyone?" The pain in my jaw restricts me from asking more. I want to ask why she is unscathed. How did we survive? I assume we landed safely. Did the plane explode after from the fire?
"Life rafts took the other passengers to sea,'' she explains, losing her flicker of optimism she previously held from the sight of me.

"They didn't take you along?''I ask, through pain.

"Two had to stay,'' she urges, watching the sea with an unhappy expression.

I look at a winding trail swerving to where I rest.

"Did you drag me away from a fight?'' I ask, noticing dots of blood along the sand. ''Over the life rafts?''

"A couple guys kicked you pretty hard for winning the last coin toss. The final raft was yours. They wanted to drag you into the sea and drown you. I offered up the raft you won, for your life. We need a plan.''

"Well,'' I say off the top of my head, trying to convince her I'm not just some pansy who passes out at the first sign of trouble. ''I'll draw a rescue signal. It'll work.''

Soon as the fire caught my eye, slowly smoldering its way up the right-side wing like a caterpillar across a leaf, and toward my window view, my ability to breathe and remain alert whisked off like the orange embers springing to smoky sky. I missed the safe landing of the plane, its explosion, the fights over the rafts, and, she divulged, a conspicuous man's departure away from the group and into the jungle.

"What was the man wearing?'' I ask.

"You know,'' she looks toward the forest. ''I can't exactly remember. Shorts, I think. A white shirt and shoes. Sneakers, looking like Adidas.''

"Hmm. Do you know why there weren't enough rafts?''

She scratches her neck. Then slaps at a bug that flies off and toward the jungle.

"The pilot discovered deliberate gashes in the inflatable material on some of them.''

"Was this before or after that man fled into the jungle?''

I receive only a shrug of the shoulders as a response.

I wonder if he could have been responsible for the plane's conflagration. Was it a terrorist plot gone awry? At some point, hopefully after rescue, I'd get some more satisfying answers.

The next day, while we traversed the atoll, Kendra and I lent it the name, "Two-Mile," given its estimated circumference. If a plane didn't spot our S.O.S signal, eventually, one of the rafters would either make it to land, or the news of a missing plane would prompt a rescue team to find us. For now, we had to treat the island like it was our New Zealand trip. Two-Mile offered bushes, exotic trees, colorful, but potentially fatal fruit, the occasional charging feral pig, canvas-colored shores, yet, unfortunately, no bare-breasted female natives.