I was stranded, stuck on a desert island, with a few palm trees and a little pool of clean water to drink from. A single coconut tree stood near the pool of water which I had managed to climb at least three hundred times now. That was since I was washed up here, after the cruise liner I was holidaying on, had sunk last year.
Coconut shell shoes, coconut shell hats, man I could open a line of clothing stores just made from coconuts if I ever got off this god forsaken place, somewhere isolated in the Pacific Ocean.
The coconut tree bore the brunt of etches into the bark I had made for every day I had managed to survive here. 334 as of last night. On one side of the Island I had written out in the sand not molested by the incoming tides, an SOS message in case anyone flying above would see me. However I had not seen a jet liner since I had woke up battered and bruised in torn clothes and a bleeding head one morning on this beach.
What had happened I was not sure but I had heard in the melee someone mention an iceberg. It was only the week before the trip that the news had reported on the huge 50 mile wide slice of ice that had broken off the Antarctic shelf, all due to climate change, someone news reporter had claimed.
Whether this was a Titanic situation, I knew not. I only knew that my wife Aleshia was in the safety boat with me when we were dropped from the ship into the water. From that moment on all I remember was waves, banging about and lots of scared hugs from my wife. I hoped with all my heart that it was only me that had been thrown out the raft as I went to collect some sea water to distill to drink but to be truthful, but I hadn't a clue. All I knew was that I had little chance of being found.
The Captain had gone down with his ship like an honourable man. I just hoped he had managed to get a radio signal out in time before the ship sank that was received by someone or some other ship. I prayed every day that someone was out there looking for me.
Our boat party had spent at least 4 days huddled together in that shaky raft, surfing the Pacific waves before that horrible night I went to collect that water and had been tossed into the sea.
I decided to walk over to the beach front, the side opposite from the help message in the sand, but the one that the nights stars told me faced due North, not that I could see anything but clear blue sea all around me.
It was as I was sitting on the beach hoping and praying that someone was coming to rescue me that I saw a brown beer bottle bobbing in the water. What was this I thought to myself as I waded into the sea to collect the bottle in my newly fashioned coconut styled summer shoes. They may make my toes curl up like an old Chinese wife, but at least it stopped the hard coral from puncturing my skin and causing bleeds I could not stop. Plasters, if only I had some plasters and a TV, that would have made the last year much more bearable.
I picked the bottle up, it was a Bud Light bottle and looked slightly familiar, not that I drank that pussy American shit, just that the bottle rekindled some memory in my befuddled sun burned brain. The coconut hat did it's job but when the sun was lower in the sky there was no getting away from the searing heat piercing my skin and etching itself like a laser onto my brain.
I sat down on the beach and looked at the bottle, it didn't feel like it contained any liquid. It was indeed a mystery “Bottle in the water”. Yes I remembered that Police Song as a kid. My dad used to play it on his record player every Sunday and we used to dance around the house as kids as our parents danced in front of us. They were good times and it was those thoughts I clutched onto keeping the hope alive that someone would find me.
Maybe the cruise ships kitchen had emptied itself into the sea and there were thousands of Bud Lights all floating around ready to be found and drinking. I wondered if I would ever see my old man again as I bit the top off the bottle only to find it wasn't full of beer as I had expected from it's light weight in my hand
Instead there was a rolled up piece of greenery inside, I turned the bottle upside down and tapped the bottle on it's back until finally a rolled up piece of green leaf fell out.
I eagerly unrolled it to read the following etched carefully with something sharp on the wide green leafs back;
“Please help me. My name is Richard and I have been washed ashore a desert island somewhere in the Pacific after our Cruise ship the Super Titanic sank. I am not sure of my direct whereabouts but I know I am direct south of the equator. If you find this bottle please send out a search plane for me. I have written an SOS message on the south point of this small island somewhere in the Pacific, directly north above Antarctica, with no visible shorelines or other islands in site. SOS”
God damn it, it was only the letter I had sent off into the ocean only 3 days after arriving on the island. It was when a real bottle full of Bud Light had actually washed ashore, presumably from the sunken ship, and I had gotten the taste of something other than pond water for the first time in days.
I had managed to climb that coconut tree for the first time that day as well. Whilst up there knocking down a coconut to eat, I had found the biggest leaf I could to write on.
I had etched my message onto it with the bookies pen I always kept behind my ear or in my mouth, it stopped me smoking, and it came everywhere with me. It took time but I had scratched the message onto the leaf without breaking it and thrown the bottle back into the sea hoping for someone to find it.
For Fucks Sake, for 331 days I had hoped that huge run up and over arm hurl of that re-sealed bottle back into the ocean had maybe, magically even, had somehow drifted towards a current that would have taken it near a major countries shore in the Pacific. Not that there were many to choose from near enough to do something about it but Australia was where we had left port and I was hoping it would reach the coast line somewhere or at least New Zealand. That thought of someone finding my bottle had kept my hopes up that someone would find me for almost a year, now it had returned to me in the same fashion I had despatched it. I was in despair.
I was alone and disheartened, no-one was going to ever rescue me I had concluded after not seeing one plane or ship in almost a year pass by on ocean or air. I was at the end of my tether and slowly walked over to the coconut tree. There was no point just surviving to wither away and die out here alone. I had already lost 5 stone at least, I reckoned, and my ribs jutted out of my chest like a lobster cage. It was time to end the suffering and despair of waiting.
I climbed the tree to the first branch where I had made a noose out of the rope that had washed up with me. I had been tied up around the waist with it on that life craft when I went to collect the water. It was supposed to be a safety measure in case I fell into the sea, but obviously the people had not held onto me tight enough.
Many a time I had contemplated ending it with that noose on the tree but the hope that someone would find that letter in the bottle always pulled me away at the last minute. Now I was sure no-one would find it, I climbed the tree and put the noose round my neck. I took one last look around the ocean in-case something was visible but today it was very wavy and I couldn't see far. It didn't matter. I jumped off the tree to hear my neck break, and the gurgling sound of phlegm and blood fill my lungs plus the inevitable splitter splatter of runny coconut poo that shot out my ass as my bowels emptied themselves.
Just as I swang there with the lights going out all around me I spotted a small white boat in the distance bouncing off the waves coming fast towards me. However it was too late for me now, and my eyes closed for the last time on this planet in this god forsaken part of the southern world.
As my body swung in the cool ocean breeze from the coconut tree, a white speed boat hurried it's way towards the island, on board was Richard's wife, Aleshia the captain and a doctor. Once Richard had gone over board that night almost a year ago they were picked up by a major help operation by the Australian government only two days later. Yet it was too late to find Richard despite helicopters and planes scanning the skies for any sign of a rope tied body floating on the flotsam and waves.
Aleshia had spent the year scanning map after map, even on Google, to find any likely position her husband might have washed ashore on. It was only after Richard's message in a bottle had washed up on a Sydney beach that her hopes had brightened. Someone had opened it and read the message and realised it must have been a survivor from the huge cruise liner that had sank making all major paper headlines for months in Australia and the rest of the world.
The finder of the bottle had rang up the national rescue line set up by the cruise liner in the hope of finding lost survivors, and told the tale of the message in the bottle. They even got to give the message and the bottle to Aleshia herself, with papers taking photographs for stories about hope and survival.
Aleshia really started to believe that she would find her husband again. Now she had chartered another cruise, and paid for a stoppage for a day near the island they hoped Richard was on. She had hired a speed boat out for the day, and the captain had let her take the ships doctor out with her in case her husband needed any medical attention. They were out on the speedboat and on the hunt for lost Richard.
As Aleshia sat happily on the speed boat hoping to see her husband again she wondered if her joke of throwing the bottle back into the oceans fast currents on the way to the island from her new cruise liner would have tricked Richard. It had at least a day to make it to him before she would. That was before the cruise liner would stop for a day, allow her to use the speed boat to go and collect him if he was still alive.
She eagerly waited to see his face and could imagine the long brown beard he would probably have along with a mane of hair belonging to a 70's metal band. Richard always used to love practical jokes and she really hoped this one had worked and he had found the bottle. In reality whether the bottle had reached him or not she didn't really care, she just thought it would be a funny surprise for him to find it come back to him nearly a year after he had sent it away, only for her to arrive and rescue him soon after.
As the boat got nearer to the island it started to slow down. “What’s the matter”, shouted Aleshia to the driver who had pulled off the gas. He turned around to her with a stern yet sad look on his face.
“I don't think your husband really likes practical jokes” he said before turning back round. Aleshia wondered what he meant before it became all too clear, as the boat neared the island, her husbands coconut shit splattered shorts were visible all too clearly as he hung from the single tree visible on the tiny island in front of her.
Sometimes, jokes just aren't funny, even to people who usually like them. It's at times like these you suddenly realise what a total cunt you had been Aleshia thought to herself, as she stroked Richards hand hanging in mid air with the etched coconut leaf letter still protruding from between his fingers.
What a stupid mare she thought to herself as the driver and doctor helped lower her husbands body down to place back in the boat.
It wasn't a very pleasant ride back to the cruise liner and Aleshia was just wishing she could have turned back time there and then and not thrown the beer bottle back into the ocean. Unintended consequences, you will never know what 334 days stuck on a small desert island alone can do to a man’s soul and sense of humour. She should have realised that but it was all too late.
As she sat on the side of the boat as it made it's way back to the island on her phone. She could almost get a 3g signal out here from the cruise liner which was fast approaching. She opened Tinder and re-activated her profile. She took a selfie of herself on the side of the boat, smiling, her dark locks blowing in the wind, and uploaded it before changing her status to single and available.
Women eh, they can be right bitches at times.
© 2021 – All Rights Reserved - Robert Reid
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