The Forgotten Island

by David Sodergren

We end our lives as helpless as when we begin them, he thought.

And whatever Prachya saw that day remained there, undisturbed, patient as death itself. Waiting.

Going on holiday to a warm climate was the cruellest fate a good book could possibly face.

Bangkok wasn’t just a city that never slept; it was a city that never shut up.

‘My sister says I use sarcasm to keep people at a distance or something. She reckons she’s a fucking psychiatrist, but really she’s just seen too many episodes of Frasier.’

She knew she shouldn’t judge on first impressions, but where was the fun in that?

‘So this is what Hell looks like,’ she said to herself. Still, it could be worse. At least here she could get drunk.

No one got the reference and she immediately regretted it, mentally adding it to her List of Mildly Embarrassing Moments. She wondered how many hours of sleep she would lose thinking about this one.

It would be fitting, if it wasn’t such typical grandiose dream bullshit.

Money talks, thought Paul. And luckily, it’s bilingual.

‘Guys…if I was to eat myself…would I disappear…or become twice as big?’

‘Nature. I mean, we can cut it back, build on it, civilise it if you like, but nature always wins. She always reclaims what was once hers.’

‘People like you, Ricky, are why I hate people.’

It was a simple one, singularly lacking in the profundity expected of death-bed speeches. It was, Holy fucking shit, what the fuck is that?

so she prayed to a God, a higher power, for divine intervention. She may as well have prayed to Cheech and Chong for all the good it did.

Life truly is stranger than fiction.

Oh hi, guts, he thought. Good to see you again.

There was no way round it; she was going to sneeze. In other words, she was well and truly fucked.

From now on, if I ever got out of this, I’m wearing nothing but sports bras and granny pants for the rest of my life.

‘It’s okay, Rach. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.’ And then, so quietly as to be almost imperceptible, she said, ‘This isn’t how you die.’

It’s just the perfectly natural human instinct to want to look. Like if someone shouts He’s got a gun and instead of dropping to the floor you have a peek first to see precisely who has the gun.

time nothing more than a sick joke played on the eternally damned.

One thought ran through her mind. Jesus fucking Christ.

Fear had left her. Once you’ve been dragged up a wall by a skinless man in the belly of a spider, not much remains to be afraid of. It was replaced by a desperate need to survive. And anger.

Her grip on reality was tenuous at best. A few more minutes and it would be game over. But before that happened, she had one simple goal. To kill this motherfucking spider.

‘Man is not alone in the universe. There’s more out there than we can possibly know. More than we would ever want to know. I guess some secrets are best left buried.’

So close. To end like this after all they had been through. You had to laugh.

Hope. Such an empty word.

‘Aye. To being a wee kid. Back when you were allowed to be stupid and silly and not care about anything. Before the reality of adulthood crushes your childhood dreams and you realise you can’t grow up to be an astronaut or a princess or a unicorn.’

Hope. That word again. That lying, deceitful word.

He had all the qualities she liked in a man; handsome, easy-going and willing to fight giant spiders. Yup, he ticked all the boxes.

I’ve never seen either of us move so fast. Fuckin’ spiders, man. Fuckin’ spiders.