Stranded

by Sarah Goodwin

‘Aren’t the females going to be easier to catch though?’ Duncan said. ‘We can replace one of them easier.’

This feels like a charged statement

I burst into camp and was hit by the smell almost at once. Shit and vomit.

Karma if you ask me

‘You did this! You knew Duncan’d take those mushrooms, you knew!’

Bitch.. maybe if yall didn’t steal this wouldn’t be a problem. Not you blaming her for YOUR THEFT and the consequences that came with it.

All right, they’d stolen them, but had I expected anything different? Hadn’t there been a moment when I put them aside that I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if …’?

Womp womp.. they deserved it.

Still, I felt like an outsider and more often than not I found myself working alone.

Like yeah what did you expect from them?

After all, every one of them had voted to kick me out. They weren’t looking for me to come back.

Hating me was the only thing they had holding them together. Without me I think they would have turned on each other much sooner. Not that it made any difference … No matter what we did, we were doomed as soon as that boat dropped us there.

It was a game camera, one of the ones we’d been shown on arrival. Glancing up I saw a broken branch, probably snapped by the weight of the snowfall. The camera must have fallen.

girl be so fr rn

smashed camera

Key word smashed

After everything, we all did this together. We should be together at the end. Just come and have a good time with us, please?’

NO

while at the same time wondering where this was coming from,

Omg something is going to happen

I started to feel uneasy, but I wasn’t sure why.

me too girl

Clearly I wasn’t welcome to share the hut I’d helped build for even one night.

It wasn’t wine at all; it was water. Water and fly agaric. Not enough to get them sick. Enough to get high.

They had been there. They had taken everything.

Already the divide between myself and the others had widened. They had taken all they could and didn’t appear to have thought of me.

I noticed that Maxine watched me as much as she watched the sea; she wasn’t wearing her camera.

had a feeling she was reporting back.

‘Duncan thinks that,

because if they had no one to blame, no one to talk about or stigmatise, they had no outlet for their fear.

Having to face what happened. I don’t blame them for not being able to cope.’

I became increasingly certain that I was being watched.

Duncan answered her by throwing his burning stick onto the tipi.

A pack chasing me through the woods because that was its nature.

‘Nah, I’m saving myself for Maddy,’

The sheer number of directions danger could come from paralysed me.

If it was to be survival of the fittest, I would play to win.

The cruel irony of my ruined home being used as parts to keep me from getting supplies was not lost on me.

What was the missing page from my book doing in the camera guys’ portacabin?

I bet it was Duncan’s ass that poisoned them

What better to trade to two bored dudes than some ‘magic mushrooms’? One of the islanders had taken the page and used it to identify fly agaric to trade for extra food, or booze.

but rather to guarantee it would be found. My page, from my book. Beside the dead men. Implicating me.

They’re so conniving it’s crazy. It didn’t have to be like this