Sam Michelson

 All Sam could hear was the irregular breaths of a man finished...Slipping between worlds was a rare talent. In order to do so, one had to be both on the verge of death and hysteria--a combination that, easy as it sounded, was harder than the ground Sam lay upon. His back arched uncontrollably as the fire rippled across his body. He'd been in hell for seven days. The fire had started off slow at first, a gentle roar that left burns across him, and then it entered his mind.

It was there, Sam found, that he first transferred from one world to the next.

"I love you," Danny whispered. He'd kiss Sam's cheeks and hold his hands. Their rings glinted in the sunlight. They were together, living on that deserted island, with a herd of small chickens and a farm. Danny had lived on a farm as a boy. That's what Sam knew--that's what Danny whispered about in his sleep.

Sam didn't dare whisper it back. He knew what happened when he spoke of love--but it was for naught, for the second it crossed his mind, he was violently jerked back to hell.

A fire that broke for one second--just one small, simple second.

Enough for him to see what was in front of him.

The ocean stretched out, long and free. The edges of the treeline, and plants that swallowed Sam's left side whole. The stick laying atop a fresh grave. The man, fishing with a pole he'd sharpened on rocks the day before.

The sun was dying. Beside him looked like nothing. He'd caught no fish. They were starving and he couldn't catch anything. Instead, he was walking into the water. Wading in deep. Lost beneath the waves. Lost in time and space. Lost.

Sam's eyes slipped close again.

"You're quiet today," Danny said. Playfulness spread throughout his voice like a curse. He was bemused.

"I know," Sam said, wrapping his arms around his lover's neck. The embrace was warm. It was all he needed.

They swam together in their love, drowning in one another's arms. There the world didn't exist. There time was empty. There, nothing was real aside from the thick, repetitive beating of their hearts intertwined.

"I found something out there--a raft. I think we can use it to get home, Sam."

"Why would we need to leave? We have everything," he said, beckoning to their world around him.

It was empty. Dull. Waves crashing on a rocky shore. Danny was not next to him. Danny was once more in the water. He was stabbing at the water. It was red. Bright, ugly, horrifying red--and then swept away into a mirage of green foam.

They were making baskets. Nice, warm baskets made from leaves they strung together. They looked sturdy. Able to hold water. Weaved as though they were experts who'd grown up on the island together.

"Look, Danny! Mine is holding water!"

Danny laughed. Thick. Loud. Rippling.

Sam looked down, only to find the basket to be leaking. Bright, red, bloody water dripping down Sam's thighs. Danny ran his fingers over the water, brushing it off Sam, only to bring it to his lips to taste. The grin that split his lips told all. It was delicious.

"I'll give you more--anything," Sam pleaded.

"You couldn't," Danny said. A sigh. A gentle, soft, disappointed head shake. Then, he stood up. "I'll tend to the chickens. You get the fire ready for dinner."

The jungle was lonely without him.

You deserve this.

Do you still think you two are meant to be together?

Even in death she was annoying. Her words echoed about him--she'd gone, falling to the same fires that ravaged Sam, and yet she wouldn't leave. She wouldn't exit existence until Sam knew nothing more than how utterly worthless he'd become--how utterly right everyone had been.

I'm sorry, Danny.

The night before they'd been fighting. Sam didn't know which world they fought in, only that both Danny's walked away and hadn't come back yet.

"What do you even know about me, Sam?"

"I know--I know that I love you."

He was quiet.

"Is that not enough?"

"No," Danny said. He sighed. Loud. Thick. Angry. "It isn't, Sam. It's never been enough."

"I'm trying. I wasn't taught how to do this--"

"You never tried to learn."

It wasn't that Danny was wrong that left Sam's heart wounded. It was that Danny was, without a doubt, right. Sam had never tried to learn. There had never been a reason to. Sam was the protagonist--the main character--the important one. Sam was the one that had the most to lose. Sam was the one who needed consoling. Sam was the one who fell ill. Sam was the weak one.

Danny's always been taking care of me. Even when he had nothing. Sam wanted nothing more than to erase everything and to start over. For them to meet again for the first time, so Sam could do it right for once. So he could ask the right questions, make the right choices. So their love could be real, and not just a way out.

Not just a fabricated monstrosity.

"I managed to get on it for a moment--it's got supplies, Sam. The water is full of sharks, though. We can't get to it. We're stuck here." Danny's voice was heavy. Sam looked up--looked down--and shook his head. A cough spread from Danny's chest. Heavy. Thick. Wet. "I'm sorry, Sam."

"It's okay," Sam said. He smiled. "We still have the chickens. We're happy. We have each other."

"Your fever is getting worse," Danny said. He frowned. "I can't keep taking care of you, Sam. I think I'm going to swim out to the raft and get help."

"And...leave me here?"

"What's the alternative?"

Danny didn't answer. The chickens were too loud. Screaming. He went to go tend to them, leaving Sam on the bed made of feathers. He hated how it felt there. Too rich. Too soft. He preferred the rocks. It was too gentle inside. Danny always wanted him to be happy. Everyone wanted him to be happy.

Sam struggled to sit up. The sun had dipped far below the horizon. The waves looked huge. The raft--if that's what that was--seemed to be moving. Floating away? Danny was by a small fire, cooking something on a stick. A fish. He'd caught a fish for dinner finally.

Good job. Sam smiled.

Danny was good at survival. He was good at everything. He'd been strong.

He was the one who'd make it out of there.

The sand was wet beneath his feet. Cold, wet, sloppy. Then it was colder as his body submerged. No longer was he on fire. No, he was cooled. Saved by a divine grace. Danny was tending to their home, keeping it nice and safe. Sam would reach the raft, signal for help, and they'd be off the island. Back to civilization.

He looked back, just once. One last glance at home.

It was soft. Gentle. Somehow, he saw the sun fading behind the island. He saw the waves in the distance. A lifetime of the two of them, together, happy.

It was red there. Dripping. He clutched at his body, crying out in pain. Screaming. But he kept swimming. For what? He couldn't say. For something. It was close. Too close. Too familiar. It reached up and snapped. Snap. Snap. Snap.

The water dripped. Thick. Hot.

It was the fire that slipped out of him. Fire that stung and sizzled against the waves. Fire that left him dizzied as he pulled his body up onto the plastic. Fire that dripped off the sides as it came up, pushing against him, attacking. Rip. Rip. Rip. Sam felt himself falling. It was so, so cold. So wet.

I'm sorry, Danny.

The basket wasn't perfect. It was dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. He didn't know how to weave. He'd never learned.

He'd never tried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny Michelson

Things were not going well. And as the sun rose and set on another dreadful day in paradise, it seemed as if things would never go well again. Danny had begun to lose count of how long they'd been stranded on the island. All the days blurred together into one horrific pile of misery and torment. His body ached from the sting of his wounds, skin still swollen and puffy from the bite of the centipedes, and the lack of untainted water made him dizzy. Danny knew at some point, they had buried Bianca, but he could not recall whether it had happened today or yesterday.

Sam, he knew, would be next.

Danny sat against the shore, watching the waves as they skirted ever closer to his bare feet. His shoes, or what remained of them, were resting beside his husband. He twisted the gold band around his finger, feeling the metal heat up beneath the penetrating sun. How it had managed to survive, despite everything they'd lost, remained a mystery; but he was grateful for what small comfort it provided. Just as he was grateful for the warm kiss of the sea against his toes. They distracted him from the painful reality around him and the man curled in the shade, staring out at nothing. Danny wasn't sure how long he'd been like that. In the fetal position, hair dotted with sand, unmoving save for the shuddering rise and fall of his breaths. He was a wounded animal content to succumb and try as hard as he might Danny could do nothing to help him.

Regret was a powerful tool. The sun's beams struck his cheeks, his hair, filling his body with warmth but leaving it craving so much more. That small comfort could do nothing to stop his skin from burning, his body from aching, or the rock in his stomach made from so many years of regret and doubt from growing larger than it was before. What would I have done differently, he wondered, if I was given the chance? Black and silver scales breached the waves, a fish boldly facing the open air before crashing back down into the safety below. I never would have brought that boy back to my dad's place. He flexed his toes in the sand, settling back with a small sigh. I wish I would have stood up more for my sister. I wish... Danny's eyes slid over to the boy in the sand. Sadness and doubt took over the place in his heart where love once resided. No longer did he feel the soft fluttering of adoration when he looked at the face that stared lifelessly into the sand.

No. Danny shook his head, chasing away the dark clouds of thought that threatened to storm inside of him. He turned his eyes back to the sand, watching the grains glitter in the sunlight. There's no point in thinking about that. It's over now. It's done with. It's- Out of the corner of his eye, something yellow flashed and Danny's head turned towards the sea. It's a raft.

It took his brain too long to comprehend what his eyes were seeing. A floating yellow raft, caught in a small outcropping of rocks just beyond the shore. Still inflated, in almost perfect condition, and screaming for his escape. Danny scrambled to his feet, kicking up sand as he struggled to focus his thoughts. Is it real? He hesitantly took a step closer to the water, watching his lifeline bob up and down in the gentle waves. It has to be. Fingertips wound their way around the bottom of his shirt, tugging the tattered material over his head as he discarded it in the warm sand. Sam hadn't moved, either unaware of his actions or too exhausted to give them any effort.

But Danny's heart was pumping, adrenaline fueling his nutrient-deprived body forward as he stepped into the sea. It's not too far. The encouragement only made his anticipation grow and the sea seemed to expand. I can wade over and grab it. We could be out of here before dark.

He hurried towards the raft, body dragged through the current as the waves struggled to hold him back. Each step made the ocean grow, lengthening the distance between himself and the one thing that could save him. Shivers prickled at his spine as the slick, wet ocean floor crept up to greet him. A brush against his ankle, a whisper around his calf, but as the water grew steadily higher and higher around him he found it easier to ignore. Nothing mattered but the raft. Nothing mattered but the promise of escape. I'll load it up with anything edible I can find, take Sam, and we can be gone for good. Someone will find us then. His heartbeat was a siren's call of hope and he could do nothing but steer himself towards the sound.

Something tightened around his ankle, ensnaring him just before he reached his destination. He twisted his foot, yanking with all of his strength to free himself. But to no avail. Danny paused, his breath heavy in his throat as he struggled to get his bearings. The waves pushed against his face, trying to knock him back to the shore. He couldn't move, not even to appease the ocean. Slowly, he reached down, outstretched fingers searching for the cause of his ensnarement. Just get yourself loose and go. I'm so close. But what greeted him below the waves was the warmth of another human being. Their fingers were tight around his ankle. Chills spiraled through his body. His fingertips brushed the cold metal of a gold wedding band just before he saw the face looking back at him through the surface of the water. By then it was too late. The grip around him was iron and it yanked him beneath the waves.

The creature at the bottom of the sea looked just like Sam— and nothing like him at the same time. It had the warm glow of Sam's eyes and the softness of his smile, but there was something predatory in the way its hands wrapped around Danny's body and how it held him so close, unaware that he was drowning. He struggled against the creature, limbs thrashing as he tried to free himself. But its smile only opened into a razor-fanged grin. It gripped Danny tighter, pulling him deeper beneath the waves. Please, he wanted to beg, but he could not speak. Could not risk losing even the smallest bit of air in his lungs. The sky above grew dark. With each moment, the monster pulled him further down, separating him from the light of the surface.

Salt stung his eyes, burning itself in his wounds and forced into his nostrils. A hot knife of pain seared his flesh, burning through him until it was all he could do not to scream. Still, the monster dragged him deeper. Until there was only darkness. Until he could see nothing but Sam's face, illuminated in front of him. Grey spots bloomed in his vision, body starved of oxygen and weak. Not yet, his hopes had been dashed against the stone, and grief overtook him. I'm not ready to die yet.

Through the darkness, the creature's eyes met his own. Pupils little more than slits, glowing with an inhuman light, it stared back at its prize. Slowly, its mouth began to open, revealing once more the broken, jagged teeth inside. Danny struggled to swim away. With the last of his breath, he fought, only to feel the creature's lips around his throat. At first, in a kiss, just as Sam always had— and then, with the ripping of flesh and bloodstained water.

Then, Danny was alive once more. Gasping for breath on the cold shore, fingertips buried in the sand. He stared at the ground below, water dripping from his soaked flesh as his body vibrated with the intensity of his shivering. His hands clutched at his throat, searching for the wound, and finding something slick attached to his skin. Fingers wrapped around the wet, squirming body as he pried it free of his flesh. A leech. He held the creature out in front of him, watching its teeth gnash hopelessly for anything to attach to. Danny flung it wordlessly into the trees, but there was something else. He could feel it now. Something that existed deep inside of him, that had crept in through the tiny holes in his throat. A toxin that invaded his veins, buried itself in his heart and his brain until he could breathe in only malice and see only his own doubts. Was it real? Was he alive and well on the beach once more, or was his body buried in the den of the monster that lurked in the shallow water?

"Tell me the truth." The words were in his own voice, but Danny could not feel his lips moving to speak them. The sound cut through the air, rousing his husband from his curled position. For the first time in hours, days, or years, he felt Sam's eyes on him. "Did you ever love me? Or was I just a way to get back at your shitty parents?"

Sam's lips pursed, brow furrowing as he pulled himself into a seated position. The sight of him filled Danny with an anger he could not contain, as if something had taken over his body and sucked all of the hope from him. "What are you talking about?" Sam asked him, and Danny's hands tightened into fists. "You know I'd do anything for you. I- I gave up everything for you."

His head shot up, body pulled from the sandy shore as he snapped at his husband. "You think you're the only person who lost things?" The words spilled out of him, gushing forward like blood from a wound. "Do you even know what I left behind to be with you?" Sam's face was pale, lips parted ever so slightly as he struggled to rise to his feet. Danny made no effort to meet him. It was too late now. "You barely know me, Sam. You never even tried to know me."

"Of course I know you!" His husband's voice was grating against his ears now, Danny's teeth gritting at the sound of it.

"Then when did I move to the city, Sam?" Danny challenged. He started to rise, feet unsteady beneath him as his eyes locked on to Sam's. "What's my favorite color? What are my parents like? Do I have siblings?" With each question, the bewilderment on the other man's face began to grow, confusion and doubt pooling to the surface of his features as he stayed silent. "Do you know? Can you answer any of those?" But there was no reply. No answer that could satisfy the way his heart pounded.

Danny's head turned, only for a moment, back to the shore. There was no life raft stranded between the rocks, only shredded yellow debris. "I loved you, Sam," he admitted at last. "I loved every single fucking inch of you." A tight knot formed in his throat as he started to shake his head, wondering if it would have been better to drown on the ocean floor. "But you'd let me die here if it meant you could leave. We both know that."

The silence that followed gave him every answer he needed. Somehow, it was worse than any monster could have been.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jennifer Mizushima 

Her father told her to go to hell to find him—but was she already there?

There really was no concrete meaning to the word 'paradise', yet everyone embraces the term whenever they discover someplace beautiful and peaceful. The aesthetic of a certain location certainly played a factor, but with the visual appeal had to come some form of calm, a warm wash of rare emotions they would not feel in their otherwise hectic days. Without one or the other, the term wouldn't even apply.

Without the feeling of being at ease, she wouldn't even consider this foreign island as 'paradise'.

Jennifer wouldn't dare wander far from her camp at the outskirts of the rainforest, where the horizon and the ocean were always visible. Thick sturdy sticks secured with vines served a makeshift tent in the soft white sand, covered with layers of banana leaves to shelter her from cold breezes at night. She always kept on her several sharp rocks collected from the shore to serve as knives, as well as a handmade sling to shoot down edible animals for dinner. In the last few days since her father and his army of monkeys scared her shitless, no external force dared to disrupt her from normalcy as she knew it now.

It only helped to adapt to her environment now that there was no chance of escaping the unknown. All she hoped was nothing extraordinary would jump the shit out of her again.

She wouldn't even fall for the trap that was the lifeboat dispatched from the cruise that became a phantom memory, its rope snagged along something in the ocean.

Jennifer couldn't help but blink in disbelief at the sight of the tiny white vessel that would only sit three or four at once, bobbing along with the waves that rippled atop the ocean's surface. Eyebrows narrowed in suspicion as she squinted at the side of the boat, the golden curlicue calligraphy that spelled Prospero gleaming faintly against the side of the boat, and she almost felt the urge to spit. Days had already passed since she buried the memories onboard the ship in the deep recesses of oblivion—the ship itself would have sunk deep into an undefined coordinate someplace beyond the horizon, far from the reaches of leisurely divers, then. Was the lifeboat just another figment of her imagination, too, just like her father and the monkeys were?

"It's not real."

She shook her head, trying to clear the boat from her vision, but it still remained there, a little ways away from the low cliff where she stood. How could it have dispatched from the main vessel and arrived here? Was this really her opportunity, then, to leave this place back into a world that she had been detached from? Time was hard to track here, but in that time she was washed ashore up to now, when she had grown accustomed somewhat to life on this place of hell, she had not given any thought to the life she had left behind. She couldn't care less about the lessons she had missed at school, the gossip that spread about her peers about her disappearance, her mother trying to dial her phone in an effort to reach her.

Still, a calling was a calling. This could not be a hoax. The only opportunity to get back to human civilization as she could recall it could slip away without another second's notice.

"Screw it," she muttered eventually before diving into the water with all the grace of a mermaid, landing with barely a splash into the ocean.

The warmth of the water settled over her skin, and she slowly opened her eyes, adjusting to the sting of the salt in her eyes. Below the crystalline blue surface she had never broke through since being washed ashore, she spotted the hull of the tiny vessel submerged in the vast open sea, and she allowed a small smile to slip as she slowly swam towards it, her legs kicking hard as she propelled through the water. All around her, massive schools of tiny silver fish glided past her, tails and fins gently brushing over her skin in soft gentle kisses. She felt the loose hair tie slip out of her unruly red locks, but she couldn't care less. The boat was just in front of her—a few more strokes, and she'd be out of this realm for good.

What she failed to notice on the sea floor was a large white octopus scaling the depths a few feet below, its lazy eyes turned aggressive as they fixated on the figure making its slow egress.

As she reached the boat, she ascended to take a breath at the surface, fingers barely clinging onto the metal rim at the edge. The air descended cold and dry down her throat, and with a hand she pushed the dripping red locks out of her eyes, turning back to see the island one more time. Had the cruise actually passed by this island on its way to a pre-assigned port-of-call, she probably would have been mentally prepared for what to expect should she be washed up here. Instead, she had ended up like every shell and rock in the ocean—washed ashore with no sense of orientation.

Would this be how fate handled her, then--treat her like a useless trinket and dump her in circumstances she would not be able to anticipate?

The sudden slimy tentacle tightly coiled around her right ankle pulled her out of her reverie, and barely had she opened her mouth in a shriek when it dragged her down, back into the salty depths soon laced with obsidian clouds.

Thrash, thrash. Her mind had completely shut down, her body responding almost automatically to the foreign sensation trapping her in a place she could not adapt to. The longer she stayed, the more her lungs felt fit to burst. The more she struggled, the tighter the hold on her ankle, slowly creeping up to her thigh, her torso, pinning her arms to her side. As the waters continued to darken, she glanced down at her new rival—the giant white octopus, concealed so well in the sands below, preying on the unwary souls who would dare cross her waters.

Jennifer tried to kick it away with her free leg, but the grip was far too strong for her to shake off. She tried to stab the tentacle with her toenails, but it barely made a dent in the slippery flesh. Lower and lower it brought her, luring her deep into the inky depths, the tentacle wrapping itself higher up her body until it reached her mouth. Only then, at the sight of the end of the slimy rope, did she gain any sense to open her mouth and sink her teeth right into the tentacle, biting hard until she felt the coil release her.

The vile taste in her mouth, almost like a mix of sandpaper and raw fish, never went away even after she had rinsed her mouth several times after that surprising encounter. An affront to her taste buds was the last thing she needed to convince herself that something about this island was definitely not normal.

The lifeboat was a trap after all—and she would never trust anything on this hell ever again after this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adrian Lovett

An impossible choice. There was always an impossible choice with this place. The kind that makes someone want to rip out their hair and scream like a little baby.

I stared down at my hand where a few lose strands sat. The side of my head stung with a dull ache. I growled at it all, hating my head, my hand and my situation. None of which I felt like I had any power to change.

Right there, the damn thing was right there. A small lifeboat, just floating on the water's surface. As far as I could tell it wasn't moving in any direction. It wasn't trying to swim away, but it wasn't doing me any favors either.

Because, of course not.

After my last dip in the ocean, who could blame me for being a little hesitant? The visions I saw were strange, and borderline creepy. As time passed they only got worse, berating me with strange insults that only hurt more if I tried to understand them. Even now, if I closed my eyes too long, the colors would flash and swirl in my mind. It still, very stupidly I might add, left me dizzy. More than once I blinked for too long and found myself on my knees ready to hurl.

The water lapped lazily at my feet. I gave up on socks and shoes for the moment. They wouldn't do me any favors when I was swimming. IF I chose to swim, I remind myself.

I don't know why I kept trying to talk myself out of it. This lifeboat is quite literally about to be a lifesaver. It's something I desperately need right now, and I'd have to be stupid to let it drift away. I was being stupid.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I ran in. Well... sloshed in, but the intention of running was there. The water splashed up, hitting me in the stomach, sending cold shockwaves up my spine. Despite how warm the day had become, the water still remained freezing.

It wasn't until I was chest deep when I gasped. I could ignore the sweeping cold, and the murky texture of the water, until it hit my ribs. That area was strangely sensitive. I began to doggy paddle across the water. The sight of me swimming like a helpless child, I'm sure, was hilarious.

Three quarters of the way to the raft and I stopped. Something felt wrong. At every turn this island has tried to hurt, maim or kill me, but this was going relatively smoothly. I wasn't buying it. So, I carefully tread water, moving as little as possible while still keeping my head up.

I hear nothing but the waves, I see nothing but the blue sky above and the blue-green sea around me. I smell fish, dead and alive around me, and the salty tang of the ocean. I feel the murky water, and...

Something brushed against my foot. I jerked my leg up, Water rushed up towards my mouth as I sank down a little. Quickly, I straightened out to tread water properly again and sputtered the water out. I smacked my lips, and sighed. My mouth still tasted nasty, but not from recently drinking fish piss.

Before I knew it, something slimy and slippery latched onto my leg and whirled me around. I let out a shriek of surprise as I was pushed, very unceremoniously on the butt, towards the island. I glared down into the water, but was met only with the sight of the murky water. It was too dark towards the floor for me to properly see what had just assaulted me.

With a grunt, I spun back around and started back towards the boat. I got a little closer, but the slimy thing wrapped around my leg and harshly spun me around, pushing me away. Whatever it was, an octopus maybe, was getting mad.

"Hey!" I shouted down at the water. "You can breathe under water, you don't need this."

Yeah, that showed it.

I turned once again and went for the boat. This time, I barely made it two doggy paddles in before the tentacle reached up and wrapped around my leg. Knowing it was coming, I thrashed my leg about. The stupid thing held fast. In fact, its grip was growing tighter. The sprained ankle throbbed in pain as the appendage held it in a death grip. I kicked again when-

I was yanked downwards. I barely had time to react, and drew the world's smallest breath as I plunged down. My eyes blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of my new surroundings. A quick look up told me I was still going down.

My descent slowed, and I looked around. The water was dark and dim down here. I squinted, and was greeted by a large silhouette. It loomed in the distance but then zipped up to me with lightning fast speed. I gasped, releasing the breath I had been holding, like the idiot that I am.

I couldn't see all of it, but I could see that the beast was massive. Its skin was a mottled purple, the color of a fresh bruise. It had three ginormous eyes that stared at me with milky white eye irises. It had a beak, much like a squid that it clicked open to show off rows upon rows of teeth. I was a dead man.

Until I heard a small crack. Looking down, I saw that I still had my beaten up, shoddy stint on my ankle. The pressure from the death grip had loosened up one of the branches. As quickly as I could, which wasn't very quick at all under water, I reached down. The branch slid from my grasp twice before I yanked it free. The beast eyed me curiously, as if challenging me to do something stupid.

But I had to. My lungs were starting to burn from the lack of oxygen. So, I swung straight at one of its eyes. The beast jerked back, and my impromptu weapon missed completely. It's tentacle, however, had loosened just a smidge. I kicked my leg, but the damn thing still held on just enough for me to have to stick around.

I swung the stick again, this time hitting the edge of its eye. I could feel the wood scrape against the beast's eye. I cringed, which turned into a full grimace as the beast opened its beak to screech. If I was above water, I was sure that my ears would have begun to bleed from that noise alone.

Another tentacle reached up, and slithered around my midsection. The end of it tried to go up my chest. With my free hand, I grappled it, holding it up to my face. My teeth weren't sharpened like a shark, like I had hoped for when I was a kid. But I could still bite down just as hard. Which is what I did. I chomped down on the beast's tentacle.

The beast let out another unearthly scream, and loosened its entire grip on me. Like a man desperate for air, I tore towards the surface. The sun's shimmering image was like the light at the end of an impossibly long tunnel. My lungs burned, followed by my legs and arms as they used up the last of their energy. I wanted to sob how much it hurt, but I didn't have time. I don't think I would ever have time.

I was gasping in the air before my mind even caught up to realize I had made it. Water ran out of my ears and sound slowly returned. The waves washed up and down around me, and I could cry over that alone.

The lifeboat still floated not too far from me. I paddled towards it, so ready to flop into it and rest. My arms and legs were burning, and my lungs couldn't stop hungrily sucking in air. I closed my eyes and kept going, not wanting to think about how much further I had to go.

Eventually, my hand thunked against something solid. I looked up dumbly, and found the raft right in front of me.

"Oh, thank God." I mumbled as I reached up to the lip of the boat. With a quick kick in the water and a pull up onto the boat, I tipped over into it. The wood was smooth, despite how worn it was. I had landed in an awkward position, my legs tossed at a weird angle, making my hips twist too far away from the rest of my spine. I couldn't have cared less though. I was safe in this boat.

Wait, no. No, I didn't mean to-

I had jinxed myself, and the clapback was upon me. A large wave crashed over the side of the boat. I quickly scrambled to a sitting up position to look at what I had just called upon myself. The creature had breached the surface of the water, allowing me a better look at it. The bruise-purple color was even uglier in the sun light. Two out of the three of its eyes glared at me with human like intelligence.

I gave it an uneasy smile, an instinctual response to ease other people into letting me go. While the creature might be as smart as a human, it wouldn't fall for those tricks.

It raised a tentacle and slammed it down. The back end of the boat, snapped right off. I yelped and looked around the raft. A single oar sat on the floor near my feet. Desperate, with nothing else that I could do, I grabbed the damned thing and started to row.

It was almost comical how terrible my plan was going. The boat inched forward. I didn't turn towards the beast, but I didn't doubt that the thing was just watching in disbelief of my feeble attempts.

Then I felt it. A tentacle had slapped the tail end of the boat. In its swing, it had knocked my head right down into my chest with a concerning pop. I grunted but looked up to see that the boat had been knocked towards the shore. The sandy beach was zooming up to me, and I could hear the beast cry out in surprise by its own actions. So much for hyper intelligent, I laughed to myself.

The boat slowed down, and I was able to row the rest of the way back to shore. I turned back and found the ocean had stilled, and the beast was gone. That was another thing I would have to face if I wanted to escape this place. Fantastic.

Still, I couldn't discount my find for today. I had... well, three quarters of a raft. It couldn't be taken all the way back home, but I could definitely use it. For now, I beached it, setting it right next to my little camp.

Life was still terrible on this stupid island, full of impossible choices and nature defying beasts, but I was surviving... somehow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MJ Williams

MJ and Willow were hiding at the edge of the jungle, carefully watching two unaware Michelsons. Spying on the poor boys had become somewhat of a past-time in recent days. The women would hide behind strategically chosen palm fronds or trees or rocks, Willow silently stewing and MJ just happy to have something to do. The Michelsons were seldom doing anything that warranted stalking, though; at best, they would have a lover's spat that felt like it had not enough 'lover' and too much 'spat'. It was a fun hobby though, and MJ was glad that Willow had something to direct her energy towards. Truth be told, she was a little worried about what was going to happen when they couldn't spy on the Michelsons anymore, but that was a problem for another time.

Currently, the Michelsons were out on the beach just far away enough that neither woman could hear what they were saying. They were clearly arguing about something, and gesturing out towards the water. MJ and Willow both hoped that this meant that they saw the life raft that was maybe 150 metres out from the shore. It was red in colour with reflective strips lining the sides, and it was bobbing in the waves but not moving from its spot, kind of like a large red flag.

"What are they waiting for? It's right there! Just swim a little and you can leave here forever!" Willow hissed, definitely not loud enough for the boys to hear.

"Don't worry, they'll get there. I mean, what kind of nutters would want to stay here forever?" MJ said with a cheeky smile.

"They need to hurry up!" she seethed, ignoring MJ's cheery tone. "Every extra day they spend here means we have to spend another day competing with them for resources."

"You know they aren't the only other people on the island—"

"This is different!" Willow's glaring eyes didn't leaving the Michelsons for a moment. "There are two of them. That means they use more resources."

MJ did her best to hold back a snicker for a few seconds. "It's the cave sex, isn't it?"

"...It's gross, okay! That's our cave and they sullied it with their bullshit kinky coconut sex!" MJ erupted into a cackle that was only silenced by Willow smothering her mouth with a hand. "Shut up! They're going to hear you!"

MJ pushed Willow off of her. "Come on, it's fine. Besides, one of them's already taken off." She gestured to the water, and they both watched as one of the men waded out into the ocean and started swimming. He was moving rather slowly, but with perfect arm strokes.

Willow's eyes followed him along intently. "Fucking finally. It looks like Sam is the one that's swimming. I'm sure his daddy would be glad to know that those life skills learnt at the yacht club are finally paying off. Now we just need to make sure they use it to leave."

"Alrighty then," MJ said, as she got up and started pushing through the plants in front of them.

Willow grabbed MJ's arm. "What are you doing!?"

"I'm going to have a chat with them, see what their plans are, nudge them towards leaving. I don't know."

"Are you insane? They're the enemy. You can't just 'chat' with the enemy."

MJ rolled her eyes. "Firstly, you know the answer to that question already. Secondly, I just want to find out what they're going to do with the raft once they get it. That's all." Willow eyed her closely. "Just let me talk to the hot guy before he gets eaten by a shark or something!"

Willow sighed and released her arm. "Fine. But don't say anything that would incriminate us or make them somehow stay."

"Wouldn't dream of it," MJ called over her shoulder as she marched off down the beach.

Danny wasn't standing too far away, so a short walk down the beach was enough to reach him. He turned as MJ approached, alerted by her loudly kicking up sand. He was not looking too crash hot, to put it lightly. His hair was clumped down in mud and sweat, and his face was streaked in dirt as if he had tried to wipe it off but not very well. To make matters worse, his arms and cheeks were scarred with nasty, puckered scratches that left his skin red. It only took MJ a glance to figure out what had caused those.

"Hey, you're Daniel, right?"

The man took a half step back and crossed his arms. He looked MJ up and down with distrustful eyes. "It's Danny."

"Ah, right, Danny. You're the bad boy with a heart of gold, yeah?"

"...What?"

"Never mind. I'm MJ." She offered a hand, which he reluctantly took. His handshake was a lot weaker than MJ was expecting.

"I know your name," he said slowly, confusion in his voice. "We've spoken before."

"D'ya want a drink?" MJ held out a tall bottle which was missing its label and half-full of a clear liquid.

Danny frowned. "Where did you get that from?"

"My bird is only trained to do one thing, and that's find mysterious bottles and bring them back to me." MJ looked around. "I don't know where he's off to now, though." She shook the bottle out towards him again.

Danny continued frowning, but took the bottle anyway and, after a quick visual inspection and a sniff, took a swig.

Which he very quickly spat out again with a couple of loud coughs and splutters.

"What the fuck was that?" he gasped.

MJ chuckled, taking a gulp of her own before screwing the cap back on the bottle. "It's not for everyone, I'll admit. Although I thought the salt water that leaked in balanced out the tequila quite well."

Danny cleared his throat and tried to regain his composure with little success. When he refused to make eye contact with MJ again, instead opting for the gaze out to his swimming husband, she continued, "I'm so sorry to hear about the girl, by the way."

"Her name was Bianca," he snapped. He then seemed to pull back a bit. "Who did you hear about that from?"

"I ran into Sam earlier and he told me," she lied. "How are you doing?" He didn't answer. "Look, I've lost friends before. I know how hard it can be to keep a brave face. Really, how are you feeling?"

Danny pursed his lips, his eyes hardening. He took a few slow, controlled breaths. "Could be better."

Poor boy, MJ thought. She unscrewed the lid again and tipped a generous amount of the drink onto the sand by their feet.

"She wasn't even old enough to drink," he sighed, his expression softening.

"She was where I'm from."

"Is the drinking age 18 in Australia?"

"Ah, funny story. I'm not actually from Australia. Don't worry, it's a common mistake. I grew up on a much smaller island nearby."

"New Zealand?"

"No, it was... you know what, it doesn't matter. I see your hubby's going for the raft out there."

Danny's shoulders tensed up, though he was obviously trying to play it cool. "Did you... want it too?"

"What? The raft? Nah, don't worry mate, it's all yours."

Danny visible relaxed just a smidge. "Oh, cool. Good to know. But don't you want—"

Splash!

MJ's head whipped towards the sudden noise to see that her best friend had just jumped fully-clothed into that water and was now swimming out towards the raft as well. Her arms windmilled wildly and her legs kicked in a blur behind her as she shot off without so much of a 'Hey MJ, something's come up that you should know about'.

Was this a part of the plan? Had MJ forgotten something?

"Oi! Willow?" MJ yelled. "What are you doing?".

No response; Willow continued swimming furiously towards the raft. This was a reckless, single-minded focus that MJ recognised well.

"It certainly looks like your friend wants it too." Danny had braced himself, like he was ready to spring into action if things went sour.

"Yeah, I have no clue why."

"Was she just... waiting over there in the bushes?"

MJ laughed. "Of course not, that would be so weird. She was probably just looking for me and got confused."

"Okay... So why is she swimming out there then?"

"I don't know, we honestly don't want to leave. Most likely, she's trying to help your boy out there get the raft faster."

"...That doesn't make any sense. Why would she do that?" He took a few steps toward the water.

"No, honest, we don't want it. We don't even want to leave the island!"

Danny squinted out towards the two swimmers. Willow had already caught up to Sam. "Is she shoving him? What the fuck!?"

As his voice increased in volume, MJ's grip tightened on her bottle. She wasn't worried or anything, but she was ready to glass him if it came to that. "Calm down, mate, everything's fine."

"What the fuck is that?"

MJ's eyes followed his pointing hand out to a spot just off to the left of the raft, further out in the ocean. Now, the waters immediately surrounding the island are fairly light in colour, because the water isn't too deep. Not far beyond the reef that the raft was stuck to, the ocean floor dropped suddenly and drastically, causing the water to be a deep navy blue. Where Danny was pointing, the water wasn't dark blue as it should have been. It was black. A large, amorphous black blob lurked underneath the surface, too far away for MJ to guess what or why or how. She could only determine that it was large, and ominous, and moving slowly towards her friend.

"Oh, fuck. What is that?"

"What do you mean? It's a shark!"

"Huh?"

He pointed out at the spot again with a shaking hand, and MJ squinted closely at where he was pointing. Just before the ominous dark spot was a comparatively small fin sticking out of the water.

"Oh. That. That's nothing to worry about, sharks don't really attack people in the wild."

Before Danny could respond, the shark fin disappeared with a splash. Not like the shark had swum down below the surface, but more like it had been abruptly yanked from its happy existence.

But before either of them could respond to that, the shark reappeared. It was different now, though. It wasn't in the water anymore, it was wholly above the water, held aloft by a massive octopus tentacle. It was also not a whole shark anymore either. The front half of the shark was gone, a mess of blood and guts left where it had been forcefully torn from the back half. In one swift motion, the tentacle reeled back and flicked the carcass across the beach. It then slipped back into the unknown depths of the water. The ominous blob had not stopped moving.

"Willow!"

Without a second thought (she was never one for second thoughts), MJ dropped everything and ran to the water's edge, splashing through the waves until she was in deep enough to dive forward and start swimming.

In hindsight, it was unfortunate that MJ was so preoccupied with the life-or-death situation Willow had flung herself into, because it meant she couldn't appreciate how nice the water was. It was cool and crystal clear, a welcome refuge from the beating sun above them. If she had been going a little slower, she would have noticed the small fish darting around beneath her or the seaweed bed dancing in time with the waves. It's a shame, really, that that section of ocean was apparently a kraken habitat (MJ would never say the water was kraken-infested, because krakens live in the ocean; if anything, Willow and Sam had made the water human-infested).

She was very lucky that a childhood living near the beaches of Kevin and an affinity for water gave her a truly enviable swimming ability, which came in hand for situations like this.

After what simultaneously felt like an eternity and only a couple of seconds, MJ ran head-first into the raft. When she looked up from the water, panting and grabbing onto the side of it, she saw Sam doing much the same thing next to her, and Willow standing shakily on the raft. In her hands was a gun.

Where on Earth did she get that!?

Despite her wobbly stance, Willow clasped the gun with the exacting hands of a trained killer. It was aimed directly at Sam, who was frozen in place.

"Get away from my raft, Sam!"

"Willow!" MJ yelled between deep breaths as she pulled at the raft. "We need to go, there's something in the water!"

Willow glanced at her quizzically. "MJ? What the fuck are you— AHH!"

In an instant, the tentacle MJ saw before whipped out of the water again and grappled Willow around the waist. It was so much larger up close, it wasn't even a surprise to learn that it was strong enough to lift Willow up and drag her under water. All Willow could do was scream and instinctively squeeze the trigger of the gun before she vanished from sight.

"Damn it, Willow!"

MJ yanked herself up onto the raft with new-found strength. What could she do? What could she do? She could just dive in after her, but then the kraken would kill them both. She scanned the small raft.

Bullet hole in the floor of the raft. Not helpful. Open supply box full of stashed goodies. Very helpful. She dug through its contents. Gas masks. Knives. Food. Bullets. Guns. Fireworks.

Fireworks.

MJ got an idea. She grabbed the firework tube and dashed to the edge of the raft where Willow disappeared. The water was calm, eerily calm. Nothing about it betrayed the certain death that lay beneath its surface. Except—

The small bubbles popping at the surface just in front of MJ.

And that was all she needed. She pulled out Eric's lighter, lit the fuse, took a deep breath, and dived head-first into the black water.

She couldn't see or hear anything under the water. The salt water stung her eyes and blocked her ears. She aimed the fireworks with blind optimism in the direction that the creature probably was.

And nothing happened.

Did the fuse go out? Was the firework damaged? How was she going to—

Then something happened.

BOOM.

The fireworks shot forward with force, a bright streak streaming ahead into the darkness. MJ hoped for an impact into something, hopefully into the sea monster, but no luck. The light flew through the water well beyond the body of the kraken.

MJ felt her body ragdoll about the water, as a large swell came upon her. No, not quite a swell. A shift. She could just make out through bleary eyes that the darkness was moving again. Quickly. Most importantly, it was moving away from her, in the direction of the fireworks.

MJ was quite pleased with herself as she lurched forward, the moving body of water removing any control she had. She flailed about, searching wildly and blindly for the person she jumped down here for.

Her hand brushed against another hand.

'I hope this is Willow', she thought to herself.

MJ clutched the hand with an iron grip and kicked with all of the strength she had left, swimming up towards the light.

When her head finally broke the surface, MJ gasped the cool air into her aching lungs. She pulled Willow up close behind her, coughing and spluttering as she too broke the surface of the water. The sea around them was surprisingly calm, no splashing or waves or noise that would suggest that a Cthulhu-like creature had just attacked. It skeeved MJ out.

There was also no raft anywhere in sight, as it turned out.

Wordlessly, MJ pulled a shaken Willow back to shore, an arm wrapped around her body to keep her afloat. Despite her love of the sea, MJ gave a silent prayer to Kevin as they both collapsed onto the sandy floor of the beach.

Willow rolled onto her back and stared up into the late afternoon sky. MJ propped herself up on an elbow to see Willow's face. "You 'kay?"

"Fuck." Her breathless laughter quickly became wet coughs.

MJ slicked her soaked hair out of her face and coughed a bit herself. "What was that?"

Willow took a moment to catch her breath, then replied, staring straight up at the clouds, "Only God fucking knows what kind of shitty fucking monstrosity he put in our path to fuck with us like this."

MJ nodded; that was well put. "And why did you go out there?"

Willow sighed. "I'll tell you later." MJ shrugged, and Willow looked at her directly with wide eyes and a rare kind of smile on her face. "Thank you."

MJ smiled back, waving her hand and shifting to lie on her back. "No worries. You know, they nicked off with the raft."

"Yep."

"Do you want to go steal it back?"

"Nope. I want to lie down right here for a bit."

"Fair."

It was a bit later that night before MJ and Willow saw the Michelsons again. They hadn't moved from their spot on the beach for hours, choosing instead to have a well-earned nap, and the sky had darkened completely in the meantime. The waning moon illuminated the beachfront just enough so they could see two familiar figures dragging a red raft out just down the way. They both sat up quickly at the sight, and scrambled back to a suitable spying position in the jungle.

"Do you think they're..." MJ asked.

"Leaving," Willow answered, a crazed smile just visible in the darkness on her face.

They watched the two men drag the heavy-looking craft out to the water's edge. It was piled high with something. Cloth, or leaves, maybe? Could the two of them even fit on that? Once it was floating, they walking it out further, wading out until their waists were wet. MJ frowned. They were leaving it pretty late to hop into it...

One of the boys grabbed something from his pocket and reached into the raft. The leaves in the raft lit up, a small yellow flame quickly growing into a brilliant orange blaze as the entire contents of the boat caught fire.

MJ heard Willow choke up next to her. "What are they doing? What the fuck are they doing!?"

With a big heave, the men shoved the raft out onto the water in unison. It glided along, not slowed at all by the tiny swells of the still ocean.

Then the two women were hit with the same thought at the same time like a two-women-sized bag of bricks. "Bianca," MJ mouthed.

The boat floated out, bathed in fire and encircled in a warm glow reflected from the water, and the two men walked hand in hand back to the dry shore.

"Aw, that's actually a really nice sentiment," MJ said.

Willow practically vibrated with anger next to her, like she might just explode any second. "They did what!? They could have left us alone forever and instead the set their only means of escape on fire!? How dare those two little..."

As Willow slipped into a string of fun expletives, mostly in Chinese, MJ sat back and enjoyed the big finale of Bianca's funeral; there were more fireworks left in that raft, and now they were igniting and launching into the air. A spectacular light show filled the night sky, every colour actually exploding in mesmerising patterns, a secret wonder only for the handful of survivors on the island. MJ smiled. All things considered, this wasn't a bad way to end the day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Willow Zheng

"What are they waiting for?!" Willow snuck her head out from behind the craggy rock she was sitting behind. A little less than a hundred fifty meters away out from shore the life raft bobbed, a flash of bright red that had to be unmistakable from the point on the beach not twenty meters away where the Michelsons stood bickering about who had shoved the coconut up whose (whom's?) ass or who wasn't responsible for Bianca Colombo's untimely death (not Willow's fault, for once, by the way) or the ethics of moral philosophy or any number of things less important than the life raft that was literally right there but might not be right there for much longer if the current shifted. "What do they need, for God himself to come down in a shower of sparkles and moon them from the side of the boat? Do I need to set out a red carpet? A banner with fireworks: 'THIS IS YOUR TICKET OUT, ASSWIPES?' I thought only one of them was blind. I thought the blind one was dead already!" Too soon? Too soon. A thought struck her. "Oh my God, MJ, do you think they're not doing it because the raft is too pedestrian for their big money aristocratic sensibilities, because if so I swear to God I'll walk right over and knock them both out and punt their unconscious bodies into the raft from right fucking here—"

"—Yeah, I don't think that's it." MJ sighed, leaning over to ruffle Willow's hair right into her eyes. Willow turned to glare at her friend, because rude and also without a comb her salt-dried hair was liable to start stiffening in any given position if she left it alone for too long; the not-Australian flashed her signature cheeky smile and went back to cheerfully sharpening their survival knife with a water-smoothed stone they'd scrounged from their cave. Her friend had taken to wilderness survival like her demon bird had taken to the island sky, eagerly improvising various traps and substitutions for supplies and busying herself with the day-to-day tasks that upgraded their existence from living to thriving. Willow was glad she was there with her, although she'd gladly let the Michelsons hatefuck their marital problems out against the wall of her cave before she admitted it. Which they had. Continuously. Repeatedly. Thankfully, the hatred drove the sappy thoughts out of her head. "Maybe they're arguing about what to do with the raft when they get it?"

"Well, can't they do that faster?! It's not like they have options: you can't use a functional raft to do much except get the fuck out." Although if anyone would somehow find a way to fuck that up, it was the Michelsons; that was obvious enough, since they'd somehow managed to let Bianca Colombo die on their watch. "I mean, they argued less about their medicine cabinet. This is just—"

"Hup! There he goes!" MJ gestured with the knife; Sam Michelson was racing away from his husband across the beach, shedding his shirt as he went. Their reactions happened simultaneously: MJ sighed dreamily while Willow shuddered. Clearly, they'd had very different experiences while hallucinating on their gas. Danny crossed his arms irately and called out after him as he waded out into the ocean. Trouble in paradise, clearly—or rather, trouble in hell. MJ scrambled to her feet, tossing the knife and stone into their open pack and dusting off her knees. "Alright, wish me luck."

"...With what?" Willow tilted her head up to follow her friend's gaze, but there wasn't anything there except one (1) brooding bad boy brooding after his husband as he swam away into the sunset.

"I'm going to have a chat with them, see what their plans are, nudge them towards leaving. I don't know."

Willow snagged her friend's arm right as MJ began walking out, using the momentum to swing her back in before she could make it fully out from their jungle cover. "Are you insane? They're the enemy. You can't just 'have a chat' with the enemy!" At best, you negotiated a deal with them that left enough holes to backstab them through later. At worst, you jabbed them in the foot with a poisoned umbrella under the table of a cafe in Paris and got the hell out of dodge before the gendarmerie showed up. MJ had been there for that one, she should've known better by now.

"...Okay, first off, you already knew I was insane. If you didn't know it when you met me, you had to have figured it out after Côte d'Ivoire." MJ rolled her eyes. "Second, you're not allowed to ask me that. We're attempting to live on an island together. We're both insane. And third, I'm not gonna go over there and ask him to do push-ups for me or anything. I just wanna find out what they're gonna do with the raft when they get it, that's all."

"There's only one thing to do with the raft, and that's take it and use it to get the fuck off my island." Oh God, what if they had decided to do something dumb with it? "Tell him that, will you? You have to tell him—"

"I'll tell him, I'll tell him!" MJ eyed her arm pointedly until Willow let it go with a reluctant sigh. "Just let me talk to the hot guy before he gets eaten by a shark or something, will you? He might be the last guy I ever see, you know! Would you really do that to me? I have dreams." She thought for a second. "Not wet dreams, though. Aspiration dreams. Although I guess in this case they're kinda the same."

"Yeah, but does it have to be one of them?" Willow wrinkled her nose. Gross incompetence wasn't sexy, but the enemy was even less sexy because half the time the enemy was acting sexy on purpose to coat his dick in Croatian poison and evil. "There's that failed comedian on the other side of the jungle, isn't there?"

MJ scoffed, smoothing her hair against her head. It popped back up immediately. "I said hot guy." She turned back, spreading her arms. "Well?"

She looked like shit. Then again, they all looked like shit after this long and Danny was clearly kind of a himbo who'd been two days and a coconut away from banging Colombo. "Don't do anything that'd make his husband leave him behind on this island."

"Wouldn't dream of it." MJ turned with a grin and casual finger-guns, racing across the sand and leaving Willow to herself and her life choices. It wasn't like she could spy on that conversation; aside from being devoid of the schadenfreude that made watching her enemies make each other's lives miserable so entertaining, it toed the line a little too close to voyeurism, which Willow thought she'd officially been cured of after all the fucking cave sex but apparently it was different when the privacy you were invading was your friends or whatever. She thought briefly back to the flashes of her hallucination she remembered: the talk of privacy in China. Ha. At least that was out in the open; the surveillance itself was public, as opposed to the NSA and all their wiretapping. Had she...pictured the conversation with a tiger? Had Sharkbait been there somehow?

As if summoned by the memory—and there was a scary thought, that the one sentient being on the island Willow believed was genuinely capable of her destruction could read thoughts—Sharkbait suddenly appeared among a flock of startled starlings fleeing something in the depths of the forest. Willow watched as his distinctively dirty pink plumage moved across the horizon, raising a hand to her eyes to shield them from the bright summery sky as he settled right into the raft Sam was making slow but steady progress towards. Oh, if only it were that simple. The galah disappeared briefly into the raft as it wobbled on the lip of a rippling white wave.

"Asshole better not puncture the raft," Willow muttered to herself before realizing that shit, yes, actually. The demon bird had claws and a beak to match, and while thus far Sharkbait had been reigned in by whatever magical charm MJ possessed that made it so angry people like Willow held particular fondness for her, it was only a matter of time before he turned on them and ruined their plans like the nefarious mastermind he secretly was in his tiny bird brain. Fortunately, as she watched, Sharkbait rose out of the raft, something black clutched in his claws; the red-and-white boat stayed buoyed, floating ever-closer to the pale shadow of Sam Michelson in the deep blue waves, as the bird returned to shore. Rather than going back to MJ (who looked preoccupied working said magical charm on Danny Michelson and his brooding McBrood face), the bird sailed right past them and made a beeline for Willow, who ducked instinctively before the vindictive galah attempted to take her head off or whatever he was trying to do.

The galah came to a rest on the handle of the sagging backpack MJ had left behind, its claws outstretched with whatever had been hanging from his sharp raft-rending talons. Willow leaned in to take a look and—

"HOLY SHIT!" She leapt instinctively back, using her hand to hoist herself over the rock and backflipping in a huddle onto the other side; Sharkbait let out a sound that sounded suspiciously like a creaky laugh as he clicked his cracked beak. She peeked out cautiously from the side, where she wasn't in the line of fire—sure enough, a small standard-issue revolver dangled by the trigger guard from his foot, the black varnished metal gleaming in the late afternoon sun. The galah stared at her, amusement and pure evil in his beady black eyes. "I knew you were out to kill me, you little shit." She crawled out carefully back to the other side of the rock, removing the gun gingerly from Sharkbait and returning his murderous glare with as much vindictive anger as she could muster. Hm. Dry as a bone. She turned it over and removed the magazine; still loaded. She had been right in her estimations: concealment never equalled cover, of course, but a gun of such a small caliber wouldn't have made it through the stone. A small thing, designed for secretive assassination from up close. A spy's weapon. A spy's weapon.

"Where the fuck did this come from?" She turned with a frown to Sharkbait. The galah stared at her imperiously with the sort of look Willow usually reserved for MJ. "Somewhere else on the island? Whoever's out to kill me?" No, no: if the former were the case it never would've made it to her, since Sharkbait was probably not immune to bullets, and if the latter were true the gun would've been water-damaged beyond repair. Willow peered back out over the rock. Thankfully, it looked like no one had heard her scream or noticed her catapulting herself to the exposed side of the rock; MJ continued to chatter to Danny, oblivious as ever (and apparently offering him some of her bird alcohol, because of course), while Sam continued making steady progress through the calm water, his wake trailing behind his bobbing head as he paddled to the halfway point between himself and the raft.

The raft. The raft.

"Fucking no." The words were out of her mouth before she even understood why she was saying it, her unconscious mind at least twenty thoughts in front of her train of thought in an effort to spare herself from a heart attack or a rage-induced burst vessel. "No way."

Sharkbait, the fucker, laughed. A bird laugh that was indistinguishable from any number of his malicious bird noises, sure, but he laughed.

"The life raft." She said it on autopilot as she turned back towards the raft—the bright red raft floating innocently away from the shore, the one that had better not fucking be the one she'd packed full of half her spy stuff before they went to steal the cruise ship in case of emergencies (or, y'know, one very specific emergency that required a quick getaway from the naval law enforcement). Sam was nearly there, now. Her hand twitched instinctively around the gun—her gun, it was her fucking gun. Those were HER GUNS. And the Michelsons were going to put their cave defiling hands. On HER GUNS! "Oh, NO YOU FUCKING DON'T!"

The gun hit the forest floor with a clatter. Before she knew it she was back on her feet, mindlessly putting one leg in front of the other and digging her heels so aggressively into the sand she kicked up clouds behind her. Within a few seconds, she'd crossed the surf and waded out into the ocean, her loose shirt billowing out over her and the bitter salt assaulting her senses in a way she'd hoped she'd never have to experience again after the shipwreck (probably too much to hope on an island, in retrospect). She let the waves kick out her legs from under her, cataloguing information as fast as possible—the trajectory of the current, the distance between Sam and the boat—she could swim faster than him, she knew that much, idiot was going breaststroke and her training had prepared her for this and who needed dumb things like air when there were GUNS—and ducked her head underwater without a second thought. Her legs and arms and lungs began to ache almost immediately, twinging with discomfort after the combined stress of sprinting followed immediately by strenuous freestyle and also probably she needed to resurface to breathe, whatever, but she held on for as long as possible before raising her head and squinting through the spray of agitated water around her to make sure she was still headed in the right direction. Sam didn't so much as look around. Dumb oblivious idiots who didn't notice impeding danger didn't deserve her shit, god damn it. Asshole idiots who hit her with golf clubs and made her talk to her parents didn't deserve anything.

She shifted her aim purposely a few feet to the right, calculating—yes, with the speed he was going and the speed she was going, they'd collide in a few seconds—

"What the—OW!" Sam Michelson (and wow, his voice was a lot less high than Willow's hallucinating mind apparently thought, or maybe she just had a really low opinion of him) flailed in the water, instinctively swatting Willow's face as she headbutted him directly in the side. "Who the hell are you?!"

She didn't respond, instead bending herself at the waist and digging her toes roughly into his shirt before the impact propelled him too far away and dragging him closer before launching herself off his chest toward the raft. The kick gave her just enough momentum against the heavy water that she managed to reach it, summoning up what remained of her strength to haul her arm bodily over the thick side of the raft. It was tough to get a grip against the rubber as it slid, chafing roughly against her slick skin, but she managed to throw her leg up over the side too. Her limbs scrabbled for purchase just enough that she could tip her weight into the raft, the balance of the boat shifting heavily as she rolled across the bottom and collided with the other side. She barely had time to think about how much it fucking hurt when her nose mashed into the rough plastic, however, before she felt something with the approximate heft of one motherfucker nudge the side. Sam goddamn Michelson was going to get them both swept out to sea because he didn't understand how things like the ocean worked.

She snatched up the closest thing—another gun, because it had been too fucking long since she'd held a gun—and hauled herself up on her feet. Her head spun, both because the salt and sun combined had a dizzying dehydrating effect and because she was tired, god damn it, but her hands knew exactly what to do when assholes got on her goddamn property and, despite the wobbly balance as the raft shifted up and down on the water under her, managed to fix it at the alarmed man clinging to the side of her raft like the world's worst, most parasitic barnacle. "Don't you fucking dare, Michelson, or I swear to God!" Her head pounded. Christ. The water rippled and shifted, stretching to the edges of her gaze and making her just that much dizzier, which was not good for Sam Michelson's chances of GD survival. "Don't you dare touch my shit! First the cabinet, now this—" She was starting to register by now that, beyond the obvious and extreme gun lust, there was enough survival shit to last her years on the raft. And knives. So many knives. How had it even survived the wreck? "—I have come too far and done too much to let some pasty-ass white boy take my property, you fucking colonist, and if you make me talk to my parents again, I swear to holy fuck, I will feed you to the tiger!"

"The—" The man's stupidly chiseled brow furrowed, which really just made Willow want to shoot him more. A forehead like the White fucking Cliffs of Dover, the largest fucking target in the world just begging to be taken down a peg or two. Even if she didn't shoot him, a good pistol-whip would get his hands off her property. Sweat poured down the back of her neck uncomfortably. "—the what?"

"Willow!"

A third voice that sounded suspiciously like MJ pricked the edges of her consciousness, but she knew better than to take her eyes off the enemy; the gun kept her grounded, a familiar weight in her hands. Besides, she was probably hallucinating, and her sanity was the least of her concerns when there were more important things like guns and (insert obligatory gritting of teeth) Michelsons. Sam turned toward the voice, because he was an idiot who did take his eyes off the enemy and really, he deserved to die just for being so stupid because he shouldn't have even survived this long, long enough to steal her shit and take her supplies and have sex on her cave.

"We need to go!" Was the voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like MJ her conscience or something? "There's something in the water!"

That got her attention; granted, there were a number of things in the water, but the terrified cadence of the voice indicated very-much-real-MJ was probably not talking about Sam or the raft. She chanced a glance—her friend had, for some reason, actually swam all the way out to her, head bobbing in the waves as her curly hair lay in wet loops plastered across her forehead. Danny, on the other hand, had stayed behind, because clearly the Michelsons' supposedly romantic relationship was weaker than theirs. Marriage was a sham. "MJ? What the fuck are you—"

The world spun before her eyes in a blur of blue as a vice-like pressure suddenly tightened, constricting around her waist with enough force behind it to alarm her even through the sudden shortness of breath; wind whipped abruptly around her as the ground dropped beneath her and she was yanked up and hurtled through the air, screaming. She barely had time to process the what-the-fuck-ness of all of that before suddenly she was engulfed in the freezing ocean, the salt stinging her eyes so she squeezed them instinctively shut as churning water moved upwards in front of her gaze. Her lungs went for a breath and instantly regretted it as the raw burning sensation moved inside her, the thing around her waist flexing tightly. Instinctively, her hand went up, feeling around for the source—whatever was fucking alive around her waist trailed off at a position somewhere behind her and instinctively, she jammed the muzzle of her gun roughly against the squishy surface and fired.

What she could be reasonably certain was a limb clenched ferociously against her in punishing retribution as her legs went almost entirely numb. Spots of white bloomed in the darkness behind her eyes like mold, even though her eyes still burned in her skull. Her chest heaved uselessly against the tightening pressure as the static-y feeling of lost circulation in her limbs began spreading through her entire body, her nerves going offline one by one. She couldn't even feel the water anymore; her muscles, clenched tight, began to relax against her will as she fought to maintain control over her consciousness. So this was how she died. Ironically, her last thought was going to be about how she'd better not fucking die this way. What a way to fucking go.

BOOM.

The sound washed over her as a disturbance in the flow of the water, rather than as a distinct noise; the background lit up somewhere in front of her so she saw the pale beige color of her own eyelids rather than total darkness. The weight against her chest began to loosen to a steady nudge, then disappeared entirely before something pressed against her hand.

And then her senses suddenly came back online as she left the water with, ironically enough, all the sudden shock of a dam bursting—the cold, muffling pressure of the ocean disappeared as MJ hauled her head back out over the surface, frigid sea air slapping her soundly in the face as light invaded her senses and the crashing of the waves returned so loudly her ears rang. Air entered her lungs with a sensation like needles being jabbed into every pore. Dazed, Willow spun in the current to face her attacker.

A tentacle with veiny membrane the color of putrid puce flailed wildly in the air, veiny membrane undulating as cloudy, opaque suckers pulsed hungrily.

"...WHAT," Willow yelled. Rather, she tried to yell—it came out as more of an incoherent wheeze, prompting a bout of tortured coughing that spared them both the string of oncoming expletives and, incidentally, put her life in legitimate danger as her still-shaky limbs threatened to call it a day, stop paddling, and return her back to the depths of the ocean from whence she came. Luckily enough, MJ was less of an impulsive idiot, pushing Willow's numb self bodily back to the island. They made it through the water without further incident, although Willow had regained enough of her mental facilities by the time they got back to shore that she could dimly register that everything was pain and also vague, distant disgust as MJ dragged her through the damp sand.

Willow wasn't sure how long she stayed like that, trying in turns to force air desperately into her lungs and take even, paced breaths—not that it mattered, they all felt exactly the same and they all felt like she was being repeatedly stabbed in her ribcage. Her eyes still stung, her vision blurry through the tears: they hurt too much to open and too much to close, because of course. Eventually, an amorphous blob the approximate color of MJ's hair popped into her field of view.

"You 'kay?"

Trying to summon a coherent thought was like sifting for gold in...some place with no gold. The first thought she dredged up, however, was do I fucking look okay, which was Willow enough that it gave her hope she would eventually reach some semblance of normal operative capacity. Her typical sarcasm was far too many syllables for her failing lungs to handle, however, so she settled for an emphatic "fuck", which hopefully still got her point across. And then promptly burst back into a phlegmy coughing fit. Way to go, Willow.

"What was that?!"

The sarcasm center of her brain came back online with a barrage of greatest hits, ranging from I dunno, that's not the sort of thing they teach in spy school to yeah, let me just pop back in real quick and find out, no biggie. Her lungs, unfortunately, did not come back online, so Willow was forced to stew in silence staring blankly at the discolored white spots dancing around her field of view and resume wondering whether they were clouds or permanent retinal damage.

"Dude, what happened out there?"

Fight through the pain, Willow. Sitting up took way too much effort and was definitely not worth it. "You tell me," she wheezed, her voice wobbling like an arthritic baby deer and giving out immediately afterwards. It took a long moment before her breath came back.

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking!" MJ said it with an incredulous tone. As if Willow knew. "One second I'm talking to Danny and the next, I see you yeet yourself out into the ocean. And then I see a giant tentacle rise up from the water like the fucking second coming and rip a shark in half—fucking metal, by the way—and I come out to warn you, and then I see it grab you before you can commit homicide." As the salt, sand, and tears drained from Willow's eyes, MJ's features became clear once more; the woman was frowning contemplatively, as if this were merely mildly confusing and not holy fucking batman batshit impossible. "You don't think that was the Michelsons stopping you from shooting Sam somehow, do you?"

Sure, because the Michelsons had the power to summon the devil. They were certainly annoying enough to be sent from hell. "You say this like—" Ow. Warning. Danger. Mistake. She kept going anyway, like the impulsive idiot she was. Might as well lean into it. "—like I know anything about what happened." She spat out a mixture of salt water and blood onto the sand; it sunk into the porous ground like a sponge. "One minute, I'm taken by the flood." Her fingers clenched as she coughed up more plasma, burning in her throat. "The next minute, I'm taken by fucking Cthulhu."

"Yeah, when you mentioned Cthulhu cultists on the island I really thought you were kidding." MJ frowned out at the ocean, which looked calm and deceptively innocent once more. Bastard. "Is it insensitive to you and your general dying-ness if I say that fighting him off with a firework underwater was the most badass moment of my entire life?"

"I'm glad one—" She was going to have to learn to stop talking. "—of us got something out of it."

"Hey, we both got something out of it! The Michelsons got the raft, see?"

Of fucking course they did. The cherry on the shit sandwich. Willow could do nothing but watch with a mixture of raging, undiluted hatred and total, utter helplessness as the Michelsons bustled about on the beach, peering into the raft and talking animatedly amongst themselves. The urge to storm over and smack them both upside the head nearly overtook her, but the moment she steadied a hand in the sand and pushed to propel herself up, a shockwave of pain rippled through her arm to remind her that her motor skills were probably shot for the foreseeable future. At least they had the medicine cabinet and enough painkillers to tranquilize Cthulhu himself. And the singular gun Sharkbait had given her. Which she was going to use to put herself out of her misery.

"Why'd you want it, anyway?"

Fuck it. There wasn't enough time to go through the long chain of events that had led her to this moment, and she had a feeling if she started in on it she'd keep ranting until she died in a fit of rage, pique, hubris, and inhaled seawater. "I'll tell you later." And, because she wasn't dead, she turned to her friend; her fingers barely managed movement, stiff as all hell and limp like fucking death, but she managed to press them clumsily against MJ's own and hope she got the message through osmosis. "...Thanks."

"Don't mention it." MJ smiled grimly as Willow managed to stretch out her legs, blood rushing back with a shock like ice water. The two stayed like that for a long moment, watching as the sky began shifting toward sunset and the Michelsons bundled what looked to be their supplies in a sheet and hoisted it into the raft. "At least they're gone now, eh?"

"Mm." That was a good thing. The one good thing, really, that'd come out of this day—at long last, they'd have the island to themselves. And if they were lucky, she'd get to watch the Michelsons get snapped in half by Cthulu, which was apparently real, which defied logic and opened the possibility of other not-real things being real like MJ's ghosts or the chupacabra but was definitely an existential crisis for another time when sitting motionless on the beach wasn't the extent of her physical and mental capabilities. Across the way, Sam and Danny heaved at the back of the raft, gaining momentum as they pushed it toward the ocean as if about to set sail. She could practically feel her heartbeat relaxing at the sight. "Thank fuck."

The two of them watched silently, their heads turning to follow the mens' trajectory as they got further and further into the water.

"Leaving it pretty late, huh?"

"They'll hop in soon." It still hurt to talk, but not as much. Willow wiggled her toes in the sand; it was going to get cold soon. "Or maybe the thing'll eat them. Who knows."

Danny shoved his hand briefly into the raft, as if reaching for something, before nodding to his husband. And then they turned back.

"Where are they going?" Something panged in Willow's chest—not the sting of seawater, but a familiar feeling. A bad feeling. The feeling of impending mental breakdown. The two men nodded and, against all logic and every conceivable train of human thought, began returning to the island. "Oh, fuck no. Oh, no, no, no—"

"Did they forget something?" MJ squinted, craning her neck forward. "...Hang on, is the raft smoking—"

And then the raft abruptly caught on fire.

"WHAT." Her lungs immediately rebelled, but fuck it, it needed to be said. "THE FUCK—"

"Bianca," MJ breathed, derailing Willow's train of thought (or lack thereof, as her brain went white with the sheer improbability of what she was seeing) so suddenly that the secret agent looked over. The not-Australian's eyes were wide as saucers and carried a haunted look dimly reminiscent of a cornered dog.

"Bianca what? Bianca Colombo?" She turned back to the raft—HER raft—as the translucent flames licked at the sides, sparks spiralling into the purpling sky. The realization hit her worse than the fucking near death experience. "No." Her sharp intake of breath nearly sent her coughing again; she clenched her jaw and reeled it in. "They'd better not have." Her legs went to stand, but human weakness stopped her. She would have died, in that moment, to storm across the beach and bitchslap those Michelsons in their faces—she would've croaked immediately after but it WOULD HAVE BEEN WORTH IT. She sucked in a painful breath. "YOU FUCKING BITCHES—"

"—you know, that's actually kind of romantic," MJ commented as Willow spiralled into another coughing fit, from a world away in a fairytale land where apparently Cthulhu was more likely to exist than the shadow of a single logical thought. A few hundred meters away and evidently in that same fantasy world, Michelsons ascended the shore hand in hand and disappeared into the jungle like a Hallmark movie. It was officially Willow's worst nightmare. "It's a nice sentiment, you know—"

"—was it something." She was going to kill someone, damn it, someone deserved to die for this. "Was it something. You said. To Danny?" She gagged out a dry cough as she finally recovered from her brief outburst, blinking murderously at her friend through the tears that threatened to well up again from both pain and rage. "I told you not to talk to him and I know you were blinded by his muscles—"

"—nope, never brought it up." MJ sucked on her teeth, musing over the conversation. "Still, I guess I can see why, he does seem like the sensitive sorta—"

"THEY COULD'VE LEFT!" Her body and best friend entirely betraying her, all Willow could do was watch helplessly as the raft floated in a meandering, aimless trail out to sea, shades of amber light dancing over the water. "THEY COULD'VE—" Ow, ow, ow. Apparently, she wouldn't even be allowed to scream in this moment of total and complete idiocy. Rage built up inside her with no outlet. Oh, God. This. This was the worst moment of her life. She wouldn't even be afforded the decency of cathartic outrage. "They could've just. Left. And tossed her body. Overboard. Later. That's a thing too. That's a thing. In movies. That they could've done. And still left this ISLAND!" MJ thumped her empathetically on the back as she abruptly went into another coughing fit. She didn't want back thumps, damn it, she wanted revenge and also to hunt the Michelsons down like dogs and fling their bodies out to Cthulhu. A sound like a gunshot nearly startled her into a heart attack, but no, apparently the universe wouldn't even allow her the mercy of death; turning back, she watched as a colorful smattering of sparks exploded into the sky. Fireworks. They had burned the fireworks. They had burned her guns and her knife and their fireworks and oh my God, they'd done it. This was worse than the cave sex. They'd somehow managed to top the cave sex. In the absence of the ability to scream and/or commit murder, Willow settled for clenching her teeth so hard her teeth clicked and settling her voice into a murderously calm whisper that also set off her lungs, because apparently she wasn't even allowed to do a threatening growl. "I am going. I am going." There wasn't enough terrible stuff in the world, even when her brain wasn't a leaking sieve of pain and venom. "To murder them."

MJ merely sighed, patting Willow's hand comfortingly again and humming what sounded suspiciously like "At Last I See the Light" from Disney's Tangled as the raft floated out into the horizon. Before them, the sky bloomed, painted in patterns of sparkling light; fireworks of every conceivable color and shape burst from the raft, leaving twisted trails of smoke as they disintegrated into the evening, the light refracting off the ocean water in a colorful mirror image of the bright sky. Unable to do much more than switch her murderous thoughts into vengeful Chinese and keep down the contents of her stomach, Willow sighed frustratedly as she cast her gaze out over the water. A moment where she might be prone to one of her rare bouts of calm sentimentality and she couldn't even appreciate it because of the existence of Cthulhu and the (insert obligatory gritting of teeth) Michelsons.

"I hope that bitch is happy," she muttered murderously, jerking her neck out mutinously toward the calm water.

"I'm sure he is," MJ sighed in reply as another sparkler went off. Lines of light sank in the sky, descending in glowing trails toward the bottom of the dark ocean. "I'm sure he is."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Arnold Brown

DID NOT HAND IN