When I awoke, I was on a beach. That much was self-evident - waves were lapping at me, and there was a salty taste in my mouth. I struggled to get to my feet, only to be greeted by a horrible sight. What lay before me was the ocean. It stretched into the horizon with no sign of life anywhere, aside from the occasional seagull.I spun around in a hurry, spotting the remains of the plane I had been on immediately. Pieces of the wreckage were scattered around a short distance away, and thick, black smoke was still rising into the air. Mangled bodies lay in the immediate vicinity.“Fuck!” I yelled, horrified. The scene was ghastly, and the scent of blood and burning bodies made me feel like throwing up. Bending over, I retched. Only seawater trickled out of my mouth, but it did make me feel a little better. I sat down heavily, keeping my back to the scene of carnage until I felt like I had my wits about me again.The last thing I remembered was being on a plane. The president of my compan

Two of the fish went to Elsa and Yvonne, leaving one for me. Fortunately, Euphie had not awoken just yet. Otherwise, we’d have a real supply chain issue, I thought, grinning a little.“Why is this tasteless?” Elsa cried, spitting out the first bite she had taken. “Forrest, this is terrible!”“If you don’t want to eat, you’re welcome to starve,” I shot back. “You’re on a deserted island, not back at home! There isn’t any seasoning - this is just for survival. If you don’t want to eat the fish, you can give it to either of us.” Elsa’s head began to droop, and I took a bite of fish to keep me from saying something else I was going to regret. Why was I so harsh? She’s the section manager, and she earns hundreds of thousands a year. She’s probably never had to deal with something like this before. Like she said, she’s never even cooked before, I told myself.Sniffling, Elsa raised her fish to her mouth again and nibbled at it. The next few minutes were fairly torturous - Elsa kept sniffing

“I’m done here, Forrest,” Yvonne told me, giving my knee a gentle pat after she finished wrapping up the cuts with a thin bandage. “There’s still the ones on your thigh to go, though. Those look rather high up, and I don’t think I can roll your pants up that far.”I blinked at her, feeling a little awkward. Was she suggesting that I take off my pants? Elsa, of course, had already reached that same realization, and she frowned.“Let me do it,” she suggested, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I can do it.”“Elsa, it isn’t that I don’t trust you. I’m just thinking about how you skipped the last first-aid training session our company organized,” Yvonne replied. Her voice was devoid of emotion, and I was glad for it. From the way that Elsa clung to me, I knew that she was suggesting that she take over out of jealousy.“It’s OK. Elsa, you keep me company while Yvonne, you help me out with the deeper gashes,” I suggested, trying to keep the peace. How on earth did I come up with a solution

“Who’s there!” Suddenly, a shout rang out from the back of the cave. It was Euphie! Since Elsa, Yvonne, and I had moved to the mouth of the cave to grill our wolf kebabs, she had been left all alone. Handing the skewer over to Elsa, I limped as quickly as I could over to Euphie, who was now sitting up and rubbing her eyes in bewilderment.“Where am I? Who are you?” Euphie hollered, the strident nature of her voice betraying her underlying fear. I could understand why she seemed angry. After all, she had just woken up in the middle of a dark cave with someone strange nearby. Since her last memories were probably of being on the plane, being in a cave was definitely hard to fathom.“I was on the plane you were an attendant on, remember? It crashed, and we landed on the beach. There’s two other colleagues of mine, Yvonne and Elsa, with me too,” I explained, hoping that mentioning the two women’s names would make her feel more comfortable. “Yvonne, Elsa, and I brought you to this cave so

“Do you think there really are others on the island?” I asked Euphie, taken aback. I thought she was unconscious all this while. Just how much does she know?“There should be other survivors,” Euphie muttered, her eyebrows meeting in the middle of her forehead. “I have the strangest feeling that I heard voices right after I landed, and I know it wasn’t you, Yvonne, or Elsa.”“Alright,” I replied, already trying to think through the possibilities. The first thing I did was to check and see if anyone else was alive. If someone else is around, then they must have left us for dead, I thought. It was not a promising notion, and I set off cautiously to search the beach once more, Yvonne’s backpack slung over my shoulder. It did smell a little fishy, but it was the only thing we had to carry stuff around in.My trek along the nearest section of the beach yielded quite a few useful things. There was a flotation device, which I slit into two parts carefully with a knife. It would come in handy