Stranded

I awoke to a pounding headache and the fresh – though nauseating – smell of golden tequila.

Small, brittle cubes of glassy earth coated my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I crunched bits of sand between my teeth before my eyes finally sprung open. 

Then, I was coughing up a small mound of the stuff.

The worst hangover I’ve ever had? Still not even close, Cade.

Sloppily-made margaritas and half-full glasses of St. Germain clinked together out of the corner of my mind. I closed my eyes and searched for an answer. 

Wind. Rough wind had tossed us. 

What were we on though? Who did the boat belong to? My boss, Jerry… his stupid-huge yacht. Right.

A swizzle of memories – all laughing and dancing; drinks spilling everywhere – clipped through my mind in quick succession.

---

I went out for drinks with Jerry and his wife, Sylvia.

“You’ve never seen anything like the falls at Redmund Falls, Cade,” Jerry says to me. “I’m telling you! And the fishing – oh man, the fishing. You ever catch a ten foot barracuda?”

A man at the bar glanced over at our booth and at Jerry, who was trying his best to show me just how impossible it was for him to represent a ten foot barracuda with his stubby arms.

But fishing meant little to me. “Do I look like a fisherman to you?”

I glanced up at the dusty TV mounted in the upper corner of the ceiling across from us as it silently broadcast a world championship boxing match. A boxer in yellow shorts from Jamaica was fighting for the ultimate title; flecks of blood spattered across the ring floor with each punch the Jamaican fed his opponent. It was like he kept pushing his fist into the other man’s face until he was completely unrecognizable. I almost thought of his opponent’s mashed-up face as a work of art.

Suddenly, I wished I had something or someone to punch. My nostrils flared.

“Alright, alright, take it easy,” Jerry said. “The fresh air’ll do you some good though, I think.”

“Yeah, and all the bugs? Can’t wait to get eaten alive.”

“Jesus, Cade, you really don’t know how to relax, do you? Listen to me, there won’t be any problem with bugs on my yacht. If you don’t want to fish, don’t fish. But some Sun, some air, maybe a little drinking and some fun? I’m your boss, you can’t say no to me.”

Sun? Air? I supposed these were important factors in what made a healthy life. I considered what Jerry said. I decided to poke fun at him rather than agree.

“Uh huh. You’ve been waiting to say that one.”

Naturally, Sylvia chimed in. I hated the sound of her voice but felt the need to grin-and-bear as much as I could in front of Jerry. She always talked too much – always sticking her nose or her opinion where it was never requested nor needed.

“Chelsea isn’t the end of the world, Cade,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “You can’t let-“

“I think,” Jerry interrupted, “you’re right, dear. We shouldn’t get caught up in the past. A little time off-shore could give you the distance and perspective you need, don’t you think, Cade?”

It seemed impossible to say ‘no’ at that point. They really weren’t letting the idea go.

I sighed.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Just this weekend.”

I glanced back up at the TV. The Jamaican had nearly won the match when, as if by some miracle or stroke of luck, his opponent delivered an unavoidable uppercut – one that immediately knocked the Jamaican out. And then, I noticed that the Jamaican’s neck seemed to be at an odd angle, his head tilted so far back that he was almost staring at the mat with his body still chest-up. The audience was in a frenzy, standing and trying to catch a glimpse from their seats.

Did that just happen? I wondered. Or maybe it’s just the angle.

My stomach felt uneasy. I was shaking Jerry’s hand but I was spaced-out and gone.

I became the Jamaican boxer on the mat.

And there was Chelsea, face bruised and bloody – no referees, no bell, no code of conduct. I couldn’t help myself. I had her right where I wanted her… or so I told myself then.

She glanced up at me with one swollen eye shut. I glanced down at the blood on my knuckle, then looked away from it; I just couldn’t look at her, for some reason.

I heard her start to cry, softly at first. Then, I realized she was also saying something to me – but, before I could make out what it was, she raised her voice.

“Look at me. Look, Cade. You did this.” She paused to take a breath. “And those hands, they’re not good for anything other than destroying whoever or whatever winds up between them.”

She hadn’t said the last part until she was certain I was looking her dead in the eye.

I wondered if she was right. I also wondered why her skin bruised so quickly.

“You catch people in your web of lies, fill their lives with your toxicity and watch them drown in it.”

‘Drown’ seemed like a strong word to me. Of course, this thought only occurred to me in retrospect as I was removed from my memory by Sylvia’s grating voice.

“Time to get those sea-legs on!” Sylvia cawed. “You’ll see, Cade. Our yacht is like sailing on a dream.”

---

A few days later, I was on the S.S. Phil Collins.

“Previously known as a member of the Genesis fleet,” Jerry the Jester said.

I clenched my fist and pretended I saw something interesting out on the water for a minute.

Jerry could tell I was upset.

“How about some drinks?” He asked.

“That sounds like the perfect idea,” I said. “Let me grab them. Point me in the right direction, Captain.”

---

The bar inside of the cabin was massive.

Suddenly, it felt more like a mini cruise-liner than a yacht.

That is, until I was rifling through Jerry’s stock and, not noticing that it had made a home in the back corner of a shelf, let a dock spider bite my hand.

I recoiled immediately, which sent it scurrying along the length of the shelf. But I had to kill it. I had to get some of my frustrations out.

The spider met it’s end with a satisfying squish.

Such is life, I thought.

---

I returned to the upper deck.

Sylvia was screaming.

What was she screaming at? Waves? No… something else. I can’t make it out. It’s in the waves. 

A glass shatters across the deck. 

I see her – for one, fleeting second of calm – and our eyes meet. She doesn’t see the glass – neither do I.

I see her reach her hands up to her eyes, her palms pressed rigidly against them. Small trails of red are escaping the folds between the skin of her hands and her eye sockets. 

Finally, I see the glass. Sylvia’s bloody, crystalline eyes reveal a fate worse than immediate death. 

All I have time to think is, what next?

Jerry, his hands white to the bone, gripping that damn steering wheel. He knows he can’t control her for much longer but he’s giving it all he’s got. Have to hand it to the man, never thought he’d be so courageous. I almost find time for a brief chuckle at the thought, until a gigantic wave reaches up over the edge of the boat and throws me to the side. 

Jerry and I exchange a look not unlike the one Sarah and I shared earlier. Except… Jerry smiles. 

Despite the screams of the rushing wind (and everyone else on-board), I still manage to hear the sound of Jerry’s arms being ripped asunder from his naked torso – the wet pop of bone cracking in a pool of blood and seawater – completely at the mercy of sheer, elemental force.

Then, nothing but waves and blood. 

---

The memories seemed to dissolve before my eyes.

I set my sights ahead of me into a thick den of fog. I could just make out a row of tall black trees standing at the edge of the sand dunes; they were like a wall of giants watching over me, motionless and silent.

Behind me, the water sat eerily still as well. 

I was on a beach. I traced the shoreline on each side of me from where I was lying in the sand, each edge quickly rounding in on itself and disappearing from view: an island. 

Nothing resembling this “Redmund Falls” Jerry went on about before we embarked.

I knew that if I wanted to survive I had to get up.

A strange pain was intermittently pulsating from my legs and radiating throughout the rest of my body. Judging by the way I had landed on the beach, my legs were each locked in the sand, held firmly in place by my twisted thighs – an awkward embrace. 

I was about to reach for my left leg, and begin the arduous process of removing myself from the stick and debris-laden dunes, when I heard something buzzing out on the water. 

My mind unleashed a number of possibilities as to what was buzzing out there – a sea monster calling to its brethren, hungry to finish me off? I coughed as I chuckled at the unreality of such a thing… but I also still had no idea where I was or exactly how I’d ended up there. 

Anything was possible at that point, to my mind. 

Perhaps being eaten wouldn’t be so bad, I wagered. After all, wouldn’t that be a quick way to die, being swallowed whole by some long-dormant, horribly large, deformed cousin of the Lochness Monster? I envisioned a gulper eel, twenty times it’s usual size (though they’re already huge) – instead of one head, it had three with which it playfully tore ships and the people onboard limb-from-limb; the sea ran red after each attack, letting passersby know to steer clear or become its next gory meal. 

I imagined that the sand dunes in which I was planted were really comprised of the broken-down, decayed remains of victims past; the cold, dry sand was really just a veil for a mountain of bone.

That’s when I shifted my weight in the sand and something – that I assumed was a stone or shell of some kind, with it’s off-white colouring and odd indentations – poked up out of the sand. 

---

Was it minutes or hours before the buzzing stopped? 

The humming droned on at a pace that left me feeling a mix of hypnotized and nauseous.

I had been sitting in the exact same spot, not even really mulling over my options, just keeping myself hidden amidst the dunes and mindlessly watching tiny ripples crimple their way across the surface of the sea. 

When the buzzing ceased, the island and the water returned to their ominous stillness. The fog was growing darker and thicker; somehow the heat, which had been manageable before, was getting to me – my entire body (forehead, chest, arms) was glazed with sweat. None of it made sense to me. I had assumed night would bring a relieving coolness – a breeze which occasionally lilted across the sea and over the dunes to lightly fan me had teased this possibility earlier. But there I was, drenched with sweat, collecting more and more sand in every crevice of my body. 

I needed out. 

As I was about to hoist myself up with my arms once and for all, the sand shifted unusually just a few feet behind me. Without warning, arms appeared on either side of me and hooked themselves under each of my armpits! 

I tried to kick my way out of the sand as those grotesquely scarred arms tightened their hold on me but it was no use; I scratched at the brute’s arm-scars – and even managed to tear several of them open as I anxiously dug trenches in my attacker’s arm flesh with my nails – but all this elicited was a burble of agonized grunts and a sudden mouthful of someone else’s blood (for me). 

All I could taste was metal. My teeth were coated in my attacker’s blood but the only thing running through my mind was survive. 

I started to choke. To stop me from moving, he elbowed me in the side of the head and shot his knee straight into the centre of my back. My muscles tensed and then suddenly my entire body went limp…

---

I awoke again. This time to complete and utter darkness; but I was certain that I had my eyes open. There was no blindfold on my face. Everything was simply pitch black.

I felt dizzy and hopeless. I felt like I was in the middle of a hangover from one of my other drunken escapades. In my mind, I was begging for forgiveness over events I barely had any recollection of. 

I suddenly realized that I didn’t know who I was asking for forgiveness from, as I laid in the middle of some stretched-out fabric that billowed when I moved.

I reached down to touch the fabric. Am I in the middle of a giant sheet? A parachute?

Whatever was holding me was strong but very light and soft. I ran strands of whatever it was through my hands to get a real feel for the fabric’s smooth texture; I could feel each individual strand of the fabric. Suddenly, I had the urge to itch my face but, much to my horror, my hand was stuck to the fabric!

With every tug I gave the fabric, it barely showed any signs of splitting. Only seconds passed as I became desperate and feverishly began tugging at my arm to get my hand unstuck. Until… I felt the flesh on the back of my hand start to peel up from the muscle and used my other hand to muffle what I’m sure would have been a very hard-to-miss shriek of absolutely agonizing pain. Tiny streaks of blood ran down the sides of my hand; in certain places, I could feel the fabric absorbing my blood.

“Ortus!” Someone shouted.

My body jumped. It was still so dark I could only get a general sense of which direction the voice came from. Just as I tried to place it, another voice, more monotone yet commanding than the last, filled the night air.

“Neco!”

A pair of torches burst into flame a few metres from my feet. The torches almost blinded me as I looked toward them. I had to squint at first to really see.

And the torches were police headlights pulling into my driveway back home.

She called the cops on me, I thought. Seven years of marriage and this is my reward? This is the grand pay-off?

Something else was wrong too – other than the headlights fading back into mysterious torches… something else I struggled to understand.

Earlier, on the beach, it had felt like my legs were stuck in the sand but now, as I gazed toward the torches, I could see that my legs – up to just past my knees and lower thighs – were gone!

I wanted to vomit but I was stuck on my back. Moving around, I could feel the skin on my naked back starting to separate from the muscles in my body. If I moved too quickly, the skin would tear off completely. I stopped moving altogether.

Nothing made sense.

“Devoro!” The third, and final, command.

Several torches lit around me. Hooded figures in crimson robes stood in a semi-circle around me, their eyes and mouths obscured by shadow. I was in a giant web.

The chanting continued.

“Ortus! Neco! Devoro!”

There was that humming sound from the beach again, echoing from somewhere nearby.

I returned my gaze to the first torches that lit. Between them was a strange opening I hadn’t noticed before.

“Ortus! Neco! Devoro!”

Nothing made sense.

I thought – just for a moment – that two of the chanting voices sounded like Jerry and Sylvia.

Did they spike my drinks?

Then, fingers appeared at the bottom edge of the opening before me – someone’s hands grasping on, climbing up and out.

But no… nothing appeared – not right away – from out of the opening. Instead, another set of fingers appeared, this time on either side of the opening.

I became vaguely aware that I had urinated at some point.

I wanted it all to be some stupid, drunken nightmare. Some guilt-induced, traumatic episode.

“Ortus! Neco! Devoro!”

Nothing made sense.

A final set of fingers grasped the upper lip of the opening. The chanting and humming stopped.

The blood completely drained from my face.

Someone’s unblinking eyes were staring back at me now. I could see their eyes glimmer by the torchlight. I wondered what the hell they’d been doing down wherever that opening led to. I almost felt sorry for them.

Almost.

And then, there it was. In full view. One fluid, silent motion and it was out on the giant web with me.

It looked like a spider. It certainly had eight legs like a spider except… no, it couldn’t be.

The closer I looked at the thing, the sooner I realized that it didn’t actually have legs like a spider. Human arms with claw-like hands grasped at the giant strands of silk holding us both up as the human-armed spider positioned itself over top of me.

The creature’s face was something I can hardly describe: multiple rows of human-like eyes above massive, clicking spider fangs and fine, ice-pick sharp hairs across the entire surface of it’s body.

A small spot of some clear-ish liquid oozed down from its open, clicking jaws.

The liquid hit my right cheek and, almost instantly, I felt a strange burning sensation that only lasted a few horrible but memorable seconds; the feeling was quickly replaced with a numbness that made my skin feel like a loose burlap sack.

The entire right side of my face went slack! I couldn’t move anything other than my right eye.

It wants me to see, I thought, though I was entirely uncertain as to how I could know that. I just… knew – like it had put that thought in my head.

I found myself unable to think further, however, as the skin on the right side of my face parted from the rest of the body, seeming to slip off and dissolve into the web. I felt none of it; the creature’s ooze numbed me to the bone.

My exposed eye was it’s next target.

Effortlessly, the creature slipped my right eye out of the socket, raised my eye to the inside of it’s jaw, and consumed it. I felt the contents of my stomach erupt past my half exposed teeth, then began to choke as the vomit slid back down my esophagus and just sat there burning its way through me as I laid on my back.

A single tear rolled down my left cheek; it was the last thing I felt before the creature plunged it’s fangs into my abdomen and numbed my entire body.

Then, it kept it’s massive fangs inside of me until everything went dark for the last time and I could hear the chanting no more.