A treehouse for Shelby

Four smashed, mottled cadavers washed up on the remote beach, while three more ebbed with the tide’s edge. The sun glared over the horizon casting light across the pale cream sand. The sea, now calm, glistened and frothed. Two cockatoos called out to each other. Palm leaves bristled, palpitated, creating a musical psithurism.

The tangy and aromatic smell of the sea mixed with a whiff of minty dried eucalyptus cleared Dylan’s head. He clambered to his feet, too fast, his head pounded and blacked out. Excruciating screams jolted Dylan conscious. Shelby came into view lent against a rock sobbing. “Help me,” she cried.

Normally he would feel sorry for someone in distress, but his rage was overwhelming. All he wanted to do was end her life there and then. He limped towards her. She was hysterical; it would be a mercy kill.

Dylan changed his attitude when he saw her shinbone protruding through bloody torn skin. Retching became projectile vomiting. Seawater mixed with half-digested prawns and diluted whisky splashed her leg wound. He wheezed with exhaustion followed swiftly by dizziness. The hard surfaces of a palm tree deflected him onto the sand. Gashes to his arms, he received glancing off jagged rocks in the sea, bled and smarted from the sea salt.

When Dylan eventually rose, he saw that Shelby had passed out. Panicking, he checked her pulse – it was pumping faintly. Like some caveman courting ritual, he pulled her by the arm, dragging her body to the shade of the treeline.

This wasn’t the first time he had to set a fractured fibula. He pulled her leg straight and watched the bone disappear under her skin. Several more tugs and he was happy it was lined correctly and in place. Dylan was gutted but had no choice but to use his favourite Lonsdale London T-shirt and soaked up the blood. He cleaned the wound, bandaged it and made a makeshift splint using a length of bamboo.

She slipped in and out of consciousness over the next few days. During her waking hours he attempted to feed and hydrate her with supplies from the punctured life raft: Granola bars, energy bars, protein bars and boost shakes. She babbled incoherently about what had happened and why she couldn't remember anything.

Dylan snatched up a rock and smashed at the base of several papaya trees and stripped banana leaves. In a few hours he had made a crude shelter at the edge of the jungle against a collection of interwoven, fallen trees acting as a skeleton for the roof structure. He then spanned branches and broad leaves. If it rained, they would be dry. He used a flint from the safety raft’s supplies to start a fire and collected the last bottles of water. Shelby sat in the shelter and fell asleep and made a strange noise. He wasn’t sure which part of her body it came from and backed away.

Dylan kept busy foraging for firewood and searched for food and water sources. He found an old rusty pan and cleaned it the best he could in the sea with a stick. At the edge of the trees, he marked a hole a meter circumference to start a well. He spent two hours digging down until he found water – it came flooding in. He punched the air in triumph and scooped up a pan full of water. It was clear, but he boiled it on the fire just to be safe. Embers from the fire made it taste like charcoal. Shelby spat out the boiled water. “This is disgusting it’s warm.”

That was it he’d had enough of her criticism. “Sorry, it’s not your sports drink. Is it too much cocaine or not enough?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Come down, from whatever meds you were taking you’re acting crazy again, do you know where we are princess?”

“How dare you.”

“I dare, the only way we are going to survive is if I find food and water, build a better shelter and find out what the dangers are on this island. I don’t expect thanks, but I do require you to act civil.” He lowered his voice. “I don't know how long I am going to remain positive enough to carry out all that shit”.

“Why are you being so horrible to me… I’m scared?”

“Please, crying is not going to help,” he tossed her a skinned coconut. “Drink.”

She wiped her tears a slight tremble in her hand, tilted her head and emptied the milky liquid down her gaping mouth. The wind blew droplets onto her face.

“Sorry I haven't got a straw and cocktail umbrella princess,” he turned to walk away smirking at his last comment and felt a thud and twinge of pain as the coconut bounce off his back.

The insect bites, the heat in the day and cold at night, the constant scavenging for clean water, searching for food and worrying about becoming ill or sustain an injury. All this he could handle but her perpetual demands and moaning about being in pain and the fact she couldn’t remember anything about her past was winding him up.

Dylan crushed leaves and placed slithers of rough-textured bark into the rusty pan, added water and boiled it. He found an Indian Willow tree, nature’s aspirin, its bark and leaves contained a strong pain killer called salicin – a godsend.

 In the meantime, he utilised the abundance of bamboo. He cleared the bodies off the beach and only stopped to vomit once. They seem to bubble, the smell in the heat motivated him to bury them deep.

 He started to build an off the ground-dwelling that was starting to resemble a treehouse. It needed to be solid and high up as the ground insects had feasted on him for long enough and that was also one of her bugbears. The key, he found, was to make many strands of rope-like twine, the thicker the better and in long lengths. Shelby even helped him and soon started producing tighter better strands than him in which she often pointed out. She was a perfectionist and overachiever.

Early morning, the sun burned August-hot high overhead, from his position on top of a group of rocks at the edge of the shoreline, he could see a beach cove, rock pools and a small forest that backed on to cliffs. Moving clouds cast shadows on the cliff face creating mixed colours of thorns, chinks of burnt sienna and asparagus green. The high rocks stopped him from being able to explore the rest of the island, for the time being. He could see smaller, plush green islands scattered around. They must be part of an archipelago. There were more pressing things to think about as Shelby was starting to spend more time conscious and moaning about the lack of food, why she was there and that she still couldn’t remember anything but the here and now.

Shelby emerged from the hut and hobbled using makeshift bamboo crutches. He watched her as she struggled across the sand, fell over twice and dragged herself back up and stood in the shallow sea washing herself. For a moment he had forgotten that he hated her as he stole an unsolicited observation of her naked bathing.

 Back prodding the fire with a stick Dylan sensed she was scared and avoided activating her, so he said nothing. She looked pathetic still wearing thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery which looked odd in contrast to her shabby, dingy clothes. He was starting to feel sorry for her but when he remembered what she had done to him his soul became overshadowed. He would walk away and spend hours alone he didn’t want to be that person that seeks revenge – the pull was overwhelming.

Dylan placed food in front of her from ditch bags he scavenged from the aeroplane’s washed-up life-raft, now running out of previsions. He changed the dressing on her leg. She complained her back hurt and wouldn't let him look at it and constantly called him captain. Dylan thought she didn't forget how to be annoying and demanding and then twigged why she kept on calling him captain. He had found a suitcase from the plane wreckage with clothes in it and put on a white shirt with epaulets on the shoulders. He wore the shirt for a day until he found them annoying and tore them off. She must have thought he was flying the aeroplane. Dylan mussed he could live with that, being thought of as an airliner pilot, until he realised it would become a reason for her to refer to him as reckless and incompetent for crashing.

Dylan tried to keep as occupied as possible because when he sat down on the beach he started to think, it always ended with him feeling depressed a condition they say from thinking about the past too much. He had only felt depressed a few times in his life and what he knew about it was that he couldn't figure out what was making him feel so low on paper he was riding high and shouldn't have had anything to be so despairing about.

He was sat under his favourite palm tree he has started to call the major oak out of ear shot of the princess and thinking about his life back in London and his dog Zeb. Dylan hoped his brother was looking after him. YouTube shows videos of people coming back home from active duty and their dogs screaming with delight also he hoped he was watering his extensive plants he had spent months cultivating in his conservatory. He enjoyed those moments but no matter how hard he tried to fight his thoughts they always reverted back to her, what she did to him and how she destroyed his life.

Furious howling winds battered the island for three days with constant, stinging rain, bending trees and flying palm leaves; followed by four days of scorching heat and repetitive despair. The drinking water was gone, the well had collapsed and started to expel a putrid odour. Dylan didn't have the energy to dig another hole or fish in the choppy sea. It all seemed hopeless as he watched the dancing flames from the fire die a flickering death. He tuned out Shelby’s latest string of complaints.

The air brought with it contradicting smells. Dylan was sick of the astringent tang of purple crabs and the redolent scent of the fire smothering their ragged clothes. The odd flush of fresh clean air heightening his senses into a microsmatic level of smelling ability. Petrichor, the earth’s scent before the rain, filled his nostrils. “Not again! When is it going to stop?” He could swear the wind, as it whistled in from the sea and across the beach, carried with it the smell of putrescine from the decomposing bodies he had buried. The thin sunlight dowsed in thick cloud snubbed out below the horizon.

A southerly chill sighed across the beach lifted a slice of newspaper upwards in a spiral. Shelby snatched at it screwed it up in a ball and tossed it on the fire it fizzled away in seconds. 

Dylan broke from his semi-catatonic contemplation and if-onlys. If only she hadn’t ruined his life, he would not have been on the island. 

He was thinking more and more about the small things he missed and pondered the absurd fragility of life. Death was life’s most effective painkiller, and this pill was no longer difficult to swallow – it was his time.

Deflated, Dylan stood up deliberate slow and jerked as if the life had been kicked out of him. He had enough energy to push down on his knees with his hands and slouched towards the sea in a simulated drunken stupor. He flopped into the water weightless, laid on his back and marvelled at the bright stars, relaxed now, almost as if he was at peace with himself, he floated further out. Shelby screamed out after him.

Only the briny air filled his nostrils now helping him to clear his head further. Shelby's screaming faded out and he found himself at a deeper tranquillity of mind sinking benefit the salty water. Thoughts of his mum and how she used to be constantly criticising his father, moaning and judging. His father would say that even though your mother seems a little crazy and nasty at times when she was being nice it was the best thing in the world and without her, he would have been nothing. He never understood the last part of his father’s recurring statement. Maybe it all meant that a woman could be a sail or an anchor.

A bubble of air with the word Shelby trapped inside released from Dylan’s open mouth. Snatching at the water, he moved his arms to swim to the surface. His instinct for survival had kicked in. The will to live suddenly became stronger, as something he thought about woke him up. Weak, he struggled to muster the strength. Reaching the surface, he sucked in saltwater and through his eyes, he continued and focused on the beautiful bright starry sky interrupted now and again by the passing clouds. The world faded to black.