Siren Song

It was another slow day on the island. The sun was raising itself, without haste, from its bed, and its life-giving touch spread across the world. The sea; before a black mass, was now a blanket of sapphires and rubies. The sun touched the beach, which the blanket covered like a lover’s gentle caress. The oasis of trees, central to the island, welcomed the sun’s touch, as it proceeded to cast a lattice of light on the long grass. The rats, knowing the fear the sun’s deadly touch brings, ran to the safety of the dark.
Bloody rats.
Struggling for space, they begin to fight each other. One buries its teeth into its brother. The rats move these fallen comrades from the sanctity and purity of the shadow. Another silhouette comes. One murderer looks up, spots the silhouette, and runs. The others follow suit. They dash from this fellow pilgrim, to find another shadow to die in.
I’ve always liked sunrises. Back home, to see the expert palette of purple and gold steal away over the sky, hiding the houses. Here, there are no houses. Its mornings like this that never make me want to light the fire. Yes, that puny pile of sticks over there. The last thing I want now is human hands spoiling my island- my home. And I say “my” because it’s mine. Mine. All mine. Sure, I get lonely, but with sunrises like this; it’s all I’ll ever need.
With the sun climbing higher, I think it’s time to find me some breakfast: feel for my machete, cross the red sand, pass that pathetic pile of sticks and reach the mango trees. The lattice of light has long vanished, but the rat crap will have to remain. With an idyll like mine, I want to enjoy life here, not spend it clearing up rat crap. I put my machete between my lips, as if kissing it, and scale the trees. An age ago, this would have ruined me, but today: I just scramble up, stab the mango, wrench it from its branch, slide down the tree and clean up my machete.
I can barely remember how I got here anymore. I was unconscious at the time: I have an excuse! It’s a gigantic cliché really- plane crashes on an island. Everyone dies. And the sole survivor, that huge hero, has to stave off hunger, insanity, boredom and rabid animals until a saviour arrives. Didn’t Tom Hanks do something like that? I hated that film. Really slow.
So anyway, everything died on this island. My partner died in the crash, everyone else died soon after and my hopes of seeing another soul may as well just go die. I chose that. In the rest of the world you have to: get a job; keep your nose clean; not swear in the streets; kill or carry machetes. Here is my land. My land, my rules, my ethics, my machete…
As the sun reaches its zenith, it gives up on its thankless task and slumps into its sofa. Soon after, its gentle, clear touch turns a menacing red. The precious blanket is set ablaze and the sky turns an alarming purple. The touch signals the dark-dwellers to raise themselves from their pits to wreak havoc on the world in their own little way. With the touch rapidly withdrawing, it has one last stab around a makeshift shelter, hidden in the lattice of blood red light.
I have a right to be scared! Do you know what happened last night? The rats, the rats; they were all hiding here in the morning. I had to kill some of them- chopped them in two with the machete. Then I had more and more rats to deal with… can’t let that happen again. Must stay awake. Stay awake. Awake…
“Darling, I’ve made waffles! Get them before I eat them- they’re looking good!”
I wander through the stark blue room. It’s raining. Look at the raindrops fall down the window. There’s an awful long way to fall here. No. I’m just floating. Open the door. The harshly gentle smell of waffles floods the corridor. I don’t know what’s going on anymore. The flat floor a foot beneath me, I tentatively open the kitchen door.
“’Bout bloody time you got here.”
The man, clutching a machete, and like lightening across a pitch-black sky, drives it right across where my chest should be.
Thud.
Several things now happen at once. I lurch up: smack my head on the shelter; scream; fall over; get up and realise I can’t see. Deep breaths. I wait for the world to reveal to me; let blurry silhouettes form shapes, which form recognisable objects, which forms a nameless fear. I grab my machete and light a twig from the dying embers of the fire. Head over to the pathetic pile of sticks, my new best friend, and smirk. This nightmare will be over soon.
In the middle of nowhere, a helicopter wearily passes over the jet-black sea. It doesn’t know what it’s doing, you can only guess from the markings that it has something to do with some uprising somewhere. The pilots are even more clueless- they only have to keep going a bit longer before they can land and get very drunk indeed.
Life’s a bitch.
“Please tell me you haven’t seen the texts, Bill,” pleads Fred nervously.
“What?”
“She’s to blame! You know I’m happy with my wife- last thing I ever wanted was to have an affair with my best mate’s wife!”
“So it is you.”
“She wants it pretty much every night, and if you won’t give it to her, I will.”
“Bastard,” remarks Bill, and he turns to look out the window at the oppressing nothingness of the sea. No one wanted to break this new found silence, so to cut a long story short, it takes one of the many enigmatic switches going haywire to provoke some small conversation.
“Land! Ten km west!” yelled Fred with a newfound enthusiasm.
“Who cares?”
“We’re paid to! Especially if…” Fred squinted slightly “…there’s a fire on it! Check the binoculars!”
“No.”
Fred suddenly became very passionate. “It’s someone in distress. We have to save them!”
“It’s savages,” Bill explained patronisingly. “We have to avoid them.”
Fred sighed. “I am in control of this helicopter, aren’t I?”
“…Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Now, we find somewhere to land here and save the poor castaway.”
Bill looked out the window at the speck of life on the black sea and said, “If we live through this, I will kill you.” Then he looked at him and mockingly added “Sir.”
Several minutes later, Fred and Bill were leaping out the helicopter and onto the rock hard sand. In the fire’s flickering flames, the world kept moving. The trees cast ghosts on the floor and the red glow made the most innocent things sinister. Nevertheless, those plucky Americans pressed on. The dull brightness of the fire rendered the space around it nonexistent, as it was black as pitch and twice as hot. Bill gasped agonisingly.
“Bill?” Fred asked the darkness. He turned on his heels, dreading what he would see next. He took one last breath, and began to look away from the ground. Bill’s head was hanging from a hand, rejuvenating the blood-red sand. Next was a machete, dripping. Finally, his eyes rose to the horizontal, and shocked him to the core.
A grimly beautiful woman was standing there, Bill in one hand, machete in the other, and calm grin on her face. She spoke softly.
“What kept you?”