All stories

Omega 8 Island. Base Camp. 2019

It finally found me.

It came sprinting out of the forest while I was sleeping off a hangover on the beach, the tropical breeze washing over me, tucked in tight above the waves, minding my own business. I opened my eyes in time to see it burst through the trees—terrible and with purpose—teeth sharp and menacing inside a bird-like beak. The head was large, like a mutant ostrich. Its neck was stretched low in a swooping attack, arms outstretched in a promise of bloody death. The body, green like the leaves of the forest canopy, with deep red and light green ruffled feathers that flashed in the sunlight as the beast bared down upon me. Two powerful, lean legs moved the creature forward on giant three-toed feet, a large black nail on the larger and inner toe.

It gripped my thigh in a bite as strong as any great white shark. I screamed in agony as it thrashed me against the sand and pulled me toward the forest. I went for my machete—my chosen weapon since arriving on Omega 8 for this cursed mission six months ago—but the leather grip slipped from my sweaty palm. The monster dragged me over a sand dune, a bloody smear in my wake.

I felt myself losing consciousness as my head cracked against the hard roots of a tree. A thick, low-hanging branch struck me across the cheek, and I spit out a gooey, bloody tooth to the ground. The blue sky disappeared beneath green canopy shortly before a cold blackness washed over me.

I awoke in a clearing deep in the jungle. An eye of sky above me announced the arrival of night. Stars blinked down upon me and strange chirping noises surrounded me. I rested upon an earthy, musky bed of debris. Half eaten bodies surrounded me. I feared to look too closely, for they might be the remains of Reba and the others.

I lifted my head up with all my remaining strength and turned my attention to my leg. Below the knee was nothing but shredded bone. I began to cry out, my shock turning quickly to panic. I turned my head to the left and right, but I saw no sign of the monster. And yet in the jungle distance I heard the most fearsome roar. Chills ran up and down my body. The starlight dimmed. The chirping grew quiet. The roar could only have come from one source: the monster I was sent here to find.

Omega 8 was not what I expected. I thought we were prepared. Bringing that bottle of whiskey was a bad idea. I drank the bottle the night before, shortly after Reba disappeared. Sober, I might have had a chance against the beast. At least as escaping.

Back at base camp, our research into this undiscovered island awaits. Will anyone find it before it’s swept under the sands of time? I was the last of us. The research is the only warning for those that follow.

Craig Winless stomped off down the tunnel. The fearsome, inspiring roar he’d experienced when he first took charge that August day had been replaced by boos that blew round the emptying stands like so many lost lottery tickets. His luck had run out.

Rain lashed at the stands deterring all but the hungriest seagulls. He could read the signs, his endgame was finally arriving. Last week, after the Leicester City debacle, he had been immediately sought out by board member Vesneva Nomonilef and reassured that he believed that the club was headed in the right direction and the last five defeats were merely a blip. Now though Nomonilef had his back to him and was talking to the owner, shady oligarch , Makya Andropov who was studiously ignoring him.

The players seemed suddenly carefree as though they had been told something at the final whistle that was being kept from him. Sergo Testosterone the peacock vain Italian winger didn’t even listen to his post match post pep talk but talked on his phone while a coaching assistant administered beeswax to his skin .

Winless was no more reassured by twitter where the death threats which usually punctuated his timeline where now being replaced by the news that Ladbrokes had stopped taking bets that he would be the next premier league manager to be sacked.

His agent Andy Deal was on the phone within the hour. “Perhaps I should just fucking quit!” Said Craig desperately. “They all hate me.”

“Hang in their buddy, if you quit now before you are sacked we will lose the £2 million pound pay off.”

He sleepwalked through the week wandering round the training ground approaching groups of staff or players who changed the subject whenever he neared. The tabloids made his head into various vegetables for no reason at all other than to publicly bully.

What were they waiting for? Tiny Cardigani to become free from his duties at AC Miragio Probably.

And on Saturday morning he was still “in charge”.

For the big cup game against Grimthorpe rovers, Wayne Cashley pronounced himself injured, Emanuel Adabadday cited family reasons and Testosterone didn’t even bother texting an excuse.

In the dressing room it was just kids and old stagers getting a rare game. The axe hung heavy. To make up a squad he named himself as sub. All 16 stone and 46 years of him.

He gave a churchillian speech and went out to his dug out, hoping against hope that maybe he could turn it around.

At half time they were 4 down.

With ten minutes left it was 7-0, he stripped ready and his number, 97, was held up on a lighted board. Andy Deal looked on in horror from the stands, he was risking everything!! But he felt the need to love football once more, to love the team he’d always supported but never played for, to put everything right to himself.

Then it happened, “Winless receives the ball in his own half out wide, goes past one, goes past two and oh what a goal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He curls into the top corner!”

Craig wheeled away, evading players nearly thirty years younger than himself, a hysterical grinning whirligig, he carried on wheeling , past the bench full of sullen tracksuits, down the tunnel and past Nomonileff, Andropov and the rest of their cronies, past Andy Deal who was trying to stop him and into the street outside still wearing his kit. He hopped on a tube train, still screaming and got home 37 minutes later, desperately panting, having sustained his own cry of “gooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll” all the way. What a way to go out.

The village is alight with excitement as evening finally begins to fall. The air is crisp with the promise of snow and the streetlights glitter with anticipation in the gathering gloam.

Mothers dab imaginary grime from children decked in their Sunday best; even the youngest know that tonight is different. Fathers pat breast pockets for the umpteenth time, checking that the tickets are safe and not somehow lost between front door and garden path

Across the village front doors click shut and the streets come alive with the clatter of footsteps and the crackle of hushed, excited voices, the rustle of paper bags filled with colourful boiled sweets.

The village hall glows warmly, beckoning them all inside.

Miss Delyth checks tickets at the door and Miss June shows the audience to their seats. The hall floor is polished to a high shine and red velvet curtains surround the raised platform that usually serves for village announcements, the Christmas raffle and the brass band show. The air is hot and rich with beeswax, greasepaint and expectation.

The lights are dimmed and then, at last, the curtain rises.

Mr Pritchard is an enthusiastic Romeo. His bald spot blacked with shoe polish and his tights cling fast to his sturdy calves but he strides with purpose and roars his lines with a ferocity that startles some of the littler ones, who don;t recognise him as the teacher from their classroom.

When he speaks his voice rings out through the hall, calling to mind Burton and Olivier. His headmaster’s disguise is discarded and he reveals his true identity through his Romeo in the glare of the follow spot.

But Mrs Ellis Jones steals the show. She is several decades past Juliet’s thirteen, but she is painted and powdered for the part, decked in a long white sheet with ringlets in her hair and red on her lips.

As the pair embrace the spell is cast. Their voices and movements conjure worlds out of thin air.

They move together through the acts like dancers for the final turn of the night. Their performance lights up the hall and transforms it, for one evening, into something more. Tonight it is grander than the Royal Albert Hall.

Open mouthed and starry eyed the audience stare, enraptured, as these ordinary people transform before their very eyes into the tragic heroes of legend. Romeo lies dead on the floor; Juliet about to join him. They are captivated as the production draws to its ultimate climax..

“O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.”

And she plunges her cardboard knife deep into her armpit with a haunting howl of mortal agony and drops, spread-eagled, to the floor.

The audience erupts in an explosion of joy and applause and cheering. Chairs are pushed noisily back as the crowd leaps, as one, to its feet. Eyes are wiped, noses are blown. The curtain is lowered on squeaky pulleys to rest on the ground

Behind it the two lead actors heave themselves up from the floor to brush off the dust and the remnants of magic. There is no sign now of beautiful Juliet or heroic Romeo, just two old friends smiling together through paint and powder in the glow of the makeshift footlights.

In his best faux-French, Jason said, ‘Le petite mort.’

He let that fearsome roar linger in the silence, scanning the faces of the baying mob, now struck dumb by his brilliance. Future generations would put a plaque on this spot.

The hulking mass of Teddy Grainger remained motionless and towering, his slab like arms folded impassively across his stomach. One of his weasel like hangers on edged around his elbow.

The weasel leaned forward to whisper. ‘Uh, what was that?’

Jason smiled at the crowd and raised his voice a little. ‘Le petite mort – the little death.’ He hardened his face, and his voice, and to Grainger, said, ‘I figure, if you were a cat, you’d have used up your nine lives about forty-six thousand lives ago.’

Oh yes, Mr Bully. Feel the burn.

Another of Grainger’s weasels edged in to view to join the conversation.

‘Sorry, what?’

Jason sighed theatrically. This was the moment the crowd would remember forevermore.

‘The little death, le petite mort. It’s that moment of post-orgasm high, when your brain can’t quite function, when you are, to all intensive purposes, dead for just a moment.’

The crowd murmured in confusion. The weasels were in close consultation, whispering urgently.

The first weasel said to Jason, ‘Sorry. Are you calling him a wanker?’

Jason folded his arms to match the pose of Grainger. Plaques, and a day named in his honour – this is where it happened: a bully bested, but with words and witty repartee.

The first weasel faced the crowd.

‘Sorry folks, show’s over. We gave it a crack, tried something different.’ He shot Jason a look of disdain. ‘We thought a display of clever word play instead of the usual fisticuffs would make a nice change, but…’

The crowd drifted away as the weasels nudged Grainger into life.

He smiled. ‘Is it over? Did I win?’

‘There were no winners,’ one of the weasels said. ‘Come on, fifteen minutes till your next bout. One of the six-year olds in the Beeswax club called you a poohead.’

Grainger grinned at Jason and stuck his thumb. ‘Later dude, good job.’

Jason stood there alone and confused. Did people really prefer blood and teeth to witty zingers?

But not alone, because here was his beloved, here was Alison!

She slumped in front of him, her voice weak. ‘I had tickets for the spelling bee final. I was going to ask you.’

Jason reached but she shook his hand away. She had always had a reedy, high pitched voice, but now she was positively dolphin blended with bat. ‘Le petite mort? LE petite mort?’

She stomped away before he could reply. Jason trudged home and up to his room. What had happened, why had she not swooned at his word play? Why was she not here, the two of them at death’s door together?

A terrible thought struck Jason. He reached for his handy bedside book of French grammar with his left hand and rifled the pages. He found what he was looking for, then slumped to the pillows in his second little death in as many minutes. This one was almost terminal.

It was LA petite mort, not LE.

There was no chance that he and Alison would ever be the definite article.

B’swax, because she has a voice like hunny and one hell of a sting in her tail. Spelt with a B for beauty, booty, or Betty depending on who you ask. Hey, That’s what the stories say right?, and as Annie Lennox might say, who am I to disagree?

Settle down this won’t take long. I was brought up with a mic in my hand, gabbling and crooning away from day 1: when I was born there wasn’t a cry, it was a fearsome roar, a lioness in waiting. Yes. That’s right. A queen ready for the throne. And call it what you want, a sting, a bite, I dont roll over and die. I fight.

But Billy was trouble. Ever since he bumped into me outside at the Kingston Rune. You know, that place, sure it’s not here. No no, be nice. It’s ok. Listen I’ve always liked trouble and this one was moaning about lost tickets. So I got him in. You see, I can’t sing without trouble, it’s what makes the melody rise and fall.

So tonight, before I came on stage, I was sat waiting in my dressing room. Billy as always was reliable late. I watched him saunter in, stumbling, adrift in his own ocean of intoxicated chaos. He wanted me. Who wouldn’t. Look at me. Yeah honey.

His eyes lit up when I took out the handcuffs. Ok ok. I know. But I do like to surprise him. Tonight would not disappoint. You see there’s something you should known about William Jonas Brown. 3 days ago, Billy turned our to be a bit more than trouble. He let things go a bit too far. I see you sugar; Questions in those eyes. That’s right. Billy crosses a line. As so many do. Every day across this great nation. He’s strong Billy. I’m strong. But he. Turns out he’s stronger.

I mean he was stronger. Right now he’s probably not feeling to strong. I can see a few of you looking confused. She’s flown to close to the sun. And your right. You should be worried. Oh and there they go…he’s in my dressing room.

It’s too late though. You know, for him. It’s funny. You should have see the confusion. When I reached down. He didn’t even see the knife. I sliced through it. Top down. Opened like a flower in bloom. That was the start. I opened his belly like a forced mouth. Prized apart with cool steel. A smile as red as fire.

I think you think I’m joking. Or maybe you just hope I do. That’s the thing with pedastols, some are so high that if you fall, you don’t survive.

Die young. The best way to guarantee your still talked about. My music, remembered for ever. Frozen honey.

Of course I might survive. Cobain didn’t. But he didn’t have my...vitality. My passion.

Stay back. You there get down. Nobody panic babies. You are witnesses to immortality.