Cast Away Creative Writing

f Leaving
A girl runs from room to room in a deserted house. She’s looking for somewhere to hide, but all the rooms are empty. Her hands open and close, grasping at the air as she careers from wall to wall and stumbles through doors. She runs down narrow stairs into the basement. A fluorescent bulb hums and flickers, throwing shadows onto a crumbling brick wall and the concrete floor.
The flickering light is making me nauseous, and I look away from the screen and wipe my sweating palms on my skirt. Beside me, Mike is struggling with his rubber hands, trying to peel them off. I pull them off for him, and he puts them on his lap, opens a can of lager, and chugs it back.
Someone is descending the stairs, one ponderous step at a time. The child crouches into a corner and puts

her arms over her head. Strands of yellow hair stick to her wet cheeks. A woman enters. She’s massive, cuboid, her body thick with fat and muscle. Flesh hangs from her arms, and her belly rests on her thighs like an apron. An axe dangles from her hand. The rasp of the girls’ breath rises above the low drone of the soundtrack.
Then a man shouts, ‘Do it, fat lady,’ and sets off a storm of whistles and shouts and stamping feet. Mike tosses back the last of his beer, crushes the can, and drops it on the floor. ‘It’s the chop for you, little girl,’ he says, ‘chop chop, you’re gone.’ He’d put together a costume at the last moment – a battered top hat, the rubber hands, a slick of black lipstick, and he’s right there with the audience. I don’t get the joke, and gather up my belongings and push past the row of people on my way out, tripping over their feet and knocking cartons of popcorn and coke into their laps. Mike is busy cracking open another can and doesn’t look up.
The bar is full of horror fans showing off their costumes and the air is thick with the odour of latex and greasepaint. A man wearing a girl’s blood stained party dress and a Chucky mask bars my way. A bald wig sprouting tufts of hair completes his get up. ‘Freaked you out, did it love? Let me buy you a drink.’ I elbow him aside and escape into the street.
The image of the girls’ yellow hair splayed across her face and the frantic patter of her bare feet as she ran from room to room play in my head like the echo of a bad dream. The darkness is soothing and a cold breeze lifts the damp hair away from my forehead and dries the sweat on the nape of my neck. It was only a film, someone’s flawed vision or idea translated into a series of moving images, an optical illusion. The audience hadn’t taken it seriously; they’d celebrated every clichéd scene and shouted out the clunky dialogue along with the characters, Mike shouting as loudly as the rest. He must be missing me by now; I send him a text promising to catch up with him later.
The Harbour is seething with tourists and gangs of teenagers spilling out of the pubs and blocking the pavements. I skirt around a dawdling couple, scatter a group of girls wearing fairy wings, and push my way past the queues outside the fish restaurants. Gusts of hot air, redolent of fat chips and vinegar remind me that I haven’t eaten, but the thought of food disgusts me. I buy a couple of bottles of wine and find a bench by the harbour wall.
Hannibal Lector sidles past on his way to the cinema, all trussed up in a straitjacket. The wine is as bitter as sin, but the first sip is always the worst; get past that and the guilt and you’re on your way.
Ellie had persuaded me that I’d enjoy the festival.
‘Everyone dresses up; some of the costumes are amazing. I’d go again if I could. Take Mike; you two get on, and he’ll drive you up there. You should start making an effort. It’s been six months now, Sarah.’
She was a good friend; she’d phoned me every day, dragged me out to see films or to hear bands, and put up with my rages and my silences, but she was getting impatient. I should have pulled myself together by now; got over it, put it behind me.
My mother wanted me to be safe at home with her. ‘Stay in London; there’s a big dance festival on this weekend. You love dance. We could go together.’ She was almost begging, frightened that I’d lapse, that I’d take up old ways, old habits.
We’d lived through the months of anticipation and planning together, and she’d shared my anguish at the end. I’d watched dry eyed as she folded small garments in tissue paper to take to the charity shop, her hands shaking and listened to her weeping in the kitchen when she thought I wouldn’t hear. It was her loss as well as mine, but neither she nor Ellie understood that I needed to find my way through the pain, however long it took. They wanted me to move on; they’d read about the five stages of grief, and I couldn’t get past anger. The offer of the tickets came at the right time; I needed to get away from both of them.
The fifties rock and roll from the amusement arcade stops abruptly and the lights go out. By the time I finish the first bottle of wine, all the bars and restaurants are closed and dark, and the streets are almost deserted. I drop the empty bottle into the nearest bin and go back to my bench.
I’m on the cusp of a serious drunk, dissolving into my surroundings, my boundaries blurred, and smile at the chefs and kitchen hands who limp past my bench, the odours of fish and cooking oil lingering in their wake. A man wearing the maroon jacket of a wine waiter jingles the coins in his trouser pockets, and smiles back hopefully.
I make a start on the second bottle of wine on the way back to the hotel, drinking as I walk, head back and greedy.

The skeletal outline of the Abbey broods over the streets sloping down to the harbour, and the waves break endlessly onto the beach below the road. Cars rush past – a moment of light and noise, a memory of warmth, and then I’m alone with my bottle and the stutter of my heels on the pavement. The blare of a horn jolts me out of my trance; I’ve wandered into the middle of the road. I stay where I am, defiant and reckless, and it feels like old times. I lift the bottle in a toast to the disappearing car, and to freedom. I’m free; I’ve been released from the burden of love, and I celebrate by finishing the last of the wine, tipping most of it down the front of my t-shirt. .
Then somehow, I’m running along the beach, swinging the empty bottle by the neck. I lurch towards the water’s edge and pitch it high into the air, watch it twist and turn until it splashes into the waves. Far out, breakers lift their heads, rear up, and rush towards me. I lie down on the sand and close my eyes. Let them take me; let them drag me out into the emptiness, toss me about, spin me around, cast me

down.
I’m hovering on the edge of unconsciousness when the girl drifts towards me. Her yellow hair steams out behind her and her arms reach out. She takes my hands and we float in the stillness and the mist. She leaves me as quietly as she came; her hands slip out of mine, and she sinks under the water as peacefully as if sinking into sleep. The sea is flat and grey and closes over her silently.
When I come to there’s sand in my hair, and my fists are full of stones. Enormous stars wheel and turn, crawling across the sky. Fragments of the night before come back: the smell of hot oil, a bench by the harbour wall, girls in fairy wings. There was a man in a maroon jacket. A bitter taste floods my mouth and scours the back of my throat; I hardly dare look. But I’m alone: there’s no stranger sprawled beside me, and I’m still wearing my clothes. My shoes and backpack have disappeared, probably washed out to sea, but it could have been so much worse.
The relief doesn’t last long; I need to get off this beach, and I stand and turn in an unsteady circle, trying to orientate myself. The beach comes into focus; sand and shingle dotted with rocks and clumps of seaweed. A row of lights high above the beach look familiar, and I walk toward them until I stumble into the base of a wall leading up to the road. It’s uneven and slippery with lichen, and too high to climb. I want to give in, to sleep it off and wake up to how life was before. My eyelids are heavy, and my head droops toward my chest.
Then, in the seconds before my eyes shut, I see it. Tucked in a hollow formed by an overhang of rocks and tethered to a ring in the wall, is a wooden boat. Warm grey against the darker stones, it’s as deep and broad as a child’s cradle. I crawl over and lift off the tarpaulin; it’s dry and clean inside, and I move some oil stained sheets and coils of rope and climb in. My wet clothes are clinging to my thighs and plastered to my back and chest and I peel them off and hang them over the side of the boat to dry. The wind tugs at my hair and chafes my bare skin as if to chastise me. The sheets are thick flannel, and I wrap them around me until I’m secure as a swaddled infant. Cold air seeps through chinks in the hull, but I’m safe here, sheltered in the boats deep belly. The smell of oil and wood, and the hot dry scent of hemp surround me, and I’m a child again, in my dad’s garden shed. His tools are on the shelves, his overalls hang on the back of the door, and I can hear my mother washing dishes and singing along to the radio through the open kitchen window.
The thump and squall of a gull landing on the side of the boat wakes me. It’s as shocked to see me, as I am to see it, and take off immediately. My head is resting on a tangle of damp sheets and a coil of rope under my feet and I’m as light and insubstantial as the thread of my breath in the cold air. It won’t last, this lightness, there’s always a price to pay. Already a dull pain is settling on my skull as if a cap designed for torture.
I stroke the soft wood of the hull, the curves like cupped hands that had held me as I slept. If only I could stay curled up amid the sheets and coils of rope, like a character in a fairy tale, and watch the clouds meander across sky, but I’m too cold. My arms are pimpled with goose flesh, and my hands and feet are icy. I can’t see my clothes, and stand up to look for them. There’s a man sitting a few yards away, rolling a cigarette.
‘It’s all right, kid,’ he says. ‘You’re in my boat. I didn’t want to scare you, but I have your stuff; it was all over the beach.’
‘Can you just throw it to me? ‘