Lost At Sea

They were at the camp again, the sky overhead completely dark and littered with stars. Scarlett felt cold - and not just because temperatures had dropped remarkably here between the dunes as soon as the sun had been gone: She was shocked by what she had seen and shocked by the understanding that had begun dawning on her since then.

Chris had collected some more driftwood and had set up a new, small campfire. They both sat very close to it, shoulder against shoulder, while he continued with his story. He mostly stared into the flames as he talked.

"Well, so when we finally got to our senses again we were seven survivors - Hendrick and Swantje were a couple from the Netherlands, then there were Zoe and Kevin, Daniel, Thomas and me. When we realized there wouldn't be a rescue too soon we began exploring the place. We did what we thought was the rational thing: Look for food and shelter, find out if we could collect fruit or vegetables or hunt animals. The first days it went well and we slowly got over the shock of the plane crash. We thought we'd been lucky. We figured we might get through this okay until we would eventually be found by a search party."

Scarlett didn't have to say it, but she felt there needed to be a filler, just to show Chris that she was listening: "But you were not found. And you did not get through this too well either."

His gaze flickered when he looked up at her. Because he was talking about his memories he seemed to also partially live through them again. It was - his face showed that much - not a pleasant experience.

"No. No, we did not. After two weeks there were still no helicopters or other planes or ships. Nothing. So we grew restless. Thomas and I started not only traveling to the brink of the Forest, we started going in there. And that's where we met the Natives.

At first they just watched us and we tried to communicate with them. They didn't seem to speak english. And they did not seem too interested to communicate with us anyways. They left us mostly alone, but they kept watching us from a certain distance. Then, next time we went to the woods, Zoe went with us, and that was when things got really ugly."

Chris' hands were shaking now - shaking so hard in fact that Scarlett, who was sitting next to him by the fire, put a hand on his shoulder and tried to console him. He seemed thankful, swallowed the lump that had been in his throat and even smiled at her.

"You know, I didn't know if I was sane anymore before I found you. It's weird to talk about things and know that another person is listening. I'm sorry for you that you stranded here, but at the same time I'm really fucking happy for myself that you did."

"I understand the notion and I'll just take it as a compliment", Scarlett said, a good mix of irony and warmth in her voice. Chris was a good guy with a good heart and she already liked him a lot. "Now go on, okay? I want to know what happened to the others."

Chris was very pale now. "Like I said, everything went to shit the day Zoe accompanied us. The natives freaked out when they saw her. They began shouting at us, they got aggressive and threatening. They threw a fucking spear that scraped my leg but could easily have impaled me as well. We didn't understand why, so we retreated back to the dunes. The Natives didn't follow us there, but... they threatened us now every time we got too close to the forest. Collecting fresh water got dangerous, collecting fruits or hunting became impossible. Thomas went there one day without telling me and never came back. Days later, when I sneaked to the lake desperately looking for traces of what had happened to him, all I found was his bloody shirt."

"I'm really sorry Chris."

"Yeah, me too", he mumbled. Biting his lower lip he shook his head. When Scarlett put her arm around his shoulders he nodded thankfully.

"Okay, the story is nearly finished. Some days later we saw the Natives' females. The guys were feeding them with leaves they plucked from some of the bushes - there's a special kind of plant, the one with those thick, juicy leaves. They can be ingested by humans I guess, because I have since then often see the Natives feed the women with them. However, point is: We watched while they fed the females and gagged them again, and we saw how they used them as beasts of burden like people elsewhere uses mules or donkeys. Essentially we saw what I showed you today, and now we could easily figure out why the Natives had reacted so aggressively when they saw Zoe."

"I guess Zoe and Swantje weren't trussed up enough for their taste", Scarlett said with a good amount of acid in her tone. "Maybe there was also not enough of the booty to see, with the clothing and all. Isn't an untied woman with a clothed torso an atrocity?"

"It's not just that." Chris shrugged and looked her in the eyes. "It's not a question of..... fashion sense, you know? This goes way deeper.These guys don't see women as humans - they see them literally as beasts of burden. I have never seen one without restraints and I only see them taking the gags from their mouths when they are allowed to drink and eat, always just for a short while. It's not just the bondage that's so gruesome, it's the whole .... worldview in which a talking, acting, free woman is an absurdity. The Natives saw Zoe and Swantje smile and talk and interact with us and saw that as an offense to... everything. Their Gods maybe. I don't know."

"With Thomas gone you were still six people."

"Yes, and six is too much to live here between the dunes. We couldn't get enough sweet water, we couldn't catch enough fish, we couldn't collect food in the inland anymore. We began to starve and we began to fight amongst each other. We began to freak out. Then finally Swantje had an idea."

"What was her plan?"

Chris smiled a bitter smile. "'Do as the Romans do'", he said, citing the woman Scarlett had never met. "She said we could try to win the Natives trust. All that needed to be done was that we tie her up. She proposed we tie her and Zoe and show the Natives that we are obeying their rules. Then maybe we would be allowed to collect water and fruit again."

Scarlett thought about it: The plan made sense, and for a modern, western woman with a practical mind it wasn't that bad a plan either. You knew you were not cattle and you knew it was all just fake. You did what had to be done because losing a little of your pride was better than dying of malnutrition. You could shrug it off later and tell yourself that you just had done what needed to be done, just like you did when you flirted with a cop to evade a parking ticket or swallowed your pride to get along with your chauvinist asshole of a boss. "I might have done the same", she mumbled softly.

"Don't say that." Chris frowned. "I understand why you say it, but don't. No woman should have to do something like that. And also it was a bad plan and did not work as intended."

"Why not? What went wrong?

He looked at Scarlett and softly shook his head. "I don't know for sure. At first it seemed to work: They collected some belts and straps and similar stuff from the old liferafts and put some effort into creating harnesses that would work like the harnesses the... cattle has to wear. It was a chore, but they got it right and made it look realistic and really strict.

It was hard for Swantje especially, but she believed we did the right thing. When she was all trussed up we felt like shit, but she insisted we went on with the plan. So Hendrick took her down to the forest and they even managed to collect food and water. When they returned we were all so relieved! We could fill our bellies for the first time in weeks, we were all so euphoric. Zoe volunteered for the next expedition.

But for Daniel that wasn't enough: He said no one would come to our rescue and he wanted to explore the inland. He said all Zoe and Swantje needed to do was 'play cattle' for a day or two. Then he and Hendrick could take the girls with them and move without being attacked. He suspected that this wasn't even a real island but a part of the coast, and that it might be possible for us to find a way back to civilization if we just got past these crazy madmen that forced us to stay between the dunes."

Scarlett smiled and ran her fingers through her hair. She had never met that Daniel, but she could understand why he had thought like that. She had also never met Zoe or Swantje, but judging from how Chris described them she could imagine what had gone on in their heads: Staying on the beach was a bad option, letting a man truss you up like a mule wasn't really a better one, but what could you do? Just like she had reflected already before, sometimes women just played along with the shit men came up with - because that's what you did when you were an adult and a confident girl, and when you knew that you had to make compromises to get through life. What was the bigger loss on control after all, being forced to slowly starve between those damn dunes or allowing a guy to put you in bondage for a day or two? Maybe, after some weeks in this shithole and with the first signs of malnutrition and group hysteria showing, the question wasn't so easy to answer anymore.

"Daniel talked them into doing it, right?"

"He talked Zoe into doing it. Swantje agreed to let Hendrick be her 'Guardian'. Kevin wanted to accompany them too, but since he didn't have a girl to show to the natives we figured it would be too dangerous. He stayed with me."

"And you?", Scarlett asked curiously. "If you had had a woman to truss up, would you have gone with them?"

He was a shocked: His body tensed, every muscle beneath his skin turning into a stone. "No... well, no, no fucking way", he mumbled his voice shaking a little. "I don't do something like that to a woman. I wanted us to try and sneak through the woods at night. Or we could have tied two or three of the old liferafts together to create a larger vessel, than we could have traveled along the coastline. But the others had already made up their minds and I couldn't talk them out of it again. They headed off to the forest. The plan was to do a test run and then return to the beach."

"But they never came back."

"Yes, you guessed it. They never came back."

Chris pressed his palms against his eyes, shook his head, inhaled deeply, exhaled again. Finally he looked at Scarlett with eyes that told a lot about loss, doubt and desperation. "We never found out what happened to them. Kevin and I stayed here, but even for two people it's very tough to survive in this place. After about two months he lost it. He screamed and cursed that we should have enslaved the girls when we had the chance, that we never should have allowed Hendrick and Daniel to take the cattle away... that's what he said, seriously. He was just angry that we had not 'taken' the girls because they would have been our ticket out of this wasteland. He was so bitter and so angry... that I did not know what to say to him anymore. He went literally insane, you know?

Finally he took one of the liferafts. But there are currents out in the bay, currents we didn't know about. I could see how the raft was pulled too far out into the ocean, away from the land. I was alone from then on. I could survive alone, barely. That's what I did, until yesterday.

Until I found you."

They sat in silence for nearly half an hour. Scarlett didn't know what to say and Chris had talked more than in all four years before and obviously had enough of it for now. But she still held her arm around his brawny shoulders, consoling him. At one point she leaned a little against him and kissed his cheek.

He was surprised. "What was that for?"

"For not being all too eager about turning women into cattle", she said with a thin smile. "And for sharing your story with me."

"You are welcome. But you should sleep now, Scarlett. You look very tired."

"I'm sure I look like shit, not just 'tired' - but thanks for the euphemism."

She took one of the old blankets and wrapped herself in it, yawning. Without saying more she closed her eyes and fell to sleep in less than half a minute. Her dreams were filled with cold and howling winds, the screams of the drowning and the voiceless, contorted shapes of the 'cattle' she had seen. But there were also the face and voice of Chris that consoled her, and there was a feeling of zeal and dedication: Scarlett intended to survive, no matter what. She did not plan to give up so easily and was adamant to not abandon hope but cling to it and spit in fate's ugly face as soon as she got the opportunity. Thus was the fire that gave her, even in her dreams, some protection against the cold.

When she woke up the next morning she had, to her own surprise, made up her mind already. She didn't talk to Chris about it though - instead she stayed with him over the course of the next days, and watched him and hoped that, against all odds, he and she would find a way to survive together on that small piece of land between the forest and the sea.

But in case that all her wishes and good prayers would not have the desired effect she also decided to not act like a fool but like a realist, preparing for a worst-case-scenario in a way that Chris' conscience might not allow him to prepare for. So she also began collecting straps and belts from the old liferafts that had been washed ashore, just like Zoe and Swantje must have done some years ago. Scarlett hid them under one of the bushes for the time being, hoping and praying they would never be used on her own wrists and arms. But if it would be necessary, she told herself, then at least she herself had chosen what bonds were to restrain her own body.