"Just bring them with us," I told him. "I can hang them up to dry at the shelter."
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt my face drop and saw the expression on Hunter's face change. He scrambled away from the edge of the water where he had paused to rinse his feet and we started running through the jungle toward the beach. I wasn't paying as close attention to where I was stepping as I usually did and the brush bit painfully into the bottoms of my feet, but I didn't stop. We needed to get to the shelter and find out how much damage the storm had caused, and if all of the work that we had put into the structure had been destroyed. The moment that I got to the beach I felt like everything inside of me emptied and I was completely deflated.
The once pristine sand was now scattered with the branches, fronds, and ropes that had once been the shelter we had poured ourselves into building. Pieces of tattered fabric and broken pieces of the ship moved in the lazy waves that slid up the sand and then back, gradually pulling the destroyed remnants of their supplies back into the sea. I stepped out onto the beach and felt emotion catch in my chest. Fighting tears, I rushed toward the site where the shelter had been. It hunkered at the edge of the jungle in a heap of broken bamboo and torn leaves. I could see the crates of supplies that we had positioned inside tipped over, the contents that hadn't been tossed onto the beach spilled on what had been the floor.
From the moment that I noticed the storm coming, I had been trying to deny it. I had been trying to keep memories forced down as far within me as I could possibly get them, not wanting to face them. I had struggled through the sound of the rain and the angry rumble of the thunder. Now, though, I couldn’t keep them away any longer. Brutal memories, moments that I had never wanted to see or think of again, sliced through my mind and forced themselves onto the backs of my eyelids as I squeezed my eyes closed so hard that I saw spots of light bursting in the darkness.
"Fuck!" I screamed, picking up one of the fronds that had been a part of the roof and throwing it as far as I could into the jungle. "Motherfucking storm!" I kicked at another piece of the rubble and spun around so that I could scream at a different portion of the beach. “Son of a bitching cocksucking, assblasting piece of shit! Motherless whore! Fuck-stick shitheaded bat-brained dick splinter! Donkey-fucking three fingered cunt kicking blueballed limp dicked fuck monkey!”
It felt amazing and I wanted to scream more, but I felt like I had used up all of my profanity creativity and couldn’t think of any other words to use.
"Eleanor," Hunter's voice said from behind me.
"No!" I shouted, whipping around to face him. "Don't you dare tell me to calm down. Are you seeing the same thing that I’m seeing?" I demanded.
I gestured frantically around us at the beach.
"Yes," Hunter said, taking a cautious step toward me and holding up a hand as if to calm me.
Either that, or to act as a defensive tool in the event that I chose to fling part of the shelter at him.
"Then you can see that everything we went through was for shit. It meant absolutely nothing."
"It didn't mean nothing, Eleanor," Hunter said, approaching me. "We knew that that storm was going to come. We had to have shelter. We couldn't just sit around. We had to do something to help us handle being here, or even just to occupy our time."
It was meant to be a comforting statement, but something about Hunter's words pushed me into even deeper fury.
"To occupy our time?" I shouted. "Is this fun for you? Is this some sort of warped tropical vacation?" I kicked at the bamboo and palm fronds spread across the ground. "Well, let me tell you something. This is not a fucking vacation. There is no five-star hotel hiding on the other side of the rocks and we don't get to dress for dinner in the banquet hall. In fact, we barely get to fucking dress at all."
I gestured toward Hunter who was wearing nothing but his pants, and then at myself and the wet castoffs I wore. His jaw set as he stared at me. This was ruining everything that we had experienced together and I was disgusted with myself for causing that, but I couldn’t stop the anger that was coursing through me. It was all too much. The night before I had been able to convince myself that everything was alright, but now it was like I was being punished, pushed back down to the ground where I should have always stayed.
"This isn't our fault. We didn’t choose for this to happen.”
"Yes, it is," she said. "It is my fault and I hate myself for it."
"Why do you think that it's your fault?" Hunter asked. "You couldn't control the storm that made us crash here anymore than you could control the storm that happened last night."
"But if it wasn't for me we wouldn't have been in that boat trying to get away from the ship so the storm wouldn't have mattered." I started to stomp away from the shelter and then whipped back around to face him again. "No. You know what? This isn't my fault. Everything that I do nowadays might turn to absolute shit because somewhere along the line I apparently lost all of my ability to function, but this isn't on me. This," she gestured wildly around herself, "this is Virgil's fault. This is all fucking Virgil's fault. If he hadn't been such a raging sleazeball this wouldn't have happened."
I was fairly sure I could have come up with something better to call him if I had taken the time to really think about it, but at that moment that seemed like the most appropriate term. It didn’t have the flair of my previous tirade, but it would do.
"He's not here," Hunter said. "He can't hurt you anymore."
"Yes, he can!" I replied. "Can't you see that? He's always here. He's always around. As soon as he found out that I knew about everything that he had done, I signed my death warrant." I felt at once like I was being dramatic and like I was telling the truth for the first time in as long as I could remember. "He cheated people out of millions of dollars. He ran drugs. I wouldn't be surprised if there was blood on his hands. Do you really think that he isn't capable of making sure that I don’t go unpunished for humiliating him with our divorce and then holding the evidence that I have over his head? He sent men after me. The cruise ship wasn’t the first time that it happened. They’ve found me in the grocery store. They’ve found me while I was jogging. They accosted me while I was fucking trying on shoes for the wedding. I had to hobble over to a group of salespeople wearing two different heights of heels just so that I wasn’t sitting alone with them.”
“Have they ever said anything to you?” Hunter asked.
I nodded, feeling as though I had gotten myself onto a slippery slope. I had already revealed more than I ever intended to and now I could just feel him scrutinizing me and everything that I had ever told him, but I was already on my way now. I couldn’t go back and pretend that I hadn’t opened my mouth and let all of this fall out.
“They say that Virgil just wants to talk to me, but when was the last time you needed to send multiple very large, very scary men after a woman just because you wanted to have a conversation with her?" I shook my head and clawed my hands back through my hair to get it out of my face. They caught on tangles that pulled at my scalp and frustrated me even further. As soon as I got off this damn island I was spending three days in the shower and using ten bottles of shampoo. "I guarantee you that he wouldn't mind if I had just tipped off of that ship and never came back up. He only wants to see me so that he can have the fun of getting rid of me himself. He just wants me to disappear so that I won't be any trouble for him anymore. He'll do whatever it takes and send whoever it takes to make sure that it happens."
“Well,” Hunter said, his eyes looking slightly lighter, “maybe that’s what happened.”