When 17 young adults find themselves on a deserted island, they must build a life from the ground up. Being stranded means hard days, cold nights, dangerous waters and mysterious events where the castaways must learn to survive. Despite the inevita...
My mind felt like it spent too long kissing a burning furnace. I kept my head down and mouth shut.
I'm not supposed to be here.
God, there are about three other places I actually needed to be. But here I was, stepping onto a boat that is going to take me somewhere that shouldn't exist on my agenda. The flight to the coastal nation that laid somewhere off the South Pacific Ocean had been a long one, but I slept through the entire thing.
"You were always good at pretending, Hayden," my mother's voice rang through my head.
I shut my eyes and stepped onto the boat, taking a life jacket from the Captain before finding my way to the back of the vessel. It was a small motor-engine boat that held all 17 of us. I didn't get the opportunity to absorb the faces of the people I would be spending the next month with, but none of it mattered. I'm not supposed to be here.
Six months ago, when the lady on campus gave me the brochure, I took it gracefully. Not because I was interested in the vast array of colorful social experiments that my university funded but because there really was no polite way to decline a brochure from a stranger. So I smiled at her and started walking away, the minute I was at a distance where she couldn't see me I threw the pamphlet inside my bag and didn't give it a second look.
Until the night I found myself flinging all the shit inside my room because everything became red.
Unnatural.
Broken.
Confused.
There were many words my mother had used to describe me when she told me I was to get married to the son of a business client she had in the law firm. Even then, I kept quiet. Even as she pushed an envelope across the table of a bustling restaurant we had dined in. Even as she kissed my head and left me, telling me I needed to get my life together.
I didn't open the envelope until I reached home. There was a ring and a photo of my future husband inside. He had white teeth and pale pink ears. He seemed like a nice enough person, but his eyes yelled something malicious that caused me to toss the photo away from me. It was then that I screamed.
I screamed until my voice went hoarse and my limbs felt sated. It was the best thing my mom ever gave me, that scream. It was life's cruel irony that I could never use it on her.
Then I destructed my college apartment room. I lived with a roommate but she had night shifts at a local club, so I was alone. I started throwing everything around in a manic rage when the brochure lifted itself from the ground because of the wind from my open window. It made me mad that there was something inside this room that wasn't as fragmented as me, so I leapt for it like an animal hungry to sink my teeth into something.
I went to rip it apart but my eyes manipulated me into reading it instead.
So here I sat. On a boat with a one-man crew and 16 other students from my university that enlisted in a social experiment.
The brochure mentioned that the experiment was a psychological study on the genetic short-leash goals of the human brain. We were meant to be dropped off in one of the Caveam Islands and fend for ourselves for a month. We were given a list of items that we were allowed to bring and our bags were scanned at the domestic airport. The brochure also stated that there would be natives on the island that would help guide us in learning how to hunt, cook and survive in a place that mimicked the Age of Darwinism. There would be cabins and bunkers on the island but the only modern thing we would be allowed to use were the plumbing facilities. We would be discreetly and overtly filmed by twenty cameras in order for the psychologists to study our behavior. Our safety was guaranteed and any serious health hazards would be dealt appropriately. There was a mention of a helicopter landing station in the nearby town that we would be able to reach during dire emergencies through the coms system on the island. Each participant that was chosen would receive a cash incentive at the end of the trip in order to reimburse their participation. Being university funded, it was 8000 dollars for the entire month.
The incentive caused a grueling selection process, one I didn't think I would make. But my fingers typed furiously and after sending through my submission, I momentarily forgot I even applied. It was last month when I received my acceptance. But the money didn't make me accept. It was the date of the trip.
Tomorrow is supposed to be my wedding day.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
