Monkeybear Productions

By Alina Arnold

Warning: spooky, smoking

“Why does everything seem so strange?” murmured FlorenceWarbler. The ocean breeze was combing her long, golden hair. She had a magenta dress on, that packaged her slick figure perfectly. All of this reminded me of a majestic, exquisite Ancient Greek sculpture. She was looking out with the most unusual colour of her eyes: chocolate brown surrounded by a sea of green at her son (a thin boy with the same straw hair ashis mother), who was diving into the water trying to catch slippery, fat fish with his bare hands like the Mohawks he read about. Florence was about to shout at him once more, when she stopped, stared at me and Uncle Fishbone, then at the sky and finally said:

“I think the heat the is playing tricks on me once more: I just heard a doorbell ringing…”

 

“As a matter of fact, I heard it too,” croaked Uncle Fishbone, inhaling the poisonous, yet addictive smoke of his pipe. I still had no idea how he hasn’t managed to set fire to his white beard (with a horrible amount of dirt) on fire, even if it would ruin his unmistakeable appearance: his beard was like a fish’s spine with his pale, bony arms and legs being the bones sticking out.

 

I looked out at the endless ocean with its waves moving to and fro, as if it were dancing with the sand, remembering that we were living here only a week. We all woke up on we night and found ourselves stranded on this island. I’ve never bought tickets to a remote island. Neither did Florence nor Uncle Fishbone. It was no dream, despite me assuring myself that it is and endlessly pinching myself until my skin didn’t feel the pain. All my suspicions could just end here, yet the strangest of all is that in the straw huts we lived in, we found all the necessities: food, clothing, comfortable furniture and even a calendar! Alas there was no telephone or television. Was there some kind of mysterious stranger helping us, like in the novels of Jules Verne?

 

The sound that sounded like a telephone ring threw me back into the present.

“These blasted sounds!” sneered Uncle Fishbone, reaching out at his crooked cane with a bony finger. Florence took his cane and shoved it to him, for her nerves were beginning to fail her. He hissed more curses at her, whilst getting up extremely slow in order to annoy her even more. Finally, he croaked back to his hut.

 

“Tony, I’m scared,” she whispered, grabbing my hand and putting it to her chest. “You hear my heart beating, do you?”

“Florence –“ I started, thinking it would be best to tell her how stupid and pathetic she sounded, but was abruptly cut off by her soft ringing voice.

“Is it my husband? You fool! We’re stranded! No more husbands in sight, when we’re here. And if you think – “

She shot a glance at the water and saw her son with a stone, hitting a crab he caught.

“Drop that crab and get out of the water, Jerry!” she roared.“Honestly, that Uncle Fishbone is a bad influence for the boy.”

The boy with his hair drooping over his face looked like he had a giant mop hurled a mocking grimace at me, thenglanced at his mother like a puppy after being chastised by his owner.

“Mum, this doesn’t seem like an island…” he murmured.

 

A hoarse, deep laughter rumbled across the stand. Every grain of sand, every leaf on the palms, every piece of wood quivered in its place. I turned around and saw Uncle Fishbone. He was the one that scared us to the core. He couldn’t stop laughing; he was shaking all over.

“The boy’s right. Haha! Why don’t you find out what’s going on.” 

He ended his laugh then stared at us.

I quickly glanced at the boy. He was looking at Uncle Fishbone with his mouth widely open and eyes sparkling with delight. Florence, on the other hand, buried her head in her spaghetti-like fingers.

 

“Mom, I wanna stay awake and catch this monster at night!’’ insisted the child, stomping his foot on the ground.

 

I stuck my fingers in my ears and retreated to my hut. A family scandal would be too much for anyone in my shoes.

 

As my hand reached out to my favourite book, peacefully lying on the smooth surface of the table, Jerry rampaged into my hut like a crazy elephant, muttered that all of them want to stay awake this night and catch the intruder (I had to ask him several times before I could understand him), stuck his tongue out at me and slammed the door shut.

“What was that for?” I asked myself.

 

The sun set slower than usual. We were all looking at it, hypnotising it to set faster, but it was just jeering at us. When the last ray tried to burn us for the last time, we all rushed behind the huts and waited. 

 

It felt as if we were trapped in a box, with walls guarding us. I felt a daunting emptiness finding its way through the thick muscles of my heart.

 

Florence’s relentless nails dug into my palm. Unlike his mother, Jerry was full of energy with his eyes fixed on the pathway, where her thought the man would be coming from. Only Uncle Fishbone was calm as a cucumber, laying on the sand with his pipe in his mouth and snoring as if he were a car’s engine.

 

I looked up at the starry sky. I froze. The sky was opening like a cover of a box, flooding everything with light. My heart leaped out of my body, when I saw a giant eye inspecting everything beneath it. Massive fingers ripped the cover completely. The eye turned into an enormous face of a man. I felt Florence’s sweaty hand sticking into mine. She gripped me tighter. And tighter.

 

“Dad?” murmured the boy, bursting into vengeful tears.

 

Florence screamed.