a view to a death

Gasoline filled his nostrils, sweeping as one towards his lungs. The intensity of such a wave made him wake up in a coughing fit. All he could remember was the announcement for the plane to brace... and he blanked out.

His head hurt like crazy and he knew he wasn't in his seat anymore.

Eyes flickered open, and affected by his dizziness everything seemed to blur before him. He could make out the horizon somewhere out there... but not much else. There was particles of something all over him. In him. Below him. Maybe even above him. He didn't know... but all of this smoke... and yelling... and something else he can't place was disorienting him.

He needed a compass, fast.

Waking up and shaking his head, the blond tried to stand up, and only then did he make sense of what was around him. There were people crying for help, holding dead, charred carcasses of who were meant to be people. He had been stepping on sand that tickled his toes, and definitely not in a good way. There were palm trees that mingled reluctantly with broken parts of the plane.

He looked down at himself. Everything on him, torn or destroyed. His lab coat was singed, recognizable only by the pocket on his right chest. There was a blue polo shirt underneath it, but its collar was tattered, and it didn't look very blue anymore. Anything of his knees down were gone. There was only him and his burnt legs. His hair was a mess, and he could tell some parts have been burnt off, leaving pink seared flesh as a mark.

The boy felt incredibly naked, and therefore chose to go about with a slow jog to see if he could find any useful information. His heart wasn't used to such strenuous exercise; he was panting heavily by the fifth metre.

Holy shit. He was on an island he barely knew the name of. What made him think he can survive with such poor fitness levels? Right - outwitting everyone else. That was always an option.

As he decided to reduce his speed further until he was pracically trudging along the beach, his eyes fell on a dismembered corpse. It may be almost unidentifiable to some scientists, but by the torn clothes, the curl of the cold lips and the colour of his hair... Corin was no stranger to this boy.

Matthieu.

The blond ran his fingers rapidly through his hair. He knelt down, wiping the stains of blood off his friend's cheeks. He studies the boy's cold eyes. They will never blink, or wink, or roll again. The living one of them both closed the eyes of the other.

He had unwittingly said goodbye to his friend.

As he laid himself down on the ground, he felt some sort of crinkle in his pocket. His eyes widened, and with movement swift as a coursing river, he removed the piece of paper from his pocket.

Except it wasn't just a piece of paper. It was a photo, of a beautiful maiden with long brown hair, sweeping down from her head like a waterfall. Her eyes, chocolate, shaped like the finest cocoa bean. They were smiling, after he had seen her win with her invention at a science contest, just a few months ago.

"Bridget!" cried he, "Bridget!"

Corin Rousseau wept for Bridget Chauveau, for her and him.

Kill the beast. Cut his throat. Spill his blood.

Corin thrust the spear upwards, watching it form an arc in the air before it hit the poor rooster he had targeted. He smirked, inwardly remarking the freshness of his dinner. He yanked the spear out of the bark and laid the spear on the ground. Dusk was approaching with every breath he took, and he knew it.

He removed the rooster from his spear and set it down on the sand. The water purifier he had invented sat down quietly, and Corin removed the cling wrap to find that there was a cup of water. He drank it, savagely wiping his lips. He then moved on, standing in the sand as he watched an approaching ship in the distance.

A ship?

Corin screamed before running towards the jungle conveniently located behind him. Months of running and hunting had made him fitter than he originally was, and there was a fierceness in his eyes he did not possess before. His footsteps were silent, methodical.

The Frenchman hid amongst a pile of bushes, when he could hear the noise of civilization echo around him. He knew those noises somehow, somewhere... but they were the voices of monsters! He wouldn't - he couldn't - live with such devils! Why live such expensive, wrecking lives when he can lead and rule his island on his own?

Rousseau Island. Area: Thirty-three kilometres squared. Population: One.

He could hear the deafening noises of boots stomping on the crabs' breeding ground, and Corin resisted the urge to sob for the eggs that will never bear its yolk. He could hear mutterings in the language he once spoke. He still spoke it too, though he refused to acknowledge it. The French language was a rule, and rules were confinement. Confinement was a prison no one would like to get themselves trapped in.

Guns were shot, and Corin cried out, begging for them to stop whatever horrors they were doing. Standing his ground, the boy shot a spear through one of the men dressed in black.

He hit him square on. The man jarred, and lay on the ground, quivering before laying there, limp.

The entire army forced themselves on him. His spear was taken custody by one of the rambunctious men, who grabbed his wrists and held them close towards him.

Corin began to whine. Tears flooded his cheeks as he looked back at the island he'd left. He could feel the ship's shadow behind him, and he trembled at the chill it gave him. He took one final glance at the dead rooster, the water purifier he had painstakingly worked on, the ashes of the fire that had warmed him through the long nights.

The thing that caught his eye the most was the photo of him and his beloved. For the first time in months, he cried a word coherent to human ears.

"Bridget!"