The Island

I was desperate to go to Miami for the summer, now I know that I shouldn’t have gone; I shouldn’t have begged for months. Where did it get me? Stuck on an island, The Island. You see, I am a seventeen year old girl, my best friend Oli moved from London to Miami last year just after my sixteenth birthday. I told him that I would come and visit him this year and I meant it. Hi, my name is Candy and this is my story on what happened and how we got onto The Island.

I was late. My plane was due to take off in five minutes. As I rushed around the airport looking for my gate I heard, “This is the last call for flight BA 815 to Miami.”
I glanced at my ticket quickly and realised that they were calling my flight. I ran as fast as I could into the departure lounge, and over to the desk. The woman behind the desk said, “You must be Miss Candy Adams; your plane is waiting for you.” I looked up at her, thanked her breathlessly and jogged through the tunnel and to my seat. I sat down still breathing heavily, looked up and noticed that everyone was giving me the most quizzical looks. I just ignored them and concentrated on getting my breathing back to normal. The seatbelt light blinked on and I started to fiddle with my belt. I was never any good at putting these on and the air hostess came over and helped me. I watched as she gracefully walked towards the front of the plane to take her seat.

After we had lifted off the pilot said, “Welcome to British Airways flight BA 815. I am your pilot George and I will take very good care of you all. Everything is going well and I can assure you that nothing is going to go wrong. Have a wonderful flight and I hope that you will fly with British Airways again. Thank you.”
That reassured me, I was never one for flying. I’ve never enjoyed it, if I had the option to drive then I would have. I was starting to get nervous and I think that the man next to me could tell, so he started to talk to me. “Are you alright you seem to be getting agitated.”
“Yeah, I’m fine thanks, it just that I don’t really like flying. I always have to be on the ground, or I feel claustrophobic and enclosed.”
“Don’t worry, nothing will happen. The pilot already told us so and you have to trust him. If you don’t trust the guy flying the plane, then who are you going to trust?”
“I guess you have a point…but-”
“No buts, you’ll be absolutely fine.”
“Thanks… sorry I didn’t catch your name.”
“Jake.” He stuck your hand out to me to shake.
“Candy,” I shook his hand “It’s nice to meet you Jake.”
“It’s nice to meet you Candy.”
We kept talking for what seemed like hours and to be truthful it was. I looked at the map on the back of the headrest and realised that we were half way across the Atlantic Ocean.

Suddenly the plane started to shake violently, and people started to scream. I grabbed Jake’s arm and started to panic. It felt like my stomach was in my mouth, it was not a pleasant feeling. It was the same feeling you get when you go down a vertical drop on a roller coaster. I remember screaming until my lungs gave out, but after that nothing came out. Jake was trying to calm me down, but it wasn’t working. It was absolute chaos. There was a massive groan and the plane broke in half. People were pouring out of the plane at an alarming rate. Screaming as they fell to their deaths on the water. After this I couldn’t take it anymore and I blacked out with Jake trying to keep me safe. I made a note to myself to thank him for everything later.

I opened my eyes, the sunlight blinding me at first. I covered my eyes and sat up; I started walking around aimlessly on the beach. It really was a beautiful island. The island had crystal clear seas and white sandy beaches; the foliage was hundreds of different beautiful shades of green and brown.

Walking around with no purpose was one of my favourite things to do. I just kept walking and walking until I saw rain clouds up ahead. I decided to walk back the way I had come to see what was happening with everyone else. When I had walked away it was like there was no one else there, like I was the only person on The Island looking to find somewhere peaceful to rest.

As I was walking back to the wreckage it started to rain, not the light rain that we get here; this is the tropical rain that you see only on the T.V. It was lovely rain. In England we always used to complain about the rain and how miserable it is; but this rain was truly lovely.

It was from then that I decided that I was going to try and make the most of my time on The Island and that’s when I thought of Oli and I whipped my phone out of my pocket so fast that my brain didn’t even comprehend what was happening. I looked at my phone screen and then saw that I had no signal. What was I thinking? How would I have ever gotten enough signal to call (or even text) Oli? He must be very worried because my flight should have landed in Miami around this time and it’s not even flying anymore. One half of the plane landed in the ocean somewhere and this half of the plane must have glided and then landed on the beach here. By now I had more or less made it back to the crash site. It was then I saw that there was not that many of us left. There was Jake, a couple talking under a palm tree, a man who looked in his late 50’s staring at a wheelchair and a woman pacing around in circles. We were the only survivors of BA flight 815.

It was then that I realised that I may not make it off of The Island. I could almost feel tears springing to my eyes when Jake called us all over to him. He said, “For those who don’t know my name is Jake and I am a 24 year old doctor, please can you introduce yourselves.”
“My name is Jess.” said the woman who was pacing around in circles.
“Our names are Charlotte and Christian.” said the couple who were sitting under a palm tree.
“My name is Robbie.” said the guy who was staring at a wheelchair.
Everyone turned and looked at me expecting me to say my name but I said “We are the last survivors of flight 815. We will probably be on this island for the rest of our lives.”
Jake coughed awkwardly and said “Her name is Candy.”
I didn’t know what they said after that because I really wasn’t listening, but what I do know was that the trees were moving rapidly. Almost like something really big was making its way through the foliage. Thud… thud… thud. It was getting closer and closer. Then it stopped.

The Island was not a normal island… there was something really wrong with it. Every night we used to hear the thud of big heavy footsteps. Thud… thud… thud. We would see the trees part but nothing would ever come through.

We had been on The Island for a couple of days now and the only thing we had eaten were coconuts. We didn’t want to see another coconut, never mind eat one. Today was the day that we decided that we go further inland and look for food.

I had been walking ahead of everyone else when I noticed a gap in the foliage ahead. I walked through and to my complete and utter surprise I had found a small village. I stood there gaping at the sight of civilisation. I turned around slowly with a shocked expression on my face. “JAKE!” I screamed.
Jake came rushing up to me, but all I could do was point at the gap in the trees. Jake turned around with a surprised look on his face and said “And I thought that we were the only ones on this island.” The shock disappeared from his face and he called the others over.

We had started walking through the trees around the small village when we came across a huge frozen donkey wheel inside a cold frozen cave. Even though it looked suspicious we walked in anyway. “It’s cold in here.” stated Jess. Everyone just nodded in agreement. It looked as though it was placed in the middle of the island for no apparent reason. Jake walked up to it and ran his hands over the ice slowly. He looked like he was deeply thinking about something, but the other four and I just stood there in wonder. Jake braced himself and started to turn the wheel; slowly but surely it moved. Jake just kept on turning it until it would no longer move. Suddenly there was a flash of purple and white light and then nothing happened. We just stood there waiting for something to happen, but it never did. “Well, that was an anti-climax.” stated Charlotte. Everyone started murmuring to themselves “True, true...”

We were walking back through the trees as we wanted to go and have a proper look at the small village. It started to rain very heavily; we were soaked in a matter of seconds. It was then we heard thump... thump... thump... it was that thing again. Thump... thump... thump... there was a big black cloud moving towards us. It was terrifying; but before I managed to get a proper look at it there was a bright flash of white light and it wasn’t raining anymore. We weren’t even in the same place anymore, there were no trees. I looked around panic stricken to find that only Christian, Robbie and I were standing here. Where were the others? I could feel something warm running down my face. It was then that I realised that my nose was bleeding, as was the others. “What happened? Where are Jack, Charlotte and Jess?” Robbie said in a confused and worried voice.
“Never mind about them, where are we?” replied Christian “I’ve never even seen this place before... have you because I know I haven’t.”
As we were standing there wondering what to do next I noticed that the view from here was magnificent. You could see the lovely white sandy beach, the crystal clear blue sea and the rich green foliage. I had an idea. “Let’s make our way back to the beach and then hopefully the others will meet us there.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” replies Robbie “Come on; let’s start walking now because we have to get there before dark.” As we were walking we heard the roar of an engine. We looked around and were stunned to see a blue VW van driving towards us. The man driving the van stopped next to us got out and asked “Who are you? I haven’t seen you around.” He stopped for a second in a thoughtful state and then continued, “Ah I know you must be the new recruits. My name is Ben and welcome to The Island.”
“Sorry, but we don’t even know where we are. Do you think that you could drive us down to that beach down there?” asked Robbie pointing at The Beach.
“Sure why not.” replied Ben.

When we had arrived at the beach we were speechless. Where was all of the plane wreckage? “Where are we?” I whispered. “This beach looks exactly the same but what happened to the plane?”
“A plane... what plane? There never was a plane on this beach.” stated Ben.
“What is the date today?” asked Christian curiously.
Ben said “It is the 21st June 1979.”
“No, that’s not right it is around the 20th to the 22nd June 2010. I have been tracking the days.” said Robbie.
“No, I am pretty sure that it is the 21st June 1979.”
We all looked at each other. There were three things on my mind at the moment: Where are the others? How do we get off this island? And how is it 1979?
That is when I came to the conclusion that there was something seriously wrong with this island.