When Carrie’s boat ran aground on the remote island she was
afraid, but the Paradisians welcomed her to their village. At night were
parties, by day she told stories of adventures at sea to an admiring
crowd. Almost immediately she had a best friend called Jenna and a lover,
Zak. Zak was good looking, intelligent and tall. He and Carrie went
for long moonlight walks together and made love under the stars.
One night there was a party to celebrate Jenna’s birthday.
Carrie woke the next morning to find herself lying on a beach at the other side
of the island freezing cold and without possessions. When she got to the
village, she found the walls were up and the gate was closed.
“Hello!” she shouted when she saw people she knew go by; “it’s
Carrie, let me in!”
They turned their backs on her.
Carrie waited all day. She saw Jenna pass and called, only
to be ignored. She could hear music and laughter coming from the
restaurants and bars she used to frequent. After a cold night sleeping
outside, the smell of bread woke her. Through the bars of the gate, she
could see the bakery and its customers with their morning pastries.
Hunger drove her into the woods where she found fruit to keep her going, but it
was nothing like the meals she’d had in the village.
Carrie was a survivor, but to experience sudden hardship after
luxury was a shock and she didn’t know why. On the third day she saw Zak
again, standing outside the bar nearest the gate with his friends.
“Zak!” she cried, “please let me back in! What have I done?”
“God’s sake!” snapped one of Zak’s friends, “such a drama queen!”
“Completely crazy,” Zak shrugged, “if we ignore her, she might go
away.”
Their faces were so hostile, Carrie felt her control slip.
She rocked back and forth, hugging herself, crying in full view. A small
crowd gathered, but no-one came forward.
“Such a cry baby,” Jenna said.
Despair and emptiness gripped Carrie, she ran through the woods
and down to the beach. She was not a Paradisian, this was not home, but
she’d thought the people here had accepted her. Suddenly she longed for
the dull, but safe town she’d grown up in and rejected. She stared at the
sea, her unseaworthy boat wreck was still clinging to the rocks. There
was no escape.
She thought of living off the land, making a shelter and catching
fish, but how could she when just round the corner was a wonderful village
filled with beautiful people? She’d hear their music everywhere and the
knowledge of their sudden unexplained hatred for her would never go away.
Carrie made a decision. She walked towards the sea, picking up pebbles
and putting them into her pockets. She would swim until exhausted, then
hopefully it would be over …
The next thing Carrie knew she was coughing up sea water on the
sand, rough hands gripped her shoulders, shaking her.
“You stupid bitch!” it was Zak’s voice, “how could you be so
selfish!”
“So attention seeking,” the derogative tone of Jenna.
“Don’t you ever do that again!”
They walked away and left her, wet to the skin, alone on the
beach.
“Please!” she shouted after them, “tell me what I did!
Please!”
They kept on walking.
A few weeks later, in the early hours of the morning, Carrie
scaled the village wall. She had done so for the last three nights.
On the first she had picked the lock of the hardware store and taken fuel and
matches from the storeroom. On the second and third she had hidden the
fuel in strategic locations throughout the village. Now she
barricaded the doors of the buildings they slept in, started the fire and
watched from the woods as it tore through the village. The Paradisians
didn’t stand a chance. Most died in their beds or trying to get out of
their homes. The few who made it out were unaccustomed to living rough and
succumbed to exposure and starvation.
Carrie often went down to the burned out shell of the
village. She watched the carrion birds pecking at the bones of the dead
and felt at peace. After all, she had not been one of them.
