The Island of No Escape
- Pishaach
- Feb 21
- 5 min read
Liam’s eyes fluttered open to a sky smeared with bruised clouds. His head throbbed, sand caked his face, and salt burned his lips. Disoriented, he pushed himself up, coughing seawater from his lungs.
Waves clawed at the shoreline behind him as if trying to reclaim him.
Where was he?
Memories came in fragments, the yacht, the sudden storm, darkness swallowing everything. His crew was gone.
He scanned the horizon. No boats, no buildings, only dense trees standing like a wall against the beach. The island stretched out in both directions, the shoreline curving out of sight.
He was alone.
Then, something glinted in the sand nearby, his satellite phone. Relief surged through him, but when he picked it up, the screen was cracked, lifeless.
His gaze drifted inland. The forest loomed, dense and shadowed.
Birds didn’t sing. The wind didn’t rustle the branches. The world felt held in a breath that wouldn’t release.
He ventured toward the trees, unaware that footprints formed behind him, without anyone there to make them.
A Forest That Watches
Branches clawed at his clothes as Liam pushed into the jungle. The air thickened with humidity, stifling and clinging to his skin.
Every step squelched in mud, and the deeper he went, the more the outside world felt like a dream slipping away.
He found a narrow path, overgrown but worn as if someone had walked it recently. His stomach twisted.
Was the island inhabited?
A small clearing appeared ahead. In its centre stood a wooden signpost, letters faded but legible enough to read one word:
“STAY.”
Stay? Stay where? Stay away?
Ignoring the warning, he continued until something crunched underfoot. He looked down.
There were bones. Animal or human? His mind recoiled from the thought.
Further on, a dilapidated hut emerged from the foliage. Its thatched roof sagged, walls weathered by time. Cautiously, he stepped inside. Dust motes hung suspended in the stale air.
A journal lay on the table, pages curled and yellowed. He opened it, scanning the shaky handwriting:
"If you’re reading this, leave. Don’t let the island keep you. It doesn’t let anyone go."
His throat tightened. A shadow passed the doorway. Liam spun around, but there was nothing.
And yet, the smell of decay crept into the room, thick and inescapable.
Echoes of the Lost
Dusk crept in too fast, shadows lengthening into strange shapes. Liam stumbled back to the beach, hoping to spot a rescue ship, anything, but the horizon stretched empty under a sky now bruised with twilight.
Setting up a makeshift camp, he lit a small fire. Its flickering light cast uneasy shadows across the sand.
Hunger gnawed at him, but fear swallowed his appetite.
Then he heard it, a faint melody, delicate and distant, like a music box playing just beyond hearing.
His muscles tensed. “Hello?”
The melody stopped.
Breath quick and shallow, he scanned the darkness. Stars blinked overhead, remote, uncaring.
Footsteps crunched in the sand behind him.
He turned fast, only to see an empty shoreline. Yet prints formed, one after another, approaching. Invisible feet moving closer.
Heart pounding, Liam backed away. “Stay back!”
No one was there. Only the prints halting inches away, then shifting sideways, circling him.
A sharp, cold pain bloomed across his arm. Looking down, four thin scratch marks appeared, bleeding freely.
Adrenaline surged. He sprinted toward the trees, breath rasping, heart hammering like a war drum.
Leaves rustled, branches clawed, but that wasn’t what sent dread lancing through him.
It was the laughter.
Light, childlike, echoing between the trunks.
He ran faster.
The Island Breathes
Night settled like a suffocating blanket. Liam’s limbs burned with exhaustion, yet he couldn’t stop, not when the forest seemed to shift around him, paths looping back to places he’d already fled.
His flashlight flickered, casting beams that stretched shadows into impossible lengths. Trees seemed to lean closer, branches curling like grasping fingers.
He tripped over something solid.
It was another skeleton, arms outstretched toward a rusted flare gun lying just beyond reach.
Scrambling, he grabbed the gun. One shot. That’s all.
He stumbled into another clearing. A massive stone altar loomed, weathered and stained dark.
It had symbols etched deep and glowed faintly.
Blood. Old, dried... and some still fresh.
His mind reeled. Ritual? Cult?
But it wasn’t the altar that made his chest seize with fear, it was the figure standing across from it.
A woman. Pale, clothes tattered, hair hanging like a wet rope. Her eyes, black, depthless, locked onto his.
“Why?” Liam’s voice cracked. “What do you want?”
Her lips parted. No words, only that melody, humming from her throat.
Frozen, he couldn’t move until she reached out, and his vision snapped to darkness.
No Way Out
He woke on the beach again, as if the nightmare had rewound. Same sky. Same waves.
Only, the hut was gone. No footprints in the sand. No evidence of the night’s horrors.
Had he imagined it?
Then he saw the scratch marks on his arm, red, raw. Real.
Shaking, he raised the flare gun, aimed at the sky. Fired.
A brilliant red arc shot upward. Relief flickered.
The flare hung too long, defying gravity.
And then, slowly descended, embedding itself into the sand beside him, still burning.
His chest heaved, panic clawing. He ran along the shore. Hours or minutes passed, time twisted on itself.
He stopped.
Ahead, his own footprints trailed the sand. He followed them, straight back to where he started.
The sea stretched vast and empty, mocking escape. He threw a rock into the waves.
It splashed.
Then, from beneath, a hand broke the surface, skeletal fingers clawing air before sinking again.
His scream tore through the emptiness.
The Island that cannot be Escaped
Days, or was it hours?.
Hunger became a dull ache, thirst a burning constant. Sanity frayed.
The woman appeared again, distant yet everywhere. Her black eyes watched from treetops, shorelines, and reflections in puddles.
“You can’t leave,” she finally spoke with a voice like wind through hollow bones.
Liam collapsed to his knees. “Why me?”
“It chooses,” she said. “You stayed.”
“I didn’t—!”
“You stayed.”
Rage flared. He sprinted toward her, arms outstretched. Hands passed through the air. She dissolved into mist.
Exhausted, and broken, he fell onto the sand, stars spinning above.
And then, boats appeared.
Real ones. Figures waved, calling out. Hope flared wild and painful.
He stood, stumbling toward the water.
A rope was thrown. He caught it and pulled aboard.
“Easy,” a man said. “You’re safe now.”
Tears burned his eyes. “I thought—”
The boat engine roared.
He glanced back at the island, but it was GONE.
He exhaled, relief flooding him. Then he noticed the crew.
Same black eyes. Same empty smiles.
The boat turned, toward the island, no longer gone.
Closer. Closer.
Liam’s scream echoed across the waves—Swallowed whole.
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