Donna woke to the sound of the waves crashing and the wind rustling in the trees. She opened her eyes slowly, getting accustomed to the glaring sunlight. She could also feel the cold water as the waves lapped against the right side of her body. Still lying down, she moved her head so she could try and figure out where she was. She looked up and saw that the beach seemed to carry on, almost to the horizon. To her right, the sapphire-blue water glided slowly up and down the white-gold sand, while in the distance she could see the waves, terrifying with a white foamy head crashing down, before mellowing out as they got closer to land. She looked to her left and saw that there was a dense forest of impossibly tall palm trees. Donna squinted into the trees, but couldn't see beyond the first few trunks, such was the thickness of the foliage. She wiggled her fingers and toes, before slowly sitting up. She felt incredibly sore, the kind of sore you feel a day after completing your first workout in months. Her arms and legs ached and, as she looked down at her body, she saw that she was covered in small cuts and bruises.
"What the fuck happened?" She said, half to herself, and half to anyone that might have been around. When she received no answer (unsurprisingly) she gradually got to her feet, wincing as she did so. She looked down at herself again and saw that her outfit was in ruins. The strings of her bikini top were nearly all frayed, only one or two strands keeping everything in place. Further down, her sarong skirt had been turned into nothing more than a series of ribbons that hung around her waist, though thankfully the bikini bottoms she had on were still largely all there, meaning her modesty wasn't too ruined. She looked back up and across the sand. Now that she was standing up and more focussed on what was in front of her, she saw that what looked like a large amount of debris had washed up. She started walking towards it, unsteadily at first, but getting more confident with each step. She reached the first piece of debris and saw that it was just driftwood, clearly part of a bigger piece of wood that had been snapped completely. What had brought all this up? A storm? Donna looked out over the ocean. The waves on the horizon were still looking quite vicious, it was certainly possible that was the storm in question. She kept on walking, passing cupboards that had had their contents spilled out on the sand, furniture that could only now be used as firewood (and even then, with a thorough drying out) and more smashed pieces of wood until she saw one that looked vaguely intact. She walked over to it and knelt down next to it. The wood looked like it had been shaped properly and so she ran her hand over it, to clear off the sand and seaweed, so that she could read it. The sign simply said Amazon. All of a sudden, Donna's memories seem to come flooding back.
The Amazon had been the yacht that Donna had spent the past week sailing on. With the k**s at college, both her and her husband had decided to go to the Caribbean on a sailing vacation. Donna could remember her husband selling the idea to her all over again and she replayed the memories as she kept walking along the beach.
"Baby, two weeks in the sun, going wherever we want -- island hopping, cruising, or just sailing out to where no one else is around us and enjoying the sun. All you'd have to do is pack as many bikinis as you want, lie back on the deck and the crew can bring you as many cocktails as you want while you top up your tan and the sea breeze helps you drift off to sleep..." he'd said. Donna had never had an interest in sailing before, but he had made it sound quite nice. Of course, things were different when they had arrived in Barbados. Craig, her husband, hadn't booked a crew at the same time that he had chartered the yacht and the only crew available at such short notice was incredibly expensive. Of course, he didn't want to pay that much money and was confident that he could sail the yacht all by himself. Brushing Donna's protests aside ("yes, I'll do the sailing, the cooking, the cleaning, and I'll bring you the Mai Tais"), the two of them had boarded a yacht that was too big for two people to live on, never mind two people to crew it. Craig had done an okay job as the sole crewmember for the first week or so, mainly because the yacht never really got up to speed and rarely ventured far beyond the safety of the marina. And, of course, the one time that they decided to risk it and venture out to the next island, the storm came along, blew them off course, smashed up their yacht and left her stranded on an island in the middle of god-knows-where. 'Well', she thought, looking at the sign, 'looks like we won't be getting that deposit back any time soon'.
The moment she said that, she felt a pang of guilt. Her first thought had been about the money she had lost on the yacht, not about her husband. She had no idea where he was, and if he was still alive. A lump formed in her throat as she thought about it, but she blinked her eyes furiously and forced the lump back down. She wasn't going to sit here and cry about it. She was going to find him. No doubt he was doing the same -- eventually they would have to bump into each other, right?
"And when I find him," Donna said, quickening her pace up the beach, "he's going to wish he was dead." Her feet kicked up the sand as she walked, almost ran, up and over sand dune after sand dune. Each time she got to the top of one, she stopped and looked out over the land, trying to find her husband, or more debris that might lead her to him. But nothing came up, beyond the usual mess of wood and metal. Finally she climbed up the highest sand dune out of all of them and looked down at the scene of carnage below her.
