... the sun is already below the horizon as she wakes up. There is still a purple hue to the western sky above the ocean, but behind her... inland... it's dark. She's confused and shakes her head to try and rid it of its muzziness; she must have fallen asleep in the heat of the afternoon. Never mind... it's only a ten minute walk beyond the end of the cove back to the hotel.
There's just enough light left to gather her towel and beach bag before setting out, she puts her slip-ons into the bag and, liking the feel of sand between her toes, sets off towards the low cliffs at the far end of the beach. She notices that inland there are no lights showing although there is a vague orange glow beyond the end of the bay that she assumes are from the veranda bar at the hotel.
As she walks she can't help but smile at the memories of last night in the bar... as she reaches the headland, there's a noise of to her right and is startles her... there it is again, the crunching of an unseen persons feet on the coarse wet sand... she reacts quickly, reaching into her bag as she turns towards the noise in a second she has her head torch out and uses both hands to put it on before her left drops back to the bag whist dropping low into a defensive stance with her right hand held forward ready to fend off. Her left hand re-emerges with a short can of mace before she switches the light on...
There five metres in front of her a large female turtle drags herself away from the surf and up the beach. It's fantastic and as she watches, the reptile blinks thick tears in the torchlight before returning its full attention back to dragging itself towards a suitable nest site at the top of the beach. Claire shines the torch back up the beach and sees that there are other dark shapes emerging from the surf.
She puts the mace back into her bag and removes the slim pink digital camera that she always carries with her. In twenty minutes she's taken fifty shots in the torchlight and is deliriously skipping around the headland towards a shower and then dinner when the beam from her torch picks out the men collecting buckets of eggs from the turtle's nests at the end the beach that the hotel faces out on to.
Before she's even considered what it is that she's witnessing, the man closest to her drops his bucket as he flings something at the torch... too late she reacts and hasn't even started to bend at her knees when the short handled shovel smacks her sharply on the forehead...
Who the fuck are you?
There's a seconds hesitation before something ice cold and wet is splashed into her face, she jerks her head away and feels the seat that she's in tilt backwards onto two legs... someone behind her pushes it roughly back to level. She opens her eyes, there's no time to see any details of her surroundings as her attention is taken up entirely by the face that is suddenly only a few inches away from her. Wrinkled by the sun and tanned almost to the hue of old leather, watery blue eyes seem lit up against the dark skin. A westerner?
I asked who the fuck you are?
He speaks from the corner of his mouth through lips bulging around the unlit remnants of a soggy looking cigar. There is no anger in his eyes... but no sign of any humour either. She's not fast enough in answering as his hand snakes up between them and grips her face by her cheeks...
I checked girl, you ain't lost your tongue, and I think you'll find that Michel behind you
is running right out of the little patience that the possesses
...
and you are going to like
him getting involved with this short question and answer session than if we do it the easy way.
She pulls her head back out of his grasp...
My name is Claire Martin and I'm staying at the hotel just up from where you kidnapped me... I'm from Devon in England, here for two weeks holiday... why am I here?
She looks around... behind her interrogator there's a low table with a telephone sitting atop a stack of directories in front of a whitewashed wall with an unvarnished door, half open onto a veranda and darkness beyond.
He stands and turns away from her...
Shit!... shit, shit, shit, shit, shit... I'm out of it man... you do whatever you feel you have to, but I'm not getting involved...
And he's gone... out of the door and away into the darkness. She tries to turn her head but she's held in the chair by something that is bound around her upper torso and something else across her thighs... she looks down and sees that her bindings seem to be a pair of flower printed curtains. She feels his hot breath against her ear as a voice like washed gravel drawls slowly... each 't' liberally pronounced with a splattering of saliva against the side of her face.
Now then what am I going to do with you then?
The blow to the side of her neck is expertly applied and she relapses once more into unconsciousness.
-----------------------------------
She comes to, naked and spread-eagled and tied to a bed in a different room, there's no-one else there and she realises that the curtains that had held her previously probably had covered the window in here. There are no lights showing through the darkness beyond the open window and she's trying to decide on whether or not she should shout for help when the bedroom door is opened. This time there are three of them, all big brawny men, as they come in, first one and then the others start to remove their shorts.
They all look vaguely alike, and the thought passes through her mind that they might be brothers... or, at most distant, cousins... this was after all a very small island quite a long way from its nearest neighbours. Each of them is overweight, not obese but carrying thirty or forty pounds they didn't need if they wanted to appease her tastes in men... but that didn't look as if it was a consideration that they might endorse. There was a near carpet of black entangled hair that ran from above each pair of nipples to almost halfway down their legs, she couldn't help but notice that they had small dicks, oddly her mind threw out the idea that their endowments would probably look smaller than they actually were against the slight rolls of fat that they carried all over.