CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HANK
One week later...
I drag my fingers through my scraggly beard as I stand on a small cliff, urinating onto the land below. It’s early morning, and the island that has become our entire universe is just waking up.
Our island. The hellish paradise that is home to me and Elliot. The speck of land that ships near without ever arriving.
I feel like I’m stuck in a Greek myth. Tantalus with the fruit he can never eat, or Odysseus, with magical winds driving me to crash and never escape.
I must be the wilderness man now. It is the only way to survive and to keep castaway Elliot safe, too. He is everything to me here. Companion. Partner. Lover.
He is life.
I return to the shelter, and Elliot and I start our morning like every other. Dwindling and shriveled violet greens, creek water, and a cold dip. Together, he and I tend the wood and forage. A storm has destroyed our dry signals and scattered the branches, so we work on constructing yet another. The signal fires areready to go at the first actual break in the weather, the wood stored under the original shelter spot to keep dry.
But the truth is that we never complete the signals and we never light the fires because it always rains on penis island. The rain is important. It reminds me that we are doomed.
After bathing, Elliot and I walk home, hand in hand. He’s naked, and I’m in my tattered suit pants, and we’re both damp from the swim and the steady sprinkle. My feet are covered in cuts, painful even with cattail shoes, but I’ve found a new way to walk on my heels.
“I’m excited about tonight,” Elliot says. His eyes are hollow, his face gaunt, and his hair is sticking out all over the place.
“It’s a good idea.” I’m very lightheaded, so I slow our pace as I heel-waddle. “I don’t know why it’s taken this long to have a dinner date.”
“Because someone works too much,” Elliot teases and bumps me with his hip, which almost sends me tumbling to the ground, but he manages to steady us.
Back home, Elliot and I stretch out on the dried needle bed. Decorative wildflowers are splayed by our heads, and a damp pile of seaweed rests on a rock, although it never manages to cut the hunger pains.
We stare at the forest for a while in silence.
Elliot buries his hand in my beard. “Do you think you’ll keep getting hairier as you get older?” he asks.
Even though I don’t like my beard, I like that Elliot likes it, considering I don’t have any option but to leave it unshaved at the moment.
On the island, I have a beard. I accept this along with everything else.
“I don’t know. I guess it seems to go that way in my family.”
“Cool,” Elliot says, delighted. “I like knowing that.”
I pull him to me, hugging him to my chest for the full-body contact we both love. We’re gritty and weak, but it still feels good to grope each other, kissing without having to think.
“You’re still so burly,” he says and kisses my neck. “Even without meals and stuff.”
His beard tickles my neck, and I let out a little huff as I push him gently away.
Elliot grabs my ass, rubbing my cheek. “Can I?”
“I’m only comfortable with that in the water.”
He takes my hand. “Then let’s go to the water.”
When we step out from under our cliff, the sun is emerging between the clouds. We get these glorious moments, at most an hour or two. The air warms and the birds all come out, and spring resurrects itself until the storms return.
We wade in the cove up to our waists, and the Orcas jump in the distance. We look between each other and the dancing, threatening whales. We kiss and jerk each other off, and our weak bodies shake with pleasure.
I wash myself with one hand, and Elliot gets down on his knees behind me. My breath jumps in my throat when he grabs my ass cheeks, and a zing shoots down to my base when he pulls me open.
