Renee sat in the sand, watching from afar as David shoveled relentlessly. His boxy frame stood against the clear blue sky, such a contrast to the smoggy clouds of Hollywood, as he shoveled into the ground, wearing a pair of faded jeans they had salvaged from his suitcase in the plane. He had picked the perfect spot to bury her only minutes after her heart stilled: at the rocky outlook, stretching into the ocean like a pissed-off middle finger. After he had wiped his tears, he had jumped into the back of the plane and with strong resolution dragged a digging shovel (why there was a shovel in there Renee could only guess) and began hacking at the ground. By now he had been going non-stop for three hours, in the baking sunlight.

Meanwhile, Jon had gotten a tarp from the back of the plane and did what he could to prepare the two bodies for burial. It hadn’t taken him long to do; there really was no need to cut Y incisions in their chests; there would be no operation, just wrapping them up. It had been enough, however. He had come to her, sobbing, tears in his eyes, repressed memories surfacing from nightmarish years of being a mortician. Countless nights before had Jon woken up beside her, thrashing, screaming about the infantile incest victim who had been fucked like a toy doll until her legs snapped back…

He said only one thing to her after he had cleansed his hands in the crystal clear Water. "That could have been me."

No, Renee thought as she glanced at the silhouette darkened against the unforgiving noon sky. I wouldn’t let you die. Never. But I let Shannon die. I did that to such a wonderful man. I ruined his life. It’s my fault. But was it, really? Was it her fault? If it weren’t for her, Jon would have surely died, as well as David, perhaps. And Shannon was gone either way, which was a definite. Who knows? Renee, herself, may have died, too. But if she’d had enough energy…always if. Always if.

As she watched David, she developed a violent tug of thirst. She feared going back into the plane; all the instant memories would overwhelm her and then maybe, just maybe, the whole situation would hit her. Besides, there was probably only fucking alcohol in the plane. The pilot had been a total washout, had given into the pressures of the exhausted yawns of his passengers. They said yawns were contagious, and Renee had always believed it, for better or worse, though she knew now that it would be a long while before they slept again. At least that was her consensus: that the pilot had fallen asleep. Even then she didn’t quite know what had happened. Maybe he had started drinking when the others had nodded off. Maybe Shannon had distracted him somehow. Maybe during a faux nosedive they had not been able to divert it, and had both watched on in silent horror as it slowly descended toward the island where Renee and Shannon’s betrothed lay on the beach, that Hare beckoning Renee to Wonder Land…

There has to be alcohol somewhere in this place. Something to drink, Renee thought, almost frantically, as she entered the plane, its insides now bloody and gutted, as if it were now the intact skin of a sentient being. Jon had run quite swiftly across the island; he said that there was a thick ridge of wooded area, and then another coast. Maybe a quarter of a mile wide. Not a thick island. A long one, however, and he was afraid of being led astray. He felt guilty over Shannon’s death, but Renee knew that he had no idea. She didn’t want to see the bodies anymore. Though she loved David, she didn’t want to see Shannon’s body even more than she would have wanted to see Jon’s.

She hoisted herself through the small door using all of her strength, and pressed a white Keds onto the back of the suspended leather seat she had sat in, now nearly parallel to the ground. It was dark; she asked Jonathan to come over. Jon asked her if she wanted to use his cigarette lighter, but she said that they shouldn’t use it yet; it was the most important item that they had. Whatever that meant. Jonathan thought that they wouldn’t need fire in this blistering weather. She told him that she was going to "feel around". She was afraid what she might find as her warding hands cautiously ventured into the crowded bowels of the plane. Now, it smelled much worse than it had before: rotted ass and foul meat. She found their suitcases, as well as a shitload of other junk: vodka, gin, and champagne bottles, blankets that smelled like bad cod (some with rather mysterious stains), cigarettes, matches, hooks and line for fishing, thermoses filled with rotted food (she had felt like a child at a horribly misled haunted house mystery substance tester during that), a jack knife, Doritos, paper, trail mix, Playboy Magazines, and, lastly, a box of super-small condoms. Wonderful survival kit. Renee wondered what they were going to do as she grabbed the bottles of alcohol; she wondered where there would most likely be a stream. The ocean would only provide a possible sort of food. The food, would in fact, make their situation worse. Anything from the ocean would be high in sodium, speeding up the dehydration process…

Stop it, Renee thought as her sensible brain kicked into gear…The alcohol would do nothing but cause dissention, creating an emotional outlet for Jonathan and David during a troubled time…as they all died slowly under this unrelenting sun. Living on sparse coconut juice (if they could find a way to crack open the rock hard shells), they would eventually go insane…and…what else was that?

Parched lips…condensed urination…increase chance of urinary infection…as alcohol enters the body it combines with H2O molecules to form a toxin the kidney must clear from the blood stream…the average body can function well a little more than ten days without food…the body can go two days without Water before dehydration becomes a crippling, fatal state, by that time irreversible…

It may be a dehydrate; it may be terrible for him; it may be the wrong thing; but David needed a drink, and Renee was going to bring it to him. It may make him thirsty, but it would help, if only temporarily. And it would show that she cared. The hot sand of the beach sprinkled over her feet as she walked. It took all of her strength to make it up to the beach ridge where David was. Her forehead secreted small rivulets of precious Water. Nevertheless, she took a tangent sip of the wine before she called for David. He was up to his strong shoulders in sand, the dirt flying maniacally over his shoulder, the dark, rich earth, and perhaps so cool, such a contrast from the hot pinpricks of white sand adorning the marvelous beach. She thought differently when she actually saw his dirty face. Dirt. From head to toe. Laced. He was laced with it. And all the same, he looked delicious.

Stop it. You’re husband’s down there, crying, wondering. He needs you now; David needs you; they both need you. Don’t be thinking like that. The sad truth about it was that she couldn’t help it in the least.

He was thankful to her for thinking of him, though he didn’t talk—just nodded his head, tipped his blonde locks toward the sun—and chugged until the bottle was half-gone. When he was done, she said carefully, "There’s only one grave."

"I know," he answered sullenly. "That other—" he shook his head, hung it below his strong shoulder line. He stood before her then, not the tall and strong man, but the confused and scared little boy she was so convinced that he was. She knew she should touch him, but refrained all the same. What if Jon saw? He wouldn’t care. Yes, he would. And that’s why she didn’t do it. There was nothing going on though, was there?

"Oh," she sobbed. Something snapped within her; the whole situation crashed upon her thin shoulders as soon as the sob let loose, a moaning cry. No matter how strong you are, no matter how tough, when it comes down to it, when you know you’re going to die, nothing matters. Renee knew, in that moment, that her life had changed indefinitely: the tight rope that was her fate had snapped and was now dwindling haphazardly over the dark side of an eternal abyss. Inside of her something pulsed, withered and died. She felt it so profoundly that her breath stopped. David’s strong arms broke her sudden fall. His arms were around her, holding her up with effortless ease as she sobbed again. She didn’t want to say it, but she knew that she had to all the same. "We’re going to die," she said, sure of the words as soon as she felt them linger on her lips.

She couldn’t have predicted his answer in a thousand years. "No, we’re not."

"What?"

"We’re not going to die."

"How do you know?"

"I don’t know." He lied.

An image flashed into her mind. She saw what she had always feared, looking into those soft brown eyes. The Cat, she was sure, pointed toward the plane, toward where Jonathan sat, his head in his hands. Jon looked up at them. She thought of that Cheshire, of its grin, so perfectly staining his arm. The skin was covered with a thin film of dirt…

He frowned in confusion for a reason she couldn’t interpret. Their gaze broke and he took his large hands from around both of her wrists. Before she could say another word, he picked up his shovel, stretched into the sunlight, groaned, and broke ground for a grave ten feet farther out. He broke ground for the grave of the man who had killed his family.

And he did it for Renee.

…………………………………

Night was a vampire, leaving all behind it drawn, pale and distraught. The velvet wings of its black cape covered the sky, the holes in it from years of wear showing through, twinkling down to the world he so greedily tried to cover. The beach the three were stranded on had been warm and vacation-like in the day. Now that night had fallen, the ominous white stretches and the way the wavelets licked the sand hinted at omniscience. It was devastatingly mysterious…and, except for the largest hole in the vampire’s cloak—the moon—there was no light in which they conducted the funeral ceremony of Shannon Silveria and the nameless pilot.

Jon was Atheist; he didn’t know the formalities of funeral services, though he had been to many in his years as a mortician. They had neither the time nor the utilities to build coffins for the unfortunate, and so they merely lugged the bodies—each wrapped in a blanket—and carefully lowered them into the ground. David remained dreadfully silent, his head bent, as the two men shoveled the dirt over them. They all stood over the fresh mounds for a long time, until David started to speak, startling both Jon and Renee.

"I—Shannon, I don’t know how to start saying this. I wish I could have spent my life with you, but seeing as this was not His plan—" (he could barely choke out ‘His’) "my life seems empty. I remember when we first met, you and me, in the hallways at school, and I thought that my life would never be better than at that moment. Some say they knew whom they were going to marry since the first moment they saw them; I was one of those people. I know, in my heart, that you were, too.

"Me and you, we kept absolutely no secrets. You knew everything about me, and me about you. When we—" the darkness of the crickets surrounded all, and he knelt down, eyes glazed, fully absorbed. Renee grabbed hold of Jon’s bony hand; buried herself in his warmth as David continued on shamelessly. He, too, had nothing to hide. The crickets chirped in tune, a mating call. "When we first made love, we weren’t just kids, then. We were adults. You were so wonderful, and I, well, I—"

"David, we all really loved her a whole lot," Jon assured. He reached for David, but David swapped him away. Before anyone could say anything else, he ran into the fringe of the forest. Renee called for him, but Jon quieted her. The couple slept in the curiously stained blankets, shivering despite each other’s warmth, and Renee fell asleep thinking that she would never see the grin of the terribly malicious Cat ever again. And they would have to eventually dig another mound in the middle finger sticking from the island. If they lived to find his dead body.