Almost Paradise

by April Hill

  “Yes,” Robin agreed, taking Jack’s arm in hers. “Gilligan was also the First Mate, as I remember it. Am I right, ‘Skipper’?”

  Jack grinned. “If you say so. I never cared much for the show.”

  Meredith made a sudden recovery, and flounced away, pouting, but wriggling as adorably as ever.

  “Looks like maybe we should have made three huts,” Jack observed, as he and McLean were finishing the roof.

  “Four,” McLean corrected him. “I believe we may soon require a dungeon.”

  When Meredith returned for dinner, her mood had improved, and she even complimented the men’s efforts. “It’s nice,” she commented.

  “I’m sure your unbridled enthusiasm makes all their hard work worthwhile,” Robin said caustically.

  Jack groaned. “Could you put a sock in it, Robin? Just for tonight?” He was hungry and tired, and he spoke softly, his comment meant for Robin alone. From long practice, though, Meredith’s antennae were fine-tuned to pick up just this sort of male-female friction. Jack was an attractive man, and now that Andrew McLean had proven a major disappointment, her radar was scanning the horizon for other romantic “blips.”

  “I’m really sorry you don’t like me, Robin.” Meredith began to sniffle piteously, a precursor, Emma knew, to the approaching cloudburst of faked tears. ”I just wanted to be friends, but if you’d rather I didn’t share the new place …Well, if it’ll make you happy, I’ll just sleep outside—by myself.”

  Robin sneered. “And eat worms, no doubt.” Sure enough, Meredith broke into a fit of weeping and sank to the sand, apparently overcome by the depth of her despair. Robin watched the performance for a moment, then walked to where Meredith lay prostrate with grief, took careful aim, and poured the remains of her stewed fish and wild onions dinner over Meredith’s freshly washed and beautifully coiffed hair.

  Meredith’s response was predictable, and loud.

  “I told you we’d need that dungeon,” McLean remarked to Jack as the battle started. He finished the last bites of his meal, seemingly indifferent to the major catfight that had erupted in the “dining room.” Meredith was on her feet, now, throwing every container, cooking utensil, and all the stray food she could lay her hands on. When her ammunition was depleted, she flew across the clearing and began flailing at Robin’s head with both clenched fists. Seconds later, they were on the ground, rolling around in the fish mess, and doing their best to tear out one another’s hair.

  Jack was exhausted and hungry, which probably accounted for his reacting the way he did. Andrew McLean, on the other hand, felt no hesitation and no compunctions at all about what he did next.

  Within seconds of the outbreak of hostilities, Jack grabbed Robin from behind, dragged her off Meredith’s back, and then tossed her over his knee with her shirt over her head, while Robin screamed in protest. Andrew McLean took somewhat longer to capture the escaping Meredith, who had dashed for the safety of the new hut. She had almost made it when she tripped on her own rhinestone sandals and landed face down in the sand. As she was trying to crawl away without being seen, McLean reached down and picked her up by the back of her bikini, then bent her over his muscled thigh and began spanking long and hard with the large, hand-carved wooden spoon only recently removed from the fish stew.

  “Let me GO! OW! OH! You goddamned– Stop it! I– OW! I didn’t do anything!” she shrieked. “Why don’t you spank that– OW! That rotten little BITCH, Robin. She’s the one who– OWW!”

  Actually, Meredith had begun screeching even before the first blow landed, possibly because she, better than anyone else present, had excellent reason to know what was coming. In addition to that, her lovely hindquarters were still tender from her earlier encounter with McLean’s temper, and even the hint of a repeat performance was not something she was ready for. Sensitive to the presence of another male, Andrew had thoughtfully left Meredith’s bottom clothed, although the skimpiness of her thong bikini offered little protection for her either her modesty (what there was of it) or her squirming backside.

  The wooden spoon proved to be an admirable tool for the job at hand, and within seconds, the cheeks of Meredith’s quivering buttocks were rosy with round, bright pink blotches the size of tennis balls. She was discovering, once again, that McLean was not a man to do things halfway. When there was no area on her ass that wasn’t completely aglow, he began on the backs of her thighs. Meredith shrieked and swore, and managed to run through her arsenal of expletives long before he had finished.

  Across the clearing, Meredith’s opponent in the fight was suffering a somewhat less painful walloping, despite having been the clear aggressor. Not only had Jack not lowered her shorts, but he was less than thirty seconds into the seriously hard spanking he had in mind when it occurred to him that he was embarrassing a woman for whom he had begun to care very much. He stopped spanking at once, gave her reddened bottom a final affectionate pat, then dropped her ragged shirt-tail and attempted to pass the incident off as a light-hearted-prank.

  “Next time, darling,” he said, adding a thin laugh, “see that you children play nicely.”

  Anxious to save face, Robin smiled sweetly, allowing him to get away with this lame explanation. Even in the short time she had spent across his knee, though, he had left her backside with a pretty good ache, and as she sat back down next to Emma to enjoy the remainder of Meredith’s humiliation, she did it carefully, perching on just the edge of her chair.

  “Does this happen a lot?” Emma asked mildly, nibbling on a piece of coconut and trying not to smile.

  “Maybe I should explain,” Robin said, in the most matter-of-fact way she could. “I’m what might be called a recovering brat, and what happened just now was…Well, it was sort of a small relapse, on my part.”

  Emma nodded. “And what Jack did cures it?”

  Robin grimaced. “Well, Jack sure as hell seems to think so.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” Emma apologized. “I’m only asking because of Meredith. About how long does it take, this cure?”

  Robin laughed. “In her case, I wouldn’t hold my breath. He seems very good at it, though, your Mr. McLean.”

  Emma flushed. “Oh, Mr. McLean’s not mine,” she said quickly.

  Robin laughed. “Sure he is. I know the symptoms.”

  During this exchange, poor Meredith was still “under the lash,” and shrieking bloody-murder. Just seconds earlier, she had forgotten herself and called Andrew McLean an “asshole cocksucker,” and was now being rewarded for her double mistake with a penalty session. McLean sighed, tightened his firm grip around Meredith’s waist, and rearranged her for a second round, this time with her own battered rhinestone sandal. Robin noticed with undisguised glee that the shoe in question made a very sharp, satisfying crack on the bare flesh of Meredith’s squirming rear end, and brought an extra-loud squall from the victim. (Meredith had paid an exorbitant price for the sandals at an exclusive Honolulu boutique, and they had never been comfortable, due to the same smooth, hard, un-giving leather soles that were now setting her ass on fire.)

  When the spanking finally ended, with the spanking, bobbed up and down on the sand, still howling, and holding her bottom with both hands. The howling segued quickly into blubbering, which continued until McLean leaned over and patted her bottom with the sandal, threatening to begin again. Meredith stopped in mid-blubber.

  As Robin and Emma walked back to the new hut, Emma smiled hesitantly, and asked Robin a question. “What you said back there? About Andrew liking me? Are you sure?”

  Robin nodded. “I’m sure. I’ve seen his eyes when he looks at you. The man is definitely smitten.” As they started inside, Meredith was standing with her back to them, rubbing her behind, and Robin peeked a quick look as they passed. “But after what I’ve seen tonight,” she said with a wink, “I’d try my damnedest to stay on the man’s good side.”

  * * *

  As they prepared to retire for the night, Meredith’s mood remaine
d sullen. She refused to come inside, and remained under a palm tree with her back to the hut, sniffling and pouting as she dried her hair. In order to get out the stink of fish, she had washed it in rainwater, with Jack’s permission—a great privilege, and one Robin didn’t dare to protest. After Robin’s “relapse,” Jack’s mood had also remained testy, and a second, less playful spanking remained an unspoken but very real possibility.

  When Emma continued to worry about Meredith, Robin scoffed. “She’ll be fine, take my word for it. As a half-reformed brat, I know the drill. Hey, I invented the drill. She’ll sit there and sulk until she thinks we’re all asleep, then sneak in and try to pretend she’s been outside all night. Wait ‘til the land crabs come out, or the damned rats. She’ll be in here like a shot.”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said uneasily. “Merrie can be pretty determined when she wants to.”

  Robin flopped onto the new, softer bunk. “I’m going to sleep. If the crabs start to carry her off, wake me up, though. I’d like to watch.”

  Finally, Emma gave up and went to bed, as well, listening to the clack clacking of the nightly parade of crabs as they marched up the beach. She smiled to herself. Meredith would be in soon, for sure.

  Emma was wrong. Morning arrived, and then noon, with no sign of Meredith. At one o’clock, the two women wandered off in opposite directions, calling for her, and combing the rocks and inlets. McLean and Jack tramped through the woods along the edge of the clearing, annoyed and hot.

  “If I find her first, do I get to wallop her?” Jack asked irritably. “Or do I have to turn her over to you?”

  “Which would you prefer?”

  “Take a guess!”

  McLean chuckled. “Well, then, lad, to the victor belong the spoils.”

  But by evening, no one had seen Meredith, and Emma was on the verge of panic. “Meredith just doesn’t do things like this!” she pleaded. “We have to go out again, and keep looking. She’s never stayed away this long. She only does it long enough to scare everyone.”

  “Who’s scared?” Robin snapped. “I couldn’t care less if she rots out there. Shit! Where are all the damned cannibals when you really need them?”

  When Jack shot her a warning look, Robin sat down demurely on a rock, and said nothing else. She could still feel the twinge of last night’s swats.

  “It’s getting dark,” he said, finally. “We’ll try again when it’s light.”

  “But she’ll be terrified, out there all alone, in the dark!” Emma cried.

  Jack touched her shoulder. “Look, Emma, I know you’re worried, but there’s nothing in the dark that’s not there during the daylight,” he said gently. “And I don’t really think there’s anything particularly dangerous out there, anyway, if she’ll just sit tight and wait for us to find her.”

  “But there’s still some light!”

  “Here, maybe, but not in the woods, and that’s probably where she is. Try to take it easy. We’ll start searching again just before daylight. Meredith is going to spend one hell of a scary night out in the woods, and she might even learn a lesson from it, who knows?”

  Reluctantly, Emma agreed, but when she went into the big hut to go to bed, she was still frantic with worry.

  “I’ll go in with her, Jack,” Robin said, “and see what I can do to calm her down.”

  “Thanks, Robin.” Before he thought about what he was doing, Jack leaned across and kissed her goodnight, very lightly, on the lips. Robin walked to the hut, and once inside, touched her mouth with her fingertips. “Well, what do you know?” she murmured.

  In spite of her fear, Emma was already fast asleep, so Robin dropped gratefully into her bunk. She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the improvised pillow.

  * * *

  Robin woke to a small sound across the room, and looked up just in time to see Emma slipping out the door. Robin leaped out of bed and ran after her,

  “What the hell are you doing?” she whispered.

  “I’m going to look for Merrie,” Emma said defiantly. “She’s out there somewhere, really scared. I know it!”

  “Wait until morning, and we’ll all…”

  “I’m going now, and if you tell anyone, Meredith will be in trouble, again. Andrew already embarrassed her once, today.”

  “Embarrassed her!” Robin yelped. “He should have hung her up by her damned thumbs! Besides, what do you think he’s going do when he does find her?”

  “I know you don’t like Meredith,” Emma said stubbornly, “but she’s my friend, and I’m going after her. If she’s back before morning, she can just say she went for a long walk, and got lost.”

  “Oh, all right!” Robin hissed. “I’ll go with you. Wait while I get my fucking shoes, will you?”

  A few minutes later, they were far enough away from the campsite to light a small torch without being seen. “My God!” Robin cried, as Emma pulled a transparent pink butane lighter from her pocket. “You’ve got a cigarette lighter! Where did you find that?”

  “Meredith smokes,” Emma said. “She’s been hiding this and two packs of Marlboros ever since we got shipwrecked. I found it last night, in her stuff. And I’ve had to make fires the hard way for weeks!”

  Robin rolled her eyes. “And this is the person you’re risking your butt for?”

  “She’s still my best friend.”

  “Some friend,” Robin scoffed. “All right, your call. Which direction do we try first?”

  Emma looked around. In the darkness, everything looked the same, frightening. “That way, I think—down the beach. I don’t think Merrie would have gone into the woods, alone. She gets lost at the mall! I’ll bet she just went too far in the direction of those the rocks, and couldn’t get back before dark.”

  They walked along the beach as far as they could go, until they reached the crumbling cliff, with its avalanche of boulders.

  “I don’t want to scare you,” Robin said, “but if she tried to climb over these rocks, something bad might have happened. “The waves here can get huge!”

  Emma held the torch out in front of her as far as she could reach and peered up the side of the cliff. “She wouldn’t do that. Aerobics, yes. Pilates, maybe, but a real climb, no way!” She pointed to a spot at the very top of the rockslide. “What’s that up there? On the right?”

  Robin stared upward. “I don’t see anything.”

  “That kind of open area? In the brush?”

  Robin looked again. “Yeah, I see it. So?”

  “It looks like an opening. Maybe a covered ledge? A small cave, maybe?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Why would she crawl into something like that, for God’s sake?”

  “To sulk, to scare us, who knows? This is Meredith we’re talking about, not a normal human being.”

  Robin groaned. “If she’s there, I warn you right now, I’m going to kill her.”

  “If she’s there,” Emma said grimly, “I’ll help you!”

  A full hour later, they had climbed to the top of the rock pile, where they did find a narrow ledge, along with a low entranceway to what looked from outside like a small cave.

  Emma leaned down to peer inside, moving the torch around. “It looks empty.”

  Robin swore as she crawled on her hands on knees though the opening. “Do they have Grizzly bears on islands like this?”

  “No. Maybe wild boars,” Emma said, crawling right behind her.

  Robin swore again. “Promises, promises! I’ve been waiting for pork chops since we got here! What’s that revolting smell?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe mold or mildew?”

  “I don’t think so. How long does it take a human body to rot?”

  “Stop it!” Emma wailed.

  “Sorry. Besides, it can’t be Meredith,” Robin giggled. “Only the good die young. Give me the torch for a minute. I see something ahead.”

  “What is it?” Emma asked breathlessly.

  “There’s sort of a turn, like a tunnel. I think w
e can stand up here, if we’re careful.”

  They stood up. Suddenly, the flame on their small torch began to waver, and then went out. “Shit!” cried Robin. “Can you light it again?”

  “I can’t find the lighter!”

  “Terrific!”

  “No! Wait, here it is!” Emma flicked the lighter, and touched the sharp blue flame to the bundle of bamboo that Jack had covered with pitch. “There!” The torch came to life, but dimmer now, the flame uneven and flickering. “I don’t think there’s enough oxygen in here.”

  Robin swore, and moved ahead, feeling her way along the damp wall. “God! What is that smell?” She took another step, and reached back for Emma’s hand. “Easy, here. There’s some sort of …”

  Suddenly, Robin screamed, and then plummeted downward, swearing at the top of her lungs as she rolled and bumped down what felt like a long, rocky tunnel. Pulled along with her, Emma tumbled down just inches behind, shouting Robin’s name into the darkness. The torch had gone out.

  Robin landed on something wet and slippery, and a second later, Emma thudded directly into her. When both women whooped with pain, their combined expletives echoed around what seemed to be an enormous cavern, endlessly repeating the words “shit” and “fuck this” until the sounds were too faint to recognize. There was a moment of silence, an odd ruffling noise, and then with a sudden rush of stagnant air and musky odor as the cave erupted into sound and movement. Just over their heads, they could feel, rather than hear, a deafening “whoosh,” accompanied by a cacophony of piercing, high pitched squeals. The two women covered their ears, and a second later, as they cringed against the rocks, a stifling wave of the same overpowering stench they had noticed earlier now made the air almost unbreathable. Gagging already from the odor, Emma recognized the familiar burning sensation searing her nose and throat as ammonia

  “Bats!” she shouted, barely audible over the rush of what sounded like millions of wings and the painfully high squeals of half as many bats. Robin and Emma crouched against the wall of the cave, covering their heads and noses, while Emma tried frantically to light the torch.