open(ly furious)

[afterglowing]

Deirdre is sitting on the beach, her knees pressed to her chest, bleached blonde hair clinging to her face in salty clumps. She isn't doing anything, not even thinking about her situation, just staring out at the sea. The gentle roll of the surf is entrancing. Under different circumstances, she might be paying a shitload of money for the pleasure of catching some sun on this island. String bikini, sunglasses, a drink with a fucking fruit salad in it... She probably couldn't even afford a vacation like that. The waves keep brushing the tips of her boots. Finally it's too much for her to take.

"Motherfucker!" she hollers, rocketing to her feet to stalk towards the jungle. Her squelchy boots undermine her tantrum, but Deirdre is so pissed off that she can't even hear them. Picking up the first rock she finds as she keeps marching past the first few palm trees, she hurls it as hard as she can with a wordless roar. She hopes she brains the last member of some endangered species. She hopes she topples another poor stranded fucker's lean-to. Better yet, she hopes she hits the poor stranded fucker. Anything to drain this white-hot anger.

Comments

[bricolaging]

"I don't know what that is," a television show? Alfred stares at his feet glumly. He hopes they're close to a resort. Maybe he'll get an actual holiday after all of this bullshit. "Probably."

"That works," he says after a moment. "I can make a fire, but that's about it. One of the others can identify plants," Alfred trails off, shaking his head. Leaning forward, he wraps his arms around his knees and stares into the flame. "I suppose if nothing else we can put 'survived a desert island' on our CVs."

[afterglowing]

She blinks slowly and wishes for a cigarette for the umpteenth time. "Yeah. Don't matter, though. You're probably better off for not seeing it." And he'll make fewer annoying jokes, if he's even capable of making jokes.

Deirdre shakes a hand through her hair, still thrumming with angry, nervous energy. Best to conserve that- sit by the fire, Alfred has the right idea- but she still keeps manically humming along. "Do you really think we'll die out here?" she says as if she's asking if it'll rain tomorrow.

[bricolaging]

Alfred takes a moment to consider the possibility - really, honestly consider it - then forces himself to dismiss it out of hand. "No. Someone will come and find us before you know it. We'll do a few celebrity appearances, get interviewed, and then someone else will survive something even worse and we'll be left in peace."

This is how he's getting through it, by thinking very carefully about the future. In the future, everything is laid out. He'll go back to drifting from job to job, bring up anecdotes from the island when he's lost for conversation topics in job interviews and on dates, buy a nice house and get older and even grumpier. Getting through the present is simply a formality. So long as he doesn't live fully in the present, so long as he hides himself in ideas of the future, everything will work out.