Stranded on the 27th Day

Day 27 ... or is it 28?

Dear Journal,

The 27th day of our group being stranded on this uncivilized island passed sluggishly with as much monotony as the other days. All my hopes of getting off this island are evaporating slowly into the unbearable heat, along with my patience. Will the day ever come when we are rescued from this place and returned to progressive society?

Though my patience is creeping away from me, paranoia has taken its place. I constantly feel like someone is following me. Just today when I was picking berries, I felt a stranger’s eyes on my back. At first I thought it was nonsense, but then I heard footsteps approaching my way. I tried to ignore it for a while, but as soon as I heard a vicious growl and roar I became so terrified that I sped off out of the bushes. When I looked back, there was a deer not too far away from where I was picking berries. Alexa quickly showed up on the scene and shot the deer down with her rifle.

We had the deer for supper tonight. Kelly cooked it with some herbs she found today. It was good, as most of the things Kelly cooks us. It’s not as delicious as lamb and potatoes - which I can no longer remember the taste of but can remember it was my favourite dish - but it will suffice.

At dinner we all talked about our day. Gino told us he fixed my tent and continued to work on the boat that will hopefully get us off this island. Alexa was in the jungle all day, hunting down animals for us to eat. She describes her hunts in such gruesome detail; she will resort to cannibalism if she doesn’t cool her love to kill. I try warning them all of this, but they just look at me like I’m crazy. Kelly kept the fire going, and found a whole batch of wild herbs in a part of the forest. I mentioned that I went fruit picking as usual, and got scared by a deer in the woods. Kelly reinforced that she thought I was going crazy, but truthfully, who isn’t going crazy on this island?

Life before this island is a blur, but I can still remember every detail from the day we got stuck here. Our class went to the tropics on a tour boat, and on our journey a raging sea storm struck. The storm caused the boat to smash into jagged rocks, and the cruiser sank along with the captain and most of the passengers on the boat. I managed to swim to the shore of a tropical island, and there I met a few other classmates who survived the crash: Alexa, Gino and Kelly. I have to remind myself of this so that I don’t start thinking I lived on this island all my life. It is why I put so much importance into being the record keeper of our camp.

Many other events of paranoia similar to the deer incident have occurred numerous times, but for most of them I don’t see an animal to explain my fears. A moment ago, I thought I saw someone staring at me in my tent. I know it wasn’t a deer, but I think I saw it have glowing blood-red eyes. I could swear it was whispering my name too...

I’m not sure how much longer I can take living here. I crave to find any means of communicating to the real world - a telephone, a radio, anything! I hallucinate non-stop of helicopters flying over me. But for now, all I’ve got are Gino, Alexa, Kelly and my pear-shaped coconut named Comrade Napolean.