A couple of years ago, my writing group decided to try writing “chain” stories, collaborative stories started and ended by one writer with the other writers contributing sections in a round robin. This is the one I started and ended with some wild twists and turns in between by Danielle, Sarah, Leah & Connie-Marie.
Crime Sisters in Paradise, a Television Special Event
“You have to stop doing that!”
“Doing what?”
“Twirling that like a baton. You're gonna hurt yourself.”
Shari-Anne pouted, then put down the knife and folded her arms across her chest.
The man in the blindfold struggled against his bindings and the chair he sat on rocked with his efforts. He yelled something unintelligible behind the gag they'd shoved in his mouth.
Kelly walked over to him and slapped him upside the head, which settled him down. She turned to Shari-Anne.
“I think he's pissed himself.” She pointed at the puddle forming around the man's feet.
Shari-Anne laughed and picked up the knife again, twirling it. Kelly sighed. When would her sister ever learn not to be so impulsive?
“Grab a towel and clean up this mess, would you? Do something more constructive than flicking that knife all over the place, before you cut your fingers off,” Kelly said. She’d always been more of a mother to Shari-Anne than their real mother had, and even though Shari-Anne was well into what would be considered adulthood, she still needed Kelly’s guidance on most things.
Shari-Anne let out a deep, loud sigh. “Fine,” she groaned, searching the boxes against the wall for anything resembling a towel.
They were in the back room of what used to be a tourist shop; carpet still saturated with sand and seawater, boxes of unsold merchandise still lining the back wall. All they needed was for the guy to cooperate and give them the address, but he’d insisted on doing things the hard way. Why didn’t these men ever learn?
Shari-Anne found a box of dishtowels printed with pineapples and “Live, Love, Laugh” mottos, but before she could open it, a knock on the door interrupted them.
Kelly sighed, exasperated. “Go see who that is. Get rid of them.”
Shari-Anne made her way to the front and opened the door a crack, setting the bell jingling. A thin boy, aged about eight or nine, was standing there. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten in several days.
“Go away,” Shari-Anne said. “We’re closed. The tsunami wiped everything out.”
“Peepee,” the boy said. “Bathroom.” His language skills were rudimentary, at best.
“No,” said Shari-Anne. “Go use the wall behind the drugstore.” She pointed.
“Can't,” said the boy, dancing slightly with his urgency. "More than peepee.”
“Fine,” said Shari-Anne. She looked up and down the street to see if anyone was watching. “You can come in for two minutes. Don’t touch anything.”
She turned to see Kelly standing against the door to the back room. “What the fuck?”
Shari-Anne shrugged. “It’s a kid.”
A thumping sound emanated from the back. Kelly swore and retreated, slamming the door. A few minutes later she stuck her head out as Shari-Anne was escorting the kid back outside. But she did a double-take and swore again when a tattooed, Hawaiian-shirted man grabbed the door away from Shari-Anne and let himself in. “Got water? Any licorice? My lady’s preggers. Cravings.”
“We’re closed,” Kelly snapped, coming out to confront him.
“Oh hey, I’ll pay top dollar— ”
“She told you to scram,” Shari-Anne said.
“That’s not a nice way to treat a fellow expatriate. There’s not that many of us on this island.” He looked closer. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you those sisters from that reality show? I heard you spent all your money and went bankrupt.”
“No, no. You have us confused with some other people. We look like lots of glamorous women,” Shari-Anne said.
“No way! You're Beverly-Sue and you're Marsha, from Devil's Island Paradise. My old lady can't get enough of that show. She's still upset the grand master voted you off the island. Wait till I tell her you're in here!”
“Shush!” Kelly forgot the knife was in her hand, and began nervously picking at her cuticles with it. "Don't go telling your wife anything, you hear me, or you'll regret it." She didn't like the way he was smiling at her, like he was happy. It was irritating. Aiming the knife at his knees, she said just above a whisper, "Just take that brat of yours and get outta here. This ain’t the Holiday Inn."
His smile vanished, maybe it was never there. “He’s not my brat,” he said.
Just then a deafening scream sounded from the back room.
Hawaiian Shirt said, “Say, what’s going on in there?” and pushed past Shari-Anne, shoving Kelly aside with such force that the knife flew, skidding across the floor and disappearing under a turned-over shelving unit.
He swung the door open and stood still. “What the—“
Kelly and Shari-Anne tried to crowd past him, but he spread his arms to block them.
“You’re that guy,” Hawaiian Shirt said. “What’s-his-name.”
The man in the pissed-on slacks hauled himself to his feet, kicking away the rope that he’d managed to untie, and ripping the gag away. In spite of everything he’d been through, he still managed to retain a semblance of dignity as he smoothed his salt-and-pepper hair and straightened his shirt.
“Yes, I am that guy.”
With a hand that shook only slightly, he pointed at Shari-Anne and Kelly standing behind Hawaiian Shirt.
“I’ll see you in hell before the network gives you crazy fucking bitches a spinoff.”
The two women looked at each other and in silent agreement, turned and sprinted toward the front door, shoving aside the kid who was busy scooping up candy bars and shoving them into his greedy little pockets.
For half a minute, their escape was thwarted as they tried to push out the door at the same time. The former hostage stood watching, an eerie laugh escaping his dry, cracked lips as the women cartoonishly fought each other to spill onto the sun drenched sidewalk. “Run all you want!” he called after them. “Everyone on the island knows who you are. You’ll never get away with this!” The man in the Hawaiian shirt and the skinny kid watched the spectacle slack-jawed.
Finally making it out the doorway, Shari-Anne and Kelly ran, pushing past women with babies in slings, past little kids with sodas, past fruit carts and tables selling other wares. Their violent shoves met with angry gazes and rude outbursts.
“Did you hear what that lady said to us?” Shari-Anne was gasping for air.
“Yeah, but who cares what the locals think? We need to get out of here!” Kelly leapt over a mangy stray dog lying panting on the sidewalk.
Eventually the sidewalk gave way as the road turned to dirt, then into little more than a path through the tropical jungle that was the natural state of the island. The sisters had slowed to a walk now, as running in the heat and humidity had worn them out. They continued on, their breathing harsh and labored from all the running. Reaching a three-pronged fork in the path, they paused to consider their options.
“Where the hell are we going? Do you even have a plan?” Shari-Anne asked, the heat and the chase making her cranky.
“Of course I have a plan. I always have a plan.”
“Okay then, which way are we going?”
“Shut up and let me think,” Kelly snapped, considering each of the three paths in front of them. She didn’t have a plan, not really, but she wasn’t going to let her younger sister know that.
“That way,” Kelly said finally, pointing to the path that led downhill. They picked their way through the foliage, swatting at mosquitoes and skidding on the dusty, red soil.
“What are we going to do?” Shari-Anne said. “We can’t go back there now. The police will be looking for us.”
“We hide out on the beach,” Kelly said. “We put up a rudimentary shelter, build a small raft. And then…we wait for a container ship to come into port. When nightfall comes, we'll paddle out and stow away on it.”
“That could take weeks!” Shari-Anne wailed.
“Come on. You lasted forty days on Devil’s Island Paradise, and that was way worse. Cameras in the latrines. Nothing but rice to eat. Land leeches.” Kelly paused. “Jarvis.”
Both of them clenched their fists at the mere mention of his name. Jarvis, the villain of Season 7, who constantly talked over them, gave them the smallest portions of food, and groped them when he thought the cameras weren't watching.
The most infuriating thing of all was that Jarvis had gone on to win the million dollar prize by burning Kelly's and Shari-Anne's sneakers in the fire while they slept, causing them to lose the final obstacle course challenge. By rights, that was their money. It had taken them over a year to hunt down Jarvis. They had been so close to getting his address from Anthony, Jarvis’ closest friend on the show. If it weren’t for that interfering brat and Hawaiian Shirt guy.
“Stop!” Kelly whispered, cupping a warning hand under Shari-Anne’s elbow. Through the trees, she had spotted what looked like a small, forgotten village. Thatched huts scattered around a central enclosure. People hurrying to and fro seemed to be preparing a feast of wild boar and plantains. In the middle of the square stood an enormous stone statue, a fertility god crowned with flowers. It looked like … no, it couldn’t be. The sisters gaped at each other.
“Jarvis!” they whispered in unison.
“You know him?”
Shari-Anne wheeled around. “Ow!” Kelly exclaimed, so startled she’d fallen back against a tree with wicked thorns.
A fiftyish man in board shorts, hipster glasses and a name tag reading “Maleko” offered a hand. “We’ve been begging the main island police to get here. Who is he? We’ve been calling him Colonel Kurtz.”
“Huh?” Shari-Anne said as Kelly worked on plucking the thorns from her elbow.
“You know. Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Lost touch with reality. We’re a cultural site, not a hideaway for armed lunatics. He’s in the main lodge acting like a kahuna. You think we’d be having a luau right now except this nut has a gun to our heads.” He pounded his forehead with his fist. “Sorry, ladies. Too much pressure. I hope he isn’t a friend of yours.”
“Oh, no. He owes us money,” Kelly said.
Maleko fished in his pocket. “Sorry for my manners. Free tour tickets, ladies. Come back when we open.”
Kelly smiled charmingly at the man as Shari-Anne smirked at the obviousness of her sister’s approach to getting information. Kelly said sweetly, “Could you please point us to the main lodge?”
“We open in three hours.” Maleko didn't smile back. Shari-Anne noticed he was chewing something dark and musty smelling. ”Colonel Kurtz doesn’t want company,” he said, “unless you’re prostitutes. Are you prostitutes? Is that why he owes you money?” He cocked his head to the left, checking out Shari-Anne's muddy ankles, and torn gold leather Nikes.
Shari-Anne was offended. “Of course, we aren’t!” but Kelly put out a restraining hand to her sister. “Suppose we were?” she said slyly to Maleko. “Would you show us to the lodge then?”
“I told you, he’s a lunatic, waving a gun around like a bored monkey with a banana.” Maleko snorted, swallowed whatever he was chewing and walked away, his small figure vanishing into the dense thicket.
“Why couldn’t you play along just this once?” Kelly snapped. “Would it have been so hard to play hooker for the greater good?”
“He saw right through your act. You were always a terrible liar. Besides, Jarvis is dangerous enough unarmed. No way in hell, I'm going in that lodge without a foolproof plan. I need to think. Your hotheaded personality got us into this mess.”
Kelly’s jaw clenched and she raised her fist as if she might punch Shari-Anne right in the face. “Don't you call me a hothead!”
“I stand corrected.” Shari-Anne waved a cool hand at Kelly's feet then along her body like she were a used car on display. “Then what's all this about?”
Kelly forced her hands down to her sides. Very quietly, she said, “I have a confession to make. And you're not going to like it.” She lifted the puka shell necklace from around her neck and raising a fingertip to her lips, swung the string of shells like a lasso and flung it into the brush.
“There.”
Shari-Anne narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“So that whole thing about building the raft and stowing away on the container ship was … ?”
“A load of horseshit. Yeah.”
Approximately one point two miles away as the I’iwi flies, Jarvis a.k.a. Colonel Kurtz was eating a hoagie and drinking a Mai Tai, watching Nikki, blonde and Amazonian, the winner of Devil’s Island Paradise, Season 5, languidly swimming laps in the crystalline infinity-edge pool.
He looked up as Maleko brought his dirt bike to a hair-raising stop inches from his toes. Jarvis sputtered as dirt sprayed all over him and his sandwich.
“What the fuuu—-?”
Maleko dropped the bike. “It’s them!”
“Wha—who? Them?”
Maleko looked at Jarvis skeptically. “Are you high right now?”
“A little. And you ruined my sandwich, dude.”
“They’re here, man. I just fuckin saw them.”
“Dude, you’re getting on my last nerve. Who are you talking about?”
Just then, a golf cart with The Lodge Casino and Resort logo on its front bumper came rocketing out of the forest, driven by Anthony, with Hawaiian Shirt, a hugely pregnant woman, and a little boy clinging on for dear life.
Anthony waved and shouted something.
“What’s he saying?” Jarvis said.
“Beats me.”
“What’s going on, guys?” Nikki came out of the pool and struck a pose, hands on hips.
She shook her head back and forth in slow-motion as every man one of them stopped to ogle her dripping wet, perfectly-muscled body all the way up and all the way back down, while each one’s internal jukebox of hot girl songs played silently in his head in perfect syncopation with every sparkling rainbow drop flung from the ends of her hair.
She picked up a towel, wrapped it around herself and just as suddenly everything returned to normal speed.
Anthony ran over to Jarvis who backed away at the sight and smell of his best friend’s ruined, pissed-on pants. “Duuude …”
“Those bitches are crazy,” Anthony cried, his eyes wild. “They fuckin tied me to a chair and threatened to cut my nuts off if I didn’t tell them where you were.”
Hawaiian Shirt guy said, “I saw them too!”
Pregnant said, “They were hoarding licorice, for chrissakes.”
The little boy said, “And they wouldn’t even let me use the bathroom!”
Maleko snapped his fingers and looked at Jarvis. “See?! That’s what I’m talking about. Crazy bitches.”
Watching the circus, Nikki said to no one in particular, “I need to make better life choices.”
All the men stopped and turned to her.
Jarvis said, “Huh?”
She rolled her eyes at Jarvis and looked at each man in turn, withering gonads with her gaze. In a loud, clear voice, “I said, you never fuck me and I always have to drive.”
For a long moment, every living thing in the surrounding forest went quiet.
With a smile on her lips, her eyes seething with contempt, Nikki said, “Fuck all, y’all misogynistic fucks. I’m out.”
As she walked out of frame, every woman on the set put down what they were holding and slow clapped her departure, nodding and whispering among themselves until she was out of sight.
Somewhere off the coast, a speedboat bumped through choppy waves, bound for the Big Island.
“So, are you going to stay mad at me for not telling you about the camera necklace?” Kelly asked.
“That depends,” Shari-Anne said.
“On what?”
“Does this cameo appearance mean we’re solvent again?”
Kelly smiled. “I probably shouldn’t have thrown the necklace away since it was one of a kind. But yeah, I think we’ll be okay.”
“Then I’m not mad.” Shari-Anne bumped her sister’s shoulder. “We should add tsunami survivors to our IMDB bios.”
“They wanted some drama,” Kelly said with a shrug.
“And we gave it to em.”
They grinned at each other.
“I guess this means we’re keeping these identities.”
“Yeah, girl. As soon as we get back to L.A., we’re under contract. Get ready for the latest Devil’s Island Paradise spinoff: Crime Sisters in Paradise.”