Mistakenly Eaten

118. Snakes on Boat

Pulling the blue plastic sheets off the six meters long speed boat, Althea squirmed in slight regurgitation.

The plastic sheets were tightly wrapped around the boats and she had to exert quite a lot of force, more than her capacity to pull the covers off from the boat.

Her eyes were still red due to all the crying that she had done throughout the entire day in her room. It pained her immensely that she had to move away from not just her dreams but her love as well. It scathed her heart and bruised her soul that just when she had thought that she achieved peace by finding love, friend and a professional opportunity, all in the same place. She was quickly reminded by her fate that she should not be derived and divined so much.

She was thrown back and down on the ground, where she was reminded about the vulnerability of her life.

Friendship and relationships were always going to be a concept that were going to stay foreign to her and at the same time, maybe it was her destiny to live in Gragnano and survive off the crumbs that she would get by working at her uncle’s restaurant.

She realized that vacation for her was over and little mishaps of fooling around had finally cost her big and deep and it was time for her to get back to the realities of life.

It wasn’t the most valor thing that she had ever done, which was running away but at the same time, she knew that it was also the only sensible thing in that situation.

She did not have the courage to face anyone, having felt the shame of being someone who hooked up with the director of the society and remembering how Nick had become the director at the first place, only due to Salva’s laborious efforts. And Althea believed that not only did she ruin Salva’s hard work but also ruined Nick and Salva’s brotherhood.

Writing three letters in the name of those, she believed that she had hurt the most, she packed up the only thing she brought with her and sneaked out of the house through the backstairs, so that no one would be able to see her.

Besides, Martha’s words stull resonated with her from when she had asked her to leave the house and it only made Althea believe even more firmly that not just Martha but everyone in the house wanted them and had she not done that, she was going to get eliminated and exiled from the island anyways, because she was caught having a relationship with one of the members of the committee and the director himself was a name big enough to cause a stir up in the entire Society.

Once the covers were off, she sighed, looking down in the boat but she could barely and only makeup anything since the sky had turned pretty dark and she could even complain, if she had any problems with vision at that time.

Since, it was he own idea to escape at the hour of the dark, she could not complain much and only had to improvise with what she could come up with.

Finding the anchor of the boat on the hooked to the ground, she tried to move it out and bulge it but it simply did not seem to work and the anchor seemed to be quite embedded deep within the ground.

Finding the chain of the hard rusty hook, she traced it back on the boat and found it attached with a big latch on the interior of the boat.

The only light that was helping her at the moment was that of the moon reflected down and on the surface of the water but the tall trees shrouding the coast of the island, did not help in much of the light to pass through it and everything seemed to be impeccably dark for Althea.

The east coast of the island seemed like a hidden corner of the island, where the trees and the plantations had grown all around the ground and had pushed the coast in inwardly, with the rest of the trees covering up the secret passage of the island, where the boats were kept for emergencies only.

When she had first wandered off to that point in the island, she asked Fiona, about the boats in a quite assuming manner and Fiona replied in a much assumptive tone and simply stated that the boats must be left in a secluded and secret corner only for emergency cases. Back then, little did poor Althea know that she would be using the same boats to escape in the dark of the night.

Reaching out for the latch, she tried to unhook it and remove the anchor, but something seemed to wrap around her arm instead.

She couldn’t see much and only sense and for a while the cold crawl against her shaky skin felt like it was the chain of the anchor that she was trying to unhook but as the thing moved and tightened against her arm, she felt a rattling and hissing sound coming off somewhere from inside the boat.

Althea’s eyes widened, as the beat of her heart became louder and fast. The realization hit her that it wasn’t the chain but instead something longer and more alive.

It was instead a snake that tightened around her arm and before she knew it, her reflexes kicked in, making her squirm and scream. She retracted her hand back, pulling the snake along.

The darkness became her enemy and the snake’s friend that tightened its hold around her arm, refusing to let her go.

Althea’s screams became louder, that helped Nick, who was somewhere in the bushes, searching for Althea, with his flashlight, held in his hands, along with Gigi and a group of his guards.

As they heard Althea’s scream, they followed the noise and immediately reached the small shore.

They flashed their light on to the boat and realized that there were snake eggs laid on the boat, and Althea’s intrusion on the point, may have threatened the snake, who then attacked her back in repercussion of Althea’s actions.

Nick immediately turned his light on the rough and grainy ground where he found Althea, They immediately rushed towards Althea, who kept on shaking her arm up in the air, having no sense of what was happening around her.

At the same time, the flash of the light, falling over her face that some of the guards did, to recognize the woman in question, only blinded her vision, making her squirm and close her eyes tightly shut.

Nick’s eyes widened as he realized that Althea was under attacked and the snake was nearing her head, ready to bite her and attack her any given moment.

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