The Most Dangerous Game

“What’s a woman like you doing in a place like this?”

Cid glanced up from her passion fruit flavored drink, a bubblegum pink umbrella hanging on the sugar salted rim. The man across from her had a shaggy beard with a curled up mustache — vastly different from the shine that radiated from his bald head.

“Drinking.” She watched him hop seats to move closer, pulling her own drink to her chest. “Waiting on a friend. Her boat should be here any minute.”

“You don’t have to lie to me sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. Cid grimaced and searched for an out. The bartender was off chitchatting with his coworkers and she couldn’t catch his eye as the man continued hopping chairs to get closer with his unlabeled beer. None of the other beachgoers cared for a drink just yet, bouncing their beachballs and running in the surf of a setting sun.

“I’m not lying.” The muscles in her calves tensed as she raised her tone, doing her best to put off the man.

“Then why didn’t her boat come this morning? They did check-ins already.” One chair kept him away from her, but she could see his sweat-stained pants peel away from the leather of his current one as he stood up to intervene.

Cid pressed her luck, throwing back her drink and slamming the glass down on the tabletop. “Oh look, there she is. Bye.”

She stood up quickly as the too-sweet alcohol burned in her stomach. She picked a direction — any direction — and quickly strode off, not looking back at the man that seemed overly keen on getting to know her. As much as she wanted to enjoy the warm sand between her toes, she dug in her feet to try and get away from whatever moves he was keen on putting to her. The laughter on the beach was drowned out the further she moved away, getting washed away with the recessing tide.

The sun on her back vanished as the bungalows came alight on her escape. Occasionally she would glance back and only see people mingling to and from their little shanties, and by the time she came to the thickening areas of forest did she feel a little sense of relief.

She rubbed her face. Sea salt clung to her face with the humidity, and she had worked herself up from the brisk pace she set for herself. The alcohol had gotten her worked up an uncomfortable amount.

Cid took out her phone and flicked through the guide of the island she had downloaded. If it was accurate, her bungalow was on the opposite side of the island, on the tip without the dense border.

“Hey— Girl!”

Her eyes darted up from her phone to look where the shout came from, and she saw the man with the shaggy beard stumbling towards her with a different bottle in his hand. Without a second thought she ran into the forest, forgoing all ideas to feign ignorance with a drunk man.

The forest was not as dense as it appeared, but it took all of her focus to leap over fallen logs and duck past thickets to lose the bumbling drunkard behind her. Her heart was whooshing in her ears with every bound, and it wasn’t long before the chill of the forest began to overcome her with a greater feeling of dread. It wasn’t a big island, but what would happen if she was caught? Cid had never been good at hide and seek as a child, and that contained its own minimal risks with a clear winner and loser with no greater consequence.

She pressed her back against a cold rock, the stone having lost its last traces of warmth following the rising of the crescent moon. She couldn’t hear anymore of the crunching of fallen palm leaves and grasses behind her, and she let go of a breath that had been stored in every taught muscle of her body. Her body ached with adrenaline exhaustion and she wished she knew what direction she would have to drag herself back to her vacation bed to sleep off the edge. No break from the hustle and bustle of life needed to have her running as if her life depended on it.

“There you are.”

Cid screamed. A beefy hand clamped itself around her mouth and cut her off, igniting a terror that cut through whatever exhaustion she felt. She jammed her elbow into his gut and she heard the grunt as it hit something soft and squishy, and she fought with the terror of a rabbit trapped in a foxhole. Nails raked across hairy flesh and she kicked herself free, gasping for the clean salty air.

She launched herself at a tree to regain her balance and quickly spotted a sharp stone on the ground, diving to grip it and face the man behind her. Fully prepared to defend herself, she bore her teeth and gripped the rock like a blade, ready to fight to the brutal death on the island.

There was a shrill shriek as the man was ripped by his collar behind the boulder. Cid nearly let out her own, thinking the wiser not to draw attention to herself before darting back into the jungle, hopefully able to find her way to her bungalow.

Stars twinkled their way through a misty twilight by the time her sore feet met the bleached planks of her vacation home. She could feel the terror of the chase washing over her as she took a shower, and she took her time locking and unlocking the door, testing to make sure it couldn’t simply be wedged open by a quick foot in the door.

Breathing out, she shook her head and sat on the king sized cot, quickly flopping back onto the cotton. It hadn’t been much of a vacation, let alone a romantic one. Maybe the boat had been delayed again, and being chased by a drunk man — regardless of his fate now — had turned her off from the idea of an island stay.

“Cid?”

Her heart skipped a beat.

“Ianthe?”

There was a quiet laugh — feminine and soft. The tenseness from her muscles rolled off entirely as she sat back up.

Ianthe stood with a bloodied maw, her fangs gleaming in the LEDs of the room. She leaned on the doorway, sporting a Hawaiian patterned button up and bermuda shorts, both stained in bright red blood.

“Why are you all bloody?” She couldn’t take her eyes off the other, and she could hear her breathless laugh.

“Oh, you know. Hunting someone hunting helpless women.” She used the back of her hand to wipe off her mouth, noting Cid’s staring. “You could’ve done some damage with that rock.” She made a stabbing gesture.

“I was waiting at that bar all damn day—“

“And my boat was delayed.” She shed her bloodied clothes, rummaging through Cid’s own and putting on an oversized t-shirt. “I wasn’t going to swim in the sun. I’m not that insane.”

“Sure.” Cid shook her head, in disbelief at the happenstance. Ianthe sunk onto the bed, cold porcelain fingers tracing over where a sunburn was sinking in. ”Next time, we ride the boat together.”

“A deal, my dear. A deal.”