Eden Island: Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Nightmare

The room was dark, the dim yellow lights flickering ominously. I was sitting on a cold, wet floor made of concrete. I was shaking uncontrollably as I looked at my parents, tears in my eyes.

“Mama! What’s happening?” I asked, tears streaming down my face. She pressed a finger to her lips, her eyes welling with tears that fell down her cheeks.

My mother’s hands were tied at the wrists, the ropes caked with dried blood. Her ankles were tied with zip ties. I wasn’t much different. My wrists were tied the same, the skin cut and bleeding from the rough ropes. The zip ties dug into my ankles, making them raw and red.

I was sat against a table, which was to be nailed to the floor. I was tied to the table. I was a toddler, it seemed.

Footsteps echoed from the hall outside. The door swung open and hit the wall. A man sauntered into the room, pulling a gun from his belt. I fought a scream.

He walked to my mother, and crouched down next to her, a slight laugh escaping his lips. My mother simply sobbed harder.

“You really were so pretty. It’s such a shame that I have to do this.” he said, pressing the gun to her head. He cocked it, and with a bang and scream, my mother was gone.

He turned to me, pointing the gun at me, then putting it to his own head. He smiled.

“Bye, sweetie. I love you,” he said, pulling the trigger. I screamed as he fell down, dead. I wriggled and twisted, hoping something would happen. The world went black.

I sat up in bed with a scream, my forehead soaked with sweat. My door burst open, Na-bi running in wearing a tight fitted black tank top and jogging shorts. She crossed the room over to my bed quickly, and grabbed me and hugged me.

“Are you okay? Was it a bad dream?” She asked, rubbing my back as I sobbed into the soft fabric of her shirt. I nodded. I noticed something about her arms. They were crossed with dark, burn-like scars about the length of my hand, and the width of two fingers.

“What’s with your arm?” I asked. I realized they were all over her body, from her shoulders down to her legs. She flinched, her arms . She sat cross-legged on my bed, the moonlight illuminating her sharp features. I moved to one side, and patted the space next to me.

She crawled in next me, and I turned on my lamp and grabbed a pack of gummies from my bedside table drawer. She’d suggested when we went to the supermarket that I start a snack drawer. It apparently wasn’t useless after all. I ripped open the packaging and put it between us.

She sighed audibly, grabbing a gummy bear and popping it into her mouth. She chewed it thoguhtfully.

“Where to start… it’s a pretty long story.” she said. I took a gummy from the pack and moved it from one side of my mouth to another.

“It’s a good thing we have all night, then. Classes don’t start until Monday, and it’s Saturday today. We’ve got lots of time.” I said. She nodded and started to speak.

“I used to live in Seoul. I went to school there, and moved here after one year of high school. I came here to escape my bullies.” she explained.

“I was bullied to an extreme during my first year of school. The kids were ruthless. There was one girl who was at the centre of it all. Hong Seon-Hee. She was rich, and good at getting people to do what she wanted. During the first week of school, she bullied one girl to the point of suicide. Then she started on me. I was her plaything. Seon-Hee loved to torment me. It started off pretty normal, for bullying. ‘Do my chores for me, Na-bi.’ ‘You’re a butterfly, right? Let’s see how you fly.’ Stuff like that.

She had a couple of friends who would help her. One was really good with teachers, especially male ones. She would do anything to help Seon-Hee. Her name was Kim Soobin. Her other friend was Park Min-jun. Now he was scary. He was the one who egged Seon-Hee on. As her methods got more and more graphic, he would encourage her, tell her to do worse.

It wasn’t long before a curling iron was brought out. They found out where I lived, paid my parents to turn a blind eye. They started bullying me outside of school, too. They took everything from me. My grades dropped significantly. My teachers turned a blind eye.

One day I went to the school nurse for a headache, and she insisted on a physical when she saw blood on my sleeve. She determined that my headache was due to blood loss and infected wounds. She told me that the scars would never go away, and that she would be talking to the school about this.

My teacher was annoyed, and told me to stop overreacting. He was upset that he could lose his job over this. I was completely alone in this. Eventually, I talked to the principal, who asked to see my burns. I showed him, and he fired my teacher. He also put Seon-hee, Soobin, and Min-jun on academic probation.

When they came back, though, they just picked up right where they left off. The principal suddenly quit, and a friend of Seon-hee’s mother came instead. I quit school due to school violence after it got too much. It was denied and changed around so Seon-hee and her friends had been mere innocent friends of mine while I imagined everything wrong she had done. The school nurse was also gone, and I had nobody left.

So I applied here, and got a 50% scholarship after acing the entrance exams. I convinced my parents to let me come here, and the rest is history.” tears streamed down her cheeks now, and she hugged her sides. I reached out and hugged her gently, stroking her hair as she cried. She pulled away after a minute.

“How about you? What was your dream about?” she asked. My gaze shifted to my hands in my lap, and I opened my mouth to speak.

“I remembered my parent’s death. My dad locked us in the basement, and tied us up. He killed my mom, and then himself. The neighbors heard the gunshots, and my screaming, and called the police. I went into the foster system after that,” I explained. “I wish I could remember anything before that. Why we were there. What happened.”

A moment of silence passed as we just sat there, eating gummy bears, feeling sorry for ourselves and each other. Then, out of the blue, a laugh escaped Na-bi’s lips.

Confused, I asked, “What’s so funny?” She just shook her head.

“What are the odds that we both have sob stories like this? I mean, we make a pair, the two of us. Think about it. I desperately want to forget about my past, and you desperately want to remember. Isn’t that kind of funny?” She said, turning to me. I laughed, nodding. This was ironic, in a sick kind of way. I turned to Na-bi.

“Wanna eat something? Like, real food?” I asked. “I can cook.”

She scowled. “You did not just say that. Gummy bears definitely are real food!”

I laughed, and got out of bed, the cold room stinging my bare legs. I turned around, and Na-bi was also getting out of bed, walking around to stand next to me. We left, and walked to the kitchenette.

I opened the fridge and found a container of kimchi, a carton of eggs, some bottles of soju, and a half-finished bottle of hot sauce. I gestured to the fridge.

“What is this?” I asked. Na-bi looked away, embarrased.

“Well, I eat out a lot, so…” she explained. I closed the fridge. I opened a cupboard, and there were cups. Another cupboard contained plates. Another bowls. I looked under the sink to the left and found a cupboard full of packets of instnd ramen. I grinned.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” I said, taking two out. I opened the fridge and grabbed the kimchi. I opened a drawer under the counter and found cutlery. There were some knives, forks and spoons, but mostly chopsticks. I fished out a pair and used it to spoon some of the kimchi out into a bowl. I took out two large bowls and filled the kettle. As I made ramen on the stove, Na-bi took out some eggs and put them into a pot of water.

“Poached eggs with ramen is too good to pass up,” she said. I nodded. We finished cooking the ramen, and sat down at the small table and slurped our ramen.

We talked for the rest of the night about everything and nothing, and fell asleep on the sofa, Darari by Treasure playing from a speaker on the coffee table, our stomachs full and our minds at peace.