A Writing Retreat to Die For (One night on an island in Maine)

  A howling nor’easter wind awoke her in the night. She had left her window cracked to allow a breeze in the small bedroom she was calling home for the next week. Undoubtedly, her fellow writers in the isolated New England cottage had, too, as her bedroom door rattled in its frame each time her curtains fluttered. She rolled over and reached for her phone in the dark. As her fingers grazed the glass, the screen lit up and she saw the time – 2:52 am. She withdrew her arm back under the bedsheet and turned her pillow to the cooler side.

  As she tried to fall back asleep, a sudden slam from somewhere in the house made her jump and her eyelids flicked open. She guessed it was the screen door to the front porch, ripped out of someone’s grasp by the gale force winds. But who would be coming and going at nearly 3 am? She thought about how there were no locks on any of the doors – not the front door, nor her bedroom door. Who was that serial killer in Florida that slaughtered coeds? Danny Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper? Nooo, not him…Ted Bundy! YES, Ted Bundy was the psychopath that waltzed into FSU’s Chi Omega House at 2:45 am and attacked four women.

  Her room was intermittently cast in a faint green glow each time the lighthouse signaled to nighttime sailors. She lay in bed staring at the dimly lit ceiling, straining to hear any creaking of the hardwood floors…or muffled screams. She wondered if any of the other ladies attending this retreat were awake, and if they would hear her cries for help, should a mad man burst into her room. Then she reminded herself that they were on an island off the coast of Maine, and it would take quite a lot of effort for any Danny Rolling or Ted Bundy type to get here. Unless…

  An image began to form in her mind of a murderous fisherman garbed in a black rain slicker, clutching a meat hook at his side – very “Ben Willis” from I Know What You Did Last Summer. Each time the green glow filled her room, she wondered if it would illuminate his menacing form. She pulled the sheet over her head just as a door slammed again, snapping her out of her spiral. She thought about her nightlight at home, and the wiry blond dog that kept watch at the foot of her bed. She again closed her eyes and willed sleep to overcome her imagination. It was 3:30 am now, and the house still groaned against the wind. She became aware of another sound, even above the din of the storm outside. It was a sound that had been present all long, but somehow became a part of the white noise of Whitehead Island – the clanging buoy.

  Sleep still evaded her, and so she decided to picture the buoy as a sort of relaxation technique. Red metal, bobbing wildly on the waves, impervious to the battering rain, a signal for safe passage on a tumultuous sea. It was a logical scene, suddenly punctuated by a familiar face, a face brought to life by a wide straight smile and curly red hair. Only in this scene, her lips were twisted in a grimace, her hair saturated with saltwater – Julia Roberts, clinging to the side of the buoy like a lizard on a tree, while her abusive husband stood in the distance screaming into the wind, “LAUURAA!!”.

  Hearing the wind whistling through the window screen and the powerful crashing of waves on the rocks, it occurred to her how implausible that movie scene was. You would never be able to grab hold of a navigational marker tossing violently on ocean swells, at least not without Jaws finding you. She sighed and turned the pillow over once more. As she pushed her musings about Ben Willis, Laura Burney, and Jaws from her mind, she thought to herself, “I need to go see that Barbie movie”.