I found Austin on the beach. He was leaning against a boulder, drawing something on the large sea pebbles. He was squeezing paint from a tube onto a palette and applying a pattern. A few pebbles – butterflies and ladybugs – were already drying in the sun. Children crowded nearby, watching his work with curiously. When Austin saw me, he put the paints in his bag, wiped the brushes with a rag, and with a glance invited the children to take the crafts.

We settled under the stone parapet that separated the rows of bungalows from the beach. “How do you like your workplace?” Austin asked. “I have a little headache, but it’s okay. I am getting used to it.” “Did Randy offer you something else?” “No. Why?” “Well, he’ll do it soon. It is customary here to work hard from morning till night.” “One job is enough for me.” “Maybe, but you have too much free time. ‘They’ don’t like it. I’m sure ‘they’ll try to keep you busy with extra work in the near future.” “What do you mean by that?” “It’s no coincidence that Randy brought you to the ‘Sands’. It’s the quietest place on the Island. No fun, total silence.” “I like it.” “That’s for now. Soon you’ll be bored to death. You’re already bored. That’s the way humans are, it’s hard for us not to do anything for a long time, and we can’t stand it.”

“You seem to have forgotten that I didn’t do anything in the bamboo hut either, but I was happy,” I reminded him. “Yes, but unlike the Island you could leave at any time. And you thought you were going to die, so you enjoyed your last days. But you didn’t want to stay in the White Room when you were really died.” “How can you compare that?” I fidgeted, trying to figure out what he was getting at.

“You really don’t see the difference?” “Austin, what pisses me off about you is that you always talk in riddles!” I couldn’t stand it. “Why are you picking on me? Maybe you’re just envy of me?” “I wonder what I am envy of?” “That I’m doing so well here.”

“Yeah, so good that soon you’ll be begging Randy for overtime?” “Why would I do that?” “Because when you get bored here, you won’t be happy with your position anymore, so you’ll get sour and compare yourself to other people who have more money and more fun, like Randy. But you’re not him, and you probably won’t make a good living here.”

“Why is that?” I frowned. “I have a great job that others can only dream of.” “Giving people crap that sucks them dry and melts their brains? Great, there’s nothing to say!” “I don’t, they ask for it themselves.” “Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with you.” “Shut up!” I jumped to my feet. It dawned on me. “You’re not a provocateur, are you? Maybe you’re pumping something out of me, too?” “How? You’re dead.” “Show me the lock pick!”

“I can’t. It’s at sea,” Austin said calmly. “I drowned it as soon as I quit the casino, where I was doing the same thing you were doing in the nightclub – taking advantage of people’s stupidity.” “See? You’re just like me!” I blurted out gloatingly. “So don’t tell me what to do, you damn moralizer!” I didn’t want to spend another minute with him. Who was he to talk to me like that? He doesn’t like my job… You’d think I had a choice.

But Austin’s words struck a chord with me. I felt myself becoming stupid, lazy, and indifferent to anything. And if I had an eternity ahead of me, was handing out drinks all I could to do?

I once asked Randy why at the other nightclubs people had to pay either for a ticket or a drink, while we have both for free. I mean, they sold alcohol at “Magic Hell” for money, but not many people took cocktails – why would they when the bar was full of free stuff? But to give away energetic drinks for free was to take a loss.

Randy laughed: “You’re wrong! The energy people leave in the club is worth more than money.”

I deducted that the “cream” we harvesting was some kind of raw material that would be used in some way. But Randy didn’t say by whom or for what. Energy drinks were sold all over the Island. In supermarkets, they were on a par with yoghurts and juices, and implication was that they were safe and even healthy. “Power drinks” were consumed by housewives, school children, taxi-and bus drivers. But they were especially popular with nightclubbers, especially in our “Magic Hell”: first, it was free, and second, the doping released so much energy that people could dance all night.

They didn’t want to eat, drink or sleep; the magic liquid seemed to give them strength and vitality, even though it was actually taking it away, or as Austin put it, “sucked them dry”. And I was the one offering the poison, the huckster. And the fact that I knew the truth, and they did not, sometimes depressed me greatly.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Dude, it’s their life, their choice!” Randy objected. “Believe me, even if you were Count Tolstoy yelling at the crowd: ‘Come to your senses!’ no one would hear you. Everyone decides for themselves how they want to live.”

And you can’t argue with that.

But today Austin poked me in a sore spot. How angry I was – at him, at myself, at everyone!It reminded me of my work in the editorial office, where I wrote reviews, went to music festivals, to theater and movie premieres, which gave the editor the impression that I earned my living too easily, and worse, with pleasure, “holing up in the rear”, while others fought on the front line.

Dubonos considered art to be something useless, and kept trying to liquidate my department, which did not bring the editors any obvious profits, like, say, the industrial and municipal departments. There was no point in arguing – money talks, bullshit walks.

On the eve of the holidays, when the paper was flooded with advertisers, the boss would redirect the efforts of all his journalists to satisfy them. Sometimes I was tempted to do the same, so I wrote advertising articles for a lot of money. And it would have been fine if I had praised something that really deserved it, but no, often under the guise of “sweets” I gave the reader a product that tasted rotten... And now, after my death, am I not doing the same?

I suddenly wanted to escape from the cursed Island and forget it like a bad dream. I knew there was a ferry crossing on the Samchang. So I hitched a ride and asked the driver to take me there. It was sunny day, but no sooner had we reached the Buddhist temple, where I was waiting for the rain when the sky filled with clouds and it rained so hard that the road disappeared from sight in an instant – as if it had been erased! An impenetrable wall of water grew before my eyes, and in a second later I found myself on the beach, where the sun was shining again. I looked around. What the hell was that? I wondered if I was overheating, because I wasn’t dreaming, was I?

Tonight I told Randy about my confrontation with Austin. “Forget it!” he winced. “Austin is a loser. Don’t ever try to follow his example!” the bearded man jokingly wagged his finger at me. “Was he an artist?” “Pretty mediocre. He couldn’t stand the fact that he wasn’t lucky enough to be born a genius, so he started drowning his sorrows in wine and ended up with us – the usual story.”

“But if he doesn’t work for ‘them’, how does he survive on the Island?” “Didn’t he tell you?” “No.” “Well,” Randy rubbed the tip of his nose. “I think he’s moonlighting somewhere, maybe stealing.”

“But he said he threw the lock pick away, didn’t he.” “He’s lying! There’s no other way to survive around here.” “You mean without lying?” I looked at Randy questioningly. “Let’s not play semantics,” he winced again. “I meant without energy. And for that you have to actively pump it out of other people. By the way, have you ever thought about moonlighting?” “What for? I earn enough.” “Really? I thought you weren’t satisfied with the amount.” “But you said it would increase over time.”

“Dude, I didn’t say that,” Randy laughed. “I just implied that my percentage of the profits might be higher; but what if I was lying and the job at “Magic Hell” is just another trap for suckers like you?” “I thought we were friends...” “Don’t be silly, there are no friends here. Better think about it: you just arrived on the Island and got a trump card right away – for what merit, huh?” “I guess, I’m different from the others, right?” My pride showed.

“Yeah, you want to emphasize your uniqueness again, don’t you? No way, dude. It’s not about you. All newbies are put in the ‘bread’ places – casinos, nightclubs, brothels. Drugs ... Too bad they’re illegal on the Island, otherwise I’d be a billionaire by now. But you can make a living with roulette and girls. You don’t have to do much and the ‘cream’ is plentiful. Even with a low interest rate, it’s easy for newbies to pay off their debts. That’s the end of the fairy tale”, Randy grinned meaningfully. “They’ll be shown the door. Only whores don’t get fired; they’re like the hens that lay the golden eggs. There’s always demand for them, so they’re allowed to stay in the brothel, and what else are these chicks supposed to do in Thailand?”

“Are you saying that I will also be thrown out into the street?” I didn’t believe it. “Sure, you will. After that, you will have to look for a job on your own. But where else are you going to find so much vitality on the Island? You have to make do with little things like gyms, cockfights, and video games rooms, or trolling in chat rooms. Let me tell you a secret – basically all the dead people here do it.” “All of them?” I lowered my voice. “Are there many dead people?” “A lot. So before it’s too late, buy a laptop and get to work.”

To be continued