[ WP ] Only you and your mother remain on the island . Once a month you see distant lights out on the water . You are safe , she says , as long as you douse the fires at dusk . But tonight you accidentally fell asleep and now those distant lights are drawing nearer .

I am 12. I have been on this island, my Mother ’ s Island since I was in second grade, when I had just turned 8. My birthday was in January of every year when my classmates would sing me a song and the teacher would greet me first in class. 
 
 
 My skin was pale then, I was 8. 
 
 
 I am 12 now. I long stopped counting the days after Mother threw my cardboard calendar into the ocean. As I watched the charcoal days leak like oil I could hear Mother. Oh Mother, as she ground my charcoal pen. I was 9 then, I had been on her island for a year then. 
 
 
 I was still 8 then. Father had always insisted we live by the sea while he maintained the boat. dad and Mother fought a lot then. He would spell of wood polish and thinners and would often greet me at home with a role of tips in his pocket from the yacht owners and their children. They were my age, 8, 9, 10. The girl priscilla was blonde but her skin was brown. 
 
 
 Father would greet me at the door when he got home spelling of polish and thinners. He would put his hand in my hair and explain to me that that priscilla was as white as I but she spent time on the sea with her father who was nice enough to leave father 20s. 
 
 
 I remember the spell of alcohol when I was 5. father had come home with a spell I had not remembered before. He was alien to me then, and maybe to Mother too, because they shouted at each other. 
 
 
 I kept my head down and looked at the maths. It had always confused me but I preferred its strange symbols to the noise. 
 
 
 After the fight father sat down to help me. He showed me how many days and how many tips he would need to fix the boat that had been sitting in the marina since we moved here. I do not remember the move. My first memory is at 4 when father gave the money in the kitchen jar to the the old sailor. That was the first time Mother and father fought. 
 
 
 My last memory before Mother ’ s Island was the day when the calendar was finished and father had broken one bottle on the front of the boat. My real last memory was of how the stuff in the bottle tasted before I fell asleep. 
 My first memory on the island was my Mother sobbing. Father ’ s tombstone was a piece of the boat I had helped him paint. I remember the wrong brushstrokes I had made and how father assured me that the mistakes only made it better. 
 
 
 I am 12. Every day Mother will burn all the driftwood on the island to cook the food which will last us to the next day. 
 
 
 She tells me that before the sun is fully gone we must pour water on the fire and sleep. Or the lights will come. 
 
 
 She tells me that the lights in the distance are the monsters which took father. The same monsters which had made me simple. The same monsters which are in the bottle. 
 Mother says that if the monsters return we can no longer be together. 
 
 
 I am 12 and I no longer believe her. I am 12 and no longer wish to hear her speak about my rotting father as if he is the reason for this. I longer wish to hear her swear at me for being soft on the head when all her friends would share the bottle when their bellies were big. 
 
 
 As the lights draw closer she shrieks at me calling me and my father names I had not heard before. I do not know them, but I know they are bad words. 
 
 
 The men on the white and red boats look like father. They are strong in the chest and spell of polish and thinners. 
 
 
 Mother has stabbed one of the men with a piece of wood from the fire. She says that they can not take her baby from her Island and that we will be here forever, free from the sailors and the boats and the bottles. 
 
 
 I am 12 now and my mother lies dead in the sand like my father. She had taken the sailor ’ s gun and turned it on herself. 
 
 
 I am 12 now and my classmates will never sing me a song again. My teacher will never greet me first. I have decided that the monsters are attracted to me and I do not deserve to be on a boat of my father ’ s leaving my mother ’ s island. 

