The apartments were arranged in a square formation, terraced in rows of ten, with pathways leading out at each corner to some other part of the complex. They were stacked two high, and the upper rooms each had a protruding balcony that jutted out over the apartment underneath to serve the double purpose of outside space for the upper room and a sun shade for the lower one.
I located the shop in the north corner of the apartment square. The door was open and lights were on. A rotating stack of postcards featuring photos of Playa Blanca and its beach were my first indication as to where I was. The confusion was overwhelming, but I kept myself steady and tried not to panic. My first goal was finding some painkillers to stop the intense throbbing in my head.
The shop was obviously meant to cater for people too lazy to leave the hotel complex itself and venture into the town. It had everything from sun cream and toiletries to tins of chili and pasta and even a section of blow-up toys for the pool. I located the drug aisle and broke open a carton of paracetamol. My Spanish is not great but thankfully drug names seem to be roughly the same in Spanish as they are in English. The law-abiding person inside me made me look around to see if there was a cashier or security guard watching me as I broke the top off the container and feverishly swallowed three of the tablets. I instantly chided myself for not looking to see if there were any faster-acting tablets that would give me more instant relief. There were, but as I didn’t want to overdose I kept hold of them until I could find something with a pocket to put on.
There was a rack of beach shorts so I dug out a pair roughly my size and put them on but could find nothing to go on my top as yet. Why I felt the need to dress myself I don’t know. Even hunter gatherers covered themselves in skins so I suppose it was base human sense ingrained over millions of years of evolution that pushed me to clothe myself even though I was totally alone.
The chilled food section had a selection of salami and cheese and some delicious looking olives stuffed with garlic, but I wasn’t hungry so left them in situ and made a mental note of where they were. The cashier’s computer was still on, so I tried to minimise the ringing up screen to see if there was an internet icon anywhere, but it was such a basic machine it seemed to only perform that one function.
I walked around the aisles to see if there was anything else I could use. I picked up a small first aid kit but realised I didn’t really need it so set it back and again made a mental note of its whereabouts.
There was a rack of newspapers in various languages, Spanish, Bild in German and The Sun in English. All were dated 3rd July and none contained any useful knowledge that would explain what was going on.
There was a cigarette vending machine, and although I haven’t smoked for seven years and my head was screaming I allowed myself the indulgence of sneaking a couple of Euros from the cashier’s tray and acquiring myself a pack of Lucky Strikes. It felt odd smoking inside the store, and again the responsible person inside coerced me out of the shop to resume my explorations.
I continued through to an open communal area containing two pool tables and a lift in the middle of a winding staircase down to a lower level. A huge skylight above the staircase flooded this area with natural light and I was able to see to the floor below but nothing of interest seemed to be there. There were two more computers in the far extremity of the room in an obvious attempt at creating an internet corner. I shook the mouse on both and the screens linked into life.
My heart leapt a beat when I saw the Google Chrome icon on the desktop and my hands shook so much it took three attempts to double-click on it, but when the screen appeared it just said ‘unable to connect to the internet at this time’. What affected me more was that there was no date or time display in the bottom left of the screen like on normal desktops. Why would anybody have gone to the trouble to remove this function from a PC?
A sense of foreboding crept over me and for the first time I wondered if this was all some kind of weird experiment designed to test human reactions and responses in an uncertain environment. A wave of nausea swept over me, and I must have collapsed or passed out as when I awoke it was pitch black outside and the temperature had dropped considerably.
Although I was not cold, I was alone in an unknown, silent environment, giddy, hungry and in a brightly lit room open to the elements in the dead of night. I had to stave off a panic attack by breathing as deeply as possible and counting to twenty. It seemed to work, but my head was still pounding and I noticed I was still gripping the fast-acting paracetamol so I quickly popped two and stumbled back to the store to grab a bottle of water. The lights were all still on and the cashier’s till was still lit up, and something in me made me go over and switch it off to preserve electricity. I almost laughed out loud when I realised what I had done.
After another cigarette I started to feel very light-headed, and an intense fatigue seemed to grab hold of me. It was all I could do to retrace my steps beside the dimly illuminated poolside back to my room before collapsing on the bed I had woken up on and falling into a deep, deep sleep.
95%
I have never known a thirst like it when I awoke. It raged, so I stumbled to the bathroom and without thinking turned on the tap and glugged down the liquid that cascaded out without even stopping to consider if it was potable. My stomach cramped and I realised as I caught sight of myself in the mirror that the weird battery icon was flickering in front of my eyes again, like before, only this time it said 95%. Somewhere in between going to sleep and waking up I had lost 3%. The thought stuck in my mind leaving a residue of unease as I headed out of the apartment. I couldn’t place its significance.
The sun was high in the sky and it must have been a least midday as I stepped outside to the grim realisation that I wasn’t just in some weird nightmare. The heat was palpable and I again resisted the urge to leap into the pool, instead heading straight to the store to grab some more bottled water. The silence was still uninterrupted and when I accidentally knocked the stand of postcards over the crash appeared almost deafening. The pain in my head had abated slightly but I noticed I had wet myself in the night for the first time since I was a kid.
I still didn’t feel in the least hungry but put it down to mild shock and forced myself to nibble on a few olives. After that my appetite seemed to surge back and I ripped open some cheese slices and salami and ate the lot, washed down with a carton of ice cold milk. Two or three seconds after I closed the door to the refrigerator it clicked on and started a low humming as it compensated for the heat I must have let in when retrieving the milk. I realised it was the first independent sound that I had heard since waking up that I hadn’t made myself. It sounded wonderful.
Whether it buoyed me with a sense of optimism I don’t know, but I felt the need, indeed the urge, to set my exploratory sights slightly further afield.
The open plan games room in which I had collapsed the night before opened out onto a sunny terrazza with 25 or 30 plastic tables laid around complete with sunbrellas. Every table was empty except for a single ashtray on each. I felt the need to check every single one, but the fag butt that would have indicated the presence of humanity here at some point could not be found.
I went into the cafeteria at the western end of the terrazza and found a slush puppie machine still churning its icy, fruity contents around in an endless tombola. Again, what caused me to reach down and pull out the plug to stop it I don’t know. It was another independent noise, but one I felt I didn’t need to hear. The place still had electricity though, which indicated to me that somewhere on the island there must be a power plant operating somewhere, which might mean a staff to operate it. The lift too was working, but I was damned if I was getting in it.