5 years ago I wrote this to begin a novel...

Back in 2001, a friend of mine proposed we get together and write, produce, and film an independent film.

We wrote the script, which I decided to format into a novel version, which would be a first person account of the events.

The script was entitled, 'Human Behavior,' and this draft is renamed 'The Diary of Arthur Russell.'

The story is about 4 former friends, turned enemies that 10 years later reunite when one of them dies of a rare disease. His will tells them that $10 million dollars is at stake if the 4 can reconcile by living remotely in a cabin for 7 days.

But after 7 days.... no one shows to pick them up.


Let me know what you think:


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Jason Charles Randall

The floor is cold and grainy. My hand feels the ridges of the ancient wooden interior as I bring my body down to lean on it. Adjusting myself accordingly, I lean my back so that I am lying completely straight and still.

The chill in the wood feels not unlike when you place your hand on the middle of a windshield while driving the speed limit down a wintered New England street. A slight shiver trickles through the nerves in my vertebrae. For a moment, the shiver remains dormant at my lower spine, but then dissipates.

The ceiling above me spins for a moment before I close my eyes. Silence lingers around me. Not even the crickets clinging near the window panes make a peep. This must be the sound a tree makes when it falls and no one is around to hear.

Without touching my neck or wrist with my index and middle fingers, I can hear the erratic pulses of my heart beat. My breath is heavy and shaky. If I close my eyes any tighter and listen carefully, I can almost hear the tidal waves of blood crashing over and through my veins like a flooded tunnel. The sound of decomposition isn't this quiet.

I exhale.

My throat is dry. I’ve had nothing to drink in three days. Moving my tongue around, I can feel the interior of my mouth is beyond leathery. I can’t speak. Well, I can, but I’m salvaging what remains in my salivary glands. Who knows when the next sip of water will be. There is no running water in the cabin. Only rusty buildup pours from the sink in the kitchen. It hasn’t rained in the eighty-seven days I’ve been here. There are no puddles, no retention pond, no anything.

My mouth is a desert wasteland. Sand and grime from the floor stick to my lips like a Post-It Note on a co-worker’s computer. When my teeth move, the grit from the sand cause loud scratching noises, almost identical to the cracks and crunches heard when stepping on a shard of glass in high heels. Not that I’ve done it before, but I can imagine. Maybe there is glass in the sand. Who knows, anymore? Who even cares?

If the glass in my lip cuts me, I can use the open wound to let my salivary glands take a rest as the few droplets of my blood trickle down my throat. I can let the saliva rest. After all, it is the only thing keeping me alive.

Twelve days without water. I should be dead by now. Aside from the shaky breathing and erratic pulses, my body is too weak to do anything else. I stare at the ceiling fan above me. It matches the country theme of the cabin, with its faux finished oak blades and bronze painted base. It is not moving.

The electricity has long since been non-functional. Long before my last drink, and even longer since my last meal. There is no food and no food substitute. Only the grass outside is edible, but that is questionable. The woods nearby may harvest edible plants, but I risk the chance of poisoning myself. However, at this point in my life, it may prove to be a reward.

The floor gets colder as the sun above begins to set over the miles and miles of trees that hide this cabin from any form of society. A helicopter flying low could not find this place. This facility could have been built underground with the entrances covered with sticks and trees, and the ability to find this location would be easier.

There is no chance of survival. I know this. I know not to expect a paramedic, police, a fire chief, or even a Wildlife Enforcement agent. I’ve given up on the possibility of a televised rescue weeks ago. Only my memories and a story or two that I have published in my time will be remembered. Then again, I’ve been missing for nearly three months.

The average search team spends a total of two to three days on a hot pursuit when on a rescue mission to find someone who has been lost in the woods. After that third day, they don’t expect to find a living, breathing person.

On the fifth day, the local police send one of their finest to the domicile of the nearest living relative to let them know the chances of survival are slim to none. The search teams are now looking for a body. A cold, pale, rotted corpse with torn flesh from the ants and other insects of the woods. Of course, this isn’t the dialogue that would be used, but it is the dialogue in the back of the young cadet’s mind. If I’m found, the police may suggest a closed casket funeral. The make up artists can only do so much.

Your closest loved one tears up. She’s shaking. Denial is the first instinct in a case like this. Anger is the second. The two work hand in hand. She argues. She claims that I’m still out there, still struggling, still trying to make my way home. I am a fighter, and I won’t give up. I won’t let this predicament be the end of one Arthur Russell. This will be a great story to have published for the Weeklies, and later to be transformed into a Lifetime Movie of the Week.

I don’t expect any Academy Award winners to play my role. It doesn’t matter. I will never see it. Maybe no one will. It’s this moment as I lie on the cold floor of a cabin I never intended upon visiting that I ponder the after life.

Most of us would rather spend time learning the little factoids that no one cares about than to take a moment and read the last chapter to understand their bitter end to a bittersweet existence. I’m referring to the book of ‘Revelations.’ Not that I am a spiritual person, but the Bible is the only guideline we have in respect of what is to come when the end nears.

Unless of course, you fall under the religion of Scientology, and you’re waiting to be enslaved by the superior alien race by the year 3000. If you make it to live that long, Happy Birthday.

(More to come)