Disclaimer: Don't know Chris Kirkpatrick (sadly); nor am I in any way affiliated with Bad Robot Productions. Lost isn't mine, neither are the characters--though I'd like to get my hands on Sawyer, Sayid, Boone, and sometimes Jack and Charlie. The end.
Chris hadn't been to Australia in years. He couldn't remember the last time they'd gone there. Not being able to remember that had pissed him off beyond belief the entire week he'd been there, and he had vowed to ask Lance to tell him once he got back home.
He was sitting in his middle row seat, trying to recall everything just as the plane hit a pocket of turbulence. He winced and found himself white-knuckling the armrest. Shit, he thought. He'd been on too many flights, and had experienced turbulence before, but every time that the plane hit an air pocket (or whatever the hell it was in the sky that could make the plane shake like that), he always found himself grabbing something. He snickered to himself, remembering when he and the other guys had been flying to Rio and they'd hit an air pocket. He'd freaked out and grabbed JC's hand too hard, making JC scream like a terrified six year old.
The plane jolted again. This time, Chris wasn't laughing. The abrupt jolt was then followed by a cracking sound, and the sudden feeling of his ears filling with air far too fast made his head hurt. Oxygen masks fell from their hidden compartments, and he snatched his forward and slid it over his face. He could feel the plane quickly losing altitude—oh, shit—and the feel of a gust of wind (wind?), and as his breaths became more sporadic and worried in the oxygen mask, he could hear people screaming.
Blackout.
He woke up with the sun in his eyes and a man wearing a dress shirt and tie standing over him, looking concerned.
"God?" Chris asked. "I'm dead, right?"
"I'm not God," the man responded. "You're breathing. That's good. Can you move your legs?"
Flinching a little bit, Chris lifted his left leg off the ground first. Good. Then he lifted his right leg. Even better.
"And can you feel your arms?"
Chris wiggled his fingers, becoming aware for the first time that he was lying in sand. Sand! He scooped up some and let the warm, gritty grains fall from his fingers. "Okay, you're not God. You're a doctor," he guessed.
The doctor helped him up. "Jack Shepard," he said.
"Chris Kirkpatrick. Nice to..." His eyes surveyed the surroundings. People were huddled all around the pristine white sand beach. In the distance, he could see part of the fuselage of the plane smoldering and smoking. The scent of gas was floating though the air. Squinting in the bright light, Chris began to put two and two together. "We crashed," he mumbled, acknowledging the fact to himself. "We crashed."
The first thing to do was to find his suitcase.
Some of the bodies and other various remains were being moved by do-good passengers. Suitcases were being dragged away or rooted through, making Chris's desire to find his own stronger than ever. It was a standard black rolling model, big enough to hold a week's worth of clothes, a portable DVD player and DVDs, and the nonessential things that he always ended up packing. Unfortunately for him, there were dozens of other black rolling suitcases littered everywhere.
He finally found it next to a neon pink duffel bag. He dragged it away, towards an empty spot on the sand, and sat down to open it. After sifting through everything, he found exactly what he'd been looking for: his glasses, in their fake leather case, unbroken. "Thank God for small miracles," he mumbled, putting the case in his shirt pocket. He would need those for later. As far as he knew, there were no pharmacies on the island that could fill his contact lens prescription.
There was something on the island. It sounded like Chris's garbage disposal at home when chicken bones or glass gets stuck in it, only louder and more menacing.
"Terrific," the guy who stood next to Jack the Doctor said. By the firelight, Chris thought he looked kind of familiar. The next morning, he woke up, realizing that it's the bassist from Driveshaft. The bassist from Driveshaft. What were the odds that two washed-up celebrities would end up on the same plane that crash lands on some deserted island? he thought. And what are the odds of both of both of them surviving the crash? "It boggles the mind," he mumbled to himself.
Days passed, and things happened.
Chris talked to a few people, who heard things. There was a US Marshall on the plane, and he had some shrapnel in him. He was teetering between life and death, and, according to the hot redhead that Chris has been getting his news from, "that Southern guy, the one with the blonde hair who is hoarding stuff, he shot him. Tried to kill him. And he missed. The guy was still alive. Jack had to put him out of his misery, poor bastard."
Then there was the guy with the knives. He had a case full of them. He threw one close enough to the Southern guy to scare the shit out of him. Chris made a mental note to ask the guy—he thought he might've heard someone call him "Locke" once or twice—to teach him how to do something like that. Later that day, Locke brought back a boar for dinner. Chris was impressed but a little bit freaked out. Maybe he's in the Army, he thought as he took his first bite of boar. Maybe he's a Green Beret.
Fights broke out. There'd been tons of fights within the first two or three days on the island, and Chris always watched. He needed to get his amusement wherever he could. But when the Asian guy had attacked the black guy right in front of his kid, Chris didn't watch. He didn't even know about it until he overheard someone talking about "Sayid handcuffing that Chinese guy." Apparently, the Asian guy had gotten pissed at the black guy for whatever reason and had tried to drown him.
But mostly, Chris spent his time wandering down the beach, thinking. Wondering how worried his family was about him. Wondering about JC and Lance and Joey and even Justin. Wondering about the press, and even morbidly wondering what they were saying about him on MTV. For a moment, he realized that to the rest of the world he was dead.
He wanted to talk to someone about it—about his realization that he was stuck on the island for an indefinite amount of time and that everyone he loved thought his carcass was being gnawed on by sharks. Jack was too busy doing Brave Doctor Things, and Charlie—the Driveshaft bassist—seemed a bit too spaced out.
I don't need to talk to anyone, he thought. I'm the one who studied psychology. But he remembered all the other times when he tried to psychoanalyze himself and he always wound up with a headache.
He found himself wanting a drink of the alcoholic variety badly.
The hot redhead—her name was something with a J, like Jodie or Jamie—told him to go see the Southern guy. "His name's Sawyer and I don't like him," she said one morning. "I went to see if I could get sunscreen from him, and he wouldn't give it to me unless I either gave him my Ray-Bans or a blowjob."
As Chris walked up to the tent, he hoped he wouldn't have to resort to fellating the guy. He stood there, hesitant for a moment. "Hey," he finally said, sticking his hands into his jeans pocket.
"Hey yourself, Backstreet," Sawyer responded. A pair of black sunglasses were on his head, keeping his bangs back. He was wearing two plastic leis: one blue, the other pink. If Chris hadn't wanted the alcohol so badly (and he wasn't secretly disgusted by the fact that after all those fucking years people still didn't realize that he was not a Backstreet Boy), he would've laughed at the entire scene.
"I heard that you have alcohol," Chris began. "What exactly will I have to do to procure it?" He was using the same sarcastic but slightly bitchy tone he used when Justin was pissing him off. If it worked with Justin, chances were that it could work with this guy.
"What've you got?" Sawyer asked.
He thought for a minute. "Uh." He closed his eyes, attempting to think for a minute. He didn't really have anything useful to potentially trade. Sure, there were DVDs and his DVD player and CDs and his I-Pod, and yeah, he had five pairs of size eight sneakers and some flip-flops… "I have shoes. I'll give you three pairs for whatever you have."
"What size?"
"Men's eights. And I have dental floss and toothpaste in case anyone's in dire need of cleaning their mouth out."
Sawyer tipped the sunglasses down. "The shoes are fine," he decided, grinning. "The thing is, though, I've got eleven bottles left. Savin' those for hard times, you know. Three bottles to you for your three pairs of shoes."
"I'll bring 'em over to you," Chris finally said. He started to go back to his spot on the sand to get out his shoes (he could cope with two pairs of shoes, he could cope with two pairs of shoes) before he turned back around. "Wrong group," he mumbled.
"Beg pardon?" Chris attempted to place his accent. He'd always been bad at placing accents. Lance was the best at it. He seemed to be able to place any Southern accent by state or major city. All that Chris could figure was that this Sawyer guy hailed from someplace below the Mason-Dixon Line.
"Wrong group. I'm..." I was? I am? "I was in *NSYNC. I actually founded it."
He laughed. "That's nice. You bringin' me the shoes or what, Timberlake?"
Chris tries to imagine what the other guys would be doing if they were with him.
Justin would love it at first, and then he would get pissed off about constantly having sand in his shorts. He'd be the first one to start running around naked. JC would look for fruit and write songs until he ran out of paper or ink in his pens, and then he'd slowly lose his mind. Lance would sunbathe the entire time and end up looking like a lobster. He probably would fight Sawyer for the alcohol—and lose. And Joey, well... Joey would certainly be doing something. Either that, or he'd be the first one dead. Chris hated to think that, but he always figured that Joey's survival skills were nonexistent.
He decides on staying at the beach, still hoping for rescue.
Mainly it's because of the fact that he's heard about the polar bear that was in the jungle, and he's not quite sure if someone's just making it up or if there really are random, angry Artic animals lurking out there, ready to off a semi-former pop star. Mainly it's because he still keeps expecting to see a plane fly over, or a boat to pull up. Mainly it's because the waves crash and it lulls him to sleep far too easily. Maybe it's because sometimes he goes over to see Sawyer, who interests him for some reason. Maybe it's because of Kate, that pretty girl who just sits and stares at the ocean all the damn time. He wonders about her, and mostly, he just stares at her, wondering what's on her mind. Maybe he stays for Jess, the hot redhead who goes between the caves where Doctor Jack is and the beach, and she always has news and she talks to him, flirts with him, and genuinely seems interested in him. But mostly, it's because he's a little afraid that he'll end up like Piggy, the kid with the glasses in Lord of the Flies.
Chris wipes his lenses clean and really hopes he doesn't end up like Piggy.
