“ Jessica, plea-” Jessica’s hand closed around Jack like a venus flytrap trapping its prey, incapacitating him with a squeeze, Jack’s ribs bending in but not snapping. Even so, it was enough to elicit a pained gasp from him.

  “You…” She brought Jack closer to her face, mere feet from her liferaft sized pink lips, her breath washing over him.

 “ Don’t talk unless I tell you to. Understand?”  She stated through gritted teeth, her anger almost unbearable. Jack could spot her teeth, each the size of a tombstone, capable of biting him in half when backed up by those powerful jaw muscles of hers bared at him. He’d have wet himself on the spot but he was saved by his empty bladder.

 “But I-”

 “ Do you understand?!” Jessica roared with the intensity of a jet engine, Jack’s eardrums nearly burst from the blast. She shook him hard, Jessica had enough of his ways, this little jaunt through the forest was the last she’d ever take from him.

 “ Y-yes,” Jack whimpered. He could see her eyes from her, burning with fury, her eyebrows twisted downwards to create the most ghastly glare ever directed at him.

 “ Good,” Jessica snorted. Without a word, she dropped her arm , letting it hang by her side while she walked back to home. It was easier now that she had carved her own path through the jungle. With each step, Jack smacked against her hip , his injured arm receiving no respite from her. He didn’t say a word, keeping the pain to himself all throughout the journey. At least he was no longer cold, Jessica’s body heat keeping him warm so he had that going for him, which is nice.

 The walk back was brief but no one said a word, Jessica bristling with anger while Jack kept his mouth shut, out of fear what she’d do to him. Jack had to endure a detour while Jessica washed the blood out from her soles, grumbling about how her idiotic guest made her do all this.

Once they got back,   Jessica brought him into the bathroom where she then deposited him on the counter  more gently than she wished.

Jack struggled to his feet while clutching his arm, the blood was now dripping rather than flowing. His blood left stains Jessica’s hands, brown from  oxidation. Jessica loomed over him, silently glaring.

   “ What..” Jessica paused briefly, shaking with anger, “ What made you even consider this imbecilic idea? Why would you want to escape?”

 Jack remained mute, lost for words. His mind worked furiously to piece together the least offensive thought possible but it wasn’t fast enough for Jessica, the deafening silence  too much. The entire table shook as Jessica brought her fist down on the sink, a few feet to the left and Jack would have been liquified.

“ Answer me! I’ve had it with your crap!” Jessica wailed.

 “I...well..I..couldn’t live like this like-” Jack stammered, his forehead lined with cold sweat. He wasn’t sure if Jessica intended to kill him for his error or was there a less fatal but more painful punishment in store for him.

 “ Ah...I wasn’t comfortable being around you, you’re really scary,” He said while looking down at the counter, feeling simultaneously guilty and ashamed of his decisions.

 Jessica lowered herself, squatting while keeping her head close to the counter, her face level with Jack, her arms crossed in front of him to keep her balance. Her face was calm but inside she wanted to tell Jack how she really felt, so she did so.

“ First, what were you even thinking!” Jessica’s voice reverberated in his chest , the same feeling you’d experience when in close proximity to a jackhammer but here, his entire body shook.

 “ Oh right, you weren’t!” She said with a sarcastic look of revelation.

 “ You are pathetic Jack, why would you even be afraid of me? Apart from being so damn big, what have I done? I have done nothing but helped you stay alive. Hell, I saved your life twice!” Jessica ranted, her face crossed with fury.

 “ You could have been left out on the beach, dying of dehydration and don’t tell me you’d have found water, you couldn’t even last a few hours without letting the wildlife turn you into a meal. All you had to do was listen to me, which you failed to do. The simplest task you had and you completely ruined that one,” Jessica’s table sized eyes noticed his arm, bloody from the attack.

Jack could tell, hoping it’d generate some sympathy and end this session.

 “ Oh right, your arm is hurt...good. A little pain for your stupidity, hope you learned your lesson,” She said as she glared menacingly at him.

 “ I can’t help you with that arm, not unless you want it removed. All I can do is let you rinse it with water, there’s no first aid kit here, no one here has ever been stupid enough to need one.” She grunted as she stood up and helped Jack get into the sink. The lack of back talk from him was rather refreshing and she knew he was scared shitless, she’d seen that look on plenty of Leighton employees when meeting her for the first time. The only difference was that the latter had no reason to be afraid but Jack was the first man to give her that reason.

 “ I-I can’t reach the tap,” Jack  jerked his head up at the faucet.

Jessica rolled her eyes in derision, turning it on with ease.

“ Geeze, I thought you had everything under control, no need for a huge freak like me,” Jessica responded sarcastically as she left the bathroom, closing the door on her way out.

 Jessica sighed, exhaling forcefully as she got her tablet out and began making a Skype call to her only contact; her father.

“ Please be up, I need to get that little jerk off this place before he kills himself,” she muttered as the call went through, the tired and bedraggled face of her father on the other end.

 Wallace had been asleep at his desk , he’d forgotten when he crossed into the realm of dreams , only that the sun had long since left the world. For a man in his fifties, he hardly looked the part with a largely wrinkle free face and a head of dark hair, yet to be bleached by time.

 His wife Maria liked to say it was his Chinese genes that kept him young, how it was an Asian thing but Wallace attributed it to other factors such as diet and exercise plus good stress management. The last part was important when he had to deal with Leighton and his giant daughter.

 “ Jess, what happened?” He asked, yawning audibly and visibly.

“ I’m sorry for calling so late Papa but, this is an emergency,” Jessica spoke with great concern. Wallace had rarely seen his daughter so worried over something on the island. His brain tried to come up with hypotheses, was she sick? Did she get hurt? More likely, was she lonely? She had called many times over that, just needing a familiar voice to talk to in between his fortnightly visits.

 “ What’s wrong?” He asked, a wry smile on his lips.

 “ Um...a man washed up on the shore this morning and just now, I saved him from from some wild dogs,” Jessica answered with trepidation. On hindsight, it would have been best to report this the moment she found him.

 “ What?” Wallace blurted out but only Jessica saw it, he was the sole occupant of his office.

  “ I think you tell me how he got injured,” Wallace requested..

 “ Okay but its quite a story,” Jessica rubbed her temples with her free hand. She told him about the moment she found him unconscious and how she had left him on a bed for the night then woke up to find him missing to the moment  she crushed those dogs to death, throwing her unflattering opinion of her guest whenever she could.

Wallace sat silently, trying to process the events, surprised at this visitor’s character, his lack of decorum rather striking, more so when interacting with his daughter of all people.

 “ This Jack fella is quite the man isn’t he?” Wallace chuckled but Jessica didn’t see the humour in it.

 “ More like a jerk,” Jessica fumed.

“ Okay okay,” Wallace conceded , hands in the air.

“ I can’t do anything about him now, there isn’t a boat available until the morning when all the coxswains are in. Is he dying?” Wallace asked softly, he was equally concerned over Jack’s welfare as Jessica despite having never met the man.

“ No, he’ll survive, I let him clean his arm with water,” Jessica replied,  last thing she wanted was a dead man on her conscience.

 “ Good, I’ll make some calls and we’ll come over first thing in the morning, probably need to take the chopper or something, get Jack out of there,” Wallace suggested, his daughter’s furrowed brow reflecting her frustration.

Wallace covered his mouth during a yawn, making it clearer to Jessica how much her father needed to get some shuteye.

“ Sorry,” Wallace said as he cracked his back, “ The office chairs aren’t as ergonomic as it should it be,” stretching his creaky joints and aching muscles.

Jessica chuckled, “ That’s why you should use a bed, otherwise it wouldn’t have a reason to exist. I’d take you there if I could, pick you up and march you off to bed.”

 Wallace tittered ever so slightly, it was a poignant moment whenever his not-so little girl tried to take care of him, her “telling offs” were adorable to witness at times.

“ I would let you do it too, my back isn’t what it used to be,” Both of them laughed before Jessica steered the conversation back .

 “ We’ll talk more tomorrow, I need to make sure Jack hasn’t drowned himself or something,” Jessica’s eyeballs rolled at the mere thought of returning but it had to be done, he was more helpless than an infant in her house.

“ Okay.Bye bye Jess, I need to make an appointment with my mattress.”

 “ Bye,” Jessica said quietly as she ended the call, feeling much better, most of her conversations with her father could defuse all of the animosity she had about anything. Setting her tablet down, she moved to get a fresh pair of clothes for Jack before entering the bathroom again.

 “ Here,” Jessica thrusted on to Jack after scooping him out from the sink, revealing a generic pair of cotton shirt and polyester pants for him. Jack put them on, no complaint over how big they were before climbing on to Jessica’s platform of palm to be carried to his bed.

 Jessica moved much slower and more careful than during the trip home from the jungle before she released Jack on to the pillow. Jack watched as she bent over, the fabric of her pants stretching tight over her buttocks before removing the pillows on the floor.

 “ You’re getting out again and if you somehow do, don’t count on me to rescue your sorry little ass,” Jessica chastised him as she put the pillows away in her cupboard.

 She moved back to the bed, taking a seat before saying what she needed to Jack.

 “ You’ll be gone tomorrow and I cannot stress how much of a relief it’ll be to get you out,” She bit her lip a little, stopping to gather her thoughts momentarily.

 “ Even after that, you ought to treat people a better, a lot better,” Jessica crossed her arms as she chastised him.

“ You’re lucky I have values, values that I stick to. You may not believe it but you’re literally in the palm of my hand and on this island, I’m in charge.

‘That means I control everything you do and if I were so inclined to, I could just make you my personal dollman and you’d be powerless to stop me. Your family wouldn’t know you were alive, the company would be completely clueless, it’s a big house with plenty of spots to hide someone as teensy as you are.”

 “ Could I just-”

 “ Not yet Jack, you’ll get your piece after I’m done,” She held up a finger to counter his interruption.

 “ Yet you’re getting out of here with all of your injuries self inflicted. You won’t be so lucky next time so try to use that thing between your ears or else you’ll be no different from the trees I destroyed while trying to save you. Now, what did you want to say?”

 Jack would not admit it but being chided by Jessica was worse than what he would get from his mother. The closest approximation to this would be if God had descended from heaven and done the same thing, Jessica had the stature and volume of a deity.

 “ You need to get out of here, this is not how a person should live,” He said, trying to let her down gently.

 “Oh goodness me,” Jessica mentally face palmed herself.

 “ Did you not hear a single word I said?” Jessica was exasperated, her lecture clearly going over his head.

“ Relax, I heard you perfectly well, you’d have to try really hard not to be heard. Since you were talking about me leaving and that is fine, I don’t belong here and never wanted to. I just think you could do a lot better than living alone on this godforsaken patch of dirt.”

“ Oh you really missed the point I was trying to make  but let me end this before your ‘flawless’ logic makes me do something I’ll regret.

‘Here, I get all the food I need with a beautiful beachfront property in a tropical paradise and until recently, no annoying little people to disrupt the tranquility I’ve had for ten years. I don’t need to get out as you said.”

 “ You might have all that but you haven’t lived, you’ve never seen the world for its true beauty, all you’ve seen are these four walls, nothing else. You act like you’re some all powerful god here, is that why you don’t want to go? You would hate to become some lowly mortal like me, just more mortal because there’s more of you.” Jack felt a twinge of satisfaction, turning Jessica’s earlier comeback against her.

   “ Oh really? Where would I go? A suite at the Ritz isn’t going to fit my foot no matter how much I squeeze it in. Perhaps your mansion?” Jessica replied.

 “ You?” Jack sneered, “ I don’t have  the money to support your fat ass.”

 “ But you have enough to support that gold digging hussy of yours,” Jessica shot back, watching Jack’s increasingly smug mug reverse itself into something more sombre.

 “ You leave Caitlin out of this,” He pointed at her in a threatening manner or well, as scary as a man on a giant’s bedside table could manage. Which was nothing.

 “ Why not? You cut it pretty close when you mentioned my rear end.” She gave it a hard smack and ran her fingers over  her own glutes.

“ Plus in one day, apart from your dime a dozen looks and bank account, you haven’t shown a single reason why any decent girl should want to be with you. Your girl probably sees you like a tampon, to be thrown out once she’s done with you.”

 “ You take that back!” Jack shouted but Jessica laughed and moved closer to him, leaning until her face right up in his grill.

 “ Make me,” She taunted him.

Jessica was taken aback by what Jack did, he threw a punch that hit her square in the chin but it was a little pinprick, like a grain of sand brushing against you at the beach.

 “ Is that all you’ve got? You really need to eat your spinach little man or you’ll…” Jessica puffed her cheeks and exhaled slowly, sending Jack falling on to his back.

 “ You’ll never be able to handle a real woman,” Jessica said as she decided to call it a day, lying on her bed with her back facing Jack. It felt amazing, taking Jack down a notch just with her breath. While she didn’t condone halitosis, she hoped he would gag on her breath.

 As for Jack, he just lay there, defeated and humiliated, wishing the earth would open up and swallow him.