This is the first chapter of my first novel, taken from the just completed second draft. Any comments, thoughts or suggestions on how it could be improved will be much appreciated, I know how important it is to have a strong start.
Anyway, enjoy!

Land of Smiles

Chapter 1

By J Kennett

Crackling. Sparking, cracking, fraying the edges, making them fall away. Not like the comforting crackle of a log fire though, not the soothing sound of wood gently succumbing to the flame.
No. This was the crackle of the fan above as it turned it worn axis, plastic wearing on plastic. This was the mosquito hunting blood its buzz sudden then gone and sudden again. It was the click of a heel carried under the door on a carpet of sallow light. The burble of unimportant conversation, meaning lost with volume.
Her own breath even.
A multitude of minutiae that mocked her still limbs and closed lids.
Sara rolled over in bed for what seemed like the hundredth time, breathed a sigh that was more like a groan, and opened her eyes. The doctors had warned her to expect restless nights, filled with dark dreams and memories. When she didn’t sleep at all for the first week, she’d thought that it was an unconscious attempt to protect herself from the shadows in her mind.
Now she would welcome nightmares of torture, death, dismemberment, her own mother being torn apart by rusty blades, any bloody thing at all; because it would mean she’d actually managed to fucking fall asleep for once.
Two months without rest was driving her insane. The blank unconsciousness she achieved with the aid of heavy duty pharmaceuticals was more like death than sleep, and as the drugs wore off she would wake as if drowning, disorientated and gasping for air.

Frustrated to the point of despair, Sara sat up and leant her head back on the cool tile of the wall behind her. A ceiling fan spun slowly above her, silent and indistinct in the half dark, lifting her long hair back as she rubbed her eyes.
The insomnia was made more frustrating by the fact that she’d always found it easy to sleep anywhere at anytime, even in the cattle class seats they’d had on plane to Thailand.
Not like poor Jamie, a voice said in her mind.
She started to smile, and then her mouth dropped as she realized that for the first time since they found her she was remembering something. The fog in her brain evaporated like breath off glass and on the other side that frozen moment began to play…

*

Day 3, Friday November 5.

This is the first entry in this journal of my Thai adventure (well, our Thai adventure really since Sara is with me).
Probably a bit slow considering we’ve been here three days now, but you can't rush these things.
It’s been a pretty adventurous three days so far, but right now I’m just sitting and swinging in a hammock on Long Beach, an out of the way little spot on the southern tip of Ko Chang.
Just got a bit freaked out by a bug the size of a flying alligator, but besides that this place really is a bit of paradise. I’ve never seen such clear blue water; outside of T.V anyway.
There’s only one bungalow operation with about a dozen huts on this parts of the island, and we’re two of only about twenty people here. Everyone is very laid back, the silence only broken by the crickets, and the hopeless guitar playing of one of the many German backpackers we have run into so far.
I’ll never forget when we chugged our way into this bay and towards the shore. It was like the fairytale photo of the impossibly blue skied, blue watered paradise you see on all of the tourist brochures of Thailand, but actually real!
This probably wouldn’t have surprised me, except that the first few days of our journey has been hectic to say the least. I’m not saying it was bad (well, the six hour bus trip in the heat straight after getting off a sleepless overnight flight was pretty bad), but it was definitely less than peaceful at times.
But more about our mad dash across Bangkok, our even madder dash across Eastern Thailand, several crazy sawngthaew rides, ferries, fishing boats, nice Thai people, scamming Thai people, peaceful bungalows, busy beaches and Kylie Minogue pumping at 200 decibels in the middle of the night later. I’m relaxing at the most beautiful place I’ve ever been right now and that’s all I care about for the moment.

P.S Sorry I haven’t emailed you Mum, I am still alive.

*

I sat up and looked over at him in the silver light, finally asleep, the lines of worry that had threatened to become a permanent feature of his forehead over the last 36 hours gone, smoothed by slumber.
I was tired too, but the effort of keeping him together through the long and stressful first day had exhausted me, and I was finding it hard to unwind.
As with everything, Jamie had overplanned the trip, going so far as writing out a ‘suggested’ itinerary for each and every one of the fifty seven days we were going to be away for. But this best laid plan had started to come unstuck as soon as we stepped on the plane.
It was a 1:45am flight out of Melbourne, and as soon as the flight attendants cleared away our plates of pretty bad Thai food away I curled up and drifted off, while Jamie looked to do the same next to me.
Three hours later he woke me, stressed out because he hadn’t been able to fall asleep. The nine hour flight was due to get into Bangkok at 6:45am (thanks to time difference), and his set-in-stone plan called for us to catch a bus straight out of the city to beat the morning traffic and get all the way out to an island hundreds of k’s to the east before stopping. Jamie had guessed that it would take around ten hours to get there from the airport, and not sleeping at all the entire way from Melbourne to the islands of Thailand was definitely not part of the plan.
“It’ll be okay buba,” I said, smiling and reaching over the hold his hand.
“Yeah, no worries, just can’t believe we are going to be there in a few hours!” he grinned, but his eyes flashed with as much tension as excitement.
His tension tracked deeper than worrying about an uncomfortable bus ride. Jamie didn't just want the holiday to be perfect; he needed it to be. And now he saw the very first step going awry. He saw an omen and let anxiety wrap him, only too willing to make the thoughts real.
Jamie had just beeen drifting along for a while now, unable to settle with anything. He finished his uni course then let it go, stayed in jobs just long enough to get noticed then left.
When we'd first met his heart had been so open that I'd almost been scared for him, worried he could become a target, worried he could get hurt. But the puppy dog enthusiasm he'd shown whatever we were doing, his optimism about anything we discussed or planned was impossible not to share. I'd fallen in love with his goofy grin as much as anything.
The grin still lived, but all too often it was forced, gaurded, only half there even when it was. He was a dreamer forced down from the clouds, and he couldn't seem to find his feet anymore.
That's why this trip was so much more important than a mere holiday. When he'd told me about his plans for us to travel to Asia he was the old Jamie again, nervous excitement electrifying his smile and sweeping gestures painting the fantasy for us both.
Which of course means that if things go to shit then who knows what might happen, a voice in my head warned – but I quickly smothered it with happy thoughts about the weeks ahead, a task made easier once Jamie finally got to sleep for an hour or so near the end of the flight.
We burst into Bangkok airport at dawn, our bags clutched tightly and our defenses up, ready to take on the crowds, heat and noise head first. So it was almost disappointing to find that the place was practically empty (relatively speaking of course; the place is so damn big that you could empty the entire populations of some small countries into it and it would still look practically empty.)
We breezed through customs, sailed through the terminal (studiously avoiding the touts trying to hustle us into taxis: thank you Lonely Planet!) and bounded onto an eastbound airport bus with grins on our faces and a buzz in our blood.
Jamie had flirted with the idea of trying to catch a local bus, but had quickly realized that paying an extra couple of Australian dollars wasn’t a bad deal for both air conditioning and actually knowing where we were going.
We glued our eyes to the windows the whole way across town, gawking like we’ve never seen a freeway lined with apartment blocks before. Jamie looked so cute for the whole ride, his face lit up and eyes wide, too excited to do anything except grab me and exclaim “Thailand!” every five seconds. I clutched his hand and kissed him compulsively, as we gleefully breached Thai etiquette all of half an hour after arriving in the country.
“Oh well, at least we didn’t put our feet on the seats,” Jamie smiled when we managed to pull ourselves back together.
It took a good two hours sweltering in the back of a much less luxurious local bus before the exhilaration of arrival began to fade. Unfortunately, we still had another five hours in said bus after that, and by the time we pulled into the eastern junction town of Trat several hundred kilometres east of Bangkok the long journey was starting to tell.
Trat serves a jumping off point for the islands we were heading to, and as soon as we got off the bus we were inundated by touts trying to shove us into the back of pickup trucks already overflowing with over a dozen other backpackers each – plus their backpacks. Turned out that these were about as close to official public transport that you could get to the pier, but we were both starting to slip into a bit of sleep deprivation induced paranoia, and there was something about people trying to grab our bags and shove us into the back of a truck that didn’t sit well.
We stumbled away from the crowd, finding refuge in a small western style department store. It was just the sort of place that Jamie didn’t like to go back home, but there’s something about being thousands of kilometres out of your comfort zone that makes cool tiled floors, plastic shelving and advertising boards soothing.
“Don't know if I can make it all the way Ko Chang today babe,” Jamie sighed as we took a few moments to relax inside.
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed, though I felt okay. “Is there anywhere we could maybe stay in town?”
“I think there is a couple of ok places I marked off here in case we got stuck,” he said, pulling out the guidebook and quickly flipping through.
“Here we go, the Trat Inn looks alright. It should be just a couple of streets down on the other side of the main road, if this map is right anyway."
“Are you sure you know where we are in town?
“Uh, think so. This place seems a lot bigger than it looks on the map."
"Places usually do."
"Very funny." He sighed and chewed his bottom lip a little. "I’m sure we could find a room somewhere in town, but I’m just a bit worried about staying somewhere that’s not  in the book."
We fell silent for a moment and leaned back against the wall. He was being a bit pedantic about following the guidebook to the letter, but we’d only just arrived and I didn’t really want to spend the first night of our holiday somewhere dodgy either.
“Maybe we could try to make it to the beach today. At least then we would kind of know where we are and wouldn’t have to get up and go anywhere in the morning.”
Jamie looked off into space for a moment, and then started nodding his head. “Yeah, I don’t know if I really want to stay here. Doesn't really have the right vibe, know what I mean?"
“You're going to be ok to keep traveling today though? Not too tired?"
“Yeah, nah, I’ll be right, just got a bit spooked when we got mobbed at the bus is all,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder and pulling me close, touching his forehead to mine.
 “Thanks” he whispered in my ear as he pressed his cheek against mine. We stayed, content in our own little world for a few moments, and then walked back out into Thailand.

*
Sara ran her hands down her face as the images swirling in front of here eyes slowed, and then stopped altogether. The memory wasn’t anything special in and of itself, but it was a little spark of colour in the yawning blackness that was the last four months of her life; something more than grey walls and frustration, and she cradled it in her mind like an injured child, as she leant forward to cradle herself in a foetal ball.
Her arms were damp before she realized she was crying, and her hands moved to cover her eyes as the tears dripped down to soak the sheets below.

*
“Come on, just a little further up the hill and we’ll be there.”
“We’ll be where?”, I exhaled as I stumbled on the track. It was so dark I couldn’t see anything but his silhouette ahead of me, and my legs burned from the climb. “Slow down, I can’t catch my breath.”
“It’s ok, just a little further, just a little bit more…we’re almost there,” came floating back from above, but I could barely see him anymore, his long strides pulling him away step by step.
My breath caught in my throat as my foot caught on a rock and I fell, coughing, to my knees.
“Wait!”, I choked between rasping breaths. “Where are you going? Where am I? Who are you!”
But he faded into the dark up ahead, and was gone.

*