Help in a bottle

 

The beach of their town was the biggest and most beautiful of all the island groups and had attracted tourists since time immemorial. A lot of parties were had on the beach along with a lot of fun. A lot of sad incidents occurred too, and some strange.

For one strange story, the coast guards found a funny message in a cheap liquor bottle one morning. The message was a clear cry for help but judging by the peculiarity of the SOS, the guards laughed it off as a joke and went about their daily activities ignoring the message. The next day, another message such as the previous day’s message was at the beach. The guards didn’t do much this day either. The message was found the day after that and so on for a week when the guards finally decided to look for the source of the call; to find out if the call was genuine or a joke, for it was going too far.

They scoured the waters for shipwrecks or marooned tourists on the lonesome islands, but none were found. They watched the waters for a while hoping to notice something irregular but nothing was found. So, they decided to give up the search. But the cheap, brown liquor bottles kept showing up at the beach. A peculiarity of it was that the new message was always found one meter
to the left of the previous day’s message. The guards made note of this fact but ignored it, and soon forgot about it.

The days went on as they always did at the beach. They watched the waters, helped people, and charged the rulebreakers with fines. Everything was normal.

One day, there was a police team at the fishermen’s village on the shore. The coast guards were summoned as well; it was a crime scene. The guards were curious. What could’ve happened in a peaceful fishing village?

The crime was ghastly. A wife was beaten to death by her drunk fisherman husband. It was tragic. Upon closer inspection, it seemed she was beaten often by her husband. Her body was found lying near some empty bottles. The coast guards recognized the brown bottles. One of the bottles had a roll of paper stuffed in it, an SOS.