the last bite

Jeremy saw past the daze in her eyes and stared at her pale and seawater-wrinkled fingers. A day and a half on a sinking lifeboat with Martin and no signs of rescue. At least the night and its endless darkness was over. She hated the dark.

Wonder just where this lazy current is taking them. Her wristwatch said half past three in the afternoon. Nothing to do but endure the boredom and hold out an inverted mineral water bottle, with its bottom knifed out, to catch in raindrops. Seawater dehydrates you more. So she and Martin split the accumulated drinking water evenly, and took turns holding it up. Hunger, dehydration, exhaustion, hopelessness, a shark. Jeremy wondered which would kill her first.

Above them, they sky was cloudy-bright, the kind of sky she looks at from her hammock on her apartment's terrace. She misses home, and her long afternoon siestas. "Tell me again," she wanted to ask Martin, "how your boat leaked to death on the way back to the harbor?" But she didn't Martin felt bad enough as it is. His plan to seduce her on his boat didn't work. And now it's life and death. How romantic.

A shark, Jeremy whispered to her self, to rock her back into reality. A shark would kill them. At least, she wished a shark would come. It if didn't come, at least it's something to think about. Better than the endless nothing she is enduring. Better than the thought of Martin raping her on an already sinking lifeboat.

Soon, night would come. So many things could happen. A shark might attack. Or the lifeboat might give out. Or a shark might come while the boat is collapsing. Or a shark might come while Martin is trying to rape her while the boat is sinking. How convenient, Jeremy thought.

She remembered a paraphrase of Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Right, definitely, I'm sure, a shark would come.

Their lifeboat was a lung slowly deflating, a boat exhaling air; they took turns sticking their fingers into a hole on the boat's side; they kept checking themselves for open wounds that would lure in a shark.

They hardly talked. Martin said they should keep quiet, to conserve their strength, so they could scream and wave at a passing boat or airplane for however long it took to get noticed, to get rescued. But what if Martin got tired of conserving his strength, and wanted to spend it all on her?

The sound of motor in the sky. A plane. Martin screamed, forgot the hole and waved both arms. Jeremy blinked and joined the noise barrage. The hole hissed and hissed. The plane was gone. There was more water inside the lifeboat. The boat had gotten limp. The water bottle was nowhere in sight.

That's the second plane that missed them. Jeremy blinked at the coming darkness. So again, where is that shark, she asked herself.

Something in the water moved. Probably nothing. Probably the hunger and desperation setting in. A fin. Out of the water so suddenly. Twenty feet away. Coming to them, fast. Something surely is hungry. They are not the only desperate creatures at sea.

She pointed to the fin and Martin's voice was almost a silent screech, "We're dead." His throat must hurt from all that screaming.

"I'm not bleeding. Are you bleeding?"

"No," Martin said. "We have a flair gun, with one flair chambered."

"Save it. We can do this."

"Do what?"

"Sharks are sensitive not only to scent but to sound."

The fin swam closer. Fifteen feet.

"We yell it away? Are you nuts, Jeremy?"

"Do you trust me?"

"Just tell me what to do."

Ten feet away.

"Get you fingers out of the hole and pound the boat, open palm, and don't stop screaming."

"You're nuts, we'd hasten the deflation--"

Five feet.

"Do it!"

They do. They scream. The hole hisses air. The fin slows down.

"Don't stop, keep pounding, keep screaming, Martin!"

Martin barely blinked as he screamed. His throat was in pain. The shark turned to circle the lifeboat and Jeremy turned to face it, screaming and pounding. Their voice, in tandem, might just be enough.

The sun setting when the fin turned around and vanished in the silent waters. Jeremy plugged the hole with her fingers. But it was of no use. When the sun had set, more than half of the lifeboat was submerged. Both of them clung to the floating part, exhausted. Their throats hurt.

No sound rippled the sea. The blanket of darkness came. Jeremy hated the dark. No, she was afraid of it. Instead of her phobia killing her, there was another way. She bit her lip until it bled.