Regan Wolfrom - Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men

“That’s sick.”

“Breccan’s only got three or four litres.”

I looked over to her. She didn’t say a word.

“You need to do it, Steph,” he said. “You won’t survive otherwise.”

“I’m not going to be an accomplice to murder.”

“It’s not murder. It’s the custom of the sea.”

“You’re insane.”

“I found out my best friend is a piece of shit wannabe rapist. As if there’s any reason for him to outlive the rest of us. And your roommate here decided to eat all our rations, and then when I came up with one last box of stale crackers, she ate every last one without thinking for one second of sharing it. So I taped her down on her bunk. Come on, Steph… she didn’t do a single thing to stop me. She knows she deserves to die.”

“Breccan,” I said. “Say something, dammit. At least tell him you don’t want him to drain your blood out like you’re a fucking side of beef.”

“I don’t care anymore,” she said.

“I’ll keep trying the handheld,” Darrel said. “If we can raise someone in time we can all make it out of here in one piece.” He started to chuckle. “Well maybe not all in one piece.”

He walked back over to me.

I turned away.

“Where’s that raven-head dagger?” he asked me.

“What are you going to do?”

“Just tell me where it is. Your ankle hasn’t broken yet, has it?”

“It’s in the storage bin,” I said. “At the bottom.”

He walked over and dug through the storage compartment. Soon he had the knife in his hand and he was making his way back over to Jon.

“What are you going to do to him?” I asked.

“I’m hungry, Steph… aren’t you?”

“Don’t do it, Darrel. There’s no way you can justify it.”

He took the blade and sliced into Jon’s thigh.

Jon’s eyes shot open and he began to scream. It was muffled by the rag but was still the loudest scream I’d ever heard. He kicked against the tape, and Darrel paused a moment to grab the cast iron pan and slam it again Jon’s forehead.

“Anesthesia,” Darrel said.

He carved out a chunk of flesh and muscle.

“At least we still have enough fuel to fry it,” he said.

He took it to the kitchen along with the bloodied fry pan and started to cook his meal.

I was horrified.

I was pretty close to vomiting.

But then the smell of the frying meat started filling the cabin, and I couldn’t help but let it waft into my nostrils. It wasn’t Jon; it was meat. And I was hungry.

And I knew that Darrel wasn’t planning on giving me a choice.

When it was ready I didn’t fight him. I took the meat and the blood.

For the first time in a week, I didn’t feel hungry.

“You can’t keep me taped up like this,” I said.

“I can trust you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I was being honest.

He walked over with the raven-headed dagger.

I started to cry.

He cut the tape from my wrists and ankles.

“I’m going to try trusting you,” he said. “During the day. You understand that I’ll have to restrain you at night.”

“I know.”

“Everything will be okay, Stephanie.” He kissed me on the forehead.

I couldn’t stop crying.

SUNDAY - Thirteen Days Adrift

I THINKJon died today. I’m not sure because he hadn’t regained consciousness in at least twenty four hours, but I’d been too frightened of the truth and of Darrel to check his vitals.

This morning Darrel took the dagger and started carving more flesh from Jon’s body.

I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t be in the same general area.

I decided to climb up to the cockpit.

“No,” Darrel said. “You’re not going up there by yourself.”

“What am I going to do? Wave down a passing seagull?”

“Something stupid. Just stay here. I’m going to need your help in a minute.”

“No. I can’t watch this.”

“Out of sight, out of mind, eh? You need to know where your dinner comes from.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Just sit down at the table and wait.”

I did what he told me, clamping my hands over my ears and closing my eyes. I thought about home, not the crummy one bedroom in Burnaby I somehow managed to share with Breccan, but to the beige split-level where my parents still lived, built into the hill over Abbotsford. And I thought of the street sweepers, how they used to turn around in the middle of the street because of some imaginary boundary that it took far too long for the politicians to erase. I never thought that there’d be something comfort in thinking about the municipal clusterfucks of the Lower Mainland.

“Grab him by the feet,” Darrel said. “Help me carry him up to the cockpit.”

He’d wrapped Jon’s body in the blanket, like a shroud, but there was no concealing the smell or the blood and who the fuck knows what else, dripping onto the floor like a Jackson Pollock.

I did what he told me.

We carried Jon up to the cockpit. We lifted him over the side and I watched him fall into the water.

Darrel hadn’t bothered to weigh the body down. His former best friend bobbed in the water like a department store mannequin.

I said a prayer for Jon and for Breccan, because I knew she’d be next. Darrel had been feeding her the smallest amount of meat and blood, just enough to keep her breathing.

I wanted to stop him from cutting into her.

But I didn’t want to die.

Darrel doesn’t bother pretending that the handheld works anymore. He’s never come out and told me, but I know that it never did. Sometimes I wonder if part of him had wanted things to end up this way.

I want to kill him.

During the day we act like everything’s fine, because I don’t think either of us wants to admit that eventually there will only be a place for one survivor.

Darrel keeps the raven-headed dagger strapped to his belt. He doesn’t trust me at all.

At night he still tapes me up, wrists and ankles and Hawaiian roast pig. He tapes me and then he spoons me, as though we’re an old married couple laying together, cuddling and relaxing and digesting our travel companions.

Edgar still circles; I’m not sure what he finds to eat in the middle of nowhere. I wonder sometimes why he’s still waiting around, if he wants to stick it out to see how it all ends.

Darrel doesn’t know how it’s going to end. He doesn’t realize that he’ll be the next to go.

TUESDAY - Fifteen Days Adrift

BRECCAN WILLbe dead soon. I guess for her that’s good news, but I know it means that time is running out for Darrel and me.

He keeps the kitchen knives locked up in his toolbox, and I don’t have much of a shot going at him with a fork. In the end I think it will have to be the cast iron pan.

I’m worried that I won’t hit him hard enough the first time.

“I think I’m falling for you,” Darrel said as we sat together at the dinette after the meal.

“I guess that’ll make me extra delicious,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“I’ll bet.”

“It can’t be much longer now. We’ll reach the coast soon.”

“Sure we will.”

“I think we should make a deal, Steph.”

“Suicide pact? I don’t think it’s possible to eat each other to death.”

“I’m serious,” he said with a frown. “We’re both doctors… or close enough.”

“I don’t think we’d have much of a shot at a medical license now.”