Over Dead Bodies

By Susan Kachmar

I am the last – the very last. All who were with me are either gone or in pieces. The water around me is crimson and there is not much of the lifeboat we boarded when we left the ship in our finery. More men than women boarded our escape vehicle while flames shot and dipped around us.

Why did we come on this cruise anyway? He really wanted to celebrate his retirement and now look at me – alone, without even his corpse. He did not make the boat I was in, but I am sure he is dead. He kissed my cheek as he shoved me in the lifeboat and said “I’ll see you when they rescue us.”

Now it has been nearly a week, if I can keep the count of sunrises and sunsets straight in my head. My boat is filled with water so the splintered wood remnants of the rail are just kissing the air. As I hold on to what is left of this boat, the waves bob and push against me as if the ocean is breathing. My lips, taught and salt-blistered, cry out for relief from the fright of seeing a gray dorsal fin rising ten feet away from the boat. The blunt nose surfaces, it snaps at a piece of leg in black striped tuxedo pants torn on both ends.

The sharks have been feasting on us for days now – all of us that made it into the lifeboats. In the beginning they only went after the ones who did not make it to a lifeboat. Those people had jumped into the water with lifejackets when they heard the sizzle and crack of burning embers meeting water. Now all of the others are gone – that is dead – not totally gone. I reach for the floating human flesh and gather it near me to toss to the sharks as they come nearer. I am indeed the last, though, because if they get me, it will be over all the other’s dead bodies.