One finds it ironic when they are the prey and find themselves worried for the predator. While it can be debated just how much prey I was, and how much predator, at the moment I felt myself akin to a wasp in a spider’s web. A much damage as I might be capable of, at this moment it hardly mattered, for I was at her mercy. And yet, as I sat tangled in her web for so long now that I barely cared to struggle, I found myself … concerned. I was, I was concerned for her. Because here I was, up and moving for nearly an hour, and yet she had not shown her face.
This was concerning for two distinct reasons. Firstly, as I had been over, I understood her predicament perfectly and at this point found it hard to harbor any ill will toward her. Whatever resentment still resided within me was fast-fading, replaced by a sort of stirring combination of pity and something else I couldn’t quite label. I knew it was something other than pity, that much was for certain. But pity overruled all else, especially since I couldn’t imagine her mental state was much more stable than my own. Which meant her tardiness should indeed be concerning, because what she had done to me she could just as easily do to herself. This cyclical dance we were all trapped in—to feast and be feasted upon, to shoot and to take a shot—had she finally found herself a victim of the same fear that led her to kill me each night?
And that brought me to the second reason that I was so worried. If she had, in fact, made her way off the mortal plane and left me behind, then what would become of me? Was I to stay here? Would I die here? Would I starve to death, once I had inevitably culled the population of rats? Could I starve?
Could I starve?
I felt like I was starving, of course, but would it ever end? I could recover from a musket shot, my flesh connected where it had been forced to disconnect. Next to that starvation seemed trivial. Was it possible that there was no way for me to die at all? I had seen that sunlight, at least, could do it. But even if I desired sunlight it was currently out of my reach. So if I couldn’t starve, then I would sit here in the dark, perpetually. Eternally, maybe.
This train of thought troubled me so much I almost forgot about the passage of time that had caused me to worry in the first place. Eventually I caught a scent and the sound of footsteps. The scent of blood, however, was overpowered greatly by something else. The scent—stench, even—of liquor.
She stumbled into view this time, losing her balance in the ill-fitting boots before grumbling and trying to kick them from her feet as she leaned against a post. The process should have only taken seconds, but in her state it took so long I began to feel as if I should say something if only to break the silence. Before I could figure out what to say, though, she had managed to free herself from the leather prisons. Her step was a bit more confident as she finally took her position on the crate in front of me again. The musket dangled from one hand—and a bottle of golden liquid was clutched in the other.
I must not have been able to keep my expression blank because through slurred speech she addressed it.
“What?” she muttered bitterly, aiming the gun at me (or trying to, while still holding the bottle). “Got something to say, have you? Spit it out.”
“Nothing to say,” I lied. “Other than to point out that you’re late.”
“Late, am I?” she lowered the gun and looked up at the deck above us. The musket took its place across her lap once again, and she cradled it there for a moment before letting it balance on its own. She leaned her elbows on her knees and set the bottle on the floor. “Well, maybe I’d better just shoot you now, and make up for lost time. Get my schedule back where it ought to be.”
I hesitated at that. I knew, or at the very least was beginning to suspect, that her schedule was no longer as accurate as it had been. I had been waking earlier and earlier from my death-like state. It was only by minutes from my calculations, but I reckoned it would likely continue in this fashion. I wondered if telling her so would do any good for either of us … but I wasn’t keen on keeping secrets. I figured that could only make things worse.
“The schedule’s slipping with or without your help,” I said. She looked up at me in surprise.
“What do you mean?” Her tone was clearer, like my words had sobered her a bit.
“I mean I’m healing faster. A little. Not enough that I think you should worry, but I can only go by how long there is between my regaining consciousness and my being able to move. It’s certainly happening faster. I feel like I’m waiting for you longer, too, but that could be human error.”
“I’m certainly not a machine,” she mumbled. Her gaze had not left me since my revelation, and she sighed. “Why are you telling me this?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. I suppose I find it a bit interesting—this is all incredible once you get past how terrifying it is, don’t you think? That I can survive wounds like these and recover faster and faster despite the fact that I haven’t had any sort of substantial meal—I’m fucking starving,” I admitted. The admission itself seemed to call to mind the scent of her blood, and I found myself turning my head away in a concerted attempt to suppress my hunger.
She must have been too drunk to notice or too drunk to care, because she didn’t appear to be unsettled by what I’d said in the slightest. “Can you starve?” she asked. “Since we’re talking about how … fascinating this is, or whatever.” Her statement was followed by a belch that she half-hid behind the back of her hand. There was no lady-like apology, no manners, just a kind of sigh that followed.
It was charming, honestly. Maybe it was only charming because she wasn’t trying to kill me at the moment, or because she was finally engaging with me in conversation, but either way I felt warmed by just her presence once again. I think it was that warmth that finally suppressed the raging hunger that gnawed at me. I wondered how long that would be enough, and when it might overtake me and I would lose the ability to speak at all. Would I then turn into the snarling beast she expected me to be? Against my better judgment, I voiced this fear aloud. “I’ve been thinking about that recently, actually.”
“I suppose you must have been,” she replied. “What else have you got to think about?”
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“Indeed,” I agreed. “I suppose … well, while I don’t feel any weaker in the body from my hunger, I must admit I feel weaker in the mind, a bit. Does that make sense?”
She hummed in consideration at that, adjusting how she was sitting to face me more directly. “I think I might. But tell me more.”
Tell her more? Then this wasn’t just a fleeting connection as it had been the night before. She was actually, truly going to listen to me. The relief was palpable. “I … well, it’s like this. Every day I feel this sort of desperation. It comes in waves, and I’m able to quench it with rats where I can. The relief is instant. It’s not like hunger used to be, when I wanted food. With blood, it’s like … I don’t know. I feel on death’s doorstep one moment, and the next I’m the most alive I’ve ever been. And when that lively feeling subsides, I long for it, and it’s that longing that begins to overtake my mind. I can’t think straight at times. All alone, it’s like I almost begin to forget …” I could go no further, watching her expression. She was listening, but a frown was deepening on her face. I must have said something that worried her, but she couldn’t be completely surprised by what I was saying, could she? She had to have suspected, at least, that this was my state.
“What do you begin to forget?” she prompted me, rather than raising the musket. Rather than seeming scared.
“Do you really want to know?”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t think so, anyway. I’ve been telling myself that these little attempts at conversation are your way of getting me to let my guard down. That the moment I let you live through the night, you’ll spring on me. That I’ll be my own undoing.”
“I appreciate that you’d give me that credit, but I’m really not that clever,” I said with a laugh.
“The other creature was cunning,” she said with suspicion.
“The other creature was not me. I know there’s no reason for you to believe this, but there are only two parts of me right now—who I was before, and an animal. There is no cunning creeping into me, no new knowledge or tactics. I’m as simpleminded as I ever was.”
Her frowning lips quirked at that, almost into a skeptical smile. “Stupid, are you?”
“Desperately,” I replied.
“You speak well for yourself,” she pointed out. “I’ve met men who couldn’t communicate half of what you’ve just told me about your hunger.”
“Don’t confuse my ramblings for intelligence,” I said, repeating a phrase my father had used so often toward me. “I’m not versed in sciences, or literature, or mathematics, or even simply in manners.”
“Many sailors aren’t, and I doubt they would consider themselves dull. Ah—but perhaps that’s exactly the issue. As you said before, you haven’t been a sailor long.” She held up a finger before I could say it myself.
“I haven’t, no.”
Perhaps she also recalled how I hadn’t wanted to talk about it the night before, because she didn’t ask me to elaborate. She stared at me hard, then swept up the bottle of liquor at her feet and took a deep, thoughtful swig. As she wiped her lips with her shirt, she said, “Is that what you’re starting to forget?”
“What, that I used to be something more than this? That I used to be something else?” I looked down at the ground between my legs, at the bloodstains and the straw. “… Yes.”
“Would it help to tell me about it?”
It was my turn to look up in surprise now. “What?”
“Well, I figure I plan on shooting you either way. It seems in my best interest that if there be an animal and a man that I try to keep the man around a little longer.”
I followed her reasoning. I found it solid. I found it hopeful, even. So I nodded. “Yes, I think it might help.”
“Go on, then.”
I leaned back, turning my gaze away from the blood and toward the planks of wood above me that I had already stared at for so long. Where would I start, I wondered?
“I’m the oldest of five boys,” I said. “As such, I carry my father’s name, which is quite the responsibility as you might imagine. James Harcourt the Third. But I think their lack of faith in me should have been apparent from the moment my first brother was born, and they named him the same. James Harcourt, as well. Jimmy. I was Cort, he was Jimmy, Father was James to those who knew him. Even the way they shortened my name made it clear—I was not the successor they had hoped I would be.”
“How old were you?” she asked, confused. I remembered that I had been confused too.
“Five,” I said.
“Five! And they had already decided that you’d failed?”
“I suppose they had. That’s how it felt, at any rate. I guess I just didn’t have the makings of the leader the family needed. They replaced me before I even knew what had happened. From there, it was hard to recover, no matter how hard I tried. And I did try, like hell—but there was no redemption after that.”
She had fallen quiet. I almost continued to talk about school, about my failing there, about trying to find my way afterward. They had paid for my education in spite of everything, perhaps hoping that even as a failure I would at least be successful enough not to make a fool of the family. I had dashed those hopes pretty handily. But before I could continue to regale her with all this, she startled me by speaking first.
“I think I was about seven before they made the same decision for me,” she said. “I’ve got two years on you.”
She said it softly. She said it like she hoped I wouldn’t hear her. I almost didn’t, and her words only registered with me just in time for me to bite my tongue. I waited, breathless, for her to continue. I hardly dared to breathe lest I shatter the fragile trust we had finally established.
“Maybe you weren’t stupid—maybe they wanted too much from you. Maybe they didn’t want you at all. Maybe they were just pretending it was all your fault just to make themselves feel better for the fact that they couldn’t love …” She stopped the words spilling from her lips by pressing her hand to them, biting her own knuckles. Mercifully for both of us, she did not bite hard enough to draw blood.
“Are we talking about me?” I prompted after a moment.
“If you were really so dimwitted you wouldn’t have even thought to ask that,” she replied. “No, I’m talking about me. I’m talking about myself. All that money you think I’m coming from—this voyage you think is a privilege I can afford—it’s not like that. This isn’t some holiday gone wrong. It’s worse than that, this is a banishment gone better than they could have possibly wished. They gave up on me. They sent me away. Said I was going to my aunt, but I never knew I had an aunt to go to across the sea. I think … I think they rather hoped I’d land there and be on my own. Maybe I’d die. But at least I wouldn’t be their problem anymore.” She took another swig from the bottle, swallowing hard and holding back another belch before she muttered, “yes, well, they’ve certainly gotten their wish.”
So that was it.
It hurt so much I couldn’t bear it. Perhaps my hunger and my desire to ignore it was making everything worse, but my heart ached deeply for the both of us. Here we were, unwanted. Here we were, lesser-than. And here we were, alone. Nobody even knew we were here except for us. And, if both of us were to be believed—and I at least believed her—nobody would ever care to know.
Just us. Just her hearing the gunshot. Just me knowing she had to do it. Just her caring enough to ask my name. Just me longing for her to ask for more than that.
It was utterly pathetic that this was the most another person had ever cared for me. I was aware of that. I was aware of how pathetic I had to be to let her silently press the muzzle of the rifle to my head again, with nothing more for the two of us to say to each other tonight.