My head hurt like hell.

The whole night before this had been full of unacceptably bad decisions. I remembered it all, of course. I hadn’t been that drunk. But between the rum and the fact I’d pretty much forgotten to drink water for the entire day, I felt like death by the time I woke. And worse than that, I wasn’t quite done making bad decisions just yet.

After I had drank as much water as I could handle without upsetting my currently delicate stomach, I made my way to the chickens. As I went, I mulled over what I was about to do. It was not smart, no, undoubtedly not. But at this point, I was beginning to think there was no amount of smarts that could save me.

Despite my drunken ramblings and the fact I’d broken every promise I’d made to myself (save for the most important one, to be fair), I had awoken feeling something new. It wasn’t resignation, exactly. It was softer than that. It felt almost like acceptance.

Rescue wasn’t coming. Why would it be? We had been drifting for over a week. We had to be far off course by now. Even if they came for us, the ocean was too large a place. If they were looking for us, they would not find us. Any help would come to us by pure luck, and luck had never been in my favor.

Now, I wasn’t quite ready to accept all of that, but in the back of my head it rattled against the cage of hope I’d stuffed it in. I was aware of it, at least. And that was more than I was willing to bear. So I knew I had to do something to take control of my situation once more—control especially where Cort was concerned.

He was at my mercy. I told myself that he needed to be reminded of that, but did he? He had not argued the point. And yet, that was the story I went with, convincing myself that the gunshot was no longer reinforcing the dynamic. I needed to try a new approach, I thought.

The chickens were so spoiled and lethargic, so confident I would not hurt them, that they remained undisturbed until I had already snapped one up in my hand by her neck. I couldn’t be sweet about this. I couldn’t lift her up gently like I had time and time before, holding her in my arms and stroking her feathers. I couldn’t bear to. I couldn’t allow myself to think of this as a betrayal of one of my only friends on this boat.

I was going to have to kill all of them eventually, if I was going to live. I needed the meat.

And he … he needed the blood. Mine or the bird’s, I hoped it didn’t matter. But if he could be sated then I would be less at risk. That was indisputably a good thing.

So there were several reasons beyond a weakness of the heart (or so I told myself) that I approached the brig with an offering that night.

He seemed to put my plan together immediately upon seeing me. His gaze was fixed on the hen as it flailed and squawked. Taking up station in the corner closest to me, he did not make a remark on it. He waited for me to speak.

“It’s probably best for both of us if you’re not starving,” I said.

“I would have to agree,” he said slowly and with measured tone. I thought I could see a bit of drool escape his lips, but he quickly wiped it away.

“Don’t be too messy, I’ll still need the meat.”

“I’ll leave it for you, I don’t want it,” he replied quickly, the measure slipping and giving way to desperation.

It seemed like torture to keep it from him for much longer. For the first time I’d seen in his imprisonment, he didn’t keep his hands behind the bars. They were outstretched and trembling, like he was barely restraining himself from making a swipe at me for the hen. Gingerly, I reached back, and he snatched it from me without another word.

If this was self-control in an attempt to save me the meat, I would hate to have seen what he might have done had I said nothing. He did not end her life before drinking, the same way that the other creature had fed on the crew while they were still living. It was almost worse with him, though. The other thing had looked far from human, but not Cort. He appeared human still—so it seemed to me that a human was tearing the feathers from the hen’s neck with his bare teeth, ripping them out and spitting them aside before he sank his fangs into its flesh.

The sound was worse—the cackling screaming squawk of the bird that faded as its blood was drained faded quickly, but was replaced by a muffled slurping, sucking and growling of the creature who had tried so much to prove himself a man the night before. I had already turned my eyes away, but my ears had no such reprieve. I covered them as best I could, and crouched until I heard the noises subside. No, I stayed crouched longer than that. I wanted to take my hands away but I couldn’t. Not until I heard him say what sounded an awful lot like my name. I lifted my hands slightly, waiting for him to say it again to see if my ears had deceived me.

“Carmen?”

I turned around slowly, dropping my hands from my ears. “How do you know my name?” I demanded. He’d never used it before. Was it a trick? Was he finally showing me his true nature after just one small sign of kindness from me? A sign of weakness, more like.

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“I heard the other passengers call you that a few times. I’m sorry, would you rather I called you Ms. Cortez-Weaver? That’s how the crew were told to address you?”

“Is it?” I wondered. He had never called me that before, either, never spoken to me much at all in fact. At the time I had found it odd, but knowing what he’d thought of me—and himself—I no longer found it so. “I would have preferred to introduce myself but … please don’t use my surname. Please call me Carmen.” It went so quickly from giving him permission to almost begging him to say it again. I hadn’t heard it pass another’s lips in over a week. I had almost begun to wonder if it was really my name, or if I’d gotten it wrong. If I’d made something new up.

“I will, then. My apologies, Carmen, I didn’t know how else to get your attention. And I’m also sorry that you had to see all that.”

“I should have expected it,” I said, scolding myself internally as I forced myself to stand.

“All the same,” he said, “there’s bound to be a difference between expectations and having to actually watch whatever the fuck I’ve just done.”

I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it. Must be the nerves. “Here, give it here,” I said, pushing the sounds and the sights out of my mind. He held the limp form of the hen back out through the bars and I took it back, looking at it with a twinge of sadness before I laid it aside on the crate. Then I turned to Cort and looked him over. I had wondered if there would be any marked difference in his appearance after he’d drank, and I was a bit surprised that I could see that there was. His face looked more flushed. His eyes sparkled a little, and his expression was sharper. Less frantic. When he spoke, the calm did not seem forced at all.

“I didn’t know there were any hens still left,” he said. “Don’t you need the eggs?”

“I’m so fucking sick of eggs,” I replied emphatically.

“Ah! Fair enough!”

“Besides that, the feed is running low. I think splitting what’s left among two will go better for me than trying to keep all three alive, and this one … wasn’t laying consistently anymore.” I cast her another forlorn look. With everything we had talked about last night, I felt almost guilty for condemning her to death for under-performing. But it wasn’t as if I was her mother. She was a bird, and I was trying not to starve.

“That makes sense,” Cort said slowly, with that same annoying tone he’d taken on before when he noticed my mind wandering during our conversations. While I wanted to appreciate his effort, it made me angry that even he could tell that I was slipping. It made me angry that he would care at all to bring me back. Couldn’t he just me slip away in peace? “What about when the feed runs out?”

I gave a harsh sigh and shrugged. “Then the feed runs out, or the water runs out, or the rum runs out, or the musketballs, or the cartridges. Whatever happens first, I figure at that point I’ll just shoot myself and have it over with. Got a shot saved up just for that.”

“I thought that’d be it,” he replied solemnly. “Listen, then.” He had pulled his arms back after handing me the hen, but now he grasped the bars on either side of his face, emphasizing his words. “If you decide to do that, you have to leave me a way out too.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean what if I can’t starve? What if you leave me here and my mind slips away from me, and I’m left a starving, mindless beast until the ship mercifully sinks? And then, what if I can’t even die after that? I can survive a shot to the head. I needn’t breathe. I haven’t got a pulse. It seems like the most I need is blood but even without that I live on, though not as I once was. Imagine that for me, Carmen. Imagine me at the bottom of the sea, mindless and lifeless. You wouldn’t condemn me to that, would you? Say that you wouldn’t.”

There was such a familiar fear there. I’d heard it in his voice before when he’d begged for his life. Now, begging for his death, I heard it ten-fold. My stomach turned. “I promise you I wouldn’t,” I said, but my voice wouldn’t come out right. It was barely a whisper. He heard it anyway. His grip on the bars softened in his relief.

“Thank god,” he murmured, pressing his forehead against the bars, his red-blond curls tangling in the rusted iron. “No, thank you. Thank you, Carmen.”

I wished I had never asked him to call me that.

“You’re welcome, I suppose,” I said shortly, trying to bring back a sense of separation. A sense of business. “I’ll shoot you once more before myself, and then I’ll leave you a way to the deck. You’ll be able to stand in the sunlight. That ought to do it, won’t it?”

“It ought.” He nodded.

“Then that’s what we’ll do. Anyhow. I need to pluck this thing and cook it before it starts to spoil.” I gestured to the hen, and picked up my musket again. He stepped away from the bars, sitting down again. I took aim …

I faltered. The muzzle slipped from against his forehead and pointed toward the ground instead, just to his right. I tried to pull it back up again. I couldn’t. My finger was on the trigger, all I had to do was aim and pull it. I could not.

My mind was full of fuzz and static. Full of droning bees. He had asked me to imagine him at the bottom of the sea, and I had. I could now. I could see it mingling with the images of his body on the floor of the brig, the same way I had seen it day after day. I could see his eyes vacant and dead, but also lively and sparkling. I could hear him saying my name. I could hear him telling me about his family. I could see him the way I’d seen him when I boarded, with the sun sparkling off those curls like spun gold, in a way it never would again.

I kept hurting him. He was trying so hard not to hurt me. Was I doing the right thing?

I felt pressure on the butt off the rifle against my shoulder. He had taken the barrel in his hands. Slowly, gently, I watched him move it. His eyes held my gaze in his, looking up from where he sat as he pressed the metal between them. I could not detect any fear or anger there, not resentment or even pity. Just understanding, and anticipation. Acceptance.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, with a tone I had not heard from him before.

My stomach turned once again. Guilt welled up within me and my mouth went so dry it felt fuzzy, like the skin of a peach. I wanted to ask him why. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t okay. None of this was. I wanted to spare him.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t, I couldn’t.

And he knew that. And it was okay.

I pulled the trigger.