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I felt a soft hand touch the top of my shoulder, and I immediately pulled away from the sensation.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I screamed, not even knowing why. At the very least, I was
already hypersensitive all over. Even the feeling of my knees against the bottom of the raft was pissing me off. The last thing I needed was her hands on me, trying to give me some kind of fucking comfort.
I would have yelled a few other choice words at her, but my body starting heaving again instead. It felt like it went on forever, but eventually it stopped long enough for me to drop down to my side and curl up in a ball for a while. My head began throbbing again, and my heart was still beating rapidly.
I was using up a lot of energy which I really couldn’t afford. There was nothing I could do to stop it unless there was a distiller in the survival kit. I’d have to make sure to add one of those for next time. I had a brief image of John Paul right after we bought the lifeboats for The Oblation. He packed a bottle of rum in with the rations. If I had gotten to one of the fucking lifeboats, I’d have some goddamn alcohol.
“Holy fucking shit!” I yelled out, beating my hand against the flexible side of the raft, which was wholly unsatisfying. I kept cursing and ignoring whatever the fuck Raine was trying to say to me. I was yelling too loud to actually hear her over myself. I felt her fingers against my arm again, and I shoved her.
“I told you not to fucking touch me! How fucking stupid are you that you can’t follow the most basic instructions?”
I heard a sharp intake of breath and didn’t care how fucking shocked she might have been.
“Should have fucking let you drown!”
My hands covered my face, and I tried to rub my fingers into my eyes. They itched. Actually, my whole face itched, and I scratched at the thickening beard on my cheeks. My ears itched, too. So did my arms. My hands were all sweaty, and when I tried to scratch at my arms, the sweat clung to my skin and just made me itch more.
“Daniel, stop,” I heard Raine say. Something was wrong with her voice – she sounded strange. I felt her hand on top of mine as she tried to pry my fingers off of my skin. I shoved her away. “You’re going to make yourself bleed.”
“I’ve bled before,” I barked. “What fucking difference does it make?”
I looked down at my arms and saw the long red streaks I had made on them with my fingernails. Shit. I couldn’t think about it for too long, though, because I was suddenly retching over the side again, bile burning up my throat.
When that session was over, I tried to sit up with my knees close to my chest. My heart raced, my hands shook, I was sweating all over, and I was fucking cold despite the sun blazing in through the canopy. I put my head in my hands and just listened to myself breathe for a while.
“Do you want some water?” Raine asked.
“No, I don’t want any fucking water!” I yelled. Why did she keep talking? It occurred to me that somehow this was all her fault anyway. I pulled my hands from my face and glared at her. “What the fuck did you do, anyway?”
“Do? I haven’t done anything.”
“What the fuck did you do to make my ship sink, bitch?”
“Daniel, you aren’t making any sense,” Raine said, flinching away from me.
Like there was somewhere for her to go.
“Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?”
“No, Daniel,” she said softly. “I think you’re sick.”
“Sick?” I laughed and shook my head at her. “You think I’m sick? Baby, you have no idea all the sick, twisted shit I’ve done. The number of people I’ve slaughtered, the number of women I’ve fucked. Shit – I don’t even remember how many!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and just rocked back and forth, trying to keep pace with the shakes. At least I felt like I was trying to do something even though it wasn’t actually helping or anything. The pain in my head and my stomach was a lot like getting shot. It ached and stabbed and burned all at once, and there was no way I could move my body into a position where it would stop hurting.
I linked my elbows around my knees and put my forehead down against my arms. I kept rocking and trying to relax my muscles, but they were too tense. They wouldn’t loosen up no matter what I said to them. There was something soft on my shoulder, running up and down it.
One fucking shot…that’s all I needed. Just one fucking shot – vodka, rum, even fucking gin. It didn’t matter what. Just one little sip of anything to take the edge off. I could make it through if I could just take the edge off. I’d even settle for a fucking American beer.
“One fucking shot!” I screamed out, causing Raine to jump and let out a little squeaking sound. I narrowed my eyes, realizing she had been touching my shoulder again. “Are you a fucking mouse?”
“No,” Raine said cautiously. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Because you fucking squeak,” I snarled. “Don’t do that again.”
“You startled me.”
