I had been floating for 6 days now.  My fingers chewed down till they were bloody stumps, I had long since drank the blood soaked water the used to surrounded me in this tub of a prison.  The gas was gone and I had not seen land since it disappeared into the mist behind me.

I just floated there for days, time lost all meaning.  The hunger grew so strong inside of me, the first thing to buckle was my thirst.  I bent down like a dog to lap up the bloody water, the putrid smell assaulting my nostrils as I got close.  If I had anything at all inside of me I would have hurled like a fat getting off the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair.  The thirst was so strong it only took a second for me to get over the stench.  I lapped it up and the taste of cooper was back, this time my body had something to expel as I began to dry heave over the side again.  I went back and started drinking that filthy water, forcing myself to hold it down - knowing that it was either this or death and I was NOT ready to die.

Once the water was gone all that remained was a rusty colored ring around my ankles and the bottom of the boat, it mocked me.  Never blinking, just staring back up at me piercing my brain - laughing, knowing that I was not long now.  I began to chew, first I chewed some rubber tubing.  It tasted awful but it filled my now shrunken stomach, this broughtthe hunger back.  I chewed the emergency paddle, the life vest, I even tried the stuffing from the bench.  Nothing was enough.  I never thought about cannibalism but I had a hang nail, so I chewed it off.

This was a terrible choice.  A tiny drop of my own blood appeared where the hanger had been.  I sucked at it, begging myself to give up a little more.  I must have been delirious, before I knew it my finger was pouring blood from the open wound and I was like a hungry dog chewing at it.  I pulled my hand away to survey the damage I had done, now I am not a nurse or a doctor - I am a farmer and even I could see I needed stitches.  Quickly I tore a strip off my shirt and wrapped up my finger, I thought to myself that it was funny - the finger didn't even hurt.

Little did I know I had un-caged a beast within.  The blood quickly soaked the crude bandage and I began to suck on the fabric, I couldn't stop - I was possessed.  Sucking this bandage satiated me for a while, until the blood dried up.  My other finger tips mocked me, the sun making me delirious as I floated in the calm waters - hoping, praying for land that never came.  It was on the fourth night that I awoke to the sharp pain, it felt like my fingers were on fire.  My face and chest covered in my own blood, the flesh just clinging to my bones on some of the stumps.  I only had three nails left after I had savagely attacked myself.  My shirt was no longer as it was now covering all my fingers, fighting a loosing battle to stem the flow of blood.

I laid back, thinking to myself - this is it, I am going to die alone and scared.  I wondered if this is what went through every-bodies mind before they died.  The elderly, the sick, victims of war or violence.  Did everybody get a chance to take stock, weigh out the value of their lives.  I hoped not as it was terrible.  I tried to think of the things that brought me joy but they were all overshadowed by darkness.  Terrible memories associated with all the good in my life.  The wetness on my cheek surprised me as I opened my eyes I expected to see dark clouds and rain.  I was stung with the pain of sunlight burning my eyes.  It was not raining, I was crying - crying over my life and the choices I had made.  I screamed out and begged for mercy, why couldn't this be quick, why was I givin so much time - time to let in the darkness and cover the good.

CLUNCK, CLUNCK, I was startled back to reality as I heard something banging against the side of this prison.  Forcing myself to sit up and right myself, using every last ounce of energy I could.  That's when I saw something that scared me to my core, worse then the fear of dying, worse then those monsters that had invaded my world on days before.  Before my eyes was land, my beach to be exact - abandoned by all, not a living creature could be seen.  It was then that the shivering began.