Drifting

Still no tug on the line. Rick takes a swig of water from his bottle, sloshes it in his mouth and swallows. We’ve been drifting four days now. If we don’t catch anything tonight, we’ll live, but our water supply is dwindling. Rick spits another mouthful into the ocean.

My mouth is parched. The salt in the air further dehydrates me. The sunburn on the back of my neck stings like I’ve been scraped with sandpaper, but I must reserve my water. My bottle is a quarter full, but it is more that what he has.

From the stern on the opposite end, Rick eyes the plastic bottle between my legs, licks his lips. “Lemme have a sip.”

My line suddenly starts to spin, and I snatch up the rod and reel it in, but it fights me, pulls me and the boat further out to sea. I take my eye off Rick for just a moment, when the head of the giant grouper breaks the surface, and he dives over to my side, nearly tipping the boat, and guzzles my water, every last drop.

Now we have three days.

—Nortina

It is Short Story A Day May, and today’s prompt asks us to write a prose sonnet: a story 14 sentences long. My favorite sonnet form is the Petrarchan sonnet, so this is a short story based loosely on that structure. And no, it is not a love story—not all sonnets are about love, obviously. 😉