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March 10, 2004

Not for Nothing

For a while there is perfect stillness under the water. Everything is cool and clear, and there is an unmistakable calmness that comes with floating in it's darkness. Gazing up through the ripples at the world above, totally free of it's chaos. Time stops, the world ceases to revolve and becomes simply a snapshot of itself. It is blissful, euphoric, a massive deception.

The stillness becomes eerie with diminished breath, and knowing there is no more, the panic starts well up within. The panic rises and turns into fear, and before I know it, I realize that I am drowning.

An unseen current is pulling fiercely at my waist, keeping the surface out of my reach. I can hear muffled voices above me. A boat, or on the shore. Hovering over me. Distant, laughably calm. Ignorant of my struggle just beneath them. My lips part in a frantic cry, but I only draw a deep breath of the offending blue down into my lungs.

I begin to thrash wildly, desperately, feeling my life running out and growing steadily more hysterical. The still glassy surface belies the turmoil of my final efforts below. My choices and my mistakes, the once good ideas have now become the weights in my shoes, the rope on my wrists, the force I can't fight against.

I jerk from side to side, eyes wide, teeth and fists clenched, scouring my depths for some miraculous strength I know I haven't got. My vision is blurred, the surface is gone now. I can feel blood pulsing behind my eyes. Every muscle burns for air, but there is none.

The water invades, overtaking and coursing like fire through my body. It's relentless assault leaves only a swollen shell behind. My resistance is twists into surrender, and I submit. When all the air is purged, I drift down deeper into the darkness that lured me. Just below the shallows, my eyes open as they were in life, I can almost see what I should have done instead.

The stillness returns. The water is again calm and blue, in the depths as on the surface. Alluring. Inviting. Lying in wait for the next poor fool who might fancy a swim. If they were to look closely, the might be able to see my eyes staring back up at them, a cautionary tale about the delusions of swimming in this dangerous hole. But no one ever looks that closely, do they?

Posted by kati at March 10, 2004 03:41 PM

Comments

Posted by: kelly at March 15, 2004 06:04 PM