When your drowning, you don't really
think. You struggle and slash violently to reach the surface, not
realizing that the thing that has hold of your foot could be merely
brushed away with the casual tug of your fingers. But no. You
aren't thinking. You are strangled by it. Suffocating. The 'thing'
suddenly becomes the embodiment of fear. A starved creature from the
deep, feasting on your foot. Then maybe your legs. Then perhaps
once you have inhaled enough water to flood your lungs, sending you
drifting not just into the current of the dark lake, but into
eternity, the creature might carve into your bones.
In a matter of seconds, all these
thoughts and more flash before you like the sunlight through the
waves above you. Can anyone hear you battling against death itself?
Where is your family? Where is anyone who could save you? Are they
distracted, cooking hot dogs over the fire? Surely someone is on
their way to pull you up out of the water like Peter amidst the
raging storm.
Your chest tightens as you fight to not
inhale. The one thing your body wants to do becomes the one most
terrifying thing you could do. Your head becomes dizzy and light as
your legs kick and churn. Maybe this is it, you think. You feel the
greasy tentacles of mortality wound around your foot, dragging you
down to the depths, and you push up towards the light one last time.
Breaking free you pull at the water and
reach air. A gasp escapes out of your mouth and you crawl to the
shallow of the shoreline. Your family is sitting around the fire,
talking and eating. Your brother not but a few feet away in the
water. You realize that in all your slashing and fighting, you
didn't even make a peep. Not even a ripple on the surface of the
water. And the beast that had come so close to devouring your
waterlogged corpse was nothing but a simple grass weed. A small fish
burrow had caused you to slip and get tangled up for just a mere
moment. Coughing and hacking you hear the voice of your father
saying to you from the comfort of dry land, “are you OK?”
“Yeah.”
I think the second person is very effective here in creating that week 10 distance, and I'm glad you kept it consistent and did not succumb to the temptation to offer up a first person summation at the close.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as someone whose foot got jammed under a capsized canoe seat once in class 3 rapids (you almost had to take this class from someone else!) , I appreciated your detailed description here.