salt water

July 2019

THIS IS OLD!!! THE OLDEST WORK ON HERE!! And therefore it is bad. So is basically everything published before 2023. Grain of salt, etc. Read on?

The ocean, at this range, was not nearly as inviting as it had been just hours ago. Then again, just hours ago, the stars hadn’t fallen around the boy that walked, now, towards the sea. His feet, having lost the inspiration even to put on a meagre pair of shoes, left useless imprints in the sand — the tide would wash them away, too, soon. As he glanced absently behind him, the boy almost stopped to reminisce, all too aware that these tracks would be the last that he would ever leave on the world. In between his toes, the sand crept in, as cold and damp as the slinking tendrils of darkness that curled around his feet, moonlit shadows blocking the one place where, perhaps, warmth would have hidden away instead. Not anymore. Steadying his shaking breaths, the boy willed his footsteps to continue, focusing hopelessly instead on the ocean’s slow breathing as the waves rolled in. The moon was reflected on the pale sheet of glass that the sea appeared to be; mocking him with its glacial beauty as the stars looked on, light years away in that terrifyingly infinite sky.

Finally — finally? — he reached the brink between knowledge and exploration, as the sharp cracks of freezing salt water began to wash over his feet. Within seconds, his soles were entirely numbed upon the rocky ocean floor as the breeze whispered through his hair, forcing his trembling limbs further into the murky depths. It was as if he was in a trance, as the sea rose, as he sank, further and further into the vice-like grip of darkness, each section of his body surrendering itself to the icy tenebrosity. The alleged marine utopia clutched at his stolen breaths, tugged ferociously at his chest as the water pressed in on that, too. The shore — the certainty of being able to stand on his own two feet, to breathe, to live — drifted slowly away, in distance and memory, until it was scarcely even a feasible option to turn back in his hypnotised stasis. The numbing of his limbs had reached the point, now, where he was no longer deprived of sensation, but suffering through sharp bursts of temperature contrast that made it feel as if dry ice was flooding through his veins. 

He couldn’t panic. Not now, when he was so far away from humanity, from danger, from everything he cowered from — not now, when he was so, so close to freedom. Even as his body shook violently from the overpowering cold that burned his nerves, as his mouth hung open, screamed prayers for help left unheard — there was physically no turning back now, for turning back would allow one of the ceaseless waves to wash over his aching head, forcing his mouth under the water, for one final time. Now, though, for the first time since he’d set out earlier that evening, the boy realised, staring up at the moon — maybe he didn’t want that. Another swell of water shoved him back, momentarily, just enough to send his arms sprawling, breaking desperately now into the open air. His suddenly panicked breaths were laced with the desperate sputtering that ripped from his throat, trying again and again to cough out the water that was blocking his airways. The breaths that did escape condensed in the frosty air; fading clouds of his terrified despair drifting insignificantly away into the night. 

Now his legs kicked into gear, unsure of what exactly they were working to get away from. He was too far out now to see the beach over the waves, only aware that up mattered, just that he had to stay alive. Irrational fears started their strategic attack on his collapsing conscience, of sharks and jellyfish and monstrosities not even foretold by stories that would surely be waiting for him in the oceanic depths. As monstrous shadows jutted out from the moon, he screamed — long, loud, hopeless, hopeful, as guttural as one of the house’s drains in a rainstorm. The house. Where now his mother slept peacefully, unaware of the mortal peril that the boy was in. Gasping in a breath for the air that had been howled into the night, it was not air that filled his lungs now but water, in such vast quantities that even the struggling boy could not hope to have expelled it, instead clamping his mouth shut as the waves pushed him further into the cold grasp of the current. Clawing desperately at the sea as it tugged him beyond even the light of the moon, the boy set all of his sapped energy into this one task, into breaking the water, into staying alive. Each deafening wave that churned around him seemed to send him further from his twisted perception of the surface, seeming to bat him back and forth in the terrifying depths like the boy was simply a plaything in the grand intensity of what the ocean really was. A monster. A villain. A killer. 

For the first time, now, as surely as the moon illuminated the flailing boy in the ocean — he didn’t want to let himself go.

The boy’s chest seemed to convulse in its desperate yearning for air, muscles screaming with the effort of simply keeping him in the open air. It was too late for him. He was going to die. And he was going to die alone. The gasping horror of the thought ripped at his delirious mind, begging for him to break the surface and breathe. Then, without warning, the game that the sea seemed to have been playing — of keeping him so, tantalisingly alive — was over. The current surged as the boy’s limbs gave in, smashing his shoulder blade against the rocks on the seabed. The snap of bone was audible even with the thunderous waves screaming in his ears, just as the blinding pain that followed was enough to be sensed, even in the numbing terror of this fatal situation. He released a blood-curdling howl into the water, but it was lost to the sea as yet again he was thrust towards the rock. This time, there was no escape. No refuge from the stones that awaited his arrival, crashing mercilessly into his head, snapping his vertebrae like a man might snap a twig. 

At last, the boy could breathe.