In the Deep

No one likes the thought of drowning. The fluid rushing into your lungs, causing a signal to be sent to every pain receptor in your torso, telling them that all of that liquid invading and expanding your lungs to the point of bursting isn’t supposed to be there. Unless you can get to a surface, there’s nothing you can do about it. But the pain will be there to remind you anyway, causing agony until death.

People try to explain away the suffering when they have never experienced it themselves, to put their own minds at ease when a friend or loved one succumbs to a watery suffocation. They tell themselves and others that it feels like falling asleep, or “going home.” Complete bullshit. There may be some who want to disagree with me, but I speak from experience.

When I fell off that boat in the Atlantic and was swept far away into the lonesome ocean by the storm that nearly capsized our ship, I thought I could accept this fate. I let myself sink beneath the waves, bracing for the pain, but breathing the sickening salt water as deeply as I could. If I was destined to go this way, I at least wanted it to be quick.

Just as my sight began to fade to black, I felt a tug on my ankle. I looked down to see a woman, glowing a deep blue, bright as a star yet entirely transparent, climbing my body. She reached eye level, and I saw in her eyes the darkest blackness possible outside of a black hole, a void empty of all things alive and good. Her lips met mine, her mouth cold as dry ice, an icy sting so frigid it permeated through my body. The cold would have frozen the water in my lungs had the sea witch not sucked it all out.

I began to hope that maybe, in my first encounter with the supernatural, I was saved. Though the pain persisted, my vision was restored. My mind cleared as I was pulled further from the light at the end of the tunnel. But she did not bring me to the surface.

She looked into my eyes once more after she pulled away, and I was reminded of the evil in hers. Her face contorted into a look of malicious satisfaction as she grabbed me once more in a grip that could create gemstones and pulled me further down.

On that trip down, I made a remarkable, horrifying discovery. I could now breathe the ocean water. My lungs could now process that water and expel it after extracting the oxygen, just enough to keep me alive, but at a cost. What was once the act of drowning is now breathing, but my brain cannot tell the difference.

The sea water engulfing me began to grow darker as I was dragged deeper. The increasing pressure of the water and the constant pain in my chest left me unable to struggle even half-heartedly against the she-demon pulling me down, so deep that even her impossible glow seemed to dim.

And then she let me go. The last light I can remember seeing quickly faded, shadowed in the depths of the ocean that even the light of the sun was too terrified to visit.

And in my state of perpetually drowning, but never dying, I recognized this murky darkness. It was the same inky black dark that could be seen in the sea witch’s eyes.

I’ve lived through the act of drowning countless times now, cursed to do so for eternity thanks to that bitch of the sea. And with each living death, I become angrier. The lies of those who have never felt such torment before, cheapening the suffering of so many that have endured and lost their lives to this torture that is like no other, infuriates me to no end.

I want to pull them down here with me and force them to experience first-hand the pain that I live with to dispel any doubt that this death is among the worst suffering a living thing can experience before death.

And that is what I plan to do. Because over time, my eyes have finally begun to adjust to darkness I am stuck in, just enough to see the dim blue glow of my skin.