I’m drowning.

I’m drowning and I’m terrified.

The water is deep, dark, and cold. I’m so close to my house, but there’s nobody around to help me. I reach out, my white hand breaking the dark water, grasping for someone, anyone. But there’s no one. My hand falls, rippling the water as it goes back under, sinking with the rest of me.

The dark water around me is my world now. I can’t see more than a few feet in any direction. I’m alone in my dark abyss like I was alone before I found myself in it. I don’t even remember how I fell in, how I ended up in water so deep, how I got so far away from the comfort of the soft land that surrounded the still water of the pond. I was just there, under the surface, making my way downward as I was made of stone.

There’s no comfort under the water, no solace. There are no feelings of a life well-lived. Concepts like that are lost on a boy, even one who’s facing the watery embrace of death under the pond that is and isn’t behind his house. The concept of reality versus fantasy is another lost concept. There wasn’t a pond behind the house, or was there? As my body goes deeper and the water grows darker, there is nothing more real than the pond that shouldn’t exist.

But it does exist.

The water turns from dark blue to black as my descent continues. The loneliness is crippling, and the pressure from the water is suffocating, squeezing my underdeveloped lungs. I can’t hold my breath in any longer, and what little air I had had in my lungs spews out in a torrent of rising bubbles, rushing to the surface. All that’s left to fill my lungs now is the deadly water that had dragged me into its depths.

There’s nothing left to do. My body demands a breath, so I take one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Budgie Bigelow is the Content Manager and Head Writer at Million And One Magazine. He’s an Indie author and dark humorist, and constantly putting my foot in his mouth; tell him a story. Find Budgie on his website and Twitter.