My open eyes blurred in and out of focus as I struggled against the current forcing me deeper. I glanced wildly around, attempting to identify which direction the surface could be. Unfortunately, I could not establish whether I was looking up down, or anywhere at all. I frantically kicked my legs in hopes that I may break the surface, but my hopes where dashed once I began to feel increasing pressure on my eardrums. Suddenly my eyes focused on a tiny golden speck, shimmering just below my feet. I could barely concentrate on this glimmer before black cloudy shapes, tinted with blood red erupted in my eyes and jerked me back to reality, then realizing I was upside down. My breath was bursting within me. With the black and red splotches still tattooed on my brain I slowly forced my way upward. The water around me was dense and shrouded in blackness. An erie feeling of dread descended on my heart. It started to become clear that all my efforts were in vain and I was destined to end only in a sold unpenetrate wall to face my impending doom. Now steadily, my foreboding thoughts began to creep back, and all my other feelings began to die away. A strange euphoria overtook me, as if I was floating on air with only the sky and its clouds beside me, and nothing could ever happen-a false sense of security if there ever was one. I began to sink further back into this bliss, an unexplainable feeling. It was too good to be true. I no longer felt the pain of my breath slamming against my walls, exclaiming its pursuit to freedom. My brain no longer throbbed from lack of oxygen. I could almost feel my breath’s whispered farewell as it stole away. Quietly and stealthily escaping my body. I am launched into swirling infinity.
POST DEATH
Now, I notice a nagging feeling that I have left something behind, but I don’t know what, and I don’t particularly care. All I can hear is the muffled rushing of water, ebbing and flowing, like when I listen to seashells at the beach. I peer into the blue-green abyss ahead of me as I glide lightly among the stringy rotting green jungle of seaweed that no longer reaches its spindly arms out to me, but stretched them out to the sky instead. Tugging at their bonds of sand and rock whenever a current passes by, eager to tag along. A blurry colorful mass of fish shoot past me like tiny happy darts. They bloom out before my eyes and scurry into dark gaps in the rock beside me. I stare at this great looming wall. It is riddled with little sparkling gems that glint demurely in the sunlight that penetrates the watery seal. They work together to make one inclusive prism that sends concentrated rainbows dashing the smooth water creating breaks in its perpetual flow. The once menacing watery seal that separated me from the outer world now seems protecting. I smile to myself, without a care in the world, this one or the one I came from, which is no longer mine. Now, there is seemingly nothing, and I slowly drift away.
