Underwater

The female sat; not girl or woman, nor an adolescent of the sort, a female. She didn’t know her age, her stage in “growing up”, only that she was female.

A sign of motion; the female turned, but sighed roughly in discontent. Life form was indeed nonexistent in this environment. She would never see anyone, only things, statues smiling to comfort her.

A shiver ran down her back and she felt a spark of ecstasy. Maybe she wasn’t without company. Her eyes scanned her surroundings, nothing, no plant life, and no colors. It was all in black and white, it was the past.

The colors came back once more as a stifled gasp escaped her. The shiver ran from neck to arms to legs. A sign of life, though not human; she wasn’t alone. She smiled, blind, but felt her nose burn and eyes close. She began to cry silently, a laugh escaping in between. Was it a bad thing that she had lost all isolation? She couldn’t tell.

Slowly she rubbed her eyes, and her eyesight joined her once again, unimpaired. She began to stand up from the bed she had somehow come to sit on. Her joints ached and her forehead crinkled in frustration. She walked out of the room, her bedroom. Her stride was in slow motion, and her hands swayed absently beside her.

Mimes opened their mouth around her, part fish they seemed. Their expressions were comedic, their actions dramatic. She recognized them somehow, where from? As the female reached out her disembodied hand to touch them, to feel the sensation of another, she was stopped by an invisible force. She was in a bubble.

She was puzzled at first by this new condition, what should she feel? After deliberating, happiness seemed the only possible emotion. Blissful with her seemingly permanent separation from the unintelligent creatures.

“Now?” the female hastily began as she tensed at the croak of her voice, it rubbed like gravel against her head, echoing. She now bore a headache.

Later. The unfamiliar voice sneered. She covered her ears, wondering where they were amidst the mimes. She sneaked a glance over her shoulder, possibly seeing a shadow peek from the doorway, her doorway. Was it the spirit she had encountered just earlier?
She walked farther, only to turn around and go back to her “room”. The mimes watched menacingly. She thought she might have heard a sound; a snort, a giggle, a hiss.

Once back from her exhausting trip, she lay back down. The female watched the wall beside her. She longed to stroke it, feel its color.

Now. She heard the voice as a shadow passed the wall. A pitter-patter of rain echoed through the household. She knew this would be the perfect time.

The female walked as though through water to her bathroom. She gazed quickly at the medicine cabinet’s cracked mirror. She saw the mimes staring back at her, they spoke.

Are you coming now?

“Yes, right now,” she reached out her revived limb, her bloody fingertips ready to caress their faces. The bubble burst at her touch. She was enjoying near-freedom.
She opened the cabinet to find a disposable razor watching her, all the while screaming in pain.

Where-where are you going? Don’t leave me here alone!

The female shushed it, “You’ll come when you’re ready; I am, I belong there.”

She grabbed it forcefully so it wouldn’t escape. She took the blade out and pinched it
between her calloused, guilty digits. She felt the cold metal seep into her skin, a few cuts so she would enter in happiness.

She released once the pain, then pleasure, began. The female slumped outside her “room” and to the mimes.

Their expressions were frozen in place. Frozen as they had been when she had witnessed their last moments, as they had been when she gave them passageway to mimehood.

Before her, the female saw these images vividly. The youngest of mimes cried as the older womanly mime begged, pleaded. She implored to stay in the nightmare from which the female was saving this woman, this foolish lady from. The eldest, gruff, male mime became peaceful; he began his silence before arriving at the paradise. His eyes stabbed into the female as she assisted them all. She had saved them from a corrupt world. From feeling the pain of lies that seeped from her current world.

Now, the female was ready. She gazed at the mimes while she held out a scarlet slab of sharpened metal before her.

She whispered hastily to them, “I’m coming to join you now, don’t worry,” her voice was still sore, she didn’t know what from.

With a chuckle the female skillfully thrust the metal into her stomach. And in her last minutes, her mind was opened. She could only stare at the mimes –turned-human before her.

The girl of age 15, the teenager named Nicole, began to cry. There, sprawled on her, their living room floor; she recognized each by their name and face. Nicole knew them each as younger brother of age 8, frightened and yet sympathetic mother, and disapproving father who, in his finality, could not see his daughter in Nicole’s face. She recognized each as family, as victim.

You did it, you finally did it! The voice chimed in, laughter twinkling behind its sinister voice. She was pulled back to her reality.

The once-again-merely-female reached out for salvation, but was met with a transparent barrier. She was in her bubble once again, in her bubble with mimes, mimes that were quite possibly part fish. Their theatrical movements lulled her to her passageway amongst them. The female slept; not girl or woman, nor an adolescent of the sort, a female. She didn’t know her age, her stage in “growing up”, only that she was free.