Brain Dead

In my state of unconsciousness I was able to dream. There I was, a seven-year-old girl with bright eyes and a beautiful red dress that I loved dearly. I was playing in the autumn leaves just outside the house that I grew up in. The sky was blue and the breeze gently touched my face as I twirled through its coolness.

“Roar!” It was my father jumping into the leaves after me, “I’m the tickle monster!”

I screamed playfully as he chased me. I ran to the little green swing set that my mom had bought me for my birthday the previous year and climbed the childish slide. Trapped in the sidelines of my own memory, I admired my father’s love for me. The joy I could see in his eyes as he chased me. It’d been so long since I’d seen him. I could faintly remember his features but seeing him well and happy almost brought peace to my soul.

“You can’t get me up here, nah nah nah boo boo!” I stuck out my tongue and clung to the swing set bar.

The memory I was in was that of my dead father. He too, died of some sort of dangerous cancer that could not be cured. I was too young to understand when he passed away. I remember asking my mother, why did daddy go away? I wanted him to be with me forever. And my mother had said, he will be sweetheart, he will be.

Those words were a whisper in my mind throughout my childhood and though they were only words, they stung like hell each and every day. I would never forget the day of his funeral. The sun shone beautifully over head, though sadness lingered in the summer breeze. My mother was frantic. She wept for hours that day, never letting go of my hand. Oh daddy, I thought as a tear burned my eye.

The memory began to break my heart, though it was taken away with a single blink. I awoke underwater. My first reaction was to grab my throat and hold my breath. I held my breath until I could hold it no longer. Expecting to choke on salty water, I gasped in the shock of pure air entering my lounges. I noticed the gentle current of the river swaying my hair like seaweed. Once again I knew I should be afraid, but I was completely calm and at peace with the water and I continued to sink.

As I sank deeper my surroundings grew darker. I still couldn’t help being afraid of what I could not see. In the world I was in, anything could happen.

A noise, some sort of shriek came from behind me. The sound was familiar somehow. The Discovery Channel one day was playing a whale documentary. I loved documentaries when I was alive. That was when I recognized the sound, and at that moment I was terrified because that sound not only meant there was something huge in the water with me, but also that I couldn’t see it.

My heart pounded as the thing shrieked once again. It sounded closer. I could feel the
current change as the creature swam toward me. Then suddenly a beautiful light shone throughout the river. I squinted my eyes and allowed them to adjust.

It was the creature that shone so brightly. It was like the fish that lived deep, deep below the ocean that produce their own light since they see no sunlight. Except this creature seemed peaceful and hardly dangerous.

It was massive. Maybe the size of a blue whale, perhaps larger. The sea creature was translucent, revealing its major organs. The sound it made was that of a whale. It had webbed, clawed hands and its head was dragon like. Ginormous coral and reefs grew from its head like a horn grew from a rhino. It was its eyes that struck me though; pure blue. As if the creature was blind.

The creature continued to swim around me until its head was in grasping reach. My heart didn’t sink in fear. It simply pounded harder as I reached out my hand to touch it. Absolutely
beautiful.

Suddenly it looked away and stared into the distance. At that moment, I could see
unease in its body language. There was something else in the water that such an enormous creature like this feared.
A cave. It lit up before our eyes, revealing a dead corpse of an old woman wearing white. My heart sank because I didn’t like surprises.

The creature and I floated in silence when the woman’s eyes and mouth gaped open in a screech so painful, blood leaked from my ears. I placed my hand atop my ears as if I would no longer hear the terrible sound, but it was simply too much. I looked at the sea creature, seeing black blood ooze from its eye sockets.

Nooo, I thought, not wanting pain to come to such a gentle being.

The creature shouted in agony as it grabbed me gently with its webbed hand and swam up. It swam, ignoring the harsh current of the water and as it swam I heard a familiar voice whisper deep inside of my head, No matter where you hide little girl, I will find you.

And then we were at the surface.