Drowning

Waves crashed and roared twenty feet or so overhead. The sky was black and full of chain-mail grey clouds that every so often created a rumbling of thunder or a crack of ice blue lightning forks that seemed to be getting closer and closer to the tiny rowing boat nestled in its clutches. Any practiced sailor would have taken one look at the seemingly harmless, cloudy sky that had been present that morning and noticed the clouds were weighed down by rain, yet this crew weren’t practiced. Upon the boat was a crew of five: a married couple that consisted of a twenty three year old Russian-French woman and her Japanese-English husband with their three children, twin four year old girls and a two year old boy. The family lived in England as the woman had moved there to escape her abusive father. The family was poor, but you didn’t need money to be happy in her mind. She had her family, until the day of that storm. If only they hadn’t taken that bloody boat out.

As the tiny boat was thrown about in the waves, the woman checked under the seats for life jackets. There was only three. In a mad panic, she pulled her daughters towards her and rammed the jackets over their heads, pulling the straps so tight the girls couldn’t wriggle out of them. As she adjusted the straps, the boat was thrown up in another wave, spray crashing into the boat and soaking them. Rocking like a child’s wooden horse, she had seconds to spare as she pulled the final life jacket onto her little boy, wishing they’d taught him how to swim. As she glanced over her children, letting a prayer softly haunt her thoughts, she considered how much she loved them as a wave threw the boat causing it to capsize. Immediately she lost sight of her husband, but as she clung to the boat she saw her daughters fighting the waves to get to the boat.

“Stop! Just lie still and let the waves carry you. You’ll get to land eventually but you’ll just tire if you fight it!” The woman yelled over the thunderous waves and cracks of thunder. She couldn’t see her little boy which made her heart ache, but she could only pray that the jacket would keep him above water until he was found. Waves dragged over her head pulling her down into the frothing, painful water. Indigo swirls danced around her, dragging her down into the deep as her lungs burnt and her head felt heavy. As a blanket of indigo wrapped its way around her, she felt a strange warmth before she gave in and slept.

Above the waves, the three children were still hanging on to consciousness. The twin girls held hands as their free hands clung to the underside – well now the top side – of the boat. Their fingers were turning violet from the cold and their eyelids grew heavy without their mother’s comforting words to stay awake as long as possible. As their legs grew cold and their brains confused, they fell asleep but it wasn’t the end. Despite the lack of oxygen to their brains, they weren’t destined to die that day. The twins were found by a lifeboat crew the next morning – unconscious and deadly ill but they would survive. They may have been destined to be geniuses like their brother but the lack of oxygen that they suffered from on that night left them both with mental retardations in different ways. Lucie came off from the event blind and with a mild cause of autism. She was smart, but because she was autistic she was never given the same chances her brother got. She was locked away with Lana, her twin, never being taught to read or write or learn Braille. Lana still had all of her senses in a way, but she heard music in her head and her short term memory was ruined. She always forgot her family was dead, and couldn’t remember anything that happened before 24 hours prior. She could only remember before the accident.

Most would expect the toddler boy to have been the first to die, the worst injured as he couldn’t swim. Yet, the boy was a sheltered genius. His mother had known from the day on which he was born that he was different. Yes, her daughters were amazingly clever for their age but her son, her son could have argued his point against a PHD student and won yet he was only two. As the boy bobbed amongst the waves, he didn’t panic or struggle against the waves. When he fell under water he didn’t try to breathe, he held the last breath he could have taken until he resurfaced. The boy was smart. Waves threw him around the sea but he didn’t cry or panic, he just lay letting the waves carry him. Small and weak, the boy wasn’t noticed by the lifeboat that scoped the area. He floated in the churning waves until he reached a part of the coast, 50 miles south of where he’d began. Oddly, the boy didn’t feel any emotions as he dragged himself onto the beach. He didn’t feel happy, scared, confused. After witnessing his parents die and with no idea where his elder sisters were, he’d shut off all emotions.

The boy spent nearly a week lying on that beach as it was winter – to be precise it was November of 1981. The sand was soft against his aching limbs but his stomach wretched and his head felt strange. It hurt him more than anything to draw shallow breaths but he knew oxygen would help his brain avoid any more injuries. He was still smart, but he’d taken a few blows. As he lay in the sand, unable to move, he considered what his next move was to be. How he would escape the certain death he’d obtain from that beach. In the end, he didn’t need to plan anything.

On the eight day upon the beach, a young girl was taking a leisurely walk down the beach. The girl, Serendipity Harper, noticed the toddler lying in the sand, battered and bruised as if he’d been in a war all of his life. Shakily, she let out a breath which she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Running as fast as she could, she finally made her way over to the tiny boy and made sure he was breathing before pulling her phone out of her pocket and dialling 999 for an ambulance. She had no idea what had happened as her powers of deduction were impaired by emotion cause by the state of the boy yet she had an inclination that he was injured else he’d have awoken.

When a woman dressed in a green polo shirt and black trousers hurried down a hill which had an ambulance situated at the top of it, Serendipity knew the boy was in good care. The paramedic carefully lifted the toddler from her arms and hurried up the hill muttering behind her that she’d contact the young girl in a few days with his progress. After that moment, Serendipity vanished. The boy would never see her again – not that he’d see anyone that he had known before again once he’d left that hospital. He’d become a new person: smarter, stronger, safer. He’d stop being Lawliet, the mummy’s boy who depended on people to carry him and feed him. He’d become L – the strong man who solved mysteries and didn’t let emotions get in the way. Loose your heart and you loose your head.