Status: Re-uploaded 20/09/12.
Six Feet Underwater
Degrees South
The sea kissed him with its darkest, filthiest cowlick, salty as the ink of squids, and toxic as oil to human lungs. Effortlessly, it rocked his boat, a paper toy in the titans’ bathtub. It was playful at first, a cat tormenting its prey. Then, without hesitation, it toppled the boat in one motion, spilling the loose, liquid boy who had been inside.
As one, his thoughts and fears tumbled out with him.
His black hair bobbed, uniform with the water as he retched and spluttered. It was as though he was made to drown. Strong enough to reach this ignored patch of sea, at this ignored hour, but not strong enough to fight back when he was taken prisoner, he was at the mercy of the swirling shape-shifter. One moment, it was a desert of watery dunes, promising no oasis. The next, its peaks and troughs were hard and callous, glinting like chipped onyx.
The sea savoured him, sucking and soaking him in its flavour. It made a soup of boy and boat. With a wet tongue, it crushed the hollow dinghy, crunching the boards to flotsam, the better to dissolve and disappear.
The boy sank.
Blue lips formed the lifeboat for his final breath. Stinging with salt, his eyes watched the point just above the water line where he had exhaled, desperate to see his soul to safety. With identical timing, the sea’s lips parted, yawning to reveal the extent of the pit it kept secret.
His ghost joined with the lingering mist. The boy was pulled down. The water tugged him, its muscle tireless and universal. All things ended with the sea.
Down, down he plummeted, until the moon was lost and the stars flickered out. The last light was blotted from view. The boy’s eyes closed.
There was no up or down anymore, no north and south, no question of direction or degrees. He felt himself compressed, becoming a singularity.
Then, he felt nothing at all.
He did not feel it when the arm of nightmare touched him, and he was thrust closer to bridge of worlds by the origin of fears worse than death. He did not see the second moon emerging from the filmy haze underwater. He did not see it there, unwinking, fixing him with a pupil as large as dais and black as oblivion.
A wave within a wave, the limb uncoiled, wrestling whitely for the foam that was its spawn. It surfaced faster than any bubble.
The boy did not feel fear when he was caught by the crusty hulk of a rising island. He did not feel it when he was floated, light as a feather or snowflake, away from stillness and back to chaos. He did not hear the banshee utterance of the woken one so large that it had defied notice, suspicion and even imagination for centuries; the one too big to be feared as its smaller agents were– the true essence of kraken.
Lastly, he did not feel the arm that reached down to rescue him, gripping his elbow on his own scale. The cheater of death was much older and stronger than he was. Many scars toughened the hands that pulled him from the brink of death, and cast him onto the flat, dry deck.
He lay there as the world turned, cheek to cheek with safety.
A lungful of seawater spewed out. No piece of the tiny rowboat survived. The iron steamer chugged a line back to shore, unmarked by what it had missed by a slim fraction of a degree.
As one, his thoughts and fears tumbled out with him.
His black hair bobbed, uniform with the water as he retched and spluttered. It was as though he was made to drown. Strong enough to reach this ignored patch of sea, at this ignored hour, but not strong enough to fight back when he was taken prisoner, he was at the mercy of the swirling shape-shifter. One moment, it was a desert of watery dunes, promising no oasis. The next, its peaks and troughs were hard and callous, glinting like chipped onyx.
The sea savoured him, sucking and soaking him in its flavour. It made a soup of boy and boat. With a wet tongue, it crushed the hollow dinghy, crunching the boards to flotsam, the better to dissolve and disappear.
The boy sank.
Blue lips formed the lifeboat for his final breath. Stinging with salt, his eyes watched the point just above the water line where he had exhaled, desperate to see his soul to safety. With identical timing, the sea’s lips parted, yawning to reveal the extent of the pit it kept secret.
His ghost joined with the lingering mist. The boy was pulled down. The water tugged him, its muscle tireless and universal. All things ended with the sea.
Down, down he plummeted, until the moon was lost and the stars flickered out. The last light was blotted from view. The boy’s eyes closed.
There was no up or down anymore, no north and south, no question of direction or degrees. He felt himself compressed, becoming a singularity.
Then, he felt nothing at all.
He did not feel it when the arm of nightmare touched him, and he was thrust closer to bridge of worlds by the origin of fears worse than death. He did not see the second moon emerging from the filmy haze underwater. He did not see it there, unwinking, fixing him with a pupil as large as dais and black as oblivion.
A wave within a wave, the limb uncoiled, wrestling whitely for the foam that was its spawn. It surfaced faster than any bubble.
The boy did not feel fear when he was caught by the crusty hulk of a rising island. He did not feel it when he was floated, light as a feather or snowflake, away from stillness and back to chaos. He did not hear the banshee utterance of the woken one so large that it had defied notice, suspicion and even imagination for centuries; the one too big to be feared as its smaller agents were– the true essence of kraken.
Lastly, he did not feel the arm that reached down to rescue him, gripping his elbow on his own scale. The cheater of death was much older and stronger than he was. Many scars toughened the hands that pulled him from the brink of death, and cast him onto the flat, dry deck.
He lay there as the world turned, cheek to cheek with safety.
A lungful of seawater spewed out. No piece of the tiny rowboat survived. The iron steamer chugged a line back to shore, unmarked by what it had missed by a slim fraction of a degree.