The Killing Water

Monsters are a funny thing to think about when you're drowning. Then again, anything besides the icy water filling your lungs is a bit odd to think about when you're drowning.

I've always had a fear of deep water. My mind filled to the brim with horror stories about grotesque sea creatures. Sharks with jaws bigger than anything i could imagine, piranhas with razor sharp teeth that could strip the flesh off a person faster than a heart beat,  electric eels and leviathans and jellyfish waiting for an unsuspecting victim. Not one monster apeared in the ink black water as it swallowed me up, its cold cruel embrace wrapping around me.

The human part of the brain knows about drowning. We're taught as children that water is dangerous, that you can drown in an inch of the stuff. But the older part of the brain, the primal part that's always been there only knows instinct. And that's where things get tricky. Not enough oxygen is going to the brain? Inhale! It says. And  so you do. Water fills your chest.

They say without training you can hold your breath for three minutes. Three agonizing minutes. Seconds turn to years turn to decades. Time slows almost to a halt and all you feel is cold and hollow. How you can feel hollow with lungs filled with an ocean, I'll never know.

Prayer comes next. Bargaining,  if you're not spiritual. It's all the same though. Any second now someone will rescue you, pump the water from your lungs and chase the cold from the places where bone meets bone. Any second becomes any minute becomes never, and somehow the world grows darker than before and drowning becomes drowned. Maybe your brain stays alive long enough for the blood in your veins to still, after you can't move your body. Eyes forever open, glossy and unseeing.

I don't know if my body ever hit the bottom. But my spirit remembers the water death. And it remembers who killed me.