In the sea I float and I feel the bubbles from below rise up and press and disappear against my legs. And the sinking feeling pulls me downwards past the surface where I let myself sway in the breezy currents. And I can see the moon sparkle above me and all the stars in the sky; together they shine upon and illuminate the sea. And I don’t have lungs because I can travel far, far down and breathe in all of the water that I must if I am to travel further. I have gills - I am fish without fins.
And I get to the bottom where the sand resides and I feel my feet touch surface. And somehow it feels no different than when I would walk above the seas and smile gently in the sunlight. But now it seems the sea is where I must remain. And I walk for mile, it seems, and watch the fish rise and sink, to and fro, and let the current take them far away from me and the seaweed swaying in the deep depths. But I meet a man and I can see the wrinkles of the eye and smile upon him. And his clothes are made of coral and seaweed and he tells me that there is a place for those like me. And so together we walk along the sand. “And how is the world above, these days?” he says casually, letting bubbles rise from his mouth, “Is it as beautiful as many years ago?” And I smile, but do not know if the world is as beautiful as it was many moons ago. But I respond “As beautiful as ever.” And he smiles and his old, wrinkled dimples show and ask for no further explanation. “And how did you get to be down here?” he asks me.
And I shrug my shoulders, “I must have floated a bit too long, maybe.”
And the old man pauses for a moment and says to me “Well, I suppose we all have our reasons for why we chose to live below the sea.” But his words were strange to me, because I had only floated to see the stars more clearly and was instead pulled into the depths.
And I breathe and I breathe in the water and I walk, feeling the cold sand beneath my feet. And finally, after much searching, we find a strange and enormous charcoal-black mountain.
And in the mountain there is a hole. Bright, twinkling lights illuminate a tunnel. And slowly, we trudge to the opening and find, upon our entrance, that there are hundreds of these twinkling lights, and they move and thrash and the man says “It is our light source, the angler fish. We keep them in nets and entangled so that they can never escape. We feed them from time to time to prevent their death.” And I am bewildered and I turn to this old man and ask him what they do when they die. And all he has to say to me is “Nothing dies down here.” And his face is covered in an ever-moving glow of lights and he looks both newer and older simultaneously. And we continue to walk through the tunnel.
And there is the horrifying scratching sound of the fish as they rub their scales together trying to become free. It penetrates my ears and fills my eyes with salt-water (but they are simply washed away by the constant salt-water).
But the old man does not notice. He simply carries on and leads me further and further through that small, rocky tunnel filled with strange, living lights.
And quite finally the lights (and the fish) become sparse and eventually, entirely fade away. The man and I stand in the darkest darkness together and he tells me to hold his hand and let him lead me. To trust him to get me safely to safety. And I do not know this old man so well but I slowly feel his hand clasp mine. I hold it tightly. And he pulls me into the darkness (getting darker). And I can feel the sand ending and a smoothness of surface brush against my feet. “Do not be alarmed,” he says, “the landscape changes here.” And I feel colder and colder and soon my body, only equipped with a pair of blue floral swim-shorts, allows the goosebumps to fully rise upon my skin. “Do not be worried, it will get warmer.”
And suddenly it does get warmer and I can feel the current moving faster and faster and I feel as if I am getting pulled forward by the water (and the man). And my feet begin to slide slowly onward on the smooth, smooth surface and the man begins to laugh. My eyes swell but no water can slide down my cheeks. “Where are you taking me?”
And no words escape from his mouth. I only know he is there by his hand holding mine, pulling me. And I stop and I struggle to keep him from pulling me, from the current pulling me to a place I do not understand. “Where are we going?” I say with quivering tones. And he solemnly says “To the belly of the beast.” And I (confused) begin to cry and let go off his hand. And suddenly the ground beneath me goes alight and I can see that I walk upon glass. And below me I see thousands swaying; white lives (but without skin or bone or muscle or blood) trapped deep below beneath the glass. And I look to the man, my face contorted and twisted, and slowly a smile creeps upon his wrinkled face, “And I have lived forever and I will live forever and I will take what I need from you like I did with them.” And as he goes to grab me, to steal me - I run. I do not look beneath me. I cannot look beneath me and see where so many have gone before me and I run and run and feel the sand return to my feet and witness the thrashing lights of the angler fish and the man running, running after me, his face lit up, sparkling.
And I reach the entrance and I see a cord, a cord tied to a net that holds tight all of the fish and looks as if may be my method of survival. And when I am about to pull it (to release them) the old man (panting and struggling, pressing his hands against his chest) says “No, I am going to set you free! I will free you.” But I decide that this man cannot decide my freedom. I pull the cord and run from the tunnel. The net falls and thousands and thousands of fish (that were once living-lights) struggle to break free of the net. They push and push each other to exit the net. And they escape in both directions (out of the tunnel and into the tunnel). The man will no longer be able to hurt me (I do believe he would have succumbed to the bombardment of thousands of angler fish, with lights upon their head, thrashing at him, their captor).
Where to go now? I gaze up and down the mountain, it is giant, and I do believe that it may rise from the sea. And I think things through (as sometimes I don’t often do) and decide that climbing it will be of use.
And so I climb. And I hope, as I get closer to the surface (as I did as I got closer to the floor of the sea) the land will welcome me back and I will again have lungs with which to breathe and maybe I can go home (where I belong) and sleep in my big bed under warm, warm covers once more.
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