Today’s story was inspired by photography by Dmitry Laudin.
I kept trying to breath. I pushed again but I couldn’t get past it. The water wouldn’t let me breach the surface.
My lungs were burning. God how they burned. It just kept hurting. I tried to breath from the surface to quench by thirst for oxygen but I couldn’t. Every time I tried I was pulled deeper.
The lake didn’t used to be this deep. It didn’t stretch so far down into blackness. I’ve known this lake my entire life, and nowhere does it go so deep. The water down there is black. It hides beneath what should be the floor of the lake. It ripples like waves touched by a breeze.
I don’t know how long I was down here. Minutes? Hours? Weeks?
At some point they had come looking for me. There had been a boat. Many boats. I had tried to pull at the nets, touch the divers, anything to get their attention to bring me above the water. Anything to let me know I’m not dead.
***
It’s been almost a year. Maybe a month or so away. I know because I came in the water for the first swim of spring. I’ve let my lungs burn hotter and hotter while the ice started to freeze over the surface. Now it was melting.
I can’t stand to look down. I keep looking up to the surface, to the rippling skies. The shadow keeps pulling at me, tugging me deeper. I always make it back to near the surface but it’s only a matter of time before I feel the cold flesh against my leg. It’s the only thing I feel besides the heat of my lungs.
***
I’m not dead. I can hear my pulse. It’s against the back of my ears, a pounding.
I’m not dead.
My lungs hurt so much.
***
Why does it stare at me? I can’t turn to look at it, but I know the black water is staring at me. Its glare gets more intense with each passing season. Each boat, each body, each breath someone tries to take down here.
Maybe it’s angry with me. I can’t breach the surface, but I can help others. The little girl, the woman in the wedding dress, the drunk man who locked himself in the car; I pushed them all to the surface. I tried to follow, but the black water pulled me back.
It wasn’t the cold touch when it pulled me back for those. It was pain the way the water burning in my lungs felt only against my entire body.
***
I don’t care anymore. I’ll never breach the surface. But I won’t let it eat anymore. I won’t let it take anyone into its dark depths. I will starve this lake of life the way I am starved of air. I will not let the dark waters eat again.
I am no longer afraid because I am dead.
I think this story has been in my head since watching Supernatural for the first time earlier this month. The lake ghost story of the series’s third episode being the big influence. It just took Dmitry’s photography to loosen it up and pour it onto the page.