Meters or Kilometers

After failing to convince me to take a swim in the sea, my mom stood with me on the wooden deck of the boat, parts of it stained darker by water. The sun beat down from the cloudless sky and all was still except for my siblings playing in the water – splashes spraying droplets across the water surface and onto us. As my mom got ready to dive in, a pair of cold, clammy hands abruptly shoved me into the water. I plummeted head-first, letting out a scream before everything around me turned blue.

Plunging deep below the surface,  I was enveloped in a sensory bubble: all noise became muffled and distorted, my skin tightened as the stinging chill of the sea seeped deeper into my body, and as my eyes opened behind my goggles, and the wall of bubbles created by my dive floated away, I was met by an endless expanse of blue. Frantically, I glanced around the water. Surrounding me, the light of the sun rippling across the ocean surface shone dancing beams of light that only penetrated a few meters deep. The beams bounced off swimming fish and amorphous plastic waste, creating shadowed silhouettes that darted through the water and faded with every movement of the light above. Below, the murky water stretched on for what could have been meters or kilometers, the gradient darkening into black and rendering the sea floor invisible, obscuring whatever may have been hiding deeper below.

As I stared into the abyss, the black of the deep melded with the blue around me, turning everything to the same shade of navy. Drifting weightless in the current, my mind begged my limbs to kick and pull me out of the water but my body remained still, trapped in the bite of the ocean’s chill and paralyzed by lingering shock. I had no idea how deep I had sunk, how far the current had pulled me, or even where the boat was. Like prey to an anglerfish, my eyes fixated on the beckoning depths below me, calling to me like a siren to sink further and ignore the idea of returning to the boat and my siblings. 

I floated immobile for a few more seconds. The stabbing cold of the sea began to subside and started to feel numb and fuzzy. It was almost like a blanket had been wrapped around me. Still staring at the gaping void below me it struck me how alien it looked. There was nothing down there. No rocks, no patches of tentacle-like seaweed, nothing tangible to connect back to life on land. Just shades of blue and the occasional shadow or glimmer of light.

Just a moment later, something brushed against my feet – wispy and thin like a tentacle or a hair. My trance shattered as I realized I had been underwater for far too long, my heart beating fervently against my ribcage ready to break out and pull me back onto the boat itself to save my burning lungs. My body launched into a panic, legs flailing and kicking frantically trying to propel me upwards as bubbles created from my movements and the silhouettes of whatever lurked in the darkness came together to play tricks on my eyes. Deciding that the threat of drowning wasn’t enough, my imagination created its own danger that I was being stalked by some grotesque sea creature, a slimy, hairy, carapaced fiend with sharp teeth: some kind of deep sea Frankenstein that had almost caught me but come up just short and brushed against my foot. 

I broke through the surface of the water, gasping for air and heaving up swallowed water, salt burning and stuck to my throat. Locking onto the shiny silver ladder leading back onto the deck of the boat, I squeezed my eyes shut and scrambled towards my target. If I couldn’t see whatever had touched me it couldn't catch me!

My arms outstretched, I plowed into the ladder, I gripped it and scrambled up the rungs, my eyes now open were blinded by light reflecting off the metal ladder and the baby blue of the sky around me. Breathless, I crawled onto the deck and lay flat on my back, soaking in the sounds of the boat swaying from side to side, the smell of salt water, and the brightness and warmth of the sun. As the stabbing of a cramp set in and my body cracked and burned with salt, my mind relaxed. I lay still for a few more moments, images of deep sea monsters disappearing from my head. Before I could get up, my mom walked over and stood cackling over me, remarking that the only way to make me swim was to force me in.