by H C Turk
Becoming a genius, I stopped while I drowned so as not to lose my way. I stopped and pinched my nostrils hard, painfully hard, though I could only feel my drowning, stopped to close my eyes so forcefully that I saw flashes against the inside of my eyelids. Gasp and stop to pray God to control it, allow none other, no further choking, as I halted all my breathing a moment, a sinner’s or a witch’s or a holy moment to wait, wait an instant or an era for my panic to subside. I waited without breathing, and found improvement. Praise God, no breathing brought an improvement; and I felt myself nearly dead, for such was the utter lack of everything I required. An absence of every movement was needed to quash the choke with calmness; and the gagging ended. All of it, the single gasp to nearly kill me with fear and with drowning, come and gone in the space of a breath, if only I could breathe again.
Slowly water with its meager air again came in and out, though the act remained difficult, exhausting, and I could not lose my energy. Not readily reestablishing water breathing was disappointing, a poor foreboding for my further journey if I could barely survive one small gasp; and what difference regardless? For I partially opened my eyes to see I knew not where I walked, and thereby became so panicked that I nearly choked again, which would drown me the next instance, the last.
No, I had not turned, but walked straight. Yes, I was a witch, and knew directions above a river or below. After all, the ship was stationary; it had not raised anchor and drifted away. And neither would I. No with the turning and yes with the witch and please God retain that panic. Yes with the walking. Yes with breathing water. Yes with smothering in salt. Yes with needing to be perfect in my mechanics or fail my life. Yes in hating this difficulty, hating this smothering. Yes with arduously following the proper direction. Yes in breathing damp, choking suffocation and needing to continue the stifling breaths. Yes with having no choice, with having placed myself in a situation, a life, wherein I could only smother on misery or die, suffocate even with my finest effort, and worse would be failing to smother. This was the horror I hated: if I lost that smothering, no air at all would I gain, only a choke, a cough, a gag and gasp. Then a panic would strike me with the need to breathe when I could not, thus my living would be so much worse, for I would be breathing nothing, and I would be dead.
On and on in this manner my horrid and false breathing continued until becoming worse. Eventually, after hours or days or an entire life, I became exhausted. Walking through water is difficult unless one’s head is submerged, and then it is torture. Torture from the smothering, for there is no breathing. Torment from the suffocation, for there is no air. Weary I became from the walking, and therefore an even greater effort of thought and will was required for me to proceed with the simple act of moving water in and digging for its tiny air, greater effort needed to reject panic, though discomfort remained, remained so long it worsened, becoming pain: pain in my legs and even my shoulders from moving them, pain in my neck and throat from that confined attitude I demanded of them, pain throughout my chest, my torso, my lungs pained from being checked, being denied their full and proper movement. Pain from that most important lack of movement, the refusal to allow panic’s approach, a panic to weaken me enough to lose effort, for with effort lost would go breathing and come choking. And with no surface nor riverbank to gain, I would breathe only water, no air, gag and choke and constrict to die on the river bottom, finally meeting my dream.
Then I was burdened further, for I found myself filled, not with water, but words. All the words of my testament that had saved me from death now threatened to drown me, for every syllable I felt, far too many to breathe, though by describing my life they now seemed my life, which was dying, a life only to end properly if writ to completion, but I could not write dead, and engulfing me was too much briny ink to pass through in one lifetime.
The oppression improved, for it was killing me. The massive torment improved toward its victim by killing my senses until I felt nothing of my body. I felt emotion, however, and it was the horror of knowing that my senses’ dying meant that my brain was dying, and with it my heart, my spirit, myself. But, of course, my brain was dead, for I knew not the ship’s location. In limbo I was, not a river, and beyond was Hell.
I moved so slowly that my steps had ceased, and next I would collapse. So meager was my breathing that I might as well halt, for with no bodily effort, no air did I need, being dead. And no fear had I of that threatening panic, for torment had smothered all of my intensity; therefore, I would never choke, for gagging is an acute response of life.
My last thought was of Mother. The final understanding came that I had not allowed her to die, for nothing in her death could I have changed. And here was peace, for no person I had killed was as important as my mother. Surely, not her daughter. With her death, too, would come peace, and an acceptance granted by God. And peace I would have gained by collapsing onto the river bottom to breathe eternity if Mother had not been weeping. Mother was weeping because no, no, I had never failed her, not in my heart, not in my spirit. Not until now. Mother was weeping across Earth and its waters in the form of God’s greatest emotion of love. Mother was weeping because now she would be alone. She would be alone, for not enough love had I to verify my spirit by surviving. No spirit of family devotion had I to selfishly accept an eternal peace without this wet misery instead of surviving for Mother thereby to love her as she deserved. Therefore, though all of my failures toward Mother were proven false, here at my end I rejected her finally by rejecting her love. But no misery had I in this recognition. No remorse came to me for my ultimate failure. No guilt did I achieve, for I was too angered.
This dying fool I wished to kill. So scurrilous was this sick bitch that she could not love the best mother on Earth with her dying breath, for to love Mother properly I would have to reject that dying breath and accept new torment. Accept more pain of breathing water, enough water to sustain me to the ship and the sinners there. But after that initial anger, I had no thoughts of Mother, for she was dead. Alive were Eric and Marybelle and they had saved me, and by the God Who had made me and in His glorious generosity would accept my life, I would not fail Marybelle again. I would not allow her to die again. And Eric, Eric, I would not snatch away his heart as I had his phallus. I would not kill his love for the wife, for every part of me was inferior to that emotion. I would not fail my remaining family, would not reject their love, would not die easily, but suffer continued living. I would not panic and choke, would not fall to the river’s bottom, and would not lose my way. But I had.
I halted. Intentionally I ceased in order to regain my direction. There, that direction, yes, at an angle to my path; for so immoral had I been as to walk away from my family instead of toward them. So I began walking accurately, and I breathed, breathed water. Then came a new torment, one of impossibility; for although my insistence upon living was now reestablished, it did not make me God. My great desire for life provided me with no powers over living, and I felt that despite my best intents and an anger to drive me onward, I would not be able to overcome the world, the natural world wherein people strive as best they can yet die, always die, and so would I. But even as God gave me life, in my selfishness I would not abandon it, but make Him take it from me.
I would not fail God after discovering that never in life had I failed Mother until accepting my own death. I would not fail my family and our Maker. Rejecting negation, I would. I would walk in that proper direction. I would continue breathing as I must, as I could. I would achieve the sinners’ ship and with it my love. I would not broach feelings of impossibility—if God had impossibility prepared for my success, then He could implement it without my aid. I would live as best I could, and if I died therefrom, praise God for being superior to us all in His ability to decide. But I was inferior and would live my life without further presuming God. So I walked and breathed and Satan knows I suffered. I walked and breathed and felt dead, felt that I must be dead considering how slowly I moved, no longer able to kee
p my eyes constantly open, blinking now and again, again and now, all limp in every portion of myself, not having pinched my nose shut in memory. I walked and breathed until hearing the noise of another person drowning.
The sound’s source was the ship. Walk there and breathe and suffer, too dull and dead for panic. Too full of dying for further acute anger. Breathe and drag myself along the river bottom until espying a rope to hang me. A dark rope all in knots and above it a noise. A splashing noise as I dragged and nearly breathed. A noise denoting an item falling into the water and thrashing only to rise. Activity ahead as I dragged and nearly breathed, nearly failed to breathe. A milder sound of movement within the water body, for ahead was a fish swimming. Ahead was a sinner swimming. Near the metal rope of dark knots with a huge hook swam a sinner looking toward me, unable to see because of my distance, my depth, this the sound of another fool moving impossibly in the water. And a sight. The sight of human gesticulation, for an arm was waving me toward the rope. Then up the sinner went for God’s air and I had no jealousy, for I had next to nothing. Then down came the person more alive than the walker to look for me, look at me, waving me toward the hard hook at the rope’s bottom, the river’s bottom. What a fine sound this splashing, for it was air and water mingling. What a terrible sound for being above me, but the rope was at my feet. And I knew. I understood. This was a fisher. Some sinning fisher had lured me to his line, lured me to his metal, and so insistent was he with his attractive immersion that I could not resist. Lure me to his line he did, for I stepped upon that hook and held the rope, and then the fisher snatched me up onto dry land where I drowned in air.
Upward I was pulled into an unknown medium, for it was so thin and dry as to pain me with its sharp substance, the air made of blades. Up into Satan’s trait of separation, for around me was air, yet I could not breathe it. So long had I respired water that I had forgotten normal living, and I recalled Marybelle’s having to relearn breath, recalled her inability to speak further of the subject, and neither could I, the invert witch inversely suffocating on too much air as the sinners lifted their chain, a specific person I should have known holding the rope and a wife who could not breathe. Up onto the flat surface of a floating box as pulled by many sinners’ hands, all of them on my genitals or digging through my heart for all I cared, since I was dying again in another new manner. Flat on my back on the wooden deck and there was a witch beside me displacing every other person. Blindly I stared at the darkening sky with absolutely open eyes to search for God’s knowledge of living. All those muscles in my mouth and throat and atrophied lungs that so long, too long, had been stressed to a near static state were now cramped beyond proper function, for I had forgotten how to breathe. But, of course, I remembered how to die.
“Breathe water, believe that you are yet breathing water,” the witch beside me known by odor hissed. “Breathe even as you did below, then slowly regain the breathing of air.”
And I did. As though in the water again, I applied that smothering process, but odd, oddly painful it was, as though the material I allowed into my lungs were fire—yes, burn my lungs it did, this fire air, cold flames burning my internal meat. So intense was this pain that I stared upward and saw nothing, breathing with all my concerted effort yet gaining scarcely a morsel of air. And here was a new form of panic, for upon choking would I need to save myself by leaping into the water to gag on brine? Would I have to save myself in this atmosphere by drowning in one inferior?
My eyes were closed. Eventually I understood that I was breathing air, yet useless it seemed, since my entire person—from mind to heart to spirit to emotion—was devoid of energy. Scarcely could I discern my state, my position. I could neither open my eyes nor feel any sensation. I was nothing but utter loss: of effort, energy, interest, intent. No feeling had I for survival. No feeling had I. Where or who or how I was meant nothing. On and on this state continued instantly or endlessly until I nearly felt peace. Definitely I sensed fragrance, and opened my eyes to turn toward a smell.
Sinners stood everywhere, but beside me sat a witch. One with a neck as crooked as my underwater walking. Behind her were strangers made to remain away by kin. Above the sister stood a woman who had grown with me until we formed a family. Beside her was a married man who had been making magic. All intent and serious were these folk as they stared, but not a tear, for I had taught them better. All so utterly intense were these people as they stared at whatever that I had to laugh. And when a true witch laughs, it comes a cackle. I continued laughing although some sinner leapt upon me, grasping my throat with his teeth, commencing to lick my face as though he were in need of salt, and wag his long and lovely tail.
“Stop, Eric,” I told Randolph as I touched his coat. “Not again tonight,” and came another cackle.
“I do so hate that sound, miss,” the husband whispered.
“Missus,” I replied, and laughed again, all my family members now smiling, and some of them later to weep. Not the white one, however, floating unafraid on a sea that had saved her despite all its space, the witch in transition from world to world via the passion of living a verified life, all my love lodged heavenly, ensconced in a clear spirit, black body.
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