I Chose to Die (Siren Suicides, Book 1)

Chapter 2. Marble Bathtub

It's not air that I inhale, it's water. There is no other way to describe it except that it feels like inhaling some weird, liquid flame. It burns my throat, burns my chest, fills my ears with ringing and my eyes with dancing dots. In that instant, I change my mind. I want to turn back time, but it's too late. My larynx shuts down in one violent spasm, cutting off the flow of water into my lungs. My mouth clamps shut with an audible clicking of teeth. As if some other passage has been opened at the same time, warmth rapidly drains out of my body through it. Time comes to a standstill. I reach that moment of tranquility I've been craving all along. A land of no pain, no yesterday, no tomorrow. A land where everything exists as a single snapshot of now, then is momentarily gone, replaced by the next snapshot.

This is what I see.

A bright light blinds me, like a photographic flash that lasts only one thousandth of a second, and helps illuminate the scene. It stands out in sharp clarity, burning into my retina. It's my hand floating in the water, yet at the same time, it's a wide expanse of freshly freckled soil. No, it's not soil, it's skin, magnified, because it's right under my nose. Iridescent circles form in my peripheral vision, then another flash makes me want to shield my eyes, but my arms won't move. I see my wrist up close, with a forest of hairs shaking lightly, as if scared into dizziness by goose bumps. I bend my neck to look down the length of my body. The brilliant blue of the hoodie is too intense, making my two feet, dangling at the far end of each leg, look even whiter than they are. Then it all turns fuzzy.

I can't tell up from down anymore, or in from out. I close my eyes and listen. I hear something faint. Thump. Thump. Thump. It's my heart. That means I'm still alive. I feel confused and disoriented, yet a strange curiosity pushes my panic down and dominates my mind. Is this how one feels when dying? My father raised me an atheist, telling me I should only believe in science. I always nodded in agreement, afraid to contradict him, secretly believing in magic and wishing that Greek gods and goddesses and all things mythological were real. Afterlife or heaven or hell or whatever you want to call it; what if there is something out there, on the other side?

I want to know what happens next. Despite the overly saturated colors and a distorted sense of size, I want to keep looking around, to notice otherworldly things with this new visual perception I've acquired. But my body thinks otherwise. It says, Get the hell out of the bathtub! I want to tell it to stop shouting, but my tongue won't move, caught between rows of my clamped teeth. My body says, This is it. I've had enough of your stupidity. I'm getting you out.

Involuntarily, I bend my knees. There should be solid marble underneath to stand on, but my feet touch nothing except water as if I'm swimming in the deep end of a pool. Afraid to think about what it means, afraid to look, I throw up my arms in one desperate stroke. There should be two polished-marble rims to grab—smooth, solid, and secure. Instead, my fingers close on water.

I open my eyes and lift my head, expecting to raise it out of the water. Tough luck. I find myself vertical, drifting deeper down into some kind of murk. The liquid around me turns muddy and greenish, with flecks of tiny fuzzy plants hanging here and there.

I turn my head left and right, twist around, flapping my arms and legs madly. The bathtub is gone! Did it expand? Did I shrink? I kick and kick and thrash around, watching the greenish tint of the liquid turn ultramarine. Blue is my favorite color. Three is my favorite number.

An insatiable need to breathe propels me up. After a dozen concentrated strokes, I surface, gasping for air and coughing up stale-tasting water. I shiver, inhaling one lungful of air after another, hyperventilating and sobbing hysterically at the same time. It takes me a moment to calm down and look around.