Drift

Chapter 6

I waited.

I wanted to run.

But I couldn't. There was only water and I could only swim. Swimming was an activity in which, even without injuries, I did not excel. 

I wanted to scream.

But there was no one to hear me. No one except for the foreign voices and people in my head. As if they could help. More memories still were bolting into my mind, none of which did I recognize. It was like I was remembering everything in world history that had ever happened... except for the things that had happened to me. I still remembered nothing. Nothing but boarding a yacht with my friends and my brother. 

I wanted to do something to get the terror out of me, at least a little bit. This foreign object was just within a few feet of me, yet I couldn't see it. Stupid fog. I had no idea what it was. And I was stone still. I wanted to yell. Sprint. Something. Then that was when I realized. Cry. I had cried some before, when the voices first hit me, but those were tears of surprise. But right now? I could just cry. I could cry without being scared that monsters of the deep would be drawn to me. I could vent some of my pain and terror and just unleash the plethora of tears that I was unknowingly holding back.

And unleash them I did. I cried. I sobbed like my life was about to end. To my knowledge, it very likely was going to any second. Why look brave when you're about to die? I thought. You won't be embarrassed. You can't feel embarrassment when you're dead. You can't feel anything when you're dead. So I didn't care about humiliation at that moment. I just cried. That was all I wanted to do, was cry. I was alone. I was tired. I was in pain, mentally and physically. And I let it all out. 

Hot steamy tears welled up, blurring my vision, and rolled down my face, one by one. I choked on my own breath and tears as I heaved for air, buoyed motionlessly in the flat water. I wailed and whimpered. I didn't care.  I was upset, and by golly, if I got eaten by mythical creatures in the process, I didn't care. I wanted to bawl. All of the sounds, once again, were lacking any remnant of an echo. They were as flat as the water. 

My vision went hazy as the tears multiplied and streamed down my face, trickling into the water. After sobbing for several minutes, I realized that I needed to get down to business and face the dreaded horror that floated so near to me. I needed to see it. 

I blinked repeatedly, gradually freeing my eyes of the droplets that festered. As my sight cleared, I realized something horrible. 

I had lost the mysterious object.

Where did it go?? I wondered.

That was when it hit me.

Literally.

bump

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I screamed as I somehow leaped about a foot out of the water. Whatever it was had just hit my back. I started crying again, just because I'm a wimp. I began loosing control of my breathing, and started aggressively treading again, my lungs no longer acting as a float for my body. 

What is it?? I freaked. 

I turned around.

And I saw it.

It was right in front of my face. 

It was in that moment that I decided that if I ever saw Rich again, I'd punch him square in the nose. And worse.

Because what was in the water inches away from me was nothing other than that stupid piece of driftwood that he had stashed on the deck before departure. 

That man, I swore, was gonna get kicked so hard that he'd never even be able to dream of having kids. 

That would only be if he was alive, though.

If any of the others were alive. 

It took several minutes to deal with the fact that I had been crying in terror for 10 minutes over a piece of frigging driftwood. 

What an idiot, I thought to myself. While I was horribly angry, I was also more thankful than I'd ever been. This was a chance to get out of the water! Finally. The only question now was, "how?" My right arm was rendered pretty much useless, and my legs were so cold I could't tell if they were in pain or just freezing.

I slowly rotated the drifted floating timber, trying to find the part that dipped the closest to the water. And there it was. The lowest part was about 8 inches above the water, and about a foot and a half wide. I put my left arm- the good one- up onto the little ledge, allowing me to haul my heavy and cold left leg up. This enabled me to hoist the rest of my body up and collapse onto it, relieving my muscles and lungs of the efforts involved in treading or floating. 

I was finally out of the water. Now I was just sitting there in the cold air, sopping wet. The bitter oxygen seemed to take giant bites out of the already huge gouges and gashes in my arm. And it didn't take me long to be able to sit up to take a look at my legs. When I did so was when I saw that my legs weren't cut up or hurt too badly, but they were morbidly and darkly bruised, appearing as if I were turning into a black Jaguar. 

I was exhausted. So tired. I needed to sleep. My skin, my muscles, my bones- my everything, really- were aching to the core. The voices and images hadn't let up with the flooding into my brain. Nothing was letting up. Not the pain. Not the curiosity. Not the sorrow, the tiredness, or the cold. Nothing. Well, nothing but the fear. The fear had eased tremendously, since I got up onto the wood. I just needed sleep now. I needed sleep more than anything that I'd ever needed. All of me felt like it was just dying down. 

I slowly began to drift away in the memories. The memories that weren't mine. I thought they'd be rather frustrating after so much time, but they were actually kind of pleasant. Rather relieving. They took me away. Away from the pain. Away from bitter air, and the colorless world I was in. Away from the silence. 

I began to drift away from conscientiousness, slowly falling asleep. In my mind, I watched a memory of a little boy in overalls. He was smiling a perfect, white, precious smile. He was flying a kite. Running barefoot through a giant field in front of an old country house. A beautiful, wavy field of tall golden grass. As the little boy ran, a little redbone pup ran alongside him, panting, tongue lolling out to the side. It was warm. And it was happy. 

Then there were the screams.

The screams of a grown man. 

They sounded so... real. 

They didn't sound like they were from one of the memories. And they didn't sound familiar. Not at all. 

But I was too far gone. 

My eyes slowly shut.

My mind closed down, and the memory of the little boy and his puppy in the sun-warmed field stayed with me, and quietly faded to black. 

But the screams...

They didn't wane. They stayed. And so did the splashes. The horrified splashes.

But the memory blacked out, and so did I.