Immobility

Chapter Ten

My mind emerges from the unending vacuity, and for a large bucketful of seconds, I am quite discombobulated, for I haven't the slightest idea what is happening, and then I remember that I attempted suicide by sinking myself to the bottom of the flood with the dead body of Heather as a result of the crippling sense of depression that smothered me subsequent to her demise that could have easily been prevented by her obeying my unuttered command to wait for me to swim over to her, thus causing me to take the blow and die. But now that survival—which had been my main priority just seconds prior to the scream that snapped me to my senses—has become worthless, I ultimately decided to take my own life, and now my opponent in the game of chess has made their strategic move to claim the crown of victory and achieved their goal, leaving me dead. I assume that perhaps an afterlife exists and my consciousness has returned from the nothingness and will continue to live on as the field of time expands indefinitely.

However, everything suddenly begins to evolve. The first pulverized fragment of sensory information that wafts into my exhausted system is a glassful of pulsing pain signals that mimic the rhythmic—albeit quite weak—beating of my heart that accompanies this sensory comprehension, signifying that I am still among the living, have yet to yield and plunge into the nullity of asphyxiation. But how am I alive? Unless a human organism experiences consciousness in some contrastive realm subsequent to their demise—thus signifying the existence of an afterlife—and I am traveling through the hyperdimensional passageway to that realm, I am still alive. But that cannot be possible. The last thing I remember is lapsing out of consciousness as a result of oxygen deprivation. So perhaps my mind is mustering some final delusion and I still have yet to die.

But then I become aware of this uncomfortable sensation rising from deep within the bowels of my throat—it feels as though it is an ancient subterranean tunnel flooded with cold water—and it is difficult to draw air into my respiratory system. I begin to cough and heave uncontrollably, and my eyelids fly open scant seconds subsequent to the awakening of the fit. I struggle to sit up, but am incapable of doing so, for I am not lying on a solid surface, but rather floating in an undulating, freezing body of water. I roll onto my side, only to be greeted by a faceful of icy spray kicked up by my frenzied thrashing laced with adrenaline. Without warning, I retch, whereupon a torrent of the disgusting floodwater mixed with rainwater and a small amount of bile gushes from my mouth. My chest convulses as my body fights to rid itself of the chemicals I have swallowed whilst insensible as a consequence of the extraordinarily low concentration of oxygen in my bloodstream. After what seems like several minutes, though it is probably only a tiny fraction of that, the coughing abates, leaving me dizzy and shuddering and gasping for breath; it does not help that it is raining torrentially, with literal walls of water pouring from the sky itself.

When I finally manage to settle my breathing, I allow my legs to descend and straighten myself up so that I am no longer lying on my back, and examine my surroundings. Towering skyscrapers and apartment buildings and hotels and inns and major business outlets stand proudly over me, solemn monuments protruding from the inhospitable floodwater, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that I am floating through the partially submerged remnants of Faulkner Heights. Some buildings have been devastated by the earthquake, besmirched clouds of smoke and dust billowing from a handful of shattered windows, seeming on the verge of crumbling into the water, while others look almost unscathed. I suddenly notice a tiny cloud of red emanating from my right side and recognize it as blood in less than a second. It does not take long for me to realize that the deep lacerations that may have caused me to painfully die of hypovolemic shock are bleeding once again, though not as heavily, to my luck, but it must be remedied, for if I neglect to staunch the flow of blood, my internal tissues and organs will sustain damage from the insufficient amount of oxygen.