Feminine Revenge [Ongoing]

Chapter Six: Underwater World

I thought I was dead. I genuinely wonder if this was the afterlife that has been preached about so much. Shimmering, soft, and pressing me with gentle pressure. I can't hear anything at all. Dead silent except for a gentle rushing noise that was keeping in time with the slightest of movements that I can feel, for some reason or another. I thought this was the afterlife.

Even as a beautiful face appeared above. The one of an angel, with floating hair and the light encasing her body like it was drawn to her, clinging to her skin. She reached out to me and I have no idea what to do except return the gesture. Lifting up my hand, amazed at how light the slow moment feels, the very air shifting against me at every twitch of a finger.

The first sign that this could very well not be heaven is when the grip of her hand on mine was firm. A silly sign that really should not matter. It felt alive though. The thrum of life and blood. The warmth of a hand that felt less like heavenly power and far more like the ordinary grip I have felt many times in my lifetime. My mind just zeroed in on that sensation as they pull me up.

That's when the next sign came. As I moved, my body floated up in an unfamiliar way and I kick my legs out to get a grip and steady ground; something I had just been on a minute ago. Instead both my legs moved together and in fact ... I cannot feel ... it ... I look down and to my utter astonishment there, in place of the legs that I was familiar with – and until now have taken advantage of this familiarity – were gone and replaced with something that resembled a fishes' tail. Not quite a fishes' tail, mind you. Fish were mainly tail as far as I've seen, and this doesn't look like what over half the fish is composed of.

I open my mouth to scream. Scream as I might I cannot get a sound out. There isn't enough air in my lungs. I breathe in and I'm breathing fine, but there is still no air. Nothing I can use to make a single sound. I try again, although it's futile and quickly notice the other problem. Everything inside me was solid. Crystalized. Nothing seems to be able to move and I'm frozen from the inside out. My arms still moved but I could not even hum. Not even a little.

I was somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere that literally, at first glance, seems like heaven. It isn't, and it contains humans with tails and takes away your ability to speak or make any sound at all. The silent haven was truly silent in every form of the word.

The beautiful face in front of me – which I had temporarily forgotten in my shocked wonder – puts her hands against my mouth, in the crudest silence gesture I had ever seen. Like she was gently clapping her hand against my mouth. With her other hand, she places a long, elegant finger in front of her mouth, telling me with a gesture to hush.

She opens her mouth and for a second I wonder what she's doing. Then I hear it. Hear her speak all around me in echoes, a voice whispering from every angle, as if she'd sung into a cavern.

"It's alright."

That was all she had said yet it was so profound. A sound. I'd heard a sound that I'd seen come from my mouth and had been heard all around me. It did the trick as I quiet down to listen to her instead. The world has quickly returned to its silent rushing. I stay, suspended in mid-air, or rather not air but something else.

It hits me all at once, feeling like a physical blow. I have no idea why it took me so long to realize it. Maybe it was my still-foggy brain. Maybe it was to be blamed on one thing or the other. The fish darting past certainly chased away the fog as quickly as its little tail flitted back and forth.

Water. I am in the deepest, darkest pit of water I have ever come across in my entire life. The ocean. I was the one at the bottom of the sea. Right where I had sunk into with total and utter panic. My last moments of life where I struggled against the idea of my entire life ending. Now it hadn't but my regrets still remain. It had indeed been my last moments breathing air, for now, I was breathing the water that had choked me not so long ago.