Portals To Another World

just, inhale

    If I risk it all, could you break my fall, how do I live, how do I breathe, when you're not here I'm suffocating.

    Up and up she swam. Until then all around was rain and grey. The storm raged above the sea, wave apon wave crashed over her. Beating her back and back. Her face pale in the moonlight, birds circling around, cawing and shouting for her to drown. Her hands clawing at the water, something that would give her a break from a battle she was quickly losing. Images swept through her mind, her hair like seaweed over her eyes. Phones ringing in the pockets of the dead, salt being poured instead of sugar. Everything that tormented her swirling around her body now, becoming one with the water and the cold and the icy rain that pelted down. Salt water poured down her throat with every desperate frantic inahle she took. Her eyes become clear so she can see around. Disappointment floods through her. No shining saviour lights on the horizon, no pieces of convenient driftwood, no mermaids to drag her to safety. Only grey, grey waves, grey skies, grey clouds and, grey skin. Her thrashing about slows, her legs begin to stop kicking, breathing seizing up.

    She sinks like a rock.

    It takes about sixty seconds for an adult to drown. Some cases it's only twenty seconds. Which you may think is a very short time, but, time slows as you accept your death.

    As she sank under the surface, her eyes closed from instinct. But had she kept them open this would have not given her such a surprise. But she opened her eyes and saw how the water was almost glowing. Instead of the dreary grey that was above how, the water was blue, a calming dark blue with streaks of light searing through it. The rain didn't reach her down here and she has stopped sinking. A crease forms between her eyebrows as she looks round with questions in her eyes. She had been sure to drown. But now all she feels is tingling al over her body, a sort of scurrying on her exposed skin. She looks down. There, nestled in the sea water, hiding in all the glowing blue, was thousands of bubbles. They moved down and up and sideways, always pushing her up, toward the surface and towards safety. And so she was escorted by the air under the waves to shore. Where her phone did not ring in a lifeless body, but she ran to a town to use one.