Holbox

The fever had gotten worse. His pores were soaking out, profusely. His body was heating up, hastily burning up his cells, and he was shaking, shivering in cold sweat. He needed to wake up, to cool off before this heat liquefied his brain. Against the force of nature, his eyes opened wide and he took a deep breath, coughing saltwater out of his lungs, pulling himself out of the dive. A sharp pain in his chest had woken him up from his warm reverie. More pain came from the pricking of his nerves, near his right wrist. He felt groggy, puzzled, thirsty, and unsure of how long he was under. He looked around to register his surroundings. There was no one around. The beach was deserted. It felt deserted too, as the last rays of the sunset were scorching, melting his layered cells. The high tide gently approached him, and the cold water reached down his spine in a chill that traversed his whole body, cooling down his flaming extremities. He looked at the auburn sky, open horizon of the island, and as the calm breeze of the evening hit his boiling physique, he felt better, wide awake. Then the jabbing pain in his chest pulled him away from the sand, and a sudden force compelled him to dive right into the water.

In the dark before dusk, he walked towards the ocean. He stepped into the milky shoreline, where fluorescent plankton gradually ignited. In his fascination, he dropped his right hand into the water and the sea turned into a starry night. Darkness took over his sight while the bioluminescence lighted up his body in its electric blue. The lights on the sea drew a map, and the waves drifted his body down such path. The tide started to rise a bit more, and a warm current helped relax his body. Amnesia washed over him, and peace flooded that shallow gap in his mind. His body stopped aching as the ocean was pulling him down an iridescent vortex. Eventually, his brain waves started to resemble the ocean waves, and both nature and man became calm. He took his last breath as his body became comatose, while the shimmering sea waved him goodbye.

The water became colder, shallower. His body still numbed, unconsciously descended down the ocean. His eyelids closed and his eyes started to roll, scanning memories, thoughts, flashbacks, his body guided by the current. An overwhelming stream of consciousness occupied his mind for a bit. Those foaming thoughts rapidly burst and he fell asleep. He kept sailing away in an evening of reminiscence while the bioluminescence led the way through the ocean floor. He was approaching the horizon, slowly decaying into a deep sleep, dozing off peacefully in the nightfall.

The moon pulled gravity to rush its final tidal force. The depths of the earth bulged out, sinking his body to the bottom of the ocean. The soles on his feet grasped the soft sand of the underground. His heart beat more slowly. His eyelids slightly opened. His brain now submerged into the deepest of sleeps, and he started to walk through the abyss as a side effect of dreaming. He sleepwalked through the strange path before him, where the lights aligned to show him where to go. He moved from one edge to the other, in the lowest underwater, trying to follow the lights until they floated still, rearranged in front of him like constellations in a night sky. The lights formed an intricate map, a visual cortex, where the bioluminescence connected each other like dots. He walked towards the closest one and touched it. His mind was pulled out of the water into somewhere he had been before. Years ago. Into the past. He let go of the light and gravity pulled him further down with such force, until his feet reached the next layer of ground, where he touched another one of the lights and this one pulled him into another distant memory. Gravity kept pulling him, and as he touched more lights, he kept jumping from time to time. From one place to another. From dream to dream to dreams within dreams. Gravity took him further down, and his feet fell from layer to layer eventually losing any sense of ground. His body weakened, his lungs demanded oxygen but he pushed the backup. He traveled far away into the map of his brain. From one memory to the other, until a single light was all that was left, floating in front of him, and this time, as he touched this light, a constellation was drawn on his skin, a perfectly symmetrical triangle shaped by three moles on his right hand. This new constellation on his skin lightened up, and the rest of the lights turned off. Three memories were now perfectly aligned on the edge near his wrist. Before he could even connect the dots, his body could not take the pressure anymore, and the weight of the water started to drown him. His chest pain woke him, and as he reclaimed control of his body again, he pulled himself out of the dive.

In the dark before dawn, his body was soaked, still burning up. A thin ray of sunlight sieved through his eyelids. His right hand pricking, three moles aligned. His chest still ached, drained of oxygen. A hand touched his forehead.

Then a voice whispered: “Don’t wake him, he’s still dreaming.”