No Seconds to Spare

She turned. Her eyes attempted to adjust to the change in light, while her lids widened from the sudden fear. Almost forgetting to keep her mouth shut as her screams were muted by her own closed lips, air bubbles rapidly escaped from her nose. A dark, very long shadow was passing by mere feet from her head, and it suddenly felt colder where she idled. She didn’t dare let her imagination wander with the possibilities of what it was that lurked above her. She tried settling her nerves as she clenched her jaw tight.

Etta reminded herself to keep counting; she had already been underwater for what it felt like an eternity.

“Shit,” she started to get a little panicked again. “That just wasted airtime, now I only have about a little under sixty seconds of air left! How am I going to surface with this looming THING above me?!”

Her mind was racing as she looked around and slowly looked up, praying that whatever was above her wouldn’t detect the motion.

“Welp, it definitely is in the top half of this food chain but what IS it?”

There didn’t seem to be any other way to bypass this creature that she could see, and she was quickly running out of time. Closing her eyes, she knew that she was going to have to swim directly straight up as much as she could, with all the speed she could muster. All she needed was the gumption to do it. Her chest was getting tight and starting to burn; she opened her eyes as her fingertips started to tingle.

“GO, ETTA! GO!!”

She started to swim up as fast as she could, towards the looming dark form that seemed to get bigger as she got closer. It was massive and she still couldn’t place what kind of creature that it was. How was it possible that this could exist here without anyone being aware of it?! As the light passed over the creature, she could see that it was almost reflective, in an iridescent sort of way. It was almost..beautiful?

Etta was so close that she thought, “maybe I could touch it! Ha!” Her hand reflectively reached out to brush her fingertips against the creature’s exterior, only recoiling back suddenly when she realized what she was doing. Etta was almost entirely on the other side of the being, and she knew that she shouldn’t, but she slowed down a little. Her arms and legs were starting to have a deep ache from the quick dive down and the weird trek back up.

“You are almost there, Etta. Almost there. Just a few more pushes and then we can be freee..”

Giddy in a new way, she noticed that the edges of her vision were starting to get blurry, it was becoming harder to focus. The fires in her lungs were now joined and dancing up her throat; she could feel the pressure to draw in oxygen from her heart pounding. With a growing darkness shrouding her vision, Etta reached up to the small specks of light that were just barely in her grasp-her fingers scratching at the warmth in the surface waters.

“Just one little..”

The seconds did what they do best, running on and out for eternity with no rest.