The Blood in The Water

Like slick oil, suffused on puddles in the gloomy glow of traffic lights, there was blood in the water. You couldn’t see it unless you were looking for it, and although Gabriella’s face was smeared with fresh tears, she did notice the strange tint to the lapping tides, if only in passing. She wasn’t going anywhere in particular; Gabriella was just willing the pain in her heart to diffuse into her body and become physical through the act of walking. An old man shuffled past her, so focused on the burdening task of moving at his age that he did not stop to notice Gabriella’s anguish. All he felt was envy as he watched her bronzed, toned legs carry her forward.

“Nice night,” He murmured out of soulless habit, and then they were both lost to each other as the insidious, curling tendrils of fog swallowed them again. Gabriella glanced up at the vapors and felt the muscles between her shoulders tense. The fog was streaked an ugly yellow by the lamppost lights on the boardwalk. It was the color of some forgotten bag of bodily fluid kept in a dank, frigid morgue room somewhere. Gabriella didn’t know what she was expecting from being there. For the ocean to swallow her whole?

Maybe, she thought hopefully. Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad right now. This thought somehow compelled her to move faster, and her slender limbs soon twisted into a desperate despairing sprint, abandoning all the decorum of the seasoned athlete that she was. Faster, and faster she moved through the swirling gloom, the condensation kissing her hot body like cold dead limbs.

Do it, the Fog seemed to say to her. Fly. Be free. You’re so close. And so she should have been, for she was expecting the end of the boardwalk. It was not a long dock. But when Gabriella slowed down to grasp the railing she expected, it was not there. All the boardwalks’ edges had disappeared. The horrible lamppost lights were now were-lights, shining through the fog, bulbless and unfixed. Gabriella slowed down, unable to catch herself until she finally plunged over the edgeless mists into the shocking cold water. She let herself sink like a stone, imagining the bubbles surfacing around her in the pitch black.

Just breathe in water, the Fog seemed to say, and she really wanted to do it. It’s so simple. It’s not that different from air. Once it slips past the back of your throat, you’ll be safe. You’ll be free.

Gabriella gave into the torment in her mind, and like a child succumbing to sleep, she sucked the water into her lungs. A strange ache no human is supposed to experience jolted her diaphragm, and as adrenaline electrified her every muscle, she realized with a panic one simple truth.

I don’t really want to die.

Gabriella’s arms and legs flailed with a renewed desire to live, and she forced her drowning body to the surface. She broke the meniscus of the ocean, and the salty water burnt in her throat. Leaving the black of the depths, she reentered the equally disorientating mists of the Fog. Thrashing, she attempted to draw the water out of her lungs, but only succeeded in bringing more in. Her dark hair was made darker still by the wet, her forgotten tears lost to the sea. Finally, a convulsion of retching wracked her body as she treaded water, and she waited in panic for the burning liquid to leave her body. But as it poured past her mouth, she saw in the dim yellow light that it was not black like the water. It was rouged and rusty instead. She looked on helplessly as what was clearly blood poured into the inky milk of the sea and mist, flecks of it mixing with the vapors, and then she started to cry again. But her tears were blood too, and she began to feel a sensation of draining. This blood was not just any blood. It was her very own life force, streaming out of her body. Her vision blurred red as it kept coming, and she sobbed as she drowned in a mixture of salt water, fog, and despair. Before the last sanguine drops were milked from her blanched body, she was revisited by the same thought.

I don’t really want to die.

But it was too late. Her corpse floated gently down to the seabed like a puppet in a forgotten child’s playset, left in a cupboard in the dark. And when she disturbed the silt on the bottom, Gabriella’s poor bleached arms bumped blindly against the limbs of others who had also had last-minute regrets. They seemed to welcome her apologetically.

And the old man who had looked so enviously upon Gabriella’s warm young body, would not have done so if he could have seen her present company. But he could not have possibly known. He could not have seen the blood in the water. Because in order to see it you have to be looking for it.