The world swims into focus and I find myself staring at my own face through the broken glass of my step mother's Cadillac. I realise after a few moments of agony and confusion that it's my reflection rippling across the surface of a pool and I can't breathe.
Turning my head feels like it takes a month, blinking a week at a time until I can eventually look at the driver's seat where my step mother float like me. A patio heater is embedded in her head. She isn't able to move like me, she looks less real than my own bobbing arms do and I wonder if I will look like her when I go.
I don't feel like I'm going anywhere right now. Everything burns and aches and is so very cold all at once but I'm still me, still conscious and still trapped in a flooded car that just keeps sinking down, down and further down into some stranger's pool.
The headlights still work, they're the only light I have and my only comfort even though all I see is my step mother's body beside me and blood flowing from us both like red smoke through the otherwise blue water. It's peaceful in its own way.
Strange though, I thought drowning took minutes but the sun is rising now and people are crowding around the edge of the pool. Maybe I've survived somehow, maybe dawn was only seconds and this brief lack of oxygen is making time move weirdly for me.
There's a diver with us now, he has an ID badge that says he works for the police.
He's crying behind his mask and I don't know why.
I'm still alive, aren't I?
Turning my head feels like it takes a month, blinking a week at a time until I can eventually look at the driver's seat where my step mother float like me. A patio heater is embedded in her head. She isn't able to move like me, she looks less real than my own bobbing arms do and I wonder if I will look like her when I go.
I don't feel like I'm going anywhere right now. Everything burns and aches and is so very cold all at once but I'm still me, still conscious and still trapped in a flooded car that just keeps sinking down, down and further down into some stranger's pool.
The headlights still work, they're the only light I have and my only comfort even though all I see is my step mother's body beside me and blood flowing from us both like red smoke through the otherwise blue water. It's peaceful in its own way.
Strange though, I thought drowning took minutes but the sun is rising now and people are crowding around the edge of the pool. Maybe I've survived somehow, maybe dawn was only seconds and this brief lack of oxygen is making time move weirdly for me.
There's a diver with us now, he has an ID badge that says he works for the police.
He's crying behind his mask and I don't know why.
I'm still alive, aren't I?
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