Marionette

Oceans, Chapter Five - Dekishi [溺死]

There was a dream Amaya thought she'd had, reaching through the pits of despair and clawing at the inside of her heart. Squeezing the air out of her lungs, forcing everything out of her while her body struggled to take breaths she couldn't physically take. Only it wasn't a dream, but a daze in which her emotions rose to engulf her, dragging her beneath the surface that was consciousness.

Daydreams mixed with reminiscence, swirling in turbulence, battering her around as she struggled to stay afloat.

It felt a lot like she was drowning.

In fact, it felt exactly like she was drowning.

She'd drowned once before to know the difference, back when she was little and she remembered what her mother's face looked like without the aid of photographs kept in old picture frames.

Her siblings had just experienced their first Tanabata despite still being unable to crawl, and their mother had wanted to take the three of them to the beach for the first time in their lives. Their umbrella had been caught by a sudden gust of wind, throwing it into the ocean while her mother tried to calm two crying twins down. Amaya had chased after it to bring it back, because even at an age just shy of four years old, Amaya was desperate to help her mother in any way she could.

It was because her mother was always crying when she thought nobody could hear her. It was always when she thought she was alone, crying for help, for someone to help pull her out of the current. So Amaya always did her best. Always worked to help her mother with the twins. Always picked flowers and brought them to her mother, just so that she could scoup some of that water out of her world for her. Amaya adored her mother so much, it always broke her heart when she'd hear the fair woman wallowing in heartache. Nothing that she did to help ever made a difference, in the end.

In fact, even now, Amaya believed that all she did was make things worse for her mother.

As they say, these things happen so fast.

It all happened so fast that in truth, Amaya drowned before her mother even knew what happened.

It's one of those strange things where your first death-experience occurs to you when you're old enough to hold consciousness, it stays with you no matter how long ago it was, even it's just a flickering nervousness or discomfort in life - It's still there, even if you can't see it. Amaya remembered well the pain of drowning like it was yesterday. To this day, it still haunts her, because it's the one thing she's truly terrified of.

When your body gives up on holding that breath devoid of much needed air, no matter how hard you try, instinct takes over and you lose control of your body - You then take that much-needed gasp you know you need, but it's not air. That gasp leads to water rushing through your air passages, but even though you can feel it burning as it fills your lungs and know with every fibre of your being that you need to stop trying to breathe, your body won't listen to you. It just keeps gasping for air, taking in everything it can between you and the surface in order to gain some air.

It's the terror through the pain where you realise that your body is out of your control, through the burning agony, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You're killing yourself, but it's like your brain has been ripped entirely out of your body, and all you can do is watch the world disappear around you.

Then, as the fire engulfs your whole being, you black out, and the world around you slips out of your trembling grasp.

Drowning is the single most terrifying and lonely feeling, and the worst of all is how emotional anguish feels exactly the same. It's terrifying because you know what's happening to you despite your desperate attempts at stopping it - Your absolute best is never good enough to break free. And it's the most lonely feeling in the whole world, because your own body betrays your mind, and there's nothing you can do but experience the hell of it all, like you're the only person left in the world right at that moment.