Diary or the Dead

Choking On Blood

It was gloomy, the cold stung in his eyes as he navigated his way through the bottom of the lake. Sharp rocks entered his vision right before he was about to swim into them but it didn't take more than a strong movement of his arms to evade them. His hair was long again and stuck to his face, brushing it away could only be a temporary solution, that he knew. Where was he even going? He wasn't sure, just away from whatever was behind him.
Suddenly everything became sharper as if fog was dispersed and he found himself in a clearing in which's center lay upside down the wrack of a small boat. Tiny muddy green swarms of fish were exploring the foreign object and disturbed up the dirt by doing so, creating small clouds. Single rays of light made their way through the water surface and playfully touched the silhouette of a woman sitting with her back to him on the rack. There was something so familiar about her so he swam closer as if in a trance, yet in the back of his mind he felt something was wrong. Was it the woman? Or the lake? Or the boat? Or even he himself?

The woman's long silver hair moved slowly around her bare shoulders and back. As he came to a stop next to her he saw that she possessed not a single piece of clothing so her grayish blue skin was visible. She slightly turned her head towards him but not to see his face. The wide pupils of her big brown eyes were like the black of a bottomless well where nothing but emptiness would await. Maybe she looked into the distance, maybe she wasn't looking at anything at all. Her mouth was slowly opening and closing. With every movement he could feel the water around him being pulled towards her and released by the opening and closing of the three gills located on either side of her bony rib cage. He let himself sink down to the ground before her and rested his head on her lap. Compared to her he was tiny even though she looked smaller than a smaller than average woman. While closing his eyes he could feel her sharp fingertips clumsily stroking through his hair. He felt a deep sense of melancholy in his chest but there was nothing closer to what he thought could be called "peace" in this cold and wet pit he was supposed to call his home. There he was laying for a while, felt her every move, felt the water steadily moving and the oxygen running through his own body.

Until it wasn't and the water swirled and her body was ripped away from under him. His head slumped into the wooden boat but it wasn't the wrack, it wasn't old and rotten but sturdy. He couldn't move as he could before as thin ropes bore into his skin, tightening the more he struggled like a gibbet. They wanted to cut him, tear him to shreds, make him believe he never had a body to begin with. Out of nowhere there was the overwhelming light of the unfiltered sun that burned in his eyes as he gasped for air, pure, dry air which was creeping through his gills like poison which made him dizzy. A sharp pain was running quickly across his neck and then over his face, a warm liquid running into his mouth and nose. Then another as he screeched in pain and curled up. The rope ripped and tightened and finally tore as he jolted up while looking for her, his only company, his final attachment to this place. He found her with the monster on top and a peg in its claws which it pressed down while a scream tore at his senses. He lost them all at once. All he could taste was blood. His blood, its blood, her blood as he sank his fangs into the life force of the monster as if he could suck it out and give it to her. The beast roared, closing its claws around his neck as well but it couldn't fight. It choked the same way he did. Its claws lost their grip, its body lost its strength and the boat fell over. It sank after splashing into the water, gurgling and drowning pitifully.

And then there was silence. The splashing of water calmed down. The red mixed until it was no more and he could almost believe nothing had happened yet she was in his arms. He rested her on the lakeside with her tiny pupils fixed on a non existent spot on the gray sky while the red flooded her gills as if she could breathe it. There was no movement. His hand held hers, he put it on his head but it slumped down into the dirt and it stuck to her wet gray skin. His insides cramped up and so did his neck. Suddenly he could feel nothing more than the feeling of suffocation even though air was running through him, he rejected it, it burned, he choked on it. The wounds on his face didn't matter. He tastes their blood but in the end it didn't matter. He was alone. There was no one there. He would die alone, the monsters closing in on all sides because he was their prey. He was their food. He was nothing more than food. He would die.

He jolted awake with his heart pounding in his ears and soaked in sweat, making his shirt stick to his back. He was sitting on something soft but cold. It was dark but the moon granted the environment a vague shape. Just a dream. It was just a dream. Dew closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. He could breathe. After a few seconds he let it out and repeated it several times until the dizziness began to disappear. "Nightmare?" he heard a sleepy voice next to him. A little pink flame lit up on his left revealing a palm and the face of the person speaking to him. Dew nodded. His hands were trembling, whether that was due to the dream or the cold wasn't clear to him. "Do you want to talk about it?" Dew shook his head and laid back down onto the bed with his head right next to the tiny light Avery had just created. The soft surface appeared like stone to him. Then he felt a warm hand on his own. "You must be freezing." Yes, he was definitely trembling due to the cold as well. Wordlessly Avery tucked Dew's blanket around his shaking body and proceeded to lay a wing around him. "Better?" his friend asked. "A bit," he replied and everything went dark again. It was fine. Someone was there. He felt the leathery texture  of the wing even through the cloth and it was as if he was back to being that young merling who sought shelter underneath the other one's shade. It was just a dream. Things had changed. He was safe.