may shatter on impact (tronnor)

90. Water & the Irony of Survival

TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE

I don't know who's screaming.

I just know that it's not me.

It's not me because I can't make any noise.

Tyde, Tyde, Tyde, Tyde, my brother.

I can't feel anything, I can't move, I'm stuck, on this goddamned cliff, next to all of these flashing lights that rival the ocean in their flashes of terror. Someone has thrown a blanket around my shoulders, and someone is telling me to

"GET OUT OF THE WAY! COMING THROUGH, COMING THROUGH!"

"THIS WAY."

"BRING IT OVER HERE!"

"COME ON, MOVE IT."

"IT'S TOO LATE, WE CAN TAKE OUR TIME."

and there's a ringing in my ears and white noise filling up my thoughts and gray clouds filling up the sky. But maybe it's just me, because no one else seems afraid of the rain, afraid of the water, afraid of their own tears.

They have a net.

And a hook.

Somehow it's dangling into the water, pulling up seaweed and sand and mud and broken glass and rocks and -

oh my God.

Tyde, Tyde, Tyde -

I can feel the rain on my cheeks, my nose blocked and my eyes dry and people are talking, speaking, yelling, screaming -

"BRING HIM UP!"

"KEEP GOING, KEEP GOING!"

"LITTLE BIT TO THE RIGHT - NO, OTHER RIGHT - DON'T HIT THAT TREE."

"OKAY, OKAY, GOOD! SET HIM DOWN, CAREFUL NOW."

I think that it's Mum who's screaming. Someone has their hands on her shoulders but it's not Dad because Dad is standing over his son's body and he's standing too close to the edge and too close to the water and too close to Tyde -

Tyde's in the water, he's fallen, he's slipped, slipped on his own damn tears, slipped on the irony of survival - that maybe you've survived and maybe you wish you hadn't and maybe you'd do anything to undo it.