Death is My BFF Rewritten (Book 1 of the Rewritten Death Chronicles)

Chapter 4: Floaties

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NO SPOILERS.

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           I guess you could say it all started when my first grade class went to the zoo.

            When my fear of swimming began.

            I couldn't recall much from my childhood. I had a few memories and all, and if my parents brought something up about the past,  I could vaguely recall it, but if I just sat down and tried to remember anything at all about my childhood, I would reach this imaginary wall, then begin to get an unbearable headache until I stopped trying. Everything past around age nine or ten was a complete and utter blur. And as crazy as it obviously sounded, it had always felt as if I wasn't allowed to access my own memories.

            One day, out of determination, I lay down in bed, shut my eyes, and tried to reach that wall in my mind again. I pushed through the headache. Pushed at the wall. It was no use. I gave up. However, I found myself unable to open my eyes, trapped in front of the imaginary black wall in my mind. I was twelve years old.

             Mom found me unconscious in the middle of my bed room floor.

             Nothing strange turned up when they checked my brain out at the hospital. I told them about everything. The wall. The memories. They didn't think I was crazy because I wasn't. I just had an overactive imagination...

            What I could distinctly remember from my childhood, cruel as it may be, were all scarring events. One of those events was my first trip to the zoo. A school field trip that I had brought Mr. Wiggles on. Marcy and I had grown up close, but we hadn't been in the same school until middle school. I didn't have many friends until her, so my "buddy" for the field trip was a smelly, nasty little kid that picked his nose. His name was George. The class had crowded around the seal exhibit, getting yelled at for standing on the ledge in front of small glass wall, and shoving each other to get a better look; whereas I stood like a loner in the back, patiently waiting for everyone to move and watching the seal trainer throw fish into the water. Tourists moved in, snapping pictures of the seal waving at the crowd, receiving a fish. I took my turn and stood up on the ledge when the trainer stepped out of the exhibit and the seal dove back into the water.

            The seal cut quickly through the water beneath my eyes, twirling and spinning and playing. I wanted to get its attention, so I started to wave Mr. Wiggles over the water.

            "Why don't you just give it that ugly thing?" George sneered from behind me. Before I could react, he shook my hand hard until Mr. Wiggles fell into the water. He landed on a small ledge between the glass wall and the water, dangling over the seal's line of sight.

            "NO!" I started to panic, reaching towards Mr. Wiggles. It was then that the seal came up out of the water, splashing it over the ledge, and causing me to lose my balaance as my hand slipped. I bonked my head on something when I fell over the wall, before plummeting into the warm water. I heard people screaming above me, knocking on the glass from the first floor of the zoo where the seal's tank was visible. Unable to swim, I instantly lost all of my breath in a silent scream and sunk straight to the bottom. I started to flail my arms out, at first keeping my mouth shut, but  then panicked, and grew so terrified that I opened my mouth and swallowed tons of water. The seal circled around me like a massive shadowy beast, making high pitched noises that sounded like screams. I must have fallen unconscious from lack of oxygen when hands gripped me by the shoulders, tugging me up from the bottom of the exhibit. They performed CPR on me. When I woke up, Mr. Wiggles was at my side and soaked. My mom sued the school and made me switch to Marcy's school, and after the horrifying event,  I never went on another school field trip, or swam in a pool again,