Can You Empathize?

Water or Betrayal?

You feel a sharp pain at the back of your head, rattling the contents of the inside. Immediately, the world starts spinning, and you struggle to focus. You stumble back, not able to control where your feet are being placed. You can hardly think, the only thing on your mind now is the throbbing, sharp pain, spreading to your brain from the crown of your head. It's making you dizzy and you are fighting to keep conscious. There is some figure zooming in and out of focus. You feel your body swaying, a clear sign that you are loosing control. Your vision is blurry, from tears or from the unconsciousness kicking in, you do not know. However, you don't need clear vision to know your feet have hit the edge of the boat.  And you definitely don't need it to experience your body falling, falling over the edge.....

You're plunged into the cool water, the sudden contact making your body tremble with shock waves. The roar of the splash is ringing in your ears, playing on repeat in your head. You're able to open your eyes, and you see the rippled surface of the water from underneath. It clicks that you are underwater, holding your breath, and with the chances of a concussion from the blow, you might not last very long.

Everything underwater seems slow. The water is gently rocking your body, sending it deeper down, unaware that any deeper and you might not live. The sun's rays sparkling against the water surface is a beautiful sight to behold, unfortunately though, you don't have time to do so.

You try moving your limbs, in the hopes that it might somehow lift you to the top. But every cell in your body has shut down - blaming the blow, pain and water - and refuses to cooperate. Your brain is still in the process of recuperating, which was why it didn't aid in an escape.

Somehow the time feels like it stopped, and you fear it is because your lungs wanted to let go of the air in them and demanded a fresher replacement. The surface is slowly drifting away and your hand shoots out to it - a reflexive action perhaps - in an impossible attempt to grab it and come up above the surface again. Your heart is pounding in your chest, circulating oxygen-lacking blood through your body, which adds to the drowsiness. It's beat was echoing through your ears and you become deaf to any other sounds. Your eyelids start to close, and you are fighting the action, but it seems that you aren't succeeding. 

A disruption in the surface breaks your stupor, it being a hand reaching down, closer to yours. You see the ring on one of the fingers, you recognized it immediately. You had been wondering about it for days, after all.

The hand clamps on to yours, and the fingers intertwine with your numb ones. Your whole body feels weightless when it jerks with the pull of the hand. But do you really want to go up there? You know that death is unavoidable whether you drown or you let the person pull you up. They are probably just pulling you up so that they themselves can pierce a knife through you. You want to let go, swim around and move as far as possible away from the boat, but you know very well that you haven't got enough energy - or breath - to comply. 

The hand pulls you again, but this time it feels as if you have heavy weights chained around your limbs, pulling you deeper and deeper towards the bed of the river. The soft waves of the river seemingly telling you that staying down, amidst the gentle current of the river, would be better than going up and facing your betrayer - that dying in the water would better than witnessing someone you trusted stab you, literally. You'd never would have imagined that someone so sinister could hide behind those determined, sincere, turquoise eyes. Determined and sincere, you understand now, for your blood.

But you have no choice. It's too late as the other hand of your betrayer emerged through the water, clasping your right arm. There is a jerk again, and your body goes higher - towards the surface. You still want to protest, pull away from them, and never ever see those turquoise eyes again, but with the little energy that's keeping you awake, and with ticking time to your doom, you decide, albeit with a heavy heart, that you'll go up to surface again.