SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

*Day 8.2 Sunday, November 26, 2017

"Zara. . ." Said a voice, quiet and whimpering, like a shot dog in the woods. I nearly snapped my body in half by jolting sideways to seek the voice. The wardrobe dug deeper into me, and both my body and the wardrobe scraped another painful inch over the edge of the balcony. I could see the ocean raising its arm as though to grab me by my hanging hairs and yank me down.

"Who is that?" I said, my lips quivering in the milk of my vomit. "Jack?"

There was silence for a moment. For a painful stretch of agonized waiting. Until the voice answered my question, Are you there, Jack?

A subtle moan, and a No. I felt the tears swell up in my eyes, and the pull away from my face as they descended down to touch a floating Maserati, glimmering in gold over the destruction. It wasn't Jack. I felt a knife gash in through the flesh of my breast and twist slowly in a tortuous screw.

I couldn't help, but guess who it might be then, and I prayed each time, that it was the name I asked for. . . It was the worst guessing game, of my life, and I felt each time, the claws of a bony reaper clawing at my pelvis, smiling in a malicious vengeance, in a response to all the happiness I ever had in the world. My life was being commented on right now. And for some strange reason, I suddenly saw the faces, of all the starving African children I've seen throughout the years, blackflies circling and eating the skin on their faces, as I would wait for the charity commercials to end, so I could go on eating popcorn to the royal family of Los Angeles and their bubblegum television show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

"Brett?" Was my next guess. Oh, how I wanted it to be him. If now Jack, please be him, the man from the gym, the titan of the schoolyard, the Tarzan of the concrete jungle, he would save us both from this hellish graveyard, take out of this nightmare, pull me from this confusion, Brett please.

And with a resounding, bitter fold, the voice muttered as though dying, "It is not me. Not at the slightest, caramel macchiato princess." His words were biting, and thought his spite might have come from the recognition of my favoritism for the names I gave over the names I left silent. By the nasty, prick-like nature of the reply, I thought George could be the voice. And in a mournful groan that suffered the potential deaths of my two favorite men, I said George's name with a reluctant wail of tears:

"George, is that you?" I said. And magically I wished it was, all of a sudden, as I realized he was a cunning rascal, he could lead me out like scavenging rat across the drifting debris like a simple game of leapfrog. George was that street smart. He was a sardonic rat and a rebel to the obstacles that obstructed his destiny to greatness. He would surely, with all his narcissistic drive, get us out of this mess.

But there was a pathetic, unbelievable laugh that whispered its way like a spider over the wooden floors to the balcony from which I hung. It was not George. No, not anyone I'd previously mentioned-- "I'm not at all," said the voice, croaking from a searing pain of which only the body of that voice could know the vicious nature. "But I'm glad you're beginning to show your true likeness in order to all us boys who this morning saved your pretty ass."

My body began to shake as my lungs shivered from the burning want to cry out loud, but the wardrobe and I dragged another inch across the cracked balcony pavement and I felt a sharp slice of hard square tile bent upward against the center of my lower back, and I wailed as though stung by the latching tentacles of an electrifying blue jellyfish. My patience caught fire to the aggravation penetrating my nerves and my brain caught fire from something like a monstrous migraine. "Who is it then!" I demanded. "Cut the spite and tell me who you are! And please," I began to cry, I burned at the throat and eyebrows in a heated flame, "Please help me, pull me up, I'll fall."

There was movement as something like a table was finally pushed over. And a grunt, a rebellious grunt surfaced through the air, and a loud stomp, fall, and obvious rustle of a struggling arm crawl in my direction made me wonder all of a sudden, if the person whose ability to speak survived this moment after the titanic wave. . . was Craig Ferguson. Jealous and lonely, he would surely be the most likely one to take offense to any preference of a girl for another man, even if that girl was me, and that other man was my boyfriend Jack, my earliest crush Brett, or the likeliest cunning survivalist of us all George. And the man I thought for sure now was Craig, crawled closer and closer and closer, not making a sound other than his approaching motions, before a wet, sweating hand clutching my suffocating waist, and I looked up, and saw that it was not Craig Ferguson at all. . .