SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

Day 22 Sunday, December 10, 2017

There was never a duller moment than the moment Travis ran upstairs to tell Jack, Brett, George and Craig that we would be going over to the neighbor's house in the morning, searching for food, searching for a boat, and then setting it on fire as an S.O.S.

You would assume it would have been a joyous occasion, that the other four boys would have bobbed up and down with energy and kissed Travis's genius skull like I just had. Nevertheless, the opposite happened. No one seemed interested, and no one believed that would work. Travis had managed to produce a successful homemade sterile environment and surgery on me that saved my life, but they didn't think that it was possible for us to create a bridge safe enough to walk across, didn't think we would find food that wasn't expired by now, didn't think we would find a boat, and certainly didn't think we could pull off setting the neighbor's house on fire without accidentally setting our own on fire, or gain enough clouds of smoke to travel far enough for anyone to see it or try to look for it. We were stranded, and would die here unless someone came to the rescue without our help. . . that was the majority's consensus, and it was depressing and likely caused by hunger, exhaustion, or everyone's sudden acceptance of our inevitable deaths.

Jack was off in the office writing up a story that was now fifty-nine pages, thirty-five thousand six-hundred and three words, and could not be bothered by whatever nonsensical ideas Travis and I had made up in the real world, and went straight back to writing, waving us both out to save his creative attention spurt. He also added such ideas as walking a bridge across the roofs or setting the building on fire would just get us killed. And he would not risk the future of his writings on hopeless gambles that would kill him, the artist, prematurely. This was the single point in my life where I wanted to catch his writings on fire and shout he wasn't even a good writer, whether I believed that or not. (I was in love with him, so of course everything he wrote was a cellulose pacemaker on my heart.) But the way Jack didn't even bother to look at me when Travis and I came in to tell him the news of our plan infuriated me to the point of insult. I could slap him now if Travis and I didn't have more people to tell.

When Travis and I went to the library on the second floor to find Craig delving cutely in a tower of religious texts, Travis gave him our spiel and immediately Craig raised his head with a messianic calm on his face that was borderline high. "My friends," Craig said, in a near dreary trans, holding up his palms to us to say with hypnotic passion the verse, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13."

Travis immediately cringed from the biblical verse. Travis hated organized religion, its hypocrisy and political and domestic turmoil. If I had not been the one to answer before he could, Travis would have surely recited Karl Marx's loathing phrase about religion, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Instead I declared, "You must wake up early to help us, Craig! Food and escape is on the other side of the water! We just need to build a bridge and throw Molotov Cocktails to set the whole house on fire! Easy peasey lemon squeezey!"

Craig shook his head with a smile, stood to his feet in an emotional calm that was infectious. He stepped across the carpet over to me, and when he came to me face to face, I looked up in his beautiful eyes, he lifted my chin with just the knuckle of his forefinger. I could feel his warm breath on my lips as he said, "I don't fear death anymore. You have stripped me of that curse, for I can never die when I am with you."

I melted on the floor. And it took Travis's awkward mop to clean me up: "Is there weed in here, Craig?" Travis said.

I laughed weakly as my legs wobbled, my chin still caressing over Craig's finger. "Craig, sweetie," I said, (I don't know why I just called him sweetie), "You will never die with me because we're not going to die at all. We're going to build a bridge, find some food, and escape to safety on a boat. What do you say?"

Craig leaned his lips in and casually planted a long, world spinning kiss on my face in the space between both my eyes. And in that moment, I woke to realize Craig Ferguson just blacked me out the way Jack does. . .

Craig pulled his lips back and I hardly noticed Travis's look of shock behind him.

Craig uttered the verse, "Hebrews 13:5."

I blinked. "What does that say?" I said, my tongue nearly slipping out my mouth.

Craig's words were a whisper, as I fell into his eyes, and everything else in the world, including Travis, melted into blackness behind him.

Craig said unto me, with the power of God:

"I will never leave you. . . and I will never let you go."