The Waiting Room.

7 (part 1)-journal entry #106

June fourteenth,

The ocean. From the shore, it is endless, and I will only ever stand here. A raft appears from the horizon, calling out to me. It will not move closer, no matter how many times I scream "I can't swim! I can't reach you!" until it begins to flow west. I chase the vessel along the shore until I have run around the tangible globe, and I am still no closer to finding my way. The captain grows frustrated, and only that can I see from where I am. She furrows her brow and every passing second contemplates drifting away. I feel some physical form of guilt prosper inside of me, though in my head I know there's nothing I can do. If I jump in, I will drown, there's no two ways about it. And still she calls to me. "I will die!" I repeat this over and over until it is impossible she doesn't understand. Again, she beckons me, and I begin to cry. Crustaceans and small breeds of fish surround the shore as water pours off the mountain behind me, but never contacts my skin. It plumes higher that I can see, like a wild fire, until it wraps over my head and there is no where to go if I do not decide to swim. I think to myself that I could theoretically stay in this spot for the rest of my life, and just eat the fish that swim a little too close to the edge of the water, but this is just a prolonged suicide.

Or I could jump in. Any way I choose, there is water inviting me to bathe in it. In muffled tones, I hear her calling for me. She throws an anchor overboard, sinking to the floor of the earth, and asks me to climb up. I sit in a meditative position, and watch it smash into the sand, not thirty feet in front of me. My hand pulls towards the metal, captivated by the idea of salvation. Swooping horrors and screams muster for the blue surrounding me, and what once was a peaceful, consistent ocean is now an invasive battlefield. The oxygen still surrounding me transmogrifies into a stale coldness, and I cannot breathe. I whip my head from side to side, begging for an area of water that hasn't been ruined yet. My safety thins while I reminisce on the protective waves that cuddled my toes in the white sand not ten minutes ago. It all seems so unfair. I never had someone to tell me that this is as good as it gets. An unforgiving blackness claims the water, ripping me of sight. I reach out and grasp at the spiraling current that is only able to wither in my hands. I sacrifice breathing and lay in a bed of damp seaweed and barnacles for days. Somehow it never grows less terrifying, and treacherous. The ocean appears endless in the same way that I know it is endless. I could dissolve into it with one step, and never be able to look back. I graze the salt-water with my fingers, tempted to let it finish, as an alarm rings in the form of the captain screaming. "Swim up!" she commands. A pocket of blue sea manifests above me in a sleight maneuver through the abyss. In the passing of seconds, I regain sight of her craft and another swinging anchor coursing toward me. Its veins pulse as it aims to devastate the window of open sea between the boat and I, saving me. My arms and legs coddle the middle shaft of the anchor and slowly I rise. I don't breathe the whole way up, and when I settle on the delicate raft, I peer over the edge, and analyze the pit I once resided in. Its catastrophic size somehow validates my pain. Black, aqueous, tendrils stretch unknowably into the horizon, bubbly and vicious. For the first time, I feel a comforting hand rest on my shoulder as we watch the ocean. I exhale. "I've been waiting for this for so long," I tell the captain. She smiles, and points to the sunset. It is beautiful and distracting, as tendrils drain the waves in one satanic swoop. As my heart beats only once, the planks and nails making up this ship disintegrate to the true ocean floor, taking us with it. After everything, we died.

And then I woke up, screaming and alone.

I asked mom what she thinks it means, and she said that I should sign up for MySpace.com. Make some friends. And she assured me that I can talk to her anytime.

Until the next one,

Kera Tarver

786 words