SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

DAY 50

Sunday, January 7, 2018

I

remained stone cold pose lying in the boat while still feigning sickly incoherence. The venom had worn off, but I'd gotten used to the sedated look, and meant for the role-play to come in handy for some sort of surprise fight or flight. Meanwhile, I wondered if George or Craig felt any regret for what they'd just done to Brett, to that family, to Travis and to Jack.

I knew George claimed regret, worry and fear as useless emotions. But I suspect he regrets his survival crimes, worries about whther Hell or karma exist, and fears he doesn't really have what it takes to become president. Certainly Craig, regretted worried about and feared many things. Craig regretted his insecurities which manifested in past relationships, he worries about his abilities to gain a successful career, and he fears that he will die out here. I could feel it in Craig's hand that nervous sweat as he clasped his hot fingers in mine.

What was odd was I began to itch at the nose where my nostrils acquired the surprise smell of sulfur. The stench was so strong that I could taste the sulfur on my tongue. And I wasn't imagining it either—as I saw the other boys sniff the air, look around at the sky and then at each other.

"You smell that?" George asked.

Craig nodded, still holding my hand while he lightly pushed objects out of the boat's path via the oar in his hand. The rain had continued, and while the sulfuric stink increased, the boys dismissed it as just dirty water or a house explosion caused by the tsunami impact, thinking the combustion had remained in the air all this time (but I wasn't so sure). To forget the smell, the boys went quiet.

Craig looked up at the sky and fell into a trans. I stared at him as I saw the gray color swim in his pupils. His hair had grown longer since we'd become stranded. The boys had shaving crème and razors to keep their faces tidy, but Craig had decided to grow out his hair during our time in the bay house. His religious excursions in the mental realm of the second-floor library might have caused an ease in him that helped him to let go, and as a consequence, to let his hair grow. But he was no hippie looking boy, his hair was not as long as Jesus's. His hair just fell in a way that was the opposite of conscientious. He could have been on this earth all by himself by the look of his stare into the gray horizon. Inside of him, he was dealing with something very deep, very dark, and very transforming. I wondered if he felt this whole situation, was some sort of reckoning on his life choices. Or if his misfortune was that of destiny, and he was just unlucky. . . feeling sorry he dragged us down with him.

He squeezed my hand harder as I spotted a painful blood vessel appear like a lightning bolt across his forehead. And he dropped his head, and began to cry.

George ignored him. If anything George exhaled because he saw Craig's distress as a nuisance. George only cared to reach civilization before starving or sinking to death.

The rain increased.

Finally, George asked what the hell Craig was crying about, and Craig lifted his reddening, crying eyes to the sky and said, "I had a dream all our families were dead. That my mom had drowned while she was reading her book Anna Karenina in our living room."

George shook his head and slapped Craig in the back of the head. "Snap out of it. Don't entertain this dream bullshit. Our families are fine. They have enough money to ensure their lives keep on going forever even after the entire planet freezes over."

Craig merely watched the clouds swim across the sky.

I knew Craig felt guilt. I knew it.

I suddenly felt a wave of certainty that I had power over Craig because I had a healthy conscience and he didn't. I would never desert my beloved friends to selfishly save my own life. I may be one girl versus two boys, and I still contained myself in the hiding role of intoxicated immobility—but as the worsening aroma tickled my nostrils, and my stomach warned that it would begin to growl loudly if I stayed hungry, I struggled to hide my consciousness. (Craig tried feeding me a saltine cracker from the box of food beneath our feet but I pretended to be incoherently disagreeable by mumbling no and turning my face. He left me alone.) Time passed. I waited. The right moment to turn this boat around would come, sure enough. Any day now.

Craig pushed more debris so George could propel the boat further in the direction they guessed would lead to land. They began to hurry as the sulfur made them cough wildly and the rain poured with a strangely slimy precipitate.

My face felt as though miniature eels and slugs were falling onto and rolling off my skin. I was so uncomfortable that I almost squirmed. But keeping my disciplined rigor, I closed my eyes, and remained motionless.

Then, to the boys' sudden gasps, I opened my eyes. Something like a red ribbon tied around the world. The clouds above were no longer gray. . .

They rained tears on us that thickened in the sulfuric smell like drops of mercury and were now changing into the color of rose-gold before deepening into an even harsher red-brick color—

As though the clouds were undergoing the effects of a solar eclipse—the clouds turned deep red, from the color of love, to the color of blood, to the hue of death. Craig's hand was shaking and it bled sweat through my fingers. George cursed as black particles started precipitating from the atmosphere and make him cough. Ash, miles and miles, pounds and more heavy pounds of gray and black ash confettied down from the sky like a dirty snowstorm. I struggled against the urge to cough, but thankfully Craig pulled off his jacket and drew it over my mouth and nose.

And that's when George turned off the motor completely and merely looked over at Craig, wondering if all the natural laws in the universe had collapsed into a physical reality where Karma governed.

Shivering in his throat, George asked Craig, the boy he knew had been studying religion for quite some weeks now, "What the hell is this?"

I nearly smiled, because the boat had stopped, and the boys were scared. They knew they had done wrong now. They knew they were going to pay for leaving our friends and loved ones behind.

Craig gave George no answer. He just watched the sky bleed thick, red-colored rain as the ashes intertwined in a spiraling swirl onto his face. His skin became buried in the ashes and the rain, and only until George leaned over and shook Craig by the neck of his shirt did Craig look over to him. George shouted at Craig— "What the hell is it?! A plague?! Or a fire? Sulfur in the air? An eclipse? What?!" George was just a politician at heart after all. George could only hope Craig knew something about science and religion to bear some insight.

But Craig merely shook his head, and then looked down at me. He saw my pupils watching him through the tiniest crease between my wet eyelashes. Craig looked off for a moment and mumbled the words-- "The ocean isn't black anymore. . . it's red. Like an endless river of blood."

He then looked back down at me, and seemed to fear all of a sudden the girl whose hand he was holding. He let go of my fingers immediately, and pulled away. Craig answered finally, "I don't know what it is, George. . . I don't think I'm the right person to ask."

George inhaled and held his breath-- "Do we stay? Do we go back? This rain and this ash might cause us more harm if we don't find land or shelter soon. Should we keep going, Craig?"

Craig shook his head. "Why do you ask me?"

And just like that. . . Craig relinquished his vote. George nodded, realizing Craig was not the survivor he thought he was, and that Craig didn't have the answers. George returned to the motor, and switched it back on.

"Keep pushing debris out of the way," George ordered.

But Craig didn't do anything. He just looked through the now red horizon between the blood ocean and fiery, ash-fallen clouds, and meditated himself out of helpfulness.

Nonetheless, my body jerked as the boat rammed into debris. George made do with forcing the boat through the ocean merely by accelerating the motor. I tried not to lose my sedated pose as the boat bumped and wriggled through the dump of broken things—but my pretended slumber led me to allow the concussions to throw me off into the foot space, where Craig was kind enough to take himself out of his lost and worried trans and pull me back up to the position I had lay.

He kissed my face and touched where my fall might have hurt me, my arms, my legs, my ribs. He kissed my lips though I gave no consent. . . But I knew as we shook our way deeper and deeper into the blood meridian, that we may never find land again. That this destruction might go beyond what us kids from the richest upbringings could ever have imagined. That this was the end, and we were only swimming in it.

The ashes between Craig's kisses tasted like the bitter ends of charged batteries. They tasted like the night Jack fought Brett, George killed cats, and Travis hit water. I tried to hold back tears because I saw the blood-red sky and realized:

Travis was up in that blood sky now, watching us.