Unsunken

Part 1: Sinking

At the small but large age of ten, Michael touched his first soccer ball. The sun was aggressive, and he was weak. His mother, confined to the seat of a wheelchair, watched him with tired eyes from behind the kitchen windowsill, and the large field behind their small home was deserted aside from a bruised ball that lay napping quietly in the center. Michael woke it from its slumber as it woke him from his.

As the days blurred together, Michael, the ball, and the sun became fast friends. He forgot about everything that troubled his mind and focused on the feeling he got when his foot made contact with the ball. He fell in love with the way his t-shirt blew in the wind when he dribbled down the field and the way the grass rubbed against his old, worn shoes. After an intense game with his imaginary friends, he'd lay softly in the center of the field, his head resting comfortably atop the soccer ball. Michael drew pictures with his eyes in the deep blue sky above him, moving his ticklish toes through the grass. He almost loved his daydreams more than he loved soccer. In those images in his head, he was the best soccer player in his entire school

Now, ten years later, that was his reality. No longer was he the poor boy absent of any hope to succeed- he was the boy that would succeed. Michael lived the life his fellow teammates could only be jealous of. None of them could even begin to ponder the romance of Michael's ability to manipulate any ball at his feet however he saw fit. They ached to, though.

On the morning of April 10th, 2016, the quiet things from within his house found sound. There was a final sounding drip from the leaky kitchen faucet whose contact with the silver sink echoed about in the house. A whining, groaning noise erupted from within the broken air conditioner, and the damp walls of the house closed in on each other. Every bug in the world seemed to be calling out from the dark corners and cabinets of the house. The living room was dense with the fuzzy voices of an early morning sitcom that oozed from the speakers of their tv.

Michael couldn't sleep. His long legs, covered only to the knee with an old blanket, hung over the right side of the twin sized bed, languid in the heat. He woke from a miserable sleep, his hair tangled from his rapid movements when he lay suspended between sleep and consciousness. Michael's eyes stared blankly into the darkness of his room, his lips smacking together to cool off. He wondered if it was worth it to get up and retrieve some water from the kitchen.

Deciding it was, he stepped wearily from the corridor of his room, hands roaming the sodden walls for balance. The floor was cold beneath the pads of his toes in the narrow hallway and he quickened his pace. Michael never liked walking in the dark. He didn't like the feeling of darkness roaming about on his skin. When he reached the corner of the kitchen threshold, something stopped him. Something begged him to turn back to his room and return to the safety of his bed.

A vile smell slithered up to greet him from within the darkness of the kitchen. It crawled about in his nose and threatened to halt his beating heart. Michael bit his lip to contain the bile that tickled the inside of his tight throat and felt the commotion of all his screaming senses rising upward from their hidden shelves inside him. He didn't dare take a step forward. A weary, shaken hand reached sideways for the light switch, alert for fear of the accidental touch of an unwanted object. Almost at once, the daunting darkness dissolved to light, and Michael, petrified in terror, dissolved to the floor just as fast.

He noticed her hair first. It hung in brown waves that called for his eyes to come closer and see. A small, eerie piece of him left his body and answered the call. Michael felt himself floating forward, following the trail of hair up to the face he'd kissed goodnight just hours ago. For the first time in a long while, he felt cold. The air was a thin sheet of ice, cutting him suddenly as he observed her. Two white teeth showed themselves from between their bed of chapped lips. Her eyes were closed, sleeping sideways over the right side of the chair.

Michael's ears pulsed on either side of his head, ringing from the sound of the drip of the faucet and the moan of the broken air conditioner. The voices of the early morning sitcom melted further and further away until there was nothing but the faint buzz of air once occupied. His arms and hands shook at his sides as he scrambled to produce the last words she'd said to him, the last audible melody she'd hummed.

His mother, poised slanted in her wheelchair, was dead.

*                    *                    *

They say that when dealing with depression, everyone reacts differently. Some can seek help. Others cannot. The lucky ones are pulled from the personal waters they drown in by the most peculiar of things. Others have sunk too deep to be tugged upwards, their lungs too soaked to be drained.

His mother was one of these sunken people, lost in a sea of circular tablets shoved down her slender throat. By the time Michael's hands even touched the surface, she had found a bed on the soft sand at the seafloor. He reached aimlessly for hours, fingers sloshing about in the deep blue. But it was too late.

Here is Part 1 of my short story, Unsunken. Please enjoy this tale of love, loss, and growth!

It would mean the world to me to have any votes, comments, or reads. Stories that capture the mental health and sexuality of people of color are so important and deserve just as much exposure to stories about straight/white people. We have made leaps, but there is still a long way to go in terms of the inclusivity of POC and LGBTQ people in literature. 

Let's change that together. 

All my love,

blackinalabyrinth