Superstition {On hold}

Preface

Alarmed and confused the boy was, as his grey eyes darted all around him; the gentle echoing of the aquamarine water was flooding his ears. Seventeen year old Reece Nevermore was submerged underwater. The slight stinging in his eyes and the watery turquoise surroundings told him he was in the ocean. A wreck of a ship slowly drifted down to the dark depths of the ocean floor along with him, and two other bodies by his side. One male, the other female. Reece couldn’t help but get the feeling that deep down, the limp bodies were his friends that may be either unconscious—or worse. A pang of sorrow hit him. It was intolerable to him. Could they really be gone? Could he have led them to their, and his, end?

Down they sank, slowly, deeper and deeper into the crushing depths of the ocean, the shipwreck leading the way; its wooden frame letting out loud, ghostly creaks that echoed throughout the water before being consumed by the darkness. He was next, and there was no escape for both him and his partners.

The darkness almost seemed…alive. Even though Reece had his back to the dark abyss, he couldn’t help but get the feeling that it was watching him, waiting patiently for it to devour him. He could feel the dark cold pit looking through him, its icy glare burning into his back. The water around Reece was getting colder by the second. His eardrums hurt badly now. The pressure started to build up as his surroundings began to darken rapidly. Reece felt like his chest was being sat on by a thick iron safe and the gradually increasing water pressure wasn’t making him feel any better. Not to mention his lungs, clawing at his ribcage, screaming for air. He couldn’t take this anymore. It was pure agony. He was going to die and he was sure of it. Slowly, in his anticipation, Reece closed his eyes, now welcoming Death with open arms, accepting his fate, ready to die in his watery tomb…

And then he heard it. The faint and grim singing. “…I want to stay in love with my sorrow,” the velvet female voice sang. “Don’t want to let it lead me down this time…” Far off into the distance, just out of his range of sight, Reece could just make out a woman with pale white, marble like, skin coming his way. As she drew nearer, Reece’s slowing heart skipped a beat. She was fish from the waist down, her long, marble coloured tail slowly manoeuvred left and right, like a shark. Her tail fin was widely spread out and just as pale as the rest of her. She had a dorsal fin and a ventral fin, both spread out just as majestically as her tail, and just as white and pale. Her jet black hair was pushed back as she elegantly swam forward, like long, thin strips of black seaweed, flowing against an ocean current. Her crimson lips were tugged into a small and gentle smile, even though her beautiful amazonite eyes were cold and unreadable. The gills on her neck would expand and contract—again like a shark—partly revealing the red flesh underneath them. Her beauty was inhuman and also somewhat intimidating. “…drown my will to fly,” she continued in her soprano voice, pronouncing every vowel clearly; she was now close enough to reach out and touch. It was hard to see her, now that the water around Reece was almost pitch-black. “Here, in the darkness, I know myself, and you will too,” she continued, this time with a cold edge to her voice; and it was then, at that moment, before Reece blacked out in the suffocating darkness, that he had realized she was singing a song that he would listen to regularly. Before he got himself into this mess. Before his ordinary life fluctuated into chaos. Before his soul was slipping away from the hand of life and into the clutches of death…It was the song...the song that he’d listen too regularly...