Channeling Morpheus 08 - Fluid by Jordan Castillo Price

Author:Jordan Castillo Price [Price, Jordan Castillo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-05-23T02:10:02+00:00

Chapter Five

The shock of hitting the water tore the gate from my hands. The impact knocked the strength out of me, too. Defensive instinct curled me into a ball, which was probably not the most buoyant configuration of limbs. But let’s face it. No matter what I did, I’d sink.

Cold against my face. Cold creeping down my spine. Cold prickling my scalp.

Everything was cold, and not unpleasant cold, not uncomfortable cold. Cold that was so cold it made existence excruciating. Death cold.

Pressure, too, like I’d collapse in on myself from the weight of the water. The pressure played my eardrums, flexed them until they made the whoosh- whoosh- whoosh sounds of a sonogram. I curled even more tightly into my fetal position and sank deeper into the frigid, cruel womb of the planet.

Even though I was so scared I couldn’t have told you my own name, and even though it hurt like hell, maybe, for the likes of me, drowning was a better way to die than on the end of a stake. There was a certain harmony to it. Everything had come full circle. The world would be wiped clean of me, like I’d never been born.

My side touched bottom. How deep? Twenty-five feet? Fifty? Deep enough to be measured in leagues and fathoms. I tried to pry my eyes open and look, but my body wouldn’t let me. If it weren’t for the spongy feel of the lake bottom against shoulder and hip, I’d have zero sense of up and down, and even though I knew I was on my side, my shorted-out wiring told me that my head was facing up. If I could just inhale, it’d all be over that much faster. But my body was on auto-pilot, and it was too stubborn to suck water.

That old saw about your life flashing before your eyes is true. It hadn’t happened to me back when I’d been left for dead by the creep who put two holes in my neck and Jordan Castillo Price

Sweet Oblivion 3: Fluid

- 38 -

then tried his damnedest to snap it. But it was happening now. You’d think the big things would register: births, deaths, first detention, first lay. Not me, though. I remembered a scab-ridden dog I had that ran away after a week. And the Halloween my sister Donna ditched me trick-or-treating to go to a make-out party, and our neighbor found me wandering around covered in snot and crying so hard I didn’t realize I was three blocks away from my apartment building. And drawing swirls in cream cheese frosting with the edge of a pear.

In a way it was like dreaming, vivid dreams, where the colors are hyper saturated, and I could see every last detail, right down to the safety pins holding together Donna’s Princess Leia costume as she dumped her candy in my bag and made me swear I wouldn’t tell.

I missed dreaming. I wondered if drowning would do more than just cleanse the world of my

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