Killer of a Mind by Valerie Albemarle

Author:Valerie Albemarle [Albemarle, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Side Channel Books
Published: 2016-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

The boat disappeared into the darkness without beginning or end. The fact that Ryan was now without any support on the water hit him only the next second. His brain shrank to the size of a pea, and panic galvanized his limbs. He started to flail.

He stopped flailing because he was out of breath. His first thought was that he hadn’t drowned. Yet. His second thought was that at some point during his flailing he’d kicked off his sandals, and that it felt much better this way. Far away, impossibly far, Ryan saw the solitary light on the shore close to the beach from which they’d launched in another life. He wouldn’t be permitted to reach that light. He’d been banished from that world of the living.Tulum sounded like the beat of a sacrificial drum in a tomb echoing with pagan malevolence. But even a tomb would’ve be welcome. Just about any dry land would’ve be welcome. To be swallowed by this infinity of water, this element without a foothold, without mind or mercy—

“Water means you no harm,” Ryan heard a familiar voice calling out from his childhood. He hadn’t lied to Mario about being close with his sister. On that day on the lake she was teaching Ryan to swim, or trying to teach him, because even her calm sagacity couldn’t chip away at Ryan’s fear. His limbs were paralyzed, but he remembered her words and stored them away for some time in the distant future, for this dark night a mile from the shore of Tulum. “Don’t worry about swimming, just lie on your back and keep still. Let the water hold you. Lie down on it like you lie on a bed, and let it hold you.”

Through an effort of will Ryan rolled onto his back to face the dark sky. Overcoming immense terror, he forced himself to stop kicking and moving his arms. He didn’t sink! Not knowing why he did this, where he got the idea, he dared to arch his back slightly, as if there was a pillow under it. In this position he found that he didn’t need to move at all. He registered the moment of complete and final surrender, and he felt giddy disbelief and awe at what he’d done. The sea was not perfectly calm; small waves rolled over his face, slapping him with gentle contempt and sending salt water down his nose. But to his surprise this didn’t frighten him at all; he spat up the water and remained lying on his back. The water was not swallowing him, and with embarrassment and dismay he realized that it never cared to. The heavy primal brine wanted nothing of him. He was suffered to lie on its surface because the sea had nowhere else to put him.

He knew that if the sea was perfectly calm he could fall asleep like this and the water would do nothing to him, would continue to let him bob like an empty plastic bottle. He held its indifference, the key to his salvation.

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