Rockland by Paul Mercurio

Author:Paul Mercurio [Mercurio, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: -
Published: 2017-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

“That’s alright now, Mama,

Anyway that you want to do.”

- Talking Elvis doll

12

I can’t explain it but I’m back in the water, a vast, churning sea. Maybe it’s the idea of weightlessness. The thought of drifting without a care through an element that cleanses as well as replenishes. Or maybe it’s a desire to be lost, swallowed whole, leaving your soul awash in humility, aware of a simple truth - you are just a drop in a vast ocean of being and all your problems aren’t worth spit in the grand scheme of things. Or I could be all wet. A logical explanation for why I wind up waterlogged all the time even though I go to sleep dry as a desert wind. I do know one thing. Despite the waves I feel cascading across my brow I am in no hurry to wake up. For consciousness can only bring me to the painful awareness my body has been beat to hell and all the King’s horses and all of his men couldn’t possibly put my battered bag of bones back together again.

So I swim. And I swim. I can’t find the island girl. So I paddle on and on. Until I see another girl with a fiery halo of hair. I swim with more determination. Why? Is it my mother? Mother Nature? Do I want to bed her? No, no. What is this water, water everywhere? Am I once again in the womb? Am I a single-celled slug crawling about the ocean wondering if anything is happening out there on land? Is this regression? Re-evolution? I thrash about to turn the tide. Want to go forward. I see the girl again. Sure that I know her. Vaguely, I recall her...features? No, it’s her rightness in this alien place. I swim closer. Try to see her aura in these darkening waves. What is this homing instinct, this drive, this pull, this yank? Is it homesickness? Is it lust? Is it more? Why the uncertainty in me? Am I scared? Or do I just scare myself? What is it I want, I want, I...I call to her. Nothing. I struggle to push air from my lungs, to force words from my lips. I strain to be free of the water.

“Out of the pool.”

“What?”

“Out...of the pool.”

“What pool? You’re in your bed.”

I wade back to reality. Blink. Spill a liquid gaze around me, my bedroom. I lift my head and a wet towel falls on my chest. She holds my arms down, restraining me.

“What...what are you doing here?”

“Your friends brought you in last night. You were unconscious.”

It comes back to me. The slow, steady throb of pain bangs its gong and reverberates through my body.

“But what are you doing here?”

“Johnny thought somebody could already be watching the apartment. He made me stay behind in case he was followed.”

“And?”

“He said he would wait for your call. It’s been almost 24 hours since he left. He didn’t tell me where he was going. He felt the less I knew the better.

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