Still, I continued to propel myself out into the brine, needing to escape everything I was leaving behind on shore. The disappointment to my family. The threat of an arranged marriage. The feeling of being trapped that had plagued me from birth.
Out here, it was me and the roar of the waves, the salty, swirling crests, the comfort the depths offered.
I plunged down below again, far enough out that I couldn’t touch the ground anymore. The shore was a good swim away, but I needed to be farther, to bob and sway with the currents. My body moved automatically, with the practice of thousands of swims over the years, and I raced forward, as if I could escape all the problems barreling my way.
When I emerged from below the surface of the water, the sky above caught my attention. It had been blue and cloudless when I’d arrived, but scorched clouds reigned now, casting a darkness over the water. Already a few of the people on shore had started to pack up. My heart thumped a little harder, and I pivoted my direction. I needed to head back to land.
Thunder boomed, followed by the brilliant, blinding flash of lightning.
Oh, fuck.
I needed to get out of the ocean now.
The rain started pattering a few drops as I knifed through the water, making my way to the shore. Within a few seconds, though, those several drops turned into a deluge. The water churned all around me, the peaks getting taller, the waves more perilous. Shit. I plunged beneath the water, focusing on my movements rather than the dangerous storm that had rolled in. Otherwise I’d be freaking out. Even beneath the water, the turbulence affected me, though, the currents stronger.
I faced resistance with each stroke, even as my arms moved in automatic arcs, my legs slashing through the water behind me. I popped above for breath, but the storm had conquered the horizon. Rain pelted my face as I gasped noisily. Black stretched as far as the eye could see on the skyline, and the water reflected that as well, an inky churn to it that hadn’t been there before. The lightning flashed again, the crest of the waves turning a brilliant white for a few moments, and then the sea-trembling boom of the thunder followed.
I continued moving toward the shore, the churning waves growing higher. The current yanked me to the right, and I kicked out, trying to stay on task. Yet the resistance increased by the second, and my stomach bottomed out.
The water dragged me to the side, no matter how hard I attempted to swim forward in the direction of the shore.
A rip current.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Normally, you flowed with a riptide, and I’d floated along with some of them before to swim back once it had carried me a bit farther out—however, this was in the middle of a storm.
If the lightning strikes weren’t dangerous enough, the wild waves and currents were even worse.
I resisted the tug, trying to swim out of it with all my might, but the water dragged me to the right with a pull I couldn’t fight. I was one small person against the wild, capricious sea.
I didn’t wonder who would win.
Terror rushed through me in a fierce sweep.
The thunder boomed again, an omen, the scorched skies an active threat. The rain poured down from the skies in sheets now, and each time I bobbed up for breath, the water threatened to drown me on the surface too. My lungs strained, and my limbs were on fire, but I kept moving.
I tried to search for the shore, but everything had grown impossibly dark.
Rain obscured my vision with every blink, and I focused on slicing my arms through the water to keep myself aloft.
A wave dragged me up, up, up, and dread shot through me.
Because I knew what would follow.
For a singular moment, I was on top of the wave.
The shore formed a dark line that seemed farther away than before. Impossibly far.
Then the wave dropped, and so did I.
I plunged under the water with a threatening force, plummeting beneath.
And out here in the middle of the ocean, the depths were a different beast.
I tried to swim, tried to push my way forward, but water was above, around, beneath. The darkness threatened to consume me as I thrashed my way through, trying to find any sort of bearings, shunted beneath the surface.
My lungs spasmed, and the panic formed a second heartbeat. My chest burned, that tightness increasing by the second.
