Last time we went swimming

the sea stood up and hugged you

as though you were responsible

for keeping it blue

–  Drown by Bianca Stewart

Justin wasn’t the type of person that dwelled on morbid things like how he would meet his end. He had to admit this certainly wasn’t how he had envisioned it.  At first he’d remained calm, the brown-black water sweeping his frame swiftly downriver a few yards, the current causing a thrill of exhilaration to rush through his veins.

He had moved his arms to paddle, muscles pushing against the water to no effect. He kicked his legs, impatient against the current and it wasn’t until he was fighting hard against the rushing of the water that he began to panic.

But one wasn’t supposed to panic in a situation like this; everyone said panicking only made it worse.

And they were right.

The water rolled him and no matter how hard he flapped his arms he couldn’t right himself. He was tumbling through a murky abyss, eyes stinging, swallowing water and snatching bits of air when he could. Branches scratched at him like invisible knives; arms, legs, chest and between stretches of undulating darkness he would catch snatches of pearl gray sky. It looked like it might rain.

His head broke the surface at one point and he managed to suck in a deep jag of air that ripped through his chest like fire. The second he tried to rally his voice to call for help a whitecap stole his words, filling his mouth with muddy water that gritted along his tongue like sandpaper.

His throat burned and his muscles seized, swallowing the dirt and grime as he tumbled head over feet, sucked down far beneath the surface. He opened his mouth to scream as the water pressed in hard on his eardrums, threatening to cave in his head. He felt his knees scrape sharply against something jagged and opening his eyes in the cloudy depth he saw nothing, eyes stinging and burning in the filthy water.

He hit something hard, chest and knees and chin colliding with what felt like rock, solid and immobile, the taste of copper mixing with the sharp grit of mud and bracken inside his mouth. The current battered against his back, trying to propel him forward still, threatening to grind him to dust. His hands clamored against the rough stone, fingernails digging in and ripping as he tried to pull himself up while the wall of water tried to force him down.

He could feel the sand between his teeth as he ground them together, his head going cloudy, muscles trembling from exhaustion and despite him consciously knowing he shouldn’t, his mouth opened of its own accord and sucked in a great lungful of water, his body seeking oxygen even when his brain knew there was none.

His head snapped back, unimaginable pain burning inside his chest, his muscles cramping as they tried to drain the last bit of oxygen from whatever fiber in which it might be hiding. His eyes drifted open, not caring about the sting anymore, legs stopped beating against the current, hands stopped clawing at the rock.

He could see sunlight, murky and brown through the muddy water and he wondered if this is what Jeff Buckley saw before he died. He marveled at the irony of two musicians being taken by the Mighty Mississippi and wondered if the news reports would make the correlation between his death and that of one of his idols.  Death.

And just like that something inside him pulled tight, fear and anger gripping him like fists closing around his neck and it felt as if the hand of God was ripping him upward but in two weeks when the deep gouges on his palms still hadn’t healed he’d know it was sheer force of will.

When his head broke the surface he still couldn’t breathe, his lungs so filled with the dirty Mississippi that there was no room left for air. He retched, still fighting his way up the boulder, scraping a long bloody swatch of skin from his collarbone to his hipbones clean off as he hauled himself up the stone.

His feet were still pushing feebly, vomiting brown water his head pounding and he could still taste blood, his tongue swollen from where he’d bitten it but when he got the first lungful of air in what seemed like eons it didn’t bring blessed relief but a multitude of aches and pains. He vaguely registered his name, the sound ripped from the guts of whoever was yelling it and their terror caused his brows to draw. He wanted to sit up, to find the screamer, to assure them that he was indeed alright but he was not sure he was. So he just laid there, broken and bloody, counting each blessed breath that passed into his scorched and battered lungs.

Hands found him, drug him, lifted him and everything hurt, the panic around him electrifying the air and he tasted his friends’ panic along with the copper and dirt. Trace’s voice sounded two octaves higher than it should have been, the rough calluses of his hands ripping across Justin’s already torn flesh as Trace tried to sit him up.

“Jesus Christ!” he keened, hands trembling against Justin’s shoulders. “Jesus fucking Christ. Oh shit… oh God… Justin…Justin!”

Justin felt a sharp slap across his cheek and Trace was rewarded with another spray of brown water from what felt like the very depths of Justin’s soul and the hacking that followed felt like his body’s way of trying to turn him inside out. Trace let loose another stream of expletives, his voice even higher than before and he sounded on the verge of tears.

And with all the strength that Justin had left he rallied his lungs, pulled in another achingly sweet breath before his voice came out in a hoarse croak:

“I’m alright.”