I close my eyes and a new world opens itself to me. A world of mist, curling and twisting in endless eddies. Thick and opaque, the mist has weight, but no form. It just sprawls into the distance. I turn around, but it’s the same no matter where I look. However, slowly, the mist begins to recede. Or rather it begins to settle as a scene takes shape.

A forest unfolds around me. Ancient. What I imagine it might have looked like before humans stepped into the world, heavy and humid with age. Towering moss covered trees rise into the sky. Silent sentinels, guarding and watching the land. Vibrant green clovers cover the soil, matched by the occasional fern. Their wide feathery leaves brushing the air. Here and there, fallen branches and dead rotting trees cover the ground. And in the distance, the world dissolves into a misty green as the trees fade into soft shadows.

Beautiful.

One direction seems as good as any, so I take in a breath of wet air and began to walk. My steps are soft and the ground soaks up most of the sound. I don’t know where I am, but neither do I feel lost. I don’t really feel much of anything at all. I’m content to simply walk through this primordial forest. One foot in front of the other, threading a trail between moss dappled trees. Minutes pass by with nothing to mark them but the muted step of my feet. My legs and lower back are sore, but I don’t mind. It’s a fulfilling pain. The kind that leaves you satisfied. I still don’t know where I’m headed, but such worries slip away with the misty footsteps I leave behind. Just a pair of feet, striding over clover and fern. My hand trail over a fallen branch and I run my fingers through the crumbling wood. The forest is just so – so peaceful. So quiet. I cock my head to the side.

I wonder if–

A loud screech rips through everything and the world shifts out of focus. I feel something torn out of my grasp and I’m falling. Falling and screaming. A vast blue fills my vision and I hit the water before I even see it. The cold slams into me and the world sharpens with a piercing clarity. The abrupt shift from ground to air to water sending me reeling with panic.

The world shouldn’t work this way. It doesn’t. It can’t.

My head breaks through the water and I suck in lungfuls of air. I pump my arms and legs to stay above the surface, but the shocking cold sends my body into shivering convulsions.

I know how to swim. That’s easy. But as I twist my head around to see over the cresting waves I’m at a loss of what to do. Keep swimming is the obvious answer.

But to where?

And for how long?

* * *

What am I going to do? I’ve been at this… what? Five minutes? Ten? My limbs already feel like dead weights. Pulling me down. Away from the air to the dark waters below.

The water stretches forever in all directions. Undulating slate blue waves, broken by foamy caps of white. No gulls squawk and soar in the cloudless sky. Just me.

Alone.

* * *

I spend most of my time floating on my back to conserve strength, holding the air in my lungs to keep myself buoyant. Blowing out the air. Sucking it back in. And all the while I flap my limbs to keep afloat.

I stare so long at the sky I begin to see things. Odd expanding and contracting pockets in the air. Twisting… somethings in the corner of my vision that disappear when I turn to look. The faint whisper of geometric patterns overlaid on the blue expanse. I try closing my eyes but the dark only invites claustrophobia.

I wonder if there’s anything in the water. Swimming under me.

Circling. Watching. Laughing.

* * *

I inhale a mouthful of briny salt water and spit it up in a retching, coughing fit. I must have held my breath for too long, leaving me light headed and dizzy. I think I drifted off and began to sink.

* * *

My arms hurt so much.

I didn’t think they could. Radiating agony in all directions. I thought I understood pain. I didn’t. If I could tear them off I would. But I have to keep swimming. Treading water. Staying afloat. My legs hurt even more than my arms. The pain is so bad it’s beyond my muscles. I feel it in my bones. The marrow feels bruised and drained.

* * *

I let go and sink into the water. Eyes closed and chest full of air, I drop a few feet and relax. Just for a few seconds. Savoring the weightlessness. Feeling my body float in the current without having to struggle or strain. It would be so easy to just keep floating. If only I could. If only…

I open my eyes and swim towards the shimmering light of the surface.

* * *

I let loose a gurgled laugh that sends a spray of bubbles into the water.

My arms and legs don’t hurt any more.

Is that good?

It has to be.

God how I hated that burning, pulsing, aching throb. Those hidden knifes that stabbed with every twitch and movement.

Silly, silly Henry. Of course it’s a good thing.

I’m glad it’s gone. Good riddance.

Whatever it was.

* * *

The pain in my throat drags me back to lucidity. Burning like a hot coal in my mind, it eats through the mush in my skull before dropping into my throat, desiccating the tissue until it’s a struggle to swallow. I feel hollowed out and brittle. And I can’t help but wonder what will break first.

My body? Or my mind?

* * *

At times I forget the water. I forget the sky. I forget everything. There’s just the air. Moving in and out of my lungs. In and out. Receive and return. I trace it’s path through my body. It tickles my nose. There’s a rhythm to it. A cycle. A wheel spinning round and round and round and round. But I notice something. In the space between inhale and exhale. When my lungs are full and ready to empty themselves. There’s a pause. A small break. A moment between the two when everything stills. When the wheel stalls and the flowing circle shrinks to a point. Like a ball tossed into the air. It’s the moment before it begins to fall back down. A piece of eternity caught in that sliver of time. I disappear into that slice of infinity. On each breath I lean back and sink into that pause. A little longer each time. Until I forget my body as well. And I’m just the air. Balanced on the tip of a needle. Expanding into the the edges of the world.

* * *

The pressure feels like a clamp on my temples and an ice pick between my eyes. My eyes. They flutter open and I’m surrounded by a bright flowing darkness. But they sting and I struggle to keep them open... Why?

I look around and my hair floats by, a half step behind my head. Left. Right. Down. Up.

Ah.

I remember. Water. Ocean. Swimming.

The glowing, refracted light of the sky is so pretty. I reach my arm up and grasp. But it’s so far away.

A howling whisper in my mind tells me to breath. It screams in a soft murmur that I’m going to die. My chest convulses as it tries, and fails, to take a breath.

Traitor. I’m not giving up the air. It’s mine. It’s me.

My body tells me that I’m wrong. I need to let it out. Let it go. It’s poison now.

I tell my body that it’s wrong. Poison? That couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth. It's there. It's–

My thoughts wind down as the edges of my vision burn away and my body floats further and further into the deep.

A laugh echoes.

A hand grasps.

And I open my eyes.