Do You Listen to the Voice Urging You to Go Up?

                                  You Listen to the Voice Urging You Up

The voice in your head nags at your subconscious and the water starts to numb your limbs. The light is fading and so does the image of your beloved. The voice in your head gets louder and becomes clearer. It snaps you out of a lull.

Go up, or you’ll die!

You listen to the voice because you won’t die like this. You kick your feet and move your arms frantic to go upward where you see a sliver of light. Your brain is telling you to take a breath, but to do so now would be a mistake. So you fight the urge and focus on the voice.

You can do it! Faster!

The muscles in your legs begin to burn and your lungs might burst, but you continue up toward the surface. The sliver of light is expanding , getting brighter. The dark water turns into warm aqua swirls, but pieces of the ship are falling around you making their way to the bottom of the sea. The light reflects off of something shiny plunging down past you. You say goodbye to Captain Contemptuous’s blade.

Keep going and swim to the right!

Yes, swim to the right, because the last thing you remember before plunging into the water was the sea serpent. You look in the direction you think the ship was in and you don’t see its dark shadow on the surface anymore, or the sea serpent. Maybe it swam away.

Hurry!

You look up and can see the blue sky through the water. You gain one last surge of energy and kick your legs breaking through to the surface. Warm sea air enters your lungs and circulates through the deprived cells of your body. The voice disappears and the fuzzy mist in your mind goes away.

Your eyes adjust to the sun and you look around to nothing. There is no ship. There is no sea serpent. There is no captain and there is no crew. But there is a piece of wood. Your fatigued muscles manage to lift yourself onto the wood, and you close your eyes hoping another ship will find you.

                                                                   * * * *
“Ninety- nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety- nine bottles of beer. You kick one down and smash it around ninety-“

You stop muttering because the piece of wood you’ve been floating on, for what feels like an eternity, stops with a jerky thud against a rock. You put your hand over the edge, but instead of water you feel rocks and sand.

Your body is stiff, your skin is stretched and burning from the sun, but you roll off of the wood. You squint and if your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you, you see a lush tropical forest in the middle of an island . You smile and stand on shaky legs.

Animals that were drinking from a stream scatter from your presence. You start to run toward the fresh water, imagining it going down your dry throat. Finally there, you walk into the cold water splashing it onto your body. You cup your hands to let the liquid pool in your hand and bring it to your mouth.

If you never get rescued at least you have food and water.

With your belly full of water you start to exit from the stream. You notice shiny blue and green, oval shaped rocks at the bottom. You reach down and pick one up , admiring its unusual texture.

The rock begins to shakes. You watch wide eyed as the surface begins to crack. You lean in close to peer into the hole. Two green orbs look back at you. Great, it looks like you found the sea serpent’s nesting ground.

The End

Do you go back: And still go 

Do you go back: Stay with the boat

Or

Start over