may 06, 2022
entrapped
nate metz
The boy hadn't realized how far out he had drifted. He was at peace; the ocean water was warm like a long hug, and carried with it only a slight sway, a rhythm the boy found himself matching and becoming. The boy was lost in his imagination the way children allow themselves to be: he imagined that, out there, he was a sailor out against the open sea, harboring an ancient tattered map and a hand-formed telescope, in search of undiscovered land. Once playing through that image, the young boy switched, imagining he was instead a sea otter, content in his simple blubber-ness, drifting in the sweet salt water among his imaginary fish friends. The boy kept on like this, floating through scenarios of his own making: a pirate in desperate search for buried treasure, a mermaid singing illustrious songs, a starfish sunbathing. Lost in his 10-year old imagination, he hadn't realized how alone he was out there, how far the ocean floor was from his short dangling legs. He hadn’t known until he was jolted from his peaceful state by a slight soft tug at his ankles from below. It all happened too fast. What followed this short tug was a more hostile, sharp and sustained yank. Short-lived contentment rapidly turned over to short-lived panic which rapidly turned over to horror as the child felt the now-razorlike biting grasp take hold of his thin ankles. The brutal force pulled him under the horizon of the ocean water. Saltwater rushed into his mouth, his nose, his eyes. It burned. Instinctively, the boy shut his eyes tight and began pumping his little arms and legs against the water like wings, mustering adrenaline-fueled courage against the unseen animal attacking from below. But his heroic fight ultimately meant nothing. There was a sureness, a predetermination to the force the moment it took hold of the little boy. The young boy struggled and struggled, but slowly his helpless body tired, letting the beast drag his growingly limp body further and further down, away from the limitless worlds the boy had constructed floating above the surface, lower and lower to the floor, to its pressure, its coldness, its darkness. Here, the boy finally opened his eyes for the last time. He couldn’t feel much of anything now. The salt no longer burned his eyes, nor did it sting and cut in his lungs as they slowly filled with the dark water’s denseness. Slowly rotating his head to survey his surroundings, the boy could see nothing beyond a few short arm’s lengths around him. The boy didn’t feel fear now, nor did he feel wonder; he only felt whatever faintness followed just after peace. As the boy succumbed to it, his head drifted down, and, as his eyes remained open for a final moment, he at last caught a glimpse of the beast that had pulled him below, that had cut and drowned him. The boy would have been terrified by what he saw if he had the time to. What he saw latched to his ankle was not teeth, nor claws, but fingers digging into his skin. Following up its wrist was the white cotton sleeve of a dress shirt, peeking just below the black, thick sleeve of a business suit. It wore cufflinks. Its hair was disheveled, drowned wet as everything else was, and pressed messily over naked patches of bald scalp. Its eyes were desperate, thick with purple and black bags that contrasted with its pale skin, and its tie, which was red and plain, sat loosely fastened and sloppy, hanging in defeat from its thick neck. This was the last image the young boy saw before his eyes closed; the boy never noticed how much this middle-aged man looked like him, having the same mouth, the same blue eyes; the boy never noticed that only one hand was gripping the boy’s ankle, that the other hand was reaching out to the boy not to pull him down as much as to pull him in; the boy never heard the man’s voice barely carry through the heavy water, screaming “I remember you, I remember you”; the boy never saw that the man was more terrified than the young boy had ever been.