DIVINATIONS 
MAGAZINE

"You ever have one of those dreams where you're underwater, and you've been holding your breath for so long your lungs feel like they're about to explode? Then, when you can’t take it anymore, you open your mouth and suck in a huge lungful of water—but you don't drown! You can breathe! It's awesome. You're free to explore this new, underwater world."

I was indeed underwater, questioning the source of this encouraging speech.

A strange magenta-so-bright-it-glowed colored fish drifted into view. Its bed sheet sized fins rippled lazily in the shifting currents.

But this isn't a dream. In a dream, you don't feel the all encompassing press of water on every square inch of your body. In a dream—I’m paralyzed. That's why I can't make it to the surface. That's why I give up and take a breath.

I'm acutely aware of the control I have over my body as I twist, thrash, and kick towards the surface. Whatever trick this beguiling little fish is trying to pull on me, it doesn't work. Its encouraging words do nothing to assuage the panic building in my pressure compressed mind as I search for an escape.

"Of course this isn't a dream," the fish said.

How was it talking? I couldn't see its lips move. Do fish even have lips? What kind of thought is that when your panicked mind is starved for oxygen?

The fish wasn't a fish, though. What looked like a fish dissolved into a million thin filaments undulating in the water. The fish was an illusion made by all those filaments, I realized.

The truth was much worse. The truth was that I was trapped, wrapped, enmeshed in long thin strands of translucent tentacles. That's when the pain returned. The pain of a million tiny needles injecting neurotoxins into my exposed flesh. Each thrash of arm or leg just brushed against more tentacles, more pinpricks of poison.

My mind did the only thing it could do. In the trauma of my dying seconds, it tried to conjure something comforting. In my neurotoxin-addled delirium, it tried to convince me this was all a dream.

I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed in. My lungs filled. My diaphragm spasmed, pulling this thicker-than-air fluid deep inside. Stars and black splotches swam in my vision as my brain shut down.

Swimming among it all was this little fish. "I tried," it said. "I tried to make it peaceful. I'm sorry."

It merged with the stars and the splotches. All of it wiped away by the all consuming darkness of the abyss.