Chapter 1
This all started fifteen years ago on one hot summer day. My life was as dull as the still summer air. I was like a scarecrow standing upon the beach overlooking the sea, drained of all emotion of living but longing to sink myself under the sea, hoping I could walk the ocean bed with fish by my side, siren as my guide, and my brother would hold my hand so we could roam the sea together. I hoped a life of fairytales would defeat the tentacles of being alive. And slowly I walked down the shore until the water swallowed me whole, and blue became my world.
Drowning was supposed to be an ascension, but it’s quite painful. Down in the water, waiting for the choking sensation to give way to painless sleep, but it never came. There’s only a feeling like swallowing your own throat and yearning for fresh air. Seconds pass, nearly 60 seconds pass, one minute pass, two minutes pass, my head was exploding, three minutes pass, four minutes pass, until time didn’t mean anything to me, until I couldn’t take it anymore, and I chided myself for giving up dying and letting myself afloated. Before I struck for open air, I had glimpsed a dark figure moving under me, a fish. No, too big for a fish; maybe my own shadow? I tried not to think about the bloated corpse of my brother drafting ashore months ago, but nonetheless, that shadow remained me of him, as if my attempt at suicide summoned his ghost, or maybe it’s a delusion I saw on the brink of death.
Back on the beach, gasping for air, I realized only to keep on suffering in this world, and it’s worse than drowning; it’s choking me with tragedies and fear of death. All the living patterns around me were squeezing me out of my breath. Now I was waiting for my time to come. A painless death and a life of waiting were unbearable,but it’s a punishment that I deserved because I was a coward for not daring to end my life quickly. Tears stinged my face, and I started to cry.
The sun set and the moon rose, and its ghostly shadow covered the shore, taking away the vividness of the beach. The wind started its nightly partrol; it seeped into my skin, piercing my bones; there’s wind in my heart, and it was tearing me apart, and I couldn’t stop crying.
The moon was at its zenith,the dome of the sky was coveing with stars, sitting on the beach, tears drying on my cheek. Time to go home now.
I saw my father’s truck parked outside the house. He went back home earlier today again. His truck was a rusty monument to the future, while the house behind it loomed like a gigantic tomb before me. I hestitated before opening the door and entering the house.
My father’s loud snoring rumbled through the house; every niche was filled with his noises. Its hollow hallway is stripped of all decoration except a canvas painting of Jesus Christ hanging on the eastern side of the wall. I’m wondering why dad had a painting like that while he was not a religious man.
While I walked past the painting, I felt the gaze of Jesus fall heavy on my shoulders. The painting always gave me creeps in an eerie sort of way, a feeling I couldn’t describe, as if the painting were real—its textures, its colors, and...
Are those tears in his eyes? Is that painting crying?
“Oh, fuck it.” I sighed and hurried back to my room as if someone or something were right behind me.
Lied down on my bed, staring at the moth-scarred celling, the single light bulb swung languidly on the center of the ceiling, back and forth like a pendulum. The repetitive motion chased away my sense of clarity, and sleepiness saturated my body. I thought about the gaze of sorrow the painting emanated before I fell asleep.
But even in sleep, the sensation of being watched still remained.
I dreamed of dark waves carrying me forward; I felt like I was floating in the cradle of the ocean.
How many times had passed since the waves borne me up and down in the cradle of a shiftless place, and a huge wave was surging on my way like a dark, moving mountain propelled by liquid legs?
But what was it that perched on the crest of a wave? It looked like a distorted humanoid figure.
The waves slammed down before me like a lid closed a coffin, and the figure on top of the wave disappeared. Now I was in complete darkness. and the feeling of being watched had grown. I called out, shouting things I didn’t understand, and let the echos of my voices probe the darkness beyond, as if an answer (or something else) would come.
And it did come; it started with a tactile sensation.
I felt something wet against my body, and I realized it’s water, it felt icy cold, and then a bright azure light started to expand in the horizon of my dark dreamscape.
It’s no longer a dark world; it’s a blue world, and I was in the heart of the ocean, drowning and thrashing. The blubbering sound of the ocean sang in my head, and the harmony of menacing ambience music closed around me until I was part of this world. I breathed as it breathed and choked as it choked.
Being asphyxiated in the womb of the ocean.
Then the claustrophobic blue suddenly popped, and I was born in a familiar world—my bedroom.
Before I woke, I glimpsed a dark figure standing upon the ocean bed, its handoutstretched, as if beckoned to me.
I woke to a shaft of sunlight. It’s already morning outside; the bird was chirping, and the cool breeze blew into my room through the window.
Did I leave the window ajar last night?
