Teeth gritted, Drew clamps my throat, squeezing my windpipe. I latch on to his hand, my fingernails digging into his skin, as I rake for freedom. Then Drew presses his lips to mine, stealing the last of my breath. The kiss of death.
I’m submerged beneath the overpowering fear of it.
I’ve died before.
I can feel death’s oily tentacles winding around my body.
My feet touch the bottom of the lake. And just as my eyes close, a cold and calm peace settling over me, Drew releases my neck. He kicks off the floor, his body propelled upward.
I’m not dying.
I grab hold of the lotus stalk snarling my arm and loop it around his leg. Halted, Drew panics, bubbles frothing from his open mouth. My chest burns with the need for air as I watch Drew struggle uselessly against the lotuses.
I remember…the feel of the coarse stalks tugging at my hair. My hands frantically searching for a way out of the underwater maze of vines and darkness.
I begin to drift upward, my gaze latched on to Drew’s fight at the bottom of the lake, as he sucks in water, trapped in the wiry grave. I don’t look away. I keep watching until his movements stop.
Every wound makes itself known as the adrenaline ebbs. I’ve been stabbed. Strangled. Lack of oxygen caves my chest. I’ve lost sight of Drew, the darkness becoming complete. I desperately kick my feet and peddle to reach the top, but my discombobulated state has lost the way to the surface.
The clotting dark consumes me. I recall the moment I decided to die nearly four years ago, accepting my place among the lotuses…then the fight as I refused to surrender. The memory surrounds me; pervading the lake and opening up a window into the past.
My body was numb of any pain. My condition too far gone. I felt nothing but the water in my lungs and the lotus stems leaching life from my body. Fight or flight was all I knew. I clawed my way through the web of vines until I reached the surface. I floated there, blood emptying from my veins, the black night shrouding me in an abyss.
Until I heard the frogs and crickets, and I realized I was nearing the shore. A second, last wind to save myself…and I dragged my body through the vegetation. I only rested once I felt earth beneath my feet. I let my body wash up onto the shore.
I’m floating somewhere between the bottom and the surface of the lake now, lost in that tranquility of acceptance. I don’t have to fear, to hide, anymore. I’m resigned to let go…
The shimmering waves appear.
They flicker above me in a crown of light.
The moon, rippling on the water surface, showing me the way.
I reach, and reach, my muscles on fire, my lungs concaved. Pain is good. It means I’m alive. I hold on to this hope as I fight to gain an inch toward the surface.
It’s too far away…
A silhouette of a man materializes amid the halo of light.
Past and present collide. Time suspends, folding in on itself, like the leaf of a lotus as it touches at the seams. I’m frightened of my mind. Terrified of what I know is happening. How many neurons fire at the moment of death? Have I been trapped inside a Jacob’s Ladder, my death stretched out endlessly, living and dying in a loop?
Blackness dims my sight around the edges, my vision tunnels. All I see is him.
A hand crashes through the water surface. He touches me. I feel him. He’s real. He drags me to the surface. The flashlight in his hand is forgotten, the halo of light drifting past me, as he hauls me over the edge of a boat.
“I’ve got you.”
Rhys’s voice is ethereal and home all at once. He’s the fusion between then and now—illusion and reality. He’s always been with me.
“She’s not breathing,” he says. I don’t know who he’s talking to.
I’m not breathing.
His mouth touches mine. His hands pump my chest. Air blasts my airway over and over.
I purge water from my lungs in a violent cough. My own voice touches my ears, and I’m shaken, but alive. I blink several times until his face becomes clear.
“Lakin…” He says my name like a question, his voice a shiver against the morning.