Unbelievable, Chapter Eight (edited)

Chapter Eight: How to Breathe Underwater

Standing in the secluded hollow, where the fishermen come on Sundays. It is early; too early. The sun has just come up. Starting out from Maggie’s cottage in the dark, feeling my way through the silent blackness, for she never left a light on, in fear of wasting electricity. Shoes in one hand, torch ready and waiting in the other, but once outside, the streetlights showed the way and the edges of the sky were beginning to lighten to the East. Only six hours’ sleep has been achieved since Arun left me at her gate. Tired, curious, tense: ‘ready’ is a state of mind that can be contrived.

It is cold down by the river. The towpath snaked its way along the bank, a dirty, brown companion serpent to the great, deep green one. The pub was my starting point, from there walking upriver, along the fields where the winter-sown crops had already started to grow, slipping their inquisitive green heads up through the damp, black earth. No torch was needed by now; dawn was rising quickly, and the mist was starting to burn off the river as the first rays of sun flicked their way Westward.

The marina with the long line of boats was silent, the birdsong echoing off the sleeping, floating metal homes, winding their way up the river. They were moored on the opposite bank, the inhabitants not yet starting to stir as my watch-hands ticked ever-closer to half past six. Shivering as I trudged, dreading the self-imposed task set. Bored of the little tests; run out of ideas. The time to hesitate was through: my first proper, unaided and undared attempt at an attack on my whole body had been considered, altered, planned, and would now be followed through.

They say drowning is the easiest way to go. They say it’s peaceful. In books and stories and films, they say that. Can it be peaceful? Imagine the dirty, green-brown water of the Avon slipping inside my mouth and sliming down my throat, filling my lungs with diluted filth, the struggle to inhale, the gurgling and bubbling and choking and splattering and writhing…no, it did not seem peaceful.

Discarded was the thought of trying in the bath at home, where at least there would be the safety net of the bottom, a few inches beneath me. Besides, it had already been done, afterwards. There was no lock on the bathroom door of the cottage, and the thought of Maggie walking in mid-experiment was too much; she might have me committed to some sort of clinic or signed up to a grief counsellor; all the things she didn’t believe were needed, she would invoke.

Since the ‘incident’ at school, the doctors had tried. They had referred me for appointments that were never kept, for Maggie refused to take me.

‘She’s grieving,’ she’d say, when the surgery rang to chase me. ‘There are stages of grief, especially after such an extreme event. First, denial, where people lock themselves away and feel only numbness. Then, realisation, when a circumstance prompts the floodgates to open and the emotion and pain to flood back to fill that numbness. Then recovery: the long, slow road to coming to terms with it. And, eventually, absorption, when the grief becomes a part of the person, part of their heart and soul and memory, and they can remember the people that have left without extreme pain, but from inside a sort of painful calmness.’

She sounded like a scientist, explaining her theorem to the doctor’s receptionists. They gave up phoning, in the end, and started sending letters, which Maggie found easier to argue with, since they gave only paper resistance on the way from the envelope to the recycling bin.

Here is the chosen spot: the beautiful, peaceful hollow, round the corner from the boats, across the river from the country park, where llamas graze quietly in the dawn. A solitary swan glides past, diverting to consider me, finding me wanting; without food. He sails away downstream, elegant and eerie in the mist.

The water will be cold, impossibly cold. Slithering out of my clothes like some sort of embarrassed child, hoping that the pre-work joggers won’t be along just yet: they can’t get wet; if I survive, there’ll be need to re-dress and head straight to school. Maggie will think my absence is due to leaving early to meet my new-found friends. We have tucked ‘the incident’ away at school, for there were no explanations that seemed like valid excuses without revealing everything about myself; the hidden things that should be secret. Only my two strangely indestructible friends know the cause of my explosion. They know why I shudder to think of exposure. They must share my fear of it, although they don’t seem as if they are afraid of anything, least of all me and my freakish, inhuman qualities. Arun must have pocketed the piece of newspaper, tucked it back away, out of sight, keeping my secrets for me; keeping his own guilt safe. Does he feel guilty? Would he tell me if he did? He’d said nothing last night. Facing Elyssa on Monday filled me with unease. Running was cowardly; staying to face the waves as they came crashing should have been handle-able, with the new support at hand. But all three people closest to me; Arun, Elyssa, Maggie; all three of them have pushed my boundaries back too far, and it’s too much, and far too fast.

Feet touch wet mud as they edge down the slope, hands covering relevant places, just in case the undergrowth has eyes. Mud squelches coldly between my toes, the consistency of clay. The water laps at the hollow, stiller here than further out, where the current is straighter. Here, it circles, eddying in the semi-circle of bank. What to do? Wade in, inch by inch, carefully, or push myself off the bank, jump into the deeps beyond the shallows, do it properly?

Deciding to take my time is easy. These may be my last minutes; they should be savoured. I edge forward. Knees shudder as the water breaches them, and the coldness has set into my shins. Skin goose-pimples in the still, clear air. The sun begins to play across the trees, her finger-rays seeking out my pale, thin form. Here, exposed in a way that outdoes my nakedness; I am attempting to destroy myself. Facing God, and hoping he will indulge me.

Shuffling, dreading the moment when the water will reach the top of my thighs and start to lap at my delicate parts; it seems so silly, compared to my intention, to worry about. Tensing as coldness reaches intimacy. A larger step to compensate, submerging myself to my waist. The slope is much greater now; there is no choice but to leap, faith and all, out into the deep parts. Inhale a deep breath, and then expel it, giggling at the ludicrousness of the action; attempting to drown does not require breath, after all!

The water consumes me. The river closes over my head. It’s a dare to open my mouth and let her penetrate me. One, two, three…eyes shut tight and reason sacrificed to Neptune. The water gurgles into my mouth and down the back of my throat, cold and odd-tasting. It isn’t pleasant. Coughing, resisting, my body automatically invoking its human reaction. Is this drowning, then?

Splutter, cough, choke, twitching in the water as if fitting, until my throat opens and lets the water really flow in fast, filling my lungs. A wait for death, or a glimpse, at least, of the unknown, eyes opening to brace myself. Nothing but the great, green-brown murk greets me, except the realisation of no longer choking, no longer struggling, but breathing normally…in the most abnormal way.

For one entire minute, wonderment fills me as I sink, flick my legs, driving myself up, then sink again. The water is murky but can still be seen through, vague shapes in the greenness that might be fish or weed. Who knows how to breathe underwater? Only mermaids and fish, and certain types of reptile. Add the freak to the list. Frankenstein’s sea monster.

My lungs are filling with water, my throat swallowing it down, then bringing it back up and letting it drift out of my mouth. I am breathing water. I am a human fish. I flap around, and start to drift, propelling myself here and there, exploring my new kingdom, half of my mind freaking out, the other half steady, rational, slow; fishlike?

Human-esque, with legs; my person cannot be a fish. It must be a human toad. Can toads breathe underwater? Staring down at the whiteness of my goose-pimpled flesh, contemplating. It resembles a toad, with the bumpy, slightly green-tinged surface and the glob-glob mouth, opening and closing, burping my way through the water. Can lizards swim? Lizards that grow their tails back, and their limbs... catch myself before being too carried away, remembering my clothes, that the current is probably carrying me down towards the boats; finding a naked young girl in the river is not going to be a promising start to anybody’s Thursday…but then again, to some it may well be!

Kicking towards the bank, glorying in the murk, at the way my lungs are working with this alien substance. Surfacing, the transition from breathing water to breathing air is again a cacophony of splutter, coughs and jerks, but once my lungs are free of water, the air slips back in easily enough, and though my throat is killing me and it feels as if somebody has attempted a strangulation on my neck, my breathing is truly normal again, as if nothing had occurred.

Hurrying to dress, for the sea monster has spent longer in the water than intended. It is nearly seven, and the sun is rising, touching the surface of the river, highlighting the world around. Birds are singing: hallelujah! I cannot die by drowning; one method ruled out, and now keen to try another. Quelling the urge, struggling to pull my jeans up my wet legs, focusing instead on the worry of having caught some nasty bug from inhaling all that river-water. But then again, if physical hurt cannot defeat me, surely the same must be true of my immune-defence system? Colds have never bothered me in my life; I must be bug-proof! Surely, if impervious to death by drowning, the sea monster cannot be finished off by bacteria?

Making my way to school, running my fingers through the knots in my wet hair to disentangle them, one word resounds inside my mind, one word that haunts me.

Reptilian.