Night at Christiansons

The torrent brought his face under and spun him. His grimace was
clear and full of pain. The struggle was tearing him apart. He knew he
was dying. He knew he was running out of air and descending deeper.
These were the last seconds. He had experienced these seconds a
thousand times before, in nightmares. They were of different places
with different people. He'd fell like a rock from a mountainous cliff,
squeezing the air for a grasp. He was shot a thousand times, by clowns
out for blood, terrorists in the east, disgruntled mad men in
underground garages. He had been stabbed to death by satanic children.
His head had exploded from some boundless supernatural scream. Darkness
had crushed him into oblivion. Machines had swallowed him and grounded
his body into tears. He had died from old age, from loss of blood, from
limbs ripped from sockets, hunted down by a lions and eaten. From
cutting his throat, shooting himself in the head, slicing his wrists in
hot bath. From getting thrown out a windshield. Losing control of his
motorcycle. Hamburgering his face on dark pavement.

A thousand times he had experienced death and each time waken to the
realization of delusion; waken to the soothing relief of life; to the
continued sense of immortality seeping back into his mind. Will it be
this way again? Will the last second find himself alone in the dark of
his room?

His fingers wobbled through the density of water as he watched the
light grow dimmer from above. He was still spinning down and the
pressure felt a thousand pounds on every point of his body. He was
crying into the water and watching his terrible sobs take to bubble and
swim up and away.

He knew he went to Christianson's jumping hole with his brother. He
knew they had taken off their clothes and he had jumped into the river.
He had floated out too far. He knew that his brother had screamed to
him as he was taken downstream. He knew that a strange gurgling sound
had whispered to him moments before the river grasped him and sucked
him under.

He wasn't going to wake up from this one. Not in his bed. He wasn't
getting up for a glass of water; for a cool splash against his face. He
wasn't going to feel his heart leap like some thick pumping firecracker
and feel the pouring relief that he's was still alive. The terror was
not just an illusion. This was the last death.

He could hold his choking lungs back no longer and released them to
inhale his fate.

---

"What did you dream about last night?" she said, clad in tight cotton
underwear and a white T-shirt, laying on her soft bed, stroking his
hair as he lay beside her.

"That I died, swimming with my brother." He replied softly, his eyes
closed and his body motionless, trying to focus on every sensation that
her fingers were giving.