A locked Nanowrimo post.
You’re falling in slow motion, your clothes dragging at your limbs. Cold water everywhere. You’re flailing, trying to swim, but something is dragging you down. The light is dim, getting dimmer. A buzzing in your ears as the pressure builds and the water gets colder. you’re pressing your lips tight shut, holding in your breath, sweet air slowly transmuting itself into poison in your lungs.
It’s no good. You can’t tell if you’re swimming up or down – no bubbles, no source for the dim red light, getting dimmer all the time. You’re tempted for a second to exhale just a little. To create a bubble or a stream of bubbles that you could follow up, to air, to life. But the moment you try, an influx of foul, salty water pours its way into your mouth. You gag, and fight your reflexes. You want to cough, to take a gasping breath, but that would be a deadly mistake. As bad as the air in your lungs is getting, water would be much worse.
But it doesn’t matter now, anyway. As your lungs spasm and your chest starts to burn the moment is lost. It’s too dark to see any bubbles that might have escaped. The water is a red velvet curtain, pressing on your bulging eyes.
Some strangely calm part of your brain is whispering at you. “That’s not right. Deep water should be blue, right? Water should block the red wavelengths first…” you curse silently and try to focus. The water is like iron bands, around your chest, around your head, slowly constricting, crushing you. The buzzing in your ears is a pounding roar, your heart is working overtime trying to drag the last bits of oxygen from your burning lungs to your brain.
How long have you been drowning? Seconds? Minutes? How deep am you? The pressure is forcing water into your nose It burns at the back of your sinuses, a faint trickle creeping down your throat. You can’t keep the water out any longer. you can’t keep your breath in any more. The stagnant air forces itself through your teeth as a hoarse, panicked shout.