She slapped both hands on her head and wove her fingers. Water slid down her wrists and off her elbows. The soft tickle made her snap, and she loudly cursed. Her voice trilled and fluttered, bouncing off the rock face and out across the lake. In response, a burst of wind pushed her forward, shoving her into the shallows. A tormenting pulse quieted her screams. The wind and waves held, too, as she looked down at her boots submerged in foamy water.
Abandoning all rational thought, she stomped further into the lake. Her boots plunged and pushed apart the water. The spreading liquid clapped and shot up towards the sky, rebounding into the sunlight and crashing to the surface. The wind and erratic pulses pushed her tantrum forward and urged her deeper into the warm bath water.
Hoping to crack the earth, she drove down a heavy step, but her momentum pulled her from the shallow rock shelf—the lake had swallowed her whole.
| 6 |
She was completely submerged and was sinking fast. Defeated and delirious, she garbled short curses into the water. Having given up hope, she didn’t care to tread back to the surface and deadened her body into descent. She foolishly opened her eyes inviting the sting of microscopic debris—anything to distract her absolute desperation.
However, her eyes felt no sting or rubbery friction. The surrounding water felt thick and warm like an embryonic fluid. Her vision pierced through the veil of silt, and she could see the vast contours of the enormous lake below. She looked upon it like an empty canyon, complete with cliffs and caves. Schools of fish swayed in the shade, and dark green weeds lazily swayed. The waves above bent the sunlight and coated the stone gorge with spectrums of auburn.
Her stubborn anger melted as she absentmindedly observed in awe, unaware of the time spent without air. Holding her breath, she began to feel light headed. Her organs flattened into thin, self-sustaining tissue: no longer dependent on concentrated amounts of oxygen.
From several yards away, she looked up at the surface reflecting the alien scene. Not knowing if her remaining air was enough to resurface, she began to panic. She flapped her arms through the thick water but wasn’t ascending. Something had a hold of her and was biting into her leg. Her bare calf was wedged between two boulders jaunting from the lake’s floor. Every movement to break free dug its sharp edges further into her skin, tearing at the naked flesh and tendons above her boot. She managed to kick both boots loose, but the narrow gap tightened and ticked on exposed bone.
Expecting to see clouds of blood swirling in the golden water, she looked down to find no blood at all. The surrounding water remained undisturbed. However, she noticed a subtle fizz beginning to gather at the incisions, like hydrogen peroxide on scraped skin. She gritted her teeth at the incredible sting.
Her desperate fear of death ordered her leg free, regardless of her threshold of pain. She grabbed a firm hold of the back of her knee and repeatedly yanked her leg, letting out the last air in her lungs. She jealously watched the bubbles dance to the surface. The rocks wouldn’t loosen their grip. She bent down to witness the horror of her mangled leg. Flaps of skin waved in the deep current, and millions of small bubbles dislodged from the wound and tickled up her body. The ghastly sight forced her to gasp, and she anticipated the agonizing moments of a drowning death, but death did not take her.
She examined the small bubbles blanketing her skin and exhaled the liquid. She took in another short, thick breath and let out water that felt warm on her tongue. An exaggerated smile bloomed on her face, and she danced with her underwater miracle.
She tried to scream with joy, but the dense fluid stung her throat. She belched a cloud of sticky foam clinging to her gums. Oily water sizzled inside her chest, causing her to cough and take in more fluid. She felt the water reach deeper into her body, claiming the gaps between bone and muscle.
Her body was dissolving from the inside out. The immense pain sizzled in her ears and bulged her eyes. Consumed with confusion and panic, she uncontrollably convulsed and broke free from the rocks’ grip. Floating slowly with the current, she looked down to see her foot completely enveloped in spongy foam. She flailed and tried to quickly surface, dislodging the foam on a foot that had been physically gone. Burning bubbles ate the remainder of her leg, forcing her focus on the searing pain. She looked down to see her lower leg missing. The foam on her stub reached her knee, which cracked and folded in on itself before vanishing in a plume.
She felt a new level of fear that she never knew existed and tried to breathe more of the liquid to curb her extreme anxiety. Hyperventilating only quickened the metamorphosis. She felt the smolder invade her spine and bubble in her veins. It dissolved through bones to the tender marrow and rapidly ate sinew. Paralyzed and helpless, her muscles suspended her in the gelatinous depths, while her vital organs began to fail and liquefy.
Dense bubbles oozed out of her pores, pushing free all hair and foreign matter. With no lids to shield her from the horrific views, she had no choice but to watch her hairs float away and dissolve into soft fizz. Her bones and teeth melted into milky froth, and her muscles puffed and collapsed within her body. Skin casings flapped lazily in the tepid water and moved in harmony with the surrounding life. What was left of her began to puff into the endless amber: her legs, torso, right arm, then left. For a moment, a cloud of foam shrouded the dreadful scene but eventually rose to the surface, revealing only her bloodshot eyes tethered to her exposed brain; its complex wrinkles flattened and imploded, igniting fuses and popping her blackened pupils into wisps of air. All evidence of her physical self folded into the depths and elevated to the surface as foamy, foreign matter.
~
Directly above the event, billows of air and froth erupted to the surface. Sections of foam gathered, pushing their shared walls until they collapse and merge into bigger segments. Thinner bubbles pop in the dry air, disturbing the others around it and creating a chain of small explosions.
These volatile, floating communities would later dissolve into the water and evaporate into the atmosphere. They will travel great distances and will be part of even greater, more influential systems, which will eventually rain down again. Defined by science and immortalized by nature, the cycle will continue, so long as there is water to be found.