Tale from the Deepwater

Chapter 43

They remembered thinking about the first person they saw to be their savior. They understood this omniscient-like entity, who knew what they thought and mocked them for it, to be not just an inescapable terror but the cruelest evil thing that had been toying with them not out of any necessity of nature or even to punish them. But Bubu's train of thought was broken when Matty leaped into the water. He could take it no longer. He could not bear to look at it, and when he closed his eyes, he could still hear it.

At this sudden and final act of his comrade, Bubu found himself in the water too, their boat having disappeared into the darkness like a shadow vanishing when the light goes off as if it was never there. Instead of the cold wetness they had expected to feel, they felt as if they were in some dry space, with a slight warmth coming from the bottom. At this point, they were not sure if they were hallucinating, but that was likely a case since the very beginning since they had set sail in the water. 

However, now it seemed like their sense of reality was fading and they were entering some sort of dream or a place that existed outside of whatever they had experienced so far. The air felt light and almost weightless, even though they could see themselves to be in the water still. What they felt and what they see were so utterly incongruous that the mental frames one uses to navigate the world were crumbling apart. It was the experience of one who could truly not trust his senses. But there was a chilling peace to this. They hardly heard the sound of the rain, and a stronger presence attracted their attention. There was a pull from below, and each of them had a sense that if they were to dive inside, they would not suffocate or drown, but like a secret alley in the towns and streets they often escaped from, they would break clear from the horrors of this place, even from the unpleasant parts of life itself, and reach somewhere new and safe.

To someone who would hear any account of this, or to whom, in his rational mind, if this was offered as a course of action, he would only consider it as some strange senselessness, or possession even. But to them, it felt wholly natural, like those undisclosed hideouts from childhood only they knew of. And just like they had thought, they did not drown when going underwater. In fact, they did not have to grasp for breath or swim in the cold. Like in an insubstantial vacuum, they kept going further down towards the source of the warmth. From swimming down vertically, they now found themselves going horizontal, as if they were passing through a tunnel. They felt no fatigue, and there was no clear sense of the passage of time either. But they did feel like they were arriving somewhere with light.