smother. [h.s.]

12. friendship, love, and happiness

//play when you see *

19-2000 - Gorillaz

I've always loved the smell of the sea. 

A crisp, salty wind hits my face, and I breathe it in deeply. Each breath calms me. The sound of the waves gently crashing into each other in the distance silences the scrambled thoughts in my head. The beach is empty and dark. Look to my right, look to my left— no one in sight. The sky, however, is littered with tiny, bright stars. It's less polluted than in the city, here where there are fewer cars, fewer factories, and even fewer people. 

Being here alone reminds me of this recurring dream I had as a child. It started around when my family began to take us on short summer vacations to coastal towns, just like this one, except we'd usually go to Long Island or Montauk. 

The dream goes like this: I'm only seven or eight years old, sitting in the sand as I build a sandcastle not too far from the water. The sun is out and my hands are sticky from ice cream. It's a peaceful moment until I look out to the shore again. In the distance, there's a woman wading through the rough waves, trying desperately to get back to land. She takes large, labored steps through the shallows, and is wearing a long, white sundress that floats on the surface with the movement of the tide. She finally makes it to the sand. Her feet leave dark footprints on it with each heavy step. I stop playing and look for my family; there's no one around. The woman's long, wet hair drips down her back as she comes to stand in front of my small figure. She shakes from the cold water and her skin looks almost translucent, displaying every blue and green vein in her body. She brings her hands to her abdomen in agony. The pearl white fabric slowly starts to turn red around her stomach. Dark, crimson blood seeps out of a fresh wound hidden from view, staining more and more of the material as the seconds go by. I look up at her in horror; unable to speak. Then, she begins to cry silently and lifts her blood-covered hands up in front of her. She turns her palms, showing them to me. 

"Run," she whispers. 

That's when I wake up. I never get past that moment. I'll never know who she is, or what happened to her— nor what happens next.

I haven't had this dream in years. Sometimes, on those hot summer nights when the weather is just humid enough, and the rain beats down hard, I'd wake up in a sweat— her bloody hands and heartbroken expression replaying over and over in my head. 

It's been forever since I've even thought about it, though. So long ago now that it almost feels like a memory; indiscernible from real life. 

Now as I lay here, I think I finally understand the woman in my dream. I rest my back against the wet sand below me and stretch my arms and legs out. Every few seconds the waves crash far out in the distance, the tide recedes, then expands back out over me. Each time, I'm momentarily drenched in the salty water up to my thighs. Occasionally it stretches farther than expected, leaving me gasping from the cold and soaking up to my waist. I should get up and move away from the water altogether, but I can't bring myself to. 

I close my eyes for a moment and imagine that I'm her. I'm in the white sundress. I press my palms to my stomach. I pretend that I'm bleeding out onto my hands; the cotton material now pink and slowly turning red. With every push and pull of the tide, a little bit of the blood is washed away. I open my eyes and hold my palms out in front of me. 

They're clean. 

"Run," I murmur to myself under my breath. 

The tide drifts up again. This time, a particularly rough wave pushes the seawater up to my neck. I sit up as I'm splashed, coughing and wiping at my face from the near-drowning.