Five Seconds

The Wave

There was no response.

He stayed silent and kept trudging on. I clenched my jaw. The fact that I felt like I was stuck with him now made me irritable. There was no way he would ever have my back if our roles were reversed, and I hated myself for not having the guts to leave him right here.

"Parker how far do we need to travel?"

Rage rushed through my veins like a thousand horses. Exhaustion lapped at my toes. How dare he take us away from safety and ignore me. I gripped his shoulder and turned him around.

"Parker. What's wrong with you?" I growled. "Are we close or not? It's getting dangerous out here."

"I don't know just a little longer," he said.

"What do you mean you don't know." A year later and he was still ruling my life. I didn't know if I was more angry at him or myself. "Do you know where you're going?"

"Yes I know where I'm going," he snapped.

"Well how far, we don't have much time."

"I know that!"

"So take some leadership!" I shoved him.

"Don't tell me what to do. It's not like I caused this," he retorted.

"I'm not telling you what to do. I'm telling you to grow a pair." His words were pathetic, but I was too irritated to shut up. I just had to yell at him, because it made things feel better.

"Well screw off! I don't need you." He began walking away.

"Are you kidding me?" I thundered. "If it wasn't for me, your sorry ass would be half way across the Pacific by now."

He stormed up to me until we were almost chest to chest. "Congratulations. You ran away. I'm not running away from my family. If you don't care for my family then you can leave."

"I didn't run away—you can't even run from a tsunami!"

Parker opened his mouth to say something but he was silenced by a familiar roar.

We froze and looked north towards the harbour. Water galloped in a million miles a minute, defying the power of man and swallowing whatever it came in contact with.

I clasped onto Parker and he held me tight as a noose—the argument about nothing was long forgotten. We braced ourselves before a wall of water hit us harder than an avalanche of semi-trucks. The water ripped through our bodies, shredding our skin. The force of the water had to be supernatural. There was no way it could hold so much wicked strength.

And there was the darkness.

The icy, angry, liquid swallowed us whole and tossed us around like a washing machine, but I held on tight. I wasn't going to lose Parker this time—that wasn't an option. We tumbled along over and under, bumping and crashing through unforgiving objects. My body collided against hard entities, but I couldn't tell if they were objects, buildings, the ground, or the wave. My nails dug tight into Parker. My face was pressed tight against his chest in an almost claustrophobic inducing way. We dizzyingly spun around in a despairing dance with death.

My lungs burned.

Fear clawed away at me, threatening to free the air trapped in my lungs, and drag me down to the bottom. It ripped at my hair, gnawed at my fingers, clenched my throat; it mauled my spine, fired uppercuts at my heart, and jabs to my stomach. The fear was a spindly monster that weighed a thousand pounds, and clamped onto me tighter than a guillotine. Its death grip was infinite—it's perseverance eternal. A taloned hand clasped my mouth. My lungs were searing.