The Pink Pistol [Girlxgirl]

Chapter 21

(Riley's POV)

We were losing light and time at an alarming rate.

When I was in high school, I'd been captain of the swim team for four consecutive years. I dedicated a lot of my time to that pool, probably more time than I ever spent studying. Practicing, racing, winning awards - it was all part of the fun, but mostly I lived for the feeling of being totally submerged. After school hours, even when we didn't have a swim meet that day, I'd go to the pool by myself. Mostly, I'd swim. Other times I'd just sink to the floor at the deep end and hold my breath. Water would rush into my ears, drown out the sounds of the rest of the world, make all that noise seem inconsequential. I was surrounded on all sides but totally alone in the most blissful of ways.

I liked to watch the way the surface of the water refracted the light, creating a fluid luminescent ceiling over my head. I'd fan my fingers out in front of my face, feel the water moulding itself around me, bending to my will. When I moved, it moved. It could carry me lazily along like I weighed no more than a petal, or hold me inside its belly like a mother bearing a child.

This was nothing like that.

This was the ocean, and she was furious.

Her invisible hands choked me, actively trying to squeeze the breath out of me. She was dark and twisty and growing heavier by the second. I became aware of an immeasurable pressure crushing my body from all sides, ribs and chest especially. Worst of all was that I could see a means of escape, mere feet from where I was. The glass doors were no more. All I'd have needed to do was swim through them and I'd be okay. They were so close. Freedom was so close.

Only, it wasn't. I was trapped with no apparent means of getting loose. The yacht was sinking, and it was dragging me down with it.

Daisy, whom I had demanded to leave me, was still urgently pulling at the metal beam dooming me to a horrific, watery death. She was a force of nature but she couldn't bend metal. My lungs began to burn. Daisy still wasn't leaving. I gestured desperately towards the doors and she shook her head, golden hair suspended around her like a halo or a mane. She abandoned her efforts and rose to meet me at the roof of the cabin. My heart felt like sandpaper scraping against my flesh each time it beat.

Why was she still here?

I was as good as dead now, that was a fact. It was also a fact that Daisy didn't need to die. Not now, not here, not for me. Frustratedly, I tried to communicate this to her. I shoved her chest and pointed at the broken doors. At this point, my lungs might as well have been on fire. They screamed at me to open my mouth, to suck in a lungful of water and give up. It was almost time. Daisy had to get the hell out.

Instead of leaving me, she let her hand float up to my face, where she proceeded to stroke my cheek. Her eyes were full of sadness, like she was grieving me. That look she was wearing confirmed my suspicions.

I was about to die.

I knew then that there would be no convincing her to leave; she was fully prepared to die down here with me. Ironically, I had an epiphany in that moment - a moment I believed to be my last. Daisy was not a monster. She did monstrous things but she was not a monster, because she had love in her heart. It was a reckless, misguided, suicidal kind of love, but it was there all the same. I think I might have felt it, too.

There was nothing else to do now. I pulled her body in and held tightly on to her like she was some kind of lifeline. If we were destined to die down here together then so be it; perhaps Daisy was the only person I was ever supposed to share a tomb with. Perhaps this is the way it was always going to happen.