Afloat

Aren't we all?

This new metaphorical short is a good step away from sci-fi for me. Inspired by hordes of people who just don’t make enough effort in life, including myself.

My wife’s hand modeled for this illustration.

I buy a carton of cheap beer on my eighteenth birthday. Just for the hell of it. Not because I want to—it just seems the thing an adult would do. And oh, because now I can. Or so says the law in our neck of the woods.

The clerk at the mini-market barely casts a glance at the ID I proudly flash at him. Whatever. What does he know about lifetime achievements? He—a man manning the night shift at a shitty joint selling liquor and cigarettes and boxed ice cream and whatever else people crave for after the sun sets.

I pop the first bottle open and take a generous swig right there—outside the store—in celebration of my adulthood. I made it. Finally free! A smith of my own destiny at last!

Savoring the moment, I finish the drink, and glance up. The tiny deserted parking lot in front of me has roads exploding in all directions. Multiple opportunities and nobody to tell me what to do.

Slightly abuzz and euphoric, I fish out and open another bottle, take a sip and head towards a gravel path. I take comfort in knowing that I’m free to choose any of the other passages, yet this narrow trail is the only one I know, having walked it a thousand times—to and from my parent’s house. I can come back to this place and make another choice at any time. No biggie.

It’s a considerably long walk, and by the time I reach the waterway, I’m halfway through my supply of hoppy liquid. Nearly there, though. The watery light blurs the edges of the windows of my home, sitting on the other side of the stream that we call river—only an old footbridge separating me from my destination.

Confidently, I step on wet cobblestones of the narrow pathway. It’s been raining. A couple of strides in, a strange shimmer upstream catches my eye, but promptly slips out of sight under the bridge. A body?

I scramble to the other side, and lean over the knee-high railing, hoping it’s just my drunken imagination pulling tricks. There, a dark shape being carried by the current!

Struggling to see in the dark, I slant further. The soles of my shoes lose grip with the moist polished surface, throwing me off balance and sending me over the low guardrail into water.

Head-first, I hit the pebbly bed of the creek, its shallow stream not much of a cushion. No, this is not how it was supposed to end, I complain silently, as I feel my consciousness recede into the void.

***

I don’t drown. Reluctantly, one by one, senses return. My skin feels a warm, womby touch all over my body. A soft gurgle of water reaches my ears.

I peel my eyes open, finding myself afloat, bobbing gently in the current.

A hint of sudden panic makes me flail my hands, trying to find something to grab onto and failing. Realizing the futility of the effort, I let myself give into the cozy drowsiness. I’m comfortable and toasty in lukewarm water, buoyed safely—there’s no immediate danger. Sooner or later, a bend will take me ashore on its own, I comfort myself. All I have to do is wait. Having calmed down, I drift off once again—into a peaceful sleep this time.

It’s light when I wake up. Glancing sideways, I catch a glimpse of a distant shoreline. The stream must’ve transported me into a larger river while I slept. The plan didn’t work. I attempt to swim ashore.

Clumsily, I try to turn myself over, plunging my face underwater. Struggling to keep my head above the surface, I take a few tentative strokes. A minute or two into my awkward swim, exhausted, I arch my neck to look up. Regretfully, I don’t seem to have made much progress. The shore looks closer, but still impossibly far away. It’s too hard. I’m not going to make it, I decide, surprisingly calm, easing onto my back to rest, the eyes drooping cozily.

A clatter of voices makes me perk up before I doze off. The noise gets closer, until I can distinguish words being spoken. Some of the voices sound familiar. As they get closer, I recognize friends from school and childhood. There’s a neighbor boy we used to ride bicycles with, and the captain of our basketball team.

Oops, excuse us, didn’t see you there, says a young woman I don’t know when she bumps into me. In an instant, I’m surrounded by floating bodies, talking, asking questions, telling stories, theorizing, complaining, joking. The vibe of camaraderie is almost overwhelming. I’m no longer alone. I’m among friends.

As the day fades into dusk, the chatter gradually dies down. One by one, members of our posse fall asleep and start drifting away, until there’s only two of us left: I and the girl who first made contact with me.

Eventually, she too starts to float away. Not wanting to let go, I grab her arm as she clutches mine. We pull each other closer and hold tight lest we lose the only remaining company.

She tells me her name, and I tell her mine. We talk until morning, finding a soulmate in each other, making plans for the future—how we’re going to work together to reach the shore, and beyond. We fantasize about starting a family and growing old together. Till death do as part.

As the dawn breaks, we start kicking and stroking as one, both ready to step in and cheer up whenever one of us succumbs to exhaustion or is about to give up. We greet the night with the sandy strands significantly closer, falling asleep happy, in lovers’ embrace.

When we awake, we find the current has carried us further from the shore, rendering our work the day before useless. Refusing to give up, we start again, only for the same predicament to be repeated the next day. As the days turn into weeks, and weeks into months, our determination wanes, the energy of our efforts morphing into a vane shadow of the resolve we started with. Together with the fading hope, our kinship disintegrates, and the stretches of empty silence grow, until we have nothing more to say, and one night no one reaches out to stop us from coasting apart.

I’m alone again, spending the days watching white clouds move above me, trying to find her face. From time to time, I hear other voices, but, resigned, don’t make an effort for contact.

Time passes, making solitude grow on me. I’m no longer trying, or even dreaming of going ashore, yet the shore, in the absolute fit of irony, finds a way to come to me. As usual, I’m staring up when the gradient of the sky is interrupted by a black line of a tree branch. Startled, I crane my neck, a bushy strand coming into view. Unbeknownst to me, the river narrowed down somehow, squeezing a massive amount of water into a lean canal, speeding up the current into a violent surge.

As my body torrents at neck-breaking speed, cascading over boulders, I instinctively know that the chance for a rescue is gone. In validation of my gloomy realization, a new persistent sound emerges—a muted rumble in the distance that grows into a deafening roar as I get closer. A waterfall! The end of the line for me.

Defeated and resigned, I feel a wet ponytail of a willow tree branch touch my forehead and slide the length of my face. Desperately, I grasp for it with my numb hands, managing to hold on before it’s gone. The tree creaks, but holds its catch, bobbing in the fierce flow.

Pulling on the last dregs of the remaining energy, I hoist myself up. Breathing heavily, I climb until most of my body is out of the water. The wind bites into my drenched clothes, making me shiver. The new vantage point affords a good view of the lip of a massive waterfall, just steps away. Chilled to the bone, head spinning, utterly lost, I realize I long for the comfort of the predictability of the tepid stream. Should I continue my miserable climb into the unknown? Or plunge back into the bliss of MY river?

Maybe, after all, it was supposed to end this way, I smile, then release my grip.

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