Candle in the Attic Window(93)

Finally, the balloon plumps up and the sled starts whirring in reverse. You hold on to the thin handles and rise along the wire, relieved to have escaped the deep once again. But this afternoon, against what is possible, against what is natural, the deep senses you, and acts.




Something terribly fast rushes out of the darkness below, blurs past you and curls around the inflated balloon. The current of the sudden motion slams against your body, almost takes you away from the sled. Whatever it is swats the ocean’s weight like a fly. You can only imagine the power needed to move at that speed at this depth.

What looks like a giant coil of maroon rope, as thick as your thigh, curls around the yellow plastic. Pale suction cups the size of your fist squeeze out of the red like jellyfish. They look soft and smooth, but you know they hide a circle of knife-like cartilage, nature’s own vagina dentata. If those bowls kiss you, it’s goodbye. Now you want to scream, but you can’t. You can only stare in terror as the arm pulls at the balloon and shakes the sled, stopping your ascent to the light. The coils curl sinuously, almost sensuously, around the balloon, increasing their hold on it.

In the horribly slow thinking of the deep, you realize the arm wants to pull the entire sled into the abyss. You pull out your knife and start sawing at the neck of the balloon to release it. All movement is heavy and painful. Your muscles are not built to fight against the deep. Your heart is blasting and your lungs are on fire. You have no air left for the way up, but the only thing you can think about is getting the sled free.

The yellow plastic rips, releasing a torrent of tiny bubbles into the dusky water. The sled tilts back to the wire. You pull the cord for the backup-balloon. It fills quickly and, with the hold of the tentacle gone, the sled starts screaming up the cord. You hang on and feel the speed take you away; you’re on your way up. But then something cold and ancient wraps itself around your leg and takes hold like a giant anaconda. You don’t have to look to see what it is. You can feel the suction cups dig through your wetsuit and into your leg. The sled bounces and swings. You hold onto the handles as hard as you can and slowly, slowly bury your knife into the red flesh. You really want to scream, but you can’t. The diving reflex is too strong. Your throat and epiglottis have closed shut. All you can see are the black spiders scuttling quickly over your eyes.




Some say screaming is embarrassing and shameful, but under the right circumstances, or perhaps the wrong circumstances, screaming is actually liberating. Because there are times and places when you would really like to scream, when you would absolutely love to scream, and feel a great and pressing need to do it, but you can’t.

One of those places is in a coma after terror. If you’re lucky, you’re still breathing on your own, and can gasp and hyperventilate and heave your breast as much as you like, while whatever it is that makes you feel like screaming plays out in your vegetative mind.





If you’re unlucky, however, the centres in your brain responsible for breathing have shut down, been shocked into silence. So, while your mind is screaming loudly, the machine that’s pushing air into your inert lungs and body, thinks breathing steadily and calmly takes precedence over self-expression, and keeps moving in an entirely too-slow pace. Then you can’t scream, however much you want to. You can only stare in horror at whatever is coming at you, stare paralyzed and helpless, and let it happen to you, again and again. But finally, the breathing centers in your brain come back online, you ignore the slow breathing of the machine that’s kept you alive for three weeks, cut yourself free from the net of tubes and wires and needles that are tangling you, and scream and scream! And it is very, very liberating.






Berit Ellingsen is a Norwegian literary and speculative fiction author. She is also a science journalist and has a dark past as a game, film and music reviewer. Her fiction has or will appear in various online literary journals and in print anthologies, most recently in The Subterranean Literary Journal, OverClock Zine and Zouch Magazine. Berit admits to pining for the fjords when abroad. Her debut novel, The Empty City, is inspired by the philosophy of nonduality.





Nightmare





By Wenona Napolitano





Darkness gripped me like a ferocious lion,

ripping and shredding apart helpless prey.

Reaching out, I begged you to stay.

But you left and my soul started crying.

My fears slowly took me over.

Nightmares set in, taking over sweet dreams.

My heart stops when I wake and drown in screams,

Lonely without a comforting lover.





Once, I drank in the dreams and dreamed the wine

that flowed over satiny cherubs’ wings.

I could hear my guardian angels sing.

Sweet voices soared to eternity’s time.





Now I can no longer feel my own soul.

I just hear the wind blowing in my mind.

My sweet seraphim are no longer kind.

Angry devils tear me, leaving a hole.





With trembling hands, I drink the poisoned wine

That will forever stop bad dreams in time.