Essential Tales #2
Falling felt unnatural, and my survival instincts knew it.
Motorcycle helmet or not, I was tumbling straight into Death’s arms. How he had let me live through the explosion was unexplainable.
I don’t know how I had survived up to this point, or how I was even conscious, but I was.
And acutely aware that I wouldn’t be for long.
There was no way my child’s body was going to withstand any landing, on any surface, from such a height.
Amidst debris and obliviated concrete fog, I screamed for my life, my Noma, my dad, and the gruesome ending of what had started as the perfect day.
From a distance, I heard an equally terrified shriek. It was from a deep male voice I’d known all my life yet never would hear again. “Maddoooooox—” Dad roared my name, before a horrid thud silenced him. Forever.
That’s when my natural instincts took over. Even with the possible loss of another parent, fighting for survival had me still reaching for a miracle. My young arms swung and swam in the air to no avail.
Blindly, as my back led me, I plummeted from the sky until a smack of vicious water greeted me.
The merciless impact was quick to begin my slip from consciousness…
and sanity. The water, like an erogenous entity, touched my body all over with waves of different temperatures.
Shockingly cold, then incredibly warm as if I were merely taking a bath.
Sinking in the water, my arms and hands lifelessly floated above me.
Unexplainably, I stayed calm, no longer flailing.
Maybe dying does that to you, but I no longer had the fight to live or hold Dad close as I had outside of the water.
Instead, I simply watched the sun shine on Dad’s skully, now missing its owner, floating just out of reach.
The rays danced on the yellow material, slowly being engulfed in a transparent blue liquid.
Lack of air could’ve explained what I was seeing; however, it felt more like a whole new instinct in me was being given life, ironically, as I died.
This new instinct understood that this world is nothing but a living miracle.
That truth vibrated through my soul. The new perspective was addictive and like a breath of fresh air when there was none to breathe.
With a grateful smile forming, my fingers attempted to grab Dad’s skullcap.
As they barely caressed the tip of the wet material, the blue fluid lit up.
Movement had created tiny stars that reminded me of glitter, twirling as if desperate for me to watch them.
I couldn’t help but stare. They vibrated through the water with an essence I wanted to touch before closing my eyes for the last time.
That is when I noticed a very faint cloud of red joining the blue. It was coming from a couple of my fingers that seemed to have been damaged in the explosion.
I’m bleeding, was all my fading mind could think.
The contemplation may have been out of sorts with all that was happening, but who can judge the thoughts of a dying boy? Even when he thinks he sees the most beautiful green eyes swimming toward him, lit with the same magical glitter as the water, now all around me and my injured right hand.
With my unexplainable euphoria, I was expecting to see the little girl to be smiling, like me, yet the closer she got, the more I saw how sad she was.
Maybe saw is the wrong word. It was more like I felt her sadness.
In those mesmerizing eyes, I felt kindred despair.
The kind only to be shared through mutual heartbreak.
At just ten years old, it is amazing how I already wanted to relieve her sorrow. It felt wrong for her to hurt. Even though I had no idea what was causing her isolation, the injustice of it was still something I yearned to help her bear.
With tiny hands, she snatched Dad’s skullcap and was quick to wrap it around my injured one. And with that simple choice, or my imagination going wild, that cloth became a lifeline. An anchor that tethered two souls.
Without delay, she grabbed my uninjured left hand and started pulling me upward…
While my head began to droop from losing consciousness, I watched sunrays find the longest, the shiniest, the most beautiful shade of pearly seafoam green hair.
My body became lax, and as my eyes shut, I glimpsed the dark water underneath me. A flash of chrome flickered before I saw a motorcycle descending into the abyss. Swallowed by the darkness, the iron beast would never rumble again.
Dad… my heart called out—cried in anguish—to him.
Gentle fingers squeezed mine, causing my eyes to flutter open once more. The tiniest nose nuzzled against mine. A comfort I could barely grasp as the sun’s rays began to penetrate the dark abyss that had threatened to swallow me.
In the last second before my mind went quiet, I saw a glimmering tail. A tail, swooshing beside my lifeless legs, was swimming me up to the surface and back to the world where I belonged.
1 ? “The Calling (EPIX Remix)” — The Rigs