Elipsions

I looked to the water, where miraculously the beautiful young woman still stood, as beautiful as before. I proceeded cautiously, afraid to wake again when the water hit my knees. I was pretty happy seeing that the water was now above my waist and I had not been ejected from my dream. However, being more than fifty yards out with another seventy to go until I reached her was concerning, because the water continued to get deeper. The bottom felt as if had changed from sandy to muddy; I continued to plod through, but when the lake got to my chest level I decided to swim the rest of the way. As I started to try to swim, the mucky floor of the lake seemed to clutch my ankles and feet. I submerged so I could get a good grip on my legs for assistance breaking free of the mud that was now holding them tightly. I tugged on each leg individually, but no matter how hard I pulled the mud wouldn’t release, and I had to come back up for air. I went back down and kneeled to get a close look at what was wrong, and I hoped to dig my feet out, but when I got close enough to see, I noticed small green vines twisting around my legs. I gawked in shock at what I saw, expelling all of the air from my lungs, which forced me to lift my head out once again for more air. I immediately noticed that the water had now risen to just below my chin. I looked to the girl, and she was the same distance away as I remembered her being just a second ago, so the water wasn’t rising. I took a breath of air and went back down to see that I was now up to my calves in this unforgiving muck that was trying to keep me under with it, to be buried in these cold, dark waters. Without a doubt in my mind, if I drowned here, I wouldn’t be waking back up from this dream! I rose to the surface again, but this time I had to raise my chin to keep my mouth out of the water. “Hey! Could you … I … the mud won’t let … help! Can you … help?” I called to the woman in gasps, because every time I opened my mouth water would splash in, causing me to choke. I wondered what the hell she was standing on. I could feel the vines and mud pulling me deeper, holding me tighter. I tried to take in one last gasp of air through my nose before being pulled under, but it was too late, and water rushed through my nasal passages straight down my trachea and began filling my lungs. An even higher level of panic set in immediately as my body’s reaction was to cough the water from my lungs and inhale air, which only resulted in the complete infiltration of water. My struggle waned. The sound of my racing heart slowing to a stop was emotionally deafening—the feeling of dying, although a foreign feeling to me, but it was an unmistakable one. The murky water started to fade to black. I looked up to see a light glowing from above me in the shape of a hand reaching down, and it touched the tip of a finger on my free-floating hand. Mom! was my first thought. My mother would aid me now and I would be with her again, in the blue place. My body began to rise up and out of the water as if I were weightless. Once completely out of the water, my body fell limp, and I could feel the water splashing against me from the surface, but I couldn’t feel it supporting me. I felt weightless, floating on top of the water, but separate, as if on an invisible space lay just on top of the water. I began coughing up what felt like gallons of water, which poured back into the lake below me, straight through the invisible space on top of the water on which I hovered. I looked up to see the girl from the center of the lake, and I wasn’t quite sure what my emotions were at that moment, but nevertheless there we both were, standing on water—well, not both. I climbed to my knees, hunched over wheezing for air, life slowly sifting back into my body as I coughed out the darkened death. I looked at her beautifully delicate feet and saw the most incredibly detailed tattoo on top of her left foot. The tattoo was the top side of a flying dove with wings flowing off at both sides of her foot, the dove’s head designed on top of her big toe and the one next to it. I tried to speak but could only hunch over and cough some more before hearing her say, “Find me.” Clear images of signs appeared in my head: “Welcome to North Dakota,” followed by, “Welcome to Devils Lake,” and then a building that looked like it could be a high school, maybe, and finally an image of a building that could be a church, but with a neon sign above the entrance door that he read “The Dojo.” I shook my head clear and looked up at her emotionless face, staring down at me. She bore a fascinating resemblance to what a teenage Angelina Jollie might look like. I managed to clear my throat enough to speak, “Who—?” Swoosh, instantly I was sinking below the water again, but this time the vines were much faster and more of them were reaching up and grabbing my arms, legs, and neck, pulling tightly and strangling. Two vines shot quickly up into my nostrils, and three of thicker ones went into my mouth and down my throat. They started branching off and burrowing themselves between each individual tooth and into my gums, as if they were trying to coil around the tooth roots. I was thinking, unsure if they were beginning to rip the teeth from my mouth or just occupying space, when the little oxygen I had left had been depleted. Everything went black once again. “Breathe, Caleb, breathe!” I heard Seth’s muzzled voice, but it sound so small and distant. I felt light taps and a tiny thump followed by feathery pushes that rapidly felt more like pressure against my chest, then a big thud and the faint sound of my heartbeat starting up. My body instantly lurched, and I heaved up an enormous amount of murky water that had made its way around whatever was still lodged in my throat. I rolled to my stomach with Seth’s help and lay there face down on my bed, coughing out the remainder of the water in disbelief that I had just been dead twice in less than five minutes. Seth fell back into the chair beside my bed, exhausted from his efforts to revive me. After regaining what little breath that I could, it became painfully apparent that the three thick vines that had slithered into my mouth and partially down my throat needed to be removed before I could breathe properly. I grabbed the small amount of vine protruding from my mouth and cringed immediately upon discovering that they felt much more like warm, slimy flesh than any plant I’d ever felt. The thought alone of this grotesque intubation definitely assisted my extraction process, as I began puking and pulling simultaneously. I let go of the mass as soon as it cleared my lips to fall into my throw up, where it flipped and slithered around for a moment before lying completely still. I looked at Seth’s mortified face as he stared at it, then he looked at me without changing his expression until he suddenly lurched forward, puking himself.