Page 33 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
The cliffs were gone.
Because the tide had dragged me out.
Oh…please.
Not again.
Please.
Panic raked poisonous nails over my throat and chest, closing my airways. Making my insides feel as though they’d been shredded with a cheese grater. Tears splotched my vision.
I fought to coerce my ravaged lungs into taking all the air they could muster. And I just managed to scream, “HELP!”before the water dunked me under again.
I flipped. And careened. A free fall. Like those weird dreams of stepping off a sidewalk and plummeting down a thousand-foot drop into nothing.
And then…
Just when I was sure the spinning would mash my brains against my skull and have them leak out my eye sockets, it stopped. I opened my eyes again and wriggled my arms and legs, trying to figure out if they had the strength to take me to the surface.
But I didn’t know where the surface was.
It was all black—so deep, so consuming—I couldn’t even see the tips of my own fingers, even when I waved them in front of my face.
Did I have a face anymore? Did I have arms? Legs?
Under this sea, suspended and weightless, feeling nothing but the screaming ache in my lungs, I wondered if I was already dead.
Until I saw it.
The big, orange orb peering at me through the dark.
An eye.
An eye as big as mytorso.
And it wasinchesaway.
A silent scream burst out of my mouth, expelling a current of bubbles and wasting the precious little air I had in my lungs. I didn’t care.
A startled, rasping sound jangled in my ears.
The eye closed.
And now I had no freaking idea where the monster was. I couldn’t see the body attached to that eye.
But it washere.Somewhere.
Go! Go, go, go!I screamed at my legs. Willing them to kick through the water. To propel me up. Or what Ihopedwas up. There was resistance, so ithadto be up. It had to be the way to the surface.
My lungs bellowed—the pain so intense, so shocking, checkerspots danced in front of my eyes.
Go. Go!
My legs were heavy as I battered them through the water.
My arms shook as I grappled and clawed and dragged.
But no matter how far I swam, the surface never came. The water rushed around me, squeezing my body, beating the last dregs of strength out of me.
