SHORT STORY - And So I Float

Being, it is nothing. Its an all encompassing feeling, the container for emptiness, above, beneath and within. So I can successfully suspend myself in such deep and murky water, and feel entirely at home. However, though I float in this expansive pool of water, I'm still rippled like a snake with emotions and sparks of indecision. Am I going to go all the way with this, or am I simply allowing myself to drift for a while, like leaf fall, hitherd and thithered by random instructive breezes? Looking for some sort of egregious sympathy.

Here we are then, rocking, face down, icy cold. The body positioned as though in the slowest of last throws of mortality. Yeah -, 'as though' - not yet - 'as was', or 'as intended.' Somewhere, between casting myself in and the just about buoyant, the resolve became drenched, weighed down by its own extraneous clothing mostly. Here I meander amongst the gentler undulations of my form and thought. No longer sure, exactly what I was meant to be carrying out. Why I've abandoned myself simply to floating.

Its an accidental impression of a human sized waterboatman I make. A sodden island, isolated in the centre of a mere, fed by the upward swirl of an underground stream. A lump of chilled white flesh, with clothes wrinkling and warping ghost like, around me. 

Why am I here? Oh, but that would be to start recounting a tale, already far far too long. No, really, I can't be arsed. Other than, I am a container for mulled resignation. That must be sufficient. Don't ask any more from me, it doesn't help cheer the draught of the mood. I'm passed being 'talked out' of any of this. Even though this now resembles an increasingly redundant gesture. Who is there left to care, eh?

Seemingly I still do. Care, that is. For I was meant to be lancing the boil of all the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks, with this conclusive dramatic finale. But haven't, of course. This floating feels too passive, so altogether pathetic. As time progresses, limbs, dangling so freely begin to hurt. Losing the sensation in hands and feet. Neck and blue veins stiffening. Thoughts began to slur and slip in and out of clarity. Appearing to open up my imagination, like a heart valve, to let the dream like reveries enter in. As though I'd never done any of this? A ship docking myself into some gothic harbour, overseen by the long shadows of skeletal ruins.

Just when I was more reconciled to totally abandoning myself to fate, there are thumping hands grappling for purchase on my body. Clamped around my extremities, lifting me up. Slipping a hammock around me, which with a roar of petrol exhaust and cascading water heaves me up. Hovering and twirling in the air, dribbling waterdrops, all around me. Gutteral shouts into the air - 'Got him'. They've come to save me, from my self, from procrastinating over my demise. Well, this sorts that out for a while, I guess. The hoist swings me over to dry land, face down on the grassy bank. Where the body, strangely does not stir. They stand around it, looking blank and pityful. As do I, I see myself as they do. as I am.

Something isn't right. I hear them chuntering between themselves - another poor bugger - second in as many weeks - looks like he's been floating here all night. Really! That long? Manhandled, then roughly plonked on a stretcher. The advancing noise of a long zip being pulled up from my feet, then over my face. Locked in. They think I'm dead, they actually think I"m dead! -  I'm alive - No - No - No - why can't they hear me?  I left it much too late, once again?  I am lost, in the many senses of that word. Who... what... where am I going to float too now?

Written by Stephen Lumb
October -November 2023