"Drowning in Turn"

I'd prefer a stop in time. Peaceful, black silence. But when I close my eyes, the undercurrent pulls me down and the waves crash overhead. I swim upward, kicking hard, fighting to breach the surface. The cold air hits my face and I gasp. The air burns my throat and lungs.

I ride the swells high into the night, scanning the sea and the sky, but there is nothing to swim toward. The clouds strobe with lightning revealing an ocean of whitecaps that splay out in all directions.

A tidal upsurge slams straight down on top of me. I sink. My body is beaten. But my arms pull at the water above and my legs kick below. I make it to the surface to breath in the air and exhale one word. "Help."

The clouds flash and the sky whispers. "Get the baby."

"What baby?–"

Lightning fractures the sky with its running cracks of plasma, and from the center of the storm I hear a baby crying.

The sea rises, then buries me from both sides. I tumble in the swirling currents and see the flashing sky at my feet. I somersault upright and battle against the undertow. My chest ablaze as I will my limbs to move. My arms are like bags of rocks. My legs are incased in lead. My head crowns the surface as I push hard to find air.

"It's your turn," the sky says. The lightning pulses overhead with it's greenish-white light. "Get the baby."

"Where?" I ask the sky but in the lightnings' flicker I see the silhouette of an island with volcanic peaks in the center resembling a crib, and above vultures circle like a mobile. I commit to a breast stroke pulling myself towards the island, but it looks smaller now, like it's moving away from me. "It's too far," I say, my chest pounding. "I'm trying, but it's too far."

The lightning shatters the sky. "It's your turn," the voice says.

"Help me," I plead, as the riptide pulls me further away from the island. I glance over my shoulder and see a wall of water scraping the clouds. The tsunami plows me foreword and I skip up the face of the wave rising to its break. The white, frothy fingers flick me foreword and I free-fall, towards the edge of the island. The wave catches up to me from behind accelerating my descent and squashing me into the shallows. The water recedes leaving me face down sinking into the wet sand.

I pull myself into a crawl. The baby's cries ring out ahead of me but my legs are stuck in a thick, muddy sludge. I claw at the mud pulling myself forward. The mud splashes onto my face. Wet-brown droplets speckle my lips. The sour smell of fermented fruit engulfs me.

I feel a foot in my back forcing my chest down into the nastiness.

"Get up!" the sky demands. I tilt my head back. The mud rises past my neck and moves up my chin and cheeks.

"I can't–" I hold my breath as my face submerges. The foot in my back becomes two feet forcing me out from between our sheets, onto the floor next to our bed. The baby monitor fills our room with flickering light and the cries of our newborn baby.

by G.A.Shepard

(Originally Published online in Flash Fiction Magazine)