Drowning

Imagine you're drowning.
No, it's not just in a 6ft. pool. You're in an ocean.
A lake that has no floor. It descends to oblivion. Your feet are shackled to cement bricks.
They pull you like two hounds of hell dragging you to the fiery pits of the underworld.
These shackles have needles that dig into your muscles. They scream, trying to contract. The weight of the cement drags the needles through your flesh, scraping at the bone.
That's just the needles
The density begins to push on you. Like closing walls in a dump truck. You try to hold that deep breath you took in before you went under, but the ocea disapproves. It compresses your chest, running your skin pale. Your ears ring, your eyes feel as if they're being pushed to the back of your skull. Your throat and lungs burn;
But that's not all.
Although you're hundreds of feet under, you can see the shore as clear as day. You can see everyone. They're laughing, talking. They're so happy, so cheerful. They water's so clear, so pure. Yet so brutal.
You watch everyone breathe, you try to close your eyes but it just burns. They laugh, taking in as much air as they please. It's not just air. It has no pollution. It's the cleanest air you could ever imagine. No carbon dioxide, no gas, no fuel. It's pure oxygen. Although you can see them, they can't see you. Your knight in a shining scuba suit will never come. It adds on more force as you try to hold your breath, but there's one thing you don't know yet.
You can be there for minutes. Hours, days, years. Your body will feel like TV static, like it all fell asleep. Your ears will ring, your eardrums will throb and pulsate. Your heart will always be racing.
But one day, you'll realize there's only one way out; You either live with the pain and suffering for eternity, or take the breath. Let the water fill your lungs. Let it end you. Let it leave your body still and lifeless, whether you're still descending or not.
Yet all this time, you had the key. The key to free you, to save you. But you were afraid. Scared to find that it wasn't the right key, that it didn't work, that the endless pain of the needles would handicap you from swimming to the surface. That you'd drop it, letting it descend. Pulling it into the endless hell that you wanted to one else to experience.
And as you take in this fatal salt water, your last few seconds give you enough time to look up at the surface one last time.
You either see a man or a woman, young or old. And as your life begins to drain, the ocean pulling your life into itself, you watch them slowly descend.


Everything goes black.


Your life floods into the cement.