Stranger Memories

I jerk out of the water mercilessly beating down on my head in an over pouring thunderous roar. It is shocking and yet something in my soul delights in recognition of the water that cascades down my naked body. At the moment. I am petrified of it, the memory that is now fading away no matter how hard I grasp at it, was triggered by the water. The feeling of being drowned is still overwhelming as I watch with trepidation, the water continue to fall from my shower head. Daja vu hits like a thunder clap at the sheer, I've experienced the sensation of drowning. I can stand the feeling no longer and the feeling that something doesn’t want me to remember. How else could I have been feeling as if I had died by drowning, when I don’t really swim? I’ve never choked on water and certainly was never close to drowning.

The feeling though continues, and yet the why remains elusive. I do the only thing I can think of and dunk my head back under the stream, in an attempt to recreate that peculiar feeling. It doesn’t work and I am once again a normal person, taking a shower. What an odd experience though. I turn my head to where the water is landing on my face and that drowning submerged feeling hits me again, only this time it is much much stronger then the one I’d felt before. An image is released in my head and I can see it clear as day.

I am deep below the ocean's surface. There is barely any light that reaches the inky depths, so black, and so cold. I can feel the cold seeping into my soul and ice begins to form along my arms even though the shower is still going. I am lost to the here and now and can not feel the heat from the water-only the black soulless cold from the water vision in my head. There is something evil lurking in it, and I can see by the way my hair is moving, that I am being pulled deeper.

Fear is clearly written across my face, and I can feel the same petrified feeling beginning to grow in me now. The fear of drowning as water presses harder and harder against my lungs. The pressure of the water against my ears and body begins to grow additionally as I am pulled deeper and deeper. I begin to not be able to make out anything in the water surrounding me, as the last of the surface light leaves the world. This new dark and watery grave is a parallel to hell’s fire. I am going to die, I can feel it with absolute certainty.

I jerk out of the trance the water has triggered my brain into going into and my body jerks with the mental push away from the vision. Clear as day it was, as if I was reliving a memory. I at some point during that horror I was just forced to watch or relive, I started hyperventilating in fear. My breaths come in great heaving gasps, as if I was really drowning. With the great push my mind just did my body jerked with it and I feel myself start to fall. Backwards my body is falling backwards and I feel the toilet that rests close to the shower strike the right side of my back as I fall. The shower curtain decided to fall with me and I was able to cover myself with it as my roommate burst into the bathroom.

“What the fuck are you doing in here? Are you good?” She pauses at the pear still very plainly written on my face and the shivers now racking my body. I can feel very detached to this body and am sort of having an out of body episode. I watch as she kneels very slowly as if not to spook an injured animal and grabs a towel. She reaches over me to shut the water off and asks if I am okay. I nod slowly, still trying to understand what the fuck just happened to me and why I am on the floor. I know better than to tell her what I just saw, she would think me a mad woman and maybe I am crazy.

Her soft brown eyes look me up and down for any physical injuries from my fall. After her perusal she helps me to stand and gasps softly at my still frozen skin. Ice coats me in a cocoon, I look like a very shiny beetle. Maybe what just happened wasn’t a figment of my imagination after all. I start breathing really fast again and she steers me to the couch. She leaves for a moment and I stare absentmindedly at our very pretty coffee table. She returns with clothes and a heated blanket.

She helps me dress and a part of my mind acknowledges how sweet she is being to help me. Not that I am too surprised my roommate pretty much helps everyone but herself. Still I am very lucky to have her as my friend. Out of all the people in the world, she would probably be the least likely to laugh and call me crazy if I told her what had just happened. I am afraid to tell her, regardless, and honestly I don’t think I am even ready to draw up those images again. There is probably a reason I forgot them in the first place, if they truly are even memories. I am way out of my element here.

Flashes of the water and the drowning feeling plague me even as a cup of warm steaming coffee is set before me and I am currently being warmed by the heated blanket. She leaned over to me on the couch and wrapped me in a hug. She rests her head on my shoulder. The warmth finally starts to seep into my bones and my soul. I start to kind of return to my body, as if my brain had drifted away to protect me from what I had just experienced. I believe cops have a word for it, shock. Yes I think I was just in shock. “Will you tell me what just happened? I am very worried about you.” I clear my throat and attempt to speak, but my voice is so hoarse, as if even they too had frozen.

She wordlessly hands my coffee cup to me and I drink heartily. After a few sips I am able to get a coherent thank you out. Well screw it I will try and tell her, at the very least she saw the ice. Maybe she won't think I'm insane, there is definitely something weird happening here. So I told her all that had happened and how real it had felt. I tell her of the fear and the drowning, how I was not just seeing it, I was experiencing it. The water from the shower seemed to have triggered the.. Memory. She doesn’t speak at all throughout my telling of what had happened and even after I have finished she says nothing. We sit in silence for a while simply recovering and warming up.

“I’ll have the doc look at your medicine. You know he had just changed it. One of the side effects of the medication for your hallucinations is well..hallucinations. I’m not trying to say that you’re crazy or anything girlie, just that this medicine could be jacking with you.” I say nothing, for what can I say to that? I am not sure what to think in this world sometimes. This is bigger than the average daily problems of an American. I simply nod to her, if that is what she thinks is best.