Under The Green Water

“It’s real…it’s real…it’s real,” Jonathan repeated in an almost inaudible whisper, his lips rippled and cracked from dehydration.

Although he’d seen things over the past 96 hours that seemed to defy what he understood to be logic, Johnathan knew without a shadow of a doubt that this creeping green light in the water was real.

He also sensed that it was aware of his deteriorating state.

Minute by minute, Johnathan’s saliva evaporated, his blood thickened, his skin tightened — he was being consumed in molecules by the sun and sea. The buoy onto which Johnathan had climbed following the accident, which he initially viewed as a saving grace, might now serve as a dinner plate for any hungry creatures awaiting the final beating of his desiccating heart.

Another day was coming to a close without rescue, signaling to Johnathan that perhaps no one would ever arrive to pluck him from this man-made island. One flare doesn’t do much good if there’s no one there to see it light up the sky.

More to the point, he was facing yet another evening during which the glow would return, just that much closer, swirling in ever-tightening circles until the second the sun speared the night sky, when it would seemingly fade away into the deep.

He knew, based on where they were when the ship sank, that there was land somewhere north of him…but how far? The dread induced by his nightly visitor had thus far prevented him from even considering entry into the water — but was it even a threat?

“One more night,” he thought. “If there’s no rescue by morning…I’ll take the plunge.”

Four days into his stranding, Johnathan was approaching absolute debilitation, and he well understood that his chances in the water were far from certain — moreover, he knew that waiting until morning was a potentially fatal risk. Could he even paddle at that point? Would he simply sink upon entering the water, so deeply fatigued and starving?

But what other choice remained?

Johnathan closed his eyes, and curled into a tight inward position, using his hands as a head rest.

Bump!

Johnathan’s eyes shot open. Was that real…or a dream? Did something knock into the buoy? He sat up straight, swiveled his head to the right and left. His whole body ached, as if each bone was grinding off layers of rust. The moon was obscured by a blanket of clouds, but a light shone from behind — bright enough to cast him in shadow.

An electricity scattered across Johnathan’s bare skin, and his hair pinned outward as he placed his hands flat on either side of his body, and with a deliberate pace, swiveled toward his rear.

It was more vivid than ever before, an intense and dazzling green.

Johnathan sat in total stillness, unable to close his eyes or even turn his head away. The electricity running across his skin expanded outward into the air around him. He was a hanging man, captured by something he couldn’t comprehend.

The light began to draw inward and become dim — but just before the once vibrant glow had nearly faded away entirely, it regained its intensity and exploded across the dark water like a firework blooming in the night sky.

The entire sea, in every direction, was illuminated while the clouds above darkened into an inky, impenetrable black. The once choppy water surrounding the buoy stilled and became like sheet glass.

As the noises of wind and waves dissolved into an absolute silence, a figure began to rise from the motionless water, hair black as coal, with alabaster skin shimmering. Johnathan was wrapped by her glorious presence, losing any sense of confusion or fear, which had previously gripped him tightly.

The woman stood firm and opened her eyes, which beamed an intense and sensational green that was sharp as lightning.

When she opened her mouth to speak, the air around Johnathan hummed, and he fell even more into a kind of peace, his aching body comforted. “חיכיתי כמה שאני יכול,” she said in Hebrew. While Johnathan didn’t speak the language, he understood her without issue.

“I waited as long as I could,” she had told him.

Johnathan paused for a moment, unable to untie his knotted thoughts in order to speak. The woman’s voice was unlike that of a human. It boomed and whispered all at once, flexing the space around him.

“Walk to me,” the woman said with a calm command.

Without hesitation, Johnathan stood and placed his feet on the water. He stepped forward, but did not sink. As he approached her on the glassy surface, she held up her hand, and Johnathan halted.

“Look,” she said as she extended her finger, pointing behind him.

Johnathan turned around to see his own body curled up on the buoy exactly as it was when he had fallen asleep — yet he wasn’t frightened, only curious. He recognized that what lay on that buoy was no longer him (not in any real sense), but simply a casing out of which he’d been extracted.

“Was there any hope?” he asked the woman, his own voice beginning to take on the booming whisper of hers.

The woman didn’t offer a reply; she merely turned her palm upward.

Johnathan took a long, shaking breath, and resumed his walk toward the green-eyed woman. When he was near enough to touch her outstretched hand, he reached out his own, physically stuttering as he did.

Upon first contact, Johnathan felt an explosive energy unlike he’d ever known before. His entire body and mind burst into flames and froze into ice as the ends of his fingers began to transmogrify into a blinding light, which crept up his arm and cascaded across his figure.

Johnathan, feeling both tranquility and a peculiar sense of lost time, turned his head once more to see his empty vessel. As the light consumed his being entirely, he shut his eyes tightly.