Blackout

Have you ever felt like you’ve fainted into reality?

His tense voice whispering prayers to a god who surely could not hear him, or who perhaps refused to listen, was the first sound I heard upon regaining consciousness. I couldn’t make out, nor felt concern to listen to, what he mumbled behind me. He rowed the boat, creaking the oars in rhythm with the waves that lapped at its sides, in rhythm with my throbbing head. It was too dark to tell whether my head was moistened with sweat or blood–with that throbbing it could have been either. As I looked out in front of me at the darkened dunes of the ocean’s ebb and flow, a subtle breeze wafted the stench of dying sea life, and despite the moonless night, no stars could be seen other than those that hung in the darkness of the slumbering city from where we came.

It was a mystery to me how I had gotten there. At that point in time, sharing a boat alone with a murmuring stranger was the most of my worries. Nothing else came to mind. As I sat up straight, stiffening with cold or fear, the creaking stopped. Something primal inside me knew for certain that death had boarded this boat with us. Unprepared for the interaction I expected to have, yet prepared with the worries that gripped at my throat, my eyes rested on a rope that laid at my feet. The man behind me cleared his throat.

“We’re here” he said.

I turned to meet his gaze. His features, obscured by the gloom, were no more familiar to me than my own would have been in that lightless night, yet his cold, hard stare was clearly darkened by something other than the night sky. I heard him taking small, shallow breaths, wringing the oar like it was a towel soaked with water, gripping it, poised and prepared to swing.

“What do you want from me?” I said.

The wringing stopped. For a moment only the sea’s hungry lapping could be heard. With reckless abandon I jumped off the side of the boat, taking the rope with me, and swam under to the opposite side. I emerged quietly and peered over the edge of the boat, saw his silhouette standing where I once sat, his back to me, frantically looking from one side to the other, trying to catch a glimpse of me in the blackened waters.

I heaved myself up onto the boat as fast as possible with my water-logged clothes and pounced on him, wrapping the rope two, three times around his neck. I would not die then.

I pulled tight as he gripped at the rope, at my hands.

We danced as the boat rocked.

I held tight as we fell into the water.

He kicked and thrashed and tried to grip at nothingness as I held my breath and pulled him down into the water, pulled tighter on the rope that he’d wear around his neck forever. The fighting stopped, and as I surfaced, the ocean’s hunger was once again all that could be heard. I hoisted myself back onto the boat, leaving the body where it expired, and shivered while I paddled back to shore.

I fainted into consciousness again.

I heard the boat hit the land with a sound that seemed to trigger the throbbing in my head. With each step I took out of the water towards the trees that lined the beach, the throbbing grew more intense. With each step, with each throb, visions of what had transpired appeared in my mind’s eye. My head pulsated with images of the stiffening at the edge of the boat, the oars grinding, the water plashing, the muttering. That god-awful muttering! His words became clear to me then. They reverberated in my head louder than the waves beat at the shore behind me despite them having once existed as merely a whisper.

“Please god, save me from this turmoil. I, as your humble servant, beseech you to deliver me from the hands of this killer. Please god, allow me the strength to overcome this distress. Please god, give me the strength to avenge the death of my family that this monster inflicted upon them. If allowed to live another day, I will surely praise your name until my last moment. Please god, save me from this turmoil…”