Page 69 of Things Get Dark

The voice feels familiar, but I can’t place it. All I know is I’m happy to hear it, even if the words unsettle me.

A riptide tosses me about, yanking me from tranquillity. I’m ripped from this womb as current after current tugs me this way and that. Giant creatures of the sea pass me, huge fins moving in slow undulations. Long tentacles list lazily around me, and I crunch into a ball. Sea creatures freak me out.

“Almost over.” The voice is coming from a small fish, no bigger than my palm. Triangular in shape, it’s a faint yellow colour with three vertical black stripes.

“Why are you apologising?” My own voice sounds subdued as the sound waves of my voice battle through the pressure of the ocean.

“This probably isn’t what you expected.” The fish circles me gently.

“Expectations just set us up for disappointment,” I murmur.

“We need disappointment to know joy.”

“What if we don’t deserve joy?” My voice falls flat.

“Everyone deserves joy. You seem nice. Why don’t you deserve joy?”

No answer comes. Around me, monstrous creatures peer into my soul with wide, unblinking eyes.

The small fish brushes a fin against my cheek. “Are you ready?”

Before I have time to ask what it is I should be ready for, the ground opens up beneath me, light cascading in as water gushes out. I’m carried away, rushing with the current. All other life hasfled. It’s just me and the water racing towards this ever-growing hole in the ground, the light growing brighter. I feel like I’m about to fall through a plug hole. Amid the undercurrent of panic I can feel gently rising in me, another memory calls out, then plays itself like a movie on the flowing water around me.

I see myself on holiday in Türkiye. Rhys and I have gone together. Our first couple’s holiday. We’re at a waterpark, and I’m standing atop a slide that acts like a giant drain. He’s gone ahead, circling the bowl before disappearing into the pool below. A lifeguard gives me a nod and I follow, going around and around, my back getting cut by the gaps in the hard plastic. Seconds later, I drop into the same pool, but Rhys is gone. Later that month, he broke up with me.

And now I’m circling the drain once again, faster, and tighter, until I drop and land with a thud.

“Is that better?”

My eyes open slowly, blinking back the brightness of the sun. Warmth from the sand beneath me seeps into my skin. Muscles throughout my body loosen. Turning, I try to locate the sound of the voice, but I can’t. All I can see is the sea lapping against the sand in front of me and luscious green trees behind me. Around me, life is thriving. Standing, I shake sand out of my hair, reaching up to discover it’s dry as a bone. Gentle wind strokes my naked body.

Fresh air floods into my lungs and slows my breaths. Everything seems so much more peaceful, but things still shift around me. Nothing stays still. The waves crawl towards me and then recede, the trees melt into each other, the sun expands and contracts as if it is breathing with me. The very beach is alive. My heart drums to the beat of the universe. It suddenly seems so obvious that I’ve been a part of everything this whole time.

I walk forward effortlessly, meandering towards the trees to see what lies beyond, away from the sea that birthed me. Everystep falls in harmony with the song of birds around me, the gentle grazing of mammals. Colours of endless beauty pass me by in the form of the most exquisite animals. My eyes can barely take everything in. Soft foliage cushions my feet as I move towards a clearing up ahead.

“You seem a little better.” It’s that voice again. It doesn’t take long to place it. A rust-coloured bird with bright plumage streaming from bright orange to apricot. It looks like a flower whose name I can’t place and that doesn’t seem important. The bird is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. As I extend my hand, he flies up to me and perches in my palm.

“Hello.” My voice is soft.

“Are you okay?” the bird asks.

“Why do you keep changing?”

“Don’t we all change?”

And it’s that question that sends discord into the rhythm that had seen me melt into the universe.

“I’m tired of change,” I say, sitting on a downed tree-trunk. “There’s been so much change. I just want things to stay the same for a while.”

The bird leaves my hand and joins me on the log.

“I can understand that. But that’s just not how things work. The only constant is change.”

In my mind, I find myself sitting on a bench in a park with my mum, a few weeks after Dad passed away. We’re having this same conversation. A few months later, I’m having the conversation with my friend Elizabeth after everyone graduated from university except me. A couple years after that, I have the conversation with a stranger in a gay bar after I tell him about Rhys leaving me.

“I’m sick of change,” I say, kicking a small stone.

“But it’s in the change that we find meaning. It’s in change that we find life.”

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