Underwater Wonderland

• Madison Telfer, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

That moment when you land on your back on water. When the pain shooting up your skin makes you lose all sense of direction and the water around you turns into a mysterious underland. A land full of shadows and weightlessness where both are easy to come by and aren’t the product of nightmares. A land where time doesn’t matter and the only thing important is the beauty around you. The light shining through the water above you looks like a rippling gem and flecks of gold shimmer around you. The silence feels holy and for once you don’t find the need to fill it. For once all the things you fear above the water are now something special, something to cherish. Some people go looking for this their whole lives. Some look for it in a pill while others look for it underground. That’s when you realise this is the closest thing to heaven.

It’s amazing until the pain emitting from your back and the need to breathe brings you back to the surface. Back to the world you know. Where fear lives in the shadows and everyone’s rushing places only to get there and realise that the whole journey was pointless. As the stinging subsides and air rushes into your lungs, filling you with sweet ecstasy, you can’t help wishing to glimpse that world again.

The underwater wonderland.