Saving Skye

• Ginette Lalieu, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2010

Skye’s lungs screamed with blackened desperation in a water world of frozen silence. A numbness pressed hard against her ears as vinegar ocean forced itself down her throat, rough as guts, replacing her air. Time wrung her out, squeezing her enough to make her want to die but cruelly keeping her living. Every tortured molecule of her thrashing body pierced and shrieked for oxygen.
*
Ledger threw his eyes left and right, desperately searching the empty land around him for help. His sandpaper breath racked in and out, gathering pace, scraping his lungs. He knew time was tight – even as he stood there, feeling ice slates in his stomach, he knew the monster was slowly consuming the girl; sinking in its teeth, ripping her apart, licking its lips. With what ruthlessness – with what cruelty! – as it had done with him years before. He felt he must run – or scream – or die at the very foot of the monster – anything but this hellish agony! He tried to hurl the memories away from him, into the monster’s hungry mouth – but it spat them back, forcing the visions behind his eyes... The blankets of water suffocating him, stealing his breath; The throbbing of his lungs, the pulse in his neck; Prying fingers that wrenched him from the monster’s grip. His life restored. Just. His self forever changed. The visions fell and he refocussed on the frothing beast that heaved before him. His stomach lurched and vomit stained the sand by his side.
*
A glass ceiling swelled above Skye, masking a paling sun... Flecks of sea dust and kelp hovered above the cloud-stained sand. Skye desperately searched her insides, hunting for strength. And somewhere in the deepest, most forgotten corners of her soul she found it. Her last pathetic scraps of energy, everything she had left. She gathered these scraps and stitched them clumsily together; scabs and scars.
The water cracked violently as her head broke the surface; her lungs filled with burning hope. But Skye could only scream as the ocean grinded and sucked her down, back into the torturous world that writhed in the depths beneath.
*
Tears carved crevices on Ledger’s contorted face as he crouched on the sand. His chest heaved and convulsed with anxiety. His senses were sharpened. He spread the span of gritty sand under his shaking fingertips; he felt the crunch and slide of each grain upon the groaning surface. He clenched his eyes shut and pressed his forehead to the ground, tears cementing the sand. He heaved a last breath and slowly – so slowly – stood to face the howling monster, his body shaking – shuddering – and staggered forward. He felt the ice-laced water lick his toes. He felt the froth from the monster’s very mouth swim around his knees. But then all he could see was a head above the water, for just a trancelike instant, before it all disappeared with a scream – hooking at his throat. At that moment Ledger’s reservations were forgotten, as he dived into the pulsing blue jungle before him.