The River of Life
By: Danni Strange
My summer time was ruined. No more deep relaxation in a cool aqua bed on a humid afternoon. No more long summer nights watching cartoons until two in the morning and sleeping in until lunch hour. No more feeding my pet turtles shrimp in the morning and long walks around the neighborhood, hearing the birds and cicadas sing. I missed summer vacation.
It all ended when I found out the liquid in the pool was no ordinary water. I know this because of the final taste I involuntarily took as I dived in. My family never witnessed me come back up. My body disappeared. It was as if I had dissolved! No longer a human being, I became one with the crystal blue current.
My mind was without a body, but remained submerged in the water. For the first few hours or days I must have been in a deep sleep, since I do not recall my initial thoughts. But when my consciousness arose once again the sensation I felt was as if I had been reborn into a new world, one not of bravery but rather of ease, steadiness, and harmony. My body was still missing but my mind was the most crystal clear it ever was, void of all worry, negativity, and other stressors endemic to the modern imagination.
I did not feel isolated, but still acknowledged that I was, from both other bodies as well as my own. Formless, the desire to touch or to be touched by any living thing had completely left my consciousness.
My journey for the remainder of the summer was a test of strength. Not of physical endurance, but of mental perseverance. I learned I could last a month alone. Without a body, without food or drink, sleep or socialization, it felt as if my whole world had stopped. But I still existed, and this was my new world. Nothing ever stopped, there was simply change. And this position, just others before it—when I was sick with pneumonia as a child, when I injured myself practicing Taekwondo, when I dealt with a diagnosis of chronic illness as a high school freshman—would eventually come to pass, in this life or at the end of it. These phases come and end, quickly or steadily, in or out of my control. In this case, the fact I did not have a body limited me to being an outside observer of my own time. I did not possess medication to cleanse myself of this condition, nor contact with any other living creature. This changed on the day of my final vision and long awaited awakening, though the experience felt more real than anything I had ever gone through.
My mind lived in the water for one month, and on the final day it was swept away by the crystal current over thousands of miles, further than any length I had ever travelled in my human body. Though I possessed no eyes and could not see I knew my location had changed from a chlorinated swimming pool into a river. I was carried away through vast seas and lakes of rage. I tried to remain calm but the feelings of outrage kept creeping back—this was all my fault, I had foolishly ended my own life by jumping into this dreaded pool, and after an initial period of peace my own hell had caught up to me. The more these thoughts intensified, the worse the raging of the water became as my mind’s tightness graduated into pain.
The pain got worse, and I grew tired of this dangerous game. I could not help but feel fright, regret, and outrage. I did not have the hands to let go nor the grip to hang onto myself. I was more alone than ever before, and now my bodiless soul was drowning in a river of rumination. By this point I knew I was facing my final test, the outcome of which would decide my soul’s continuation. Will I continue down the violent stream and end or will I escape to the peaceful crystal current, the swimming pool, and finally be free? It took every ounce of willpower inside of me to declare, with no hesitation, that I could not breathe and I could not die because I was already dead. I was no individual, I was the water, I was the life force of Earth.
After this my body and mind returned together and swam together and rested together on a riverbank in a jungle far away from any place I had ever known. I woke up, relaxed and under a tree, surrounded by nature’s music, the river, wind, bugs, and birds.
A snake hissed from behind the tree before wrapping around my leg, then unravelling, then wrapping and unravelling a second time so as to grab my attention. I got up and followed the snake along the riverbank for several minutes, before the reptile turned around, hissed and lunged directly at my head. My body reacted quickly—still out of sync with my slower mind—as I grabbed the snake by its head mere centimeters from my face. Its mouth gaped open, revealing a pair of massive venomous fangs. It was the first time I had ever been up close to such an animal. I couldn’t help but stare for a moment until I was disturbed by the nearby cries of a human being, an animal I had seen before but not in some time. I automatically tossed the snake and ran down the riverbank to where I had heard the cries from.
It was then that I encountered one of nature’s most magnificent fauna, a tiger. The specimen’s roar paralyzed me, and went on for such a terrifying time and volume that it felt as if the world was shaken for ten days. The river then went into a wild rage once more as the current picked up to a violent pace, trees fell, birds flew away, and all the insects went silent. The roar triggered my awakening, so to speak, as I asked myself how I could have gotten here, staring down a tiger on the opposite side of the river. If this had happened a month prior, I would have already fainted in terror at the initial touch of the serpent.
I looked around after hearing a second human cry, this time much louder and closer, before I noticed a person on the opposite side of the river, near the tiger. They were attempting to climb a tree in order to escape the big cat. The tiger now crept up to the tree slowly before lunging at this person just as the snake had done to me moments before. A horrifying cry and roar came out at once as the tiger grasped the human by the neck and dragged the life form from its tree. The tiger stared me down as the human cried out in horror. Something came over me, I remained paralyzed from the sight and could not help but simply stare in awe as the desperate predator was rearing to kill one from my own species. A crashing gunshot broke our contact as the startled cat swinged itself around, before a second shot came in with such explosive force that it pierced the tiger’s chest and miraculously launched the two bodies into the raging river. The current was no longer crystal clear but more of a dark indigo or sapphire, as it raged with such speed and force that the tiger and human were swept away in the blink of an eye, and besides the blood on the tree and riverbank there was no longer any trace of the two.
As my heart raged as strong as the river while the remainder of my body was perfectly still, nausea came over me, and soon it became difficult for me to breathe. I could not see, but soon noticed the snake slithering past my foot, and realized within a second it had been there since the tiger let out its paralyzing roar. My newly restored body became numb, the pain in my foot overwhelmed me, and I eventually fell down to the ground. I desired to take one last look at my face in the water as I struggled over to the river, but I could not see as my vision was fading and I did not expect to view a reflection in the dark current. Then my vision became just as dark.
When I finally woke up, I was in my bed. It was nine o’clock in the morning on the final day of summer vacation. I could smell my mother cooking up scrambled eggs and turkey bacon in the kitchen. I could hear my brother raging at his video game with his friends. I could see my turtles scratching at the tank awaiting their meal. I took a deep breath and examined my foot. It was red, because it was sunburnt. I had a little sunburn! I cried out laughing and got up to care for my pets. My mother came in and said good morning.
“You seem happy today. What are you laughing about?” she asked.
“It’s nothing! It will pass,” I replied.
Picture courtesy of Macaulay Art Tank
