Prose Fiction: Riptide

Riptide

Waves crash. The ocean holds her in a choppy embrace. She sobs, exhausted from swimming. The sound of a flute swirls into her ears, or maybe it’s the sound of a sea creature. Is she floating or drowning? Bubbles gather and disperse in front of her face. Her thoughts, she thinks, have whiskers and a wet nose. Her mind sniffs at the bubbles as they expand and burst around her. Sunlight flickers overhead like passing angels. Then a dark tunnel vision propels her downward to the bottom of the ocean floor, where she glimpses the remnants of a thousand red balloons lying listless in the sand. Is it time to die?

She hears her father’s voice through the slapping saltwater: “A soul is like the air inside a balloon.” She’s pulled back to when she was five years old and curled in his lap, looking upward from under his jaw. The wrinkles on her father’s neck remind her of the weathered totem pole in their backyard. The big turtle at the base of that totem pole was her trusted confidant. Whenever her father and mother fought, she ran into the backyard to sit beside the wooden turtle. She told the turtle what she heard and how scared she felt. The turtle always listened intently and responded telepathically. “Look up, little ninja, look up,” the turtle said. “All the animals here, especially the eagle, are looking out for you. You must look out for us, too.”

She looks up and sees her father’s jaw. He strokes her head with his left hand while his right hand clutches a ribbon tied to a red balloon for her grandmother’s funeral. “A soul,” he tells her, “is like the air inside a balloon. It always returns to heaven." The rocky white knuckles of his fist collapse as he opens his fingers to release the balloon. “No!” she screams. “Daddy, stop! You could kill a turtle! Or an eagle! They don’t know the difference between that and food! They’ll swallow your balloon, suffer, and die!” His balloon joins the others from their family in a rubbery congregation. She starts sobbing as the army of defiant red dots advances upwards and disappears beyond the trees.

Her chest heaves in panic. She’s no longer five years old. Now, she’s nearly fifty, and she’s caught in a riptide. Fighting against the current only pushes her further back. She changes the direction of her swimming and elongates her body like the horizon over the waves. She tells herself to relax and focus on her breathing, and suddenly a sensation of great support emerges beneath her. As solid as a raft, this sensation carries her to shore. She sighs in relief upon reaching the land and looks around. What saved her? Squinting under the radiant sun, she sees the wings of an eagle dotting across the sky and the tail of a turtle disappearing into the sea. “Thank you, friends,” she whispers. “I’m looking out for you too.”

Special thanks to Jack Grapes for the encouragement, guidance, and support to be more creative and courageous with writing. This is a short prose fiction piece that I wrote in his beginners course in Method Writing.