---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/book “Flawed Cadaver” cc&d, v278 (the December 2017 issue) Order this as a 6"x9" paperback book:

Order this writing in the issue book Language of Untamed Spirit the cc&d Sept.-Dec.2017 collection book		get the 4 page May-August 2017 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

In the Dark

Nora McDonald

    I’ve never liked water. Not in big quantities. Even the bath I only fill halfway. I blame the dream. That’s what made my decision so strange. I was moving halfway across the world to an island surrounded by it. Near the equator. From an island already surrounded by it. This island. A dark island. For five months of the year.
    It had all started when I went on holiday there. For the first time. It was the light that hit me as I opened the shutters that first morning after a late, dark arrival. But I didn’t realise how strong it was until I looked in the mirror beside the open shutter and saw my face for the first time. Except it didn’t look like my face. More like a totally unexplored Martian landscape with previously unseen craters and unexplained protrusions. I was a stranger to myself. I was another person.
    I only realised I wanted to be another person when summer hit this island of mine. Not autumn when the light customarily began to fade as the days get depressed. But summer. A summer characterised by sullen, sunless days and granite, grey skies with a troglodyte light level.
    I was in the dark. Literally and figuratively. Day after day. Five months in the dark I could tolerate. Eight was more than I could stand.
    I would not live the rest of my life in the dark.
    Not that I hadn’t spent my whole life in the dark. I’d been in the dark over which career to choose. I’d been in the dark when it came to men and I’d been in the dark when it came to going back to single after twelve years of marriage.
    It was time for the light.
    I should have remembered the dream. But it had been a long time since I’d had it. It had usually come on when I was stressed. I’d wake up sweating, the memory of being in a hut on a beach, the window with the water level rising slowly up it, the blackness and the fear that followed it lingering more than normal.
    “Maybe you drowned in a previous life!” said my friend Lynn when I told her.
    “Previous life!” I scoffed. “Don’t tell me you believe all that guff! Isn’t one life bad enough for you?”
    “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “How else do you explain irrational fears? Couldn’t they be carried over from a previous life? You never learned to swim, did you?”
    “Well, there’s my point exactly,” I said. “If I’d drowned in a previous life, I’d have learnt to swim, wouldn’t I?”
    I soused the recollection of my first sojourn into a swimming pool at the age of eleven. The bubbling waves of water, the others all around jumping and splashing, washing over me sending me to the bottom of the pool.
    “Maybe you were too scared!” she said.
    I didn’t like her reading my thoughts.
    “I nearly learnt!” I retaliated. “When I lived abroad!”
    I thought of the three feet of unruffled water that even the red mullet of the Mediterranean couldn’t bring themselves to rumple. I thought of the flippers and goggles I had donned like some Bond bombshell from a movie as I kicked off from the soft sandy bottom of the sea bed. I was older then. More confident. Until one over-zealous kick sent me sideways, my flapping flippers stirring up the sand as my head sank into the muggy murk of the Mediterranean.
    That was my last attempt at learning to swim.
    “Nearly is not actually learning!” sneered Lynn.
    “I don’t need to,” I said. “I never go in the water!”
    “Don’t you think you’ll need to when you move?” she said. “One hour on a roasting hot beach and you’ll be glad to go in the water!”
    Her words came back to me as I lay on that roasting hot beach. My top lip like a pool about to overflow, my eyes streams of water running rivulets down the side of my face.
    She was right. I would have to go in the water to cool off. I picked my way gingerly through the throng on the beach and placed a tentative toe in the water. It was rough but exciting. I ventured a little further, only to be the target of a frontal attack of small fishes nibbling my feet. I tried to retreat, backing away without looking, but was hit by someone behind me who sent me like a flying fish floundering into the Atlantic.
    My head was about to go under when I felt someone grip my hand. They say water and electricity don’t mix. It isn’t true. A shot of electricity rushed up my arm leaving me gasping. I’ve never experienced it before or since and a voice said, “Are you all right?”
    If I’d drowned at that moment, I’d have drowned happy, hearing that voice. It was almost like it was familiar to me. But I didn’t drown. My head cleared the water and I felt myself lifted clear into an upright position. He wasn’t familiar. I’d never seen him before.
    “That’s not a good way to swim,” he said, smiling.
    He wasn’t handsome. Small to average height with sandy coloured hair but that smile lit up his eyes like sunrise slowly surfacing.
    “I wasn’t,” I spluttered. “I can’t.”
    “I can see that!” he laughed.
    The nerve of the man, I thought. Laughing.
    “You nearly drowned me!” I retaliated.
    “Maybe you needed a push to learn to swim!” he said.
    His arrogance was annoying me.
    I disengaged my hand from his. The circuit was cut. I felt myself again.
    “I don’t like pushy people,” I said.
    A hurt expression seemed to hover momentarily in his eyes then move off on some far journey.
    “Look, I’m sorry. It was my fault, knocking you into the water like that. The least I can do is take you for a drink of some sort so you can get over the shock.”
    I was about to refuse. But then I would have been no better than him. Besides I felt in need of a sit down somewhere.
    “All right,” I said somewhat ungratefully. “I’ll need to throw something over this wet swimsuit.”
    I pointed at my sunbed. He put a hand under my elbow and steered me to the sunbed. I wished he hadn’t for the current of electricity ran up my arm.
    “I can manage,” I said, pulling away from him and grabbing my beach cover-up.
    “I’m glad I haven’t done any permanent damage,” he said.
    But I knew he had. Not to my body. But to something else. My soul.
    I wondered if he had felt it too.
    We had a drink at the beachside café then lunch. He told me he was on holiday. That he worked as a physical education teacher back in the United Kingdom but he’d had to give it up for family commitments.
    “Family commitments?” I queried.
    A sadness suffused his face.
    “I care for a sick relative,” he said.
    I should have inquired more but I didn’t like to. It was obviously a painful subject.
    “I live here,” I said, to change the subject. I moved here because I didn’t want to spend my life in the dark.”
    “We’re all in the dark in some way,” he said. “That’s why I got away too.”
     He smiled as if to smother dark thoughts.
    “Now we’re both in the light,” he said, raising his glass so that it sparkled in the sunshine, “and isn’t it wonderful?”
    And it was for two weeks.
    We visited hilltop villages, sampled local wines, climbed the volcano and went shopping at the local market. At night we sampled the local drinks and delicacies. His arrogance and my antipathy dissolved like rust, unable to form in a dry climate.
    The inevitable happened. It had to. We were so similar in every way.
    “God,” he said, one night rolling over on his back. “It’s a once in a lifetime————————.”
    His voice tailed away with emotion.
    Now I knew he felt the same. My happiness was complete.
    The next day we took a walk along the sea front where we’d first met. A man was distributing leaflets. I walked straight by but he stopped and seemed to have got in conversation with the man. I turned back.
    “I’ve lived here for twenty years, said the man.
    “I’ve just moved here,” I said.
    “You’ll not have experienced the tsunami warnings then, “said the man.
    “Tsunami warnings?” I replied, a strange foreshadow darkening my day.
    “Yes, we get them all the time,” he said.
    I was glad to walk on. Nothing must spoil my happiness.
    But the day continued to darken. He’d never mentioned swimming since we’d met. I wondered why he brought it up at lunch. On that day. Maybe it was the man. Or maybe he knew.
    “You really should learn to swim, you know,” he said over lunch. “I could teach you.”
    I’d have agreed to anything at that point. I loved him so.
    “There’s changing huts further along the beach, “he said. “How about now?”
    “Why now?” I said.
    “I have to go back tonight,” he said.
    “Back?” I said, time having had no meaning for me for two weeks.
    “Back to the U.K.”
    “You can’t!” I said.
    He looked sad.
    “No, I can’t” he said. “I love you.”
    He took my hand and we strolled down to the beach huts. I went inside one and changed into my swimming costume. He had so much to teach me. I couldn’t let him down.
    I emerged from the hut. He was already standing on the beach in his swimming shorts.
    “You look beautiful,” he said.
    It sounded like goodbye.
    “There’s something I have to tell you before we go in the water,” he said. “I’m married!”
    “Married!”
    It was a howl from the heart.
    “Don’t think badly of me,” he said. “She’s been sick a long time. You understand. I can’t leave her. Though I want to. You know that. Could you——————————————?”
    His voice tailed off.
    I knew what he was asking of me. I couldn’t.
    “I can’t!” I said.
    I was angry.
    “You should have told me before!” I said.
    Before? Before what? Before his hand had grabbed my arm?
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “See you in the next life.”
    I hardly heard his words as I ran up the beach. Away from him.
    I simmered for an hour. The nerve of the man. Expecting me to hang around for him. Then I knew. I knew I couldn’t leave him.
    I had to go back. Maybe he’d still be there. Where I left him. I had to tell him I’d changed my mind.
    I ran all the way back to the beach. The expanse of sand seemed bigger than I’d remembered. Wider. The sea further away. There were few people about. I flung open the door of the changing hut.
    He wasn’t there.
    Lying on the bench was a note. I picked it up and read it.
    “If you read this, you’ll know I’m on my way to the airport. Find me. I miss you already.”
    I would have. But a roaring noise distracted me. It was as the first of the 300 feet waves hit the hut and I saw the water rising rapidly up the window that I remembered the dream.
    I’m not in the dark any longer. I’m in the light. He’s not here. But that’s all right. For I know I’ll find him again. He may be a stranger. I may not recognise him. But I’ll know as soon as he touches me.
    I guess he made it over twenty miles inland to the airport. And safety. He was needed after all.
    I’m not a stranger to myself now. I’m another person. I’ve accepted everything. I’ve accepted the fact I needed to experience love. Painful though it can be. I’ve accepted the fact that he needed to receive love. He’d already been giving it for years.
    I’m already planning the next life. In case I miss him up here. With a little help, of course. I know they have my best interests at heart.
    Even though I may return to the dark at some point, somehow I think things will be a little clearer next time. I’m already clear about one thing.
    The first thing I’ll do is learn to swim.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...