Dating : The Reflection at the Lake, Part 3

Then, it appeared! It had been of the most beautiful lake, with its waters glistening within the Sun’s rays, and of the most intricate and flourishing life, made of the songs of birds and animals fluttering about, and of the trees and their leaves, whistling in tune to the wind and its movements. The sky above me had been so bright and blue that even the most refined diamond could not compare to its beauty! The clouds overhead were as white as angels’ wings, and they only helped to make the rays more visible to the eyes. I must admit that, at a certain time, I felt as if I had been visited by the Lord himself, as he was to have brought me into Heaven, far from the ails of being human. The air around me felt warm, as if I had been comforted by Mother Nature herself, as she held one of her children within her grasp and gave within him the purest of life. In all of my amusement, I hadn’t even noticed that I had been stripped bare of all my clothes, rendered naked as the day I had been born, and without anything to cover myself. I blushed in embarrassment, and tried to hide myself away, but something within me had prevented me from doing so. It was if I was being told by the trees and air around me to express myself in the most natural and authentic of ways, to render myself vulnerable to the elements of life itself, at the very root of my biology.

Wanting to know more of this newfound world that I found myself in, I stepped forward with a new vigor that overcame me, as I ran forward, a burst of energy, at full speed. I ran, and then leapt into the air like that of a gazelle, reaching upwards to that eternal sky. I pushed my legs outward as I looked down to see the water. I saw it within those blue waters — a reflection of who I had been, and who I looked to be. Within that single moment, I saw it all; my mother and father, the friends I had left behind as a result of my sickness, and with them, a group of angels that had been smiling so kindly at me, and even a hand that reached out to pull me into the lake. I inched closer to the water, and felt the first touches of the liquid upon my skin, as I let it consume with such a passion, unrivaled by the state I had been previously in. That water had been awfully cold, as if it had been untouched by the rays of the sun and the warm air that pierced through it, but I resisted the urge to shiver. I found myself, within a few short moments, submerged under the water, my breath taken from me, as what I saw below had been of something entirely foreign to what I had come to believe.

Looking downwards into the water, I briefly saw, for an instant, the presence of what appeared to be a large limb, with long fingers and made of a dark essence, slowly rise up from the depths of the lake. It had been faint at a glance, but with each blink of my eye, it grew closer and closer to me, coming at such a breakneck speed that any man who were to lose his focus for a mere split second would miss it coming to him. I had been intently focused on the sensation of the water around me, and did not see it coming to me initially. It had caught me off guard, as I, out of instinct before I could consciously recognize the danger, made an attempt to surface myself. However, before I could make a single move, this limb, of which remains unclear as to where it came from, came from below and snatched my leg, trapping it within its grasp. The jolt I felt nearly made me lose my oxygen; it felt as if I had taken a punch directly to my torso, and it took a surprising amount of force to be able to hold it in, lest I drowned. I continued to look down at the tentacle as it wrapped itself around me, and began to pull me to depths of the ocean. I squirmed and shimmied as hard as I possibly could; I mustered up all the vitality I had within me as a result of the nature around me, but it had not been enough.

With several jerks of its muscles, it continued to pull me down further into the deep blue waters, not taking any time to rest or recover. My struggles had been in vain, and my efforts to escape had gone to waste; my leg had been completely caught, and all I could do is watch as the sun and sky above became muddled within the ripples of waves. My breath had been running out, and I estimated, with what little mental faculty I had remaining, that I only had but a few short minutes before I would eventually lose my breath and begin to lose consciousness. Out of desperation, I tried to reach down and pry the limb off of me, but all it did was make me lose more of my precious oxygen. And so there I had been, trapped and unable to move at all! The rays of the sun seemed so distant at the time, and all I could see now was my vision fading away, into what appeared to be a shade of red that had been darker than normal; it had been so dark that I could not see a difference within the two, and they both seemed to blend together with no real difference between them. It escaped from me as I continued to be pulled down from the abyss, and it came into me, filling every crevice of my body with its contents, until, no longer, had I been able to move. What remained of me had been lost to the sea below, as I could only look down to see me, or perhaps my body, be dragged without a care to the darkest reaches of the Earth, never to be seen again. All that I could see, however, was nothing more than a reflection of myself within the water. The only difference being that I had been crying tears of blood, and frowning as I looked into the world that I once knew.