Lake of Green Water

Lake of Green Water: Ten Years Post-Trauma


       In the heavy heat of summer, the tepid water before me is alive and demonic with the trashing movements of blissful children in careless play. But I have come to visit a grave, one which has been all but lost: its tomb robbed, its stone worn bare, its earth unkempt. It is said that time heals all things. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps the slow tick of time covered the wound that was left so many years ago, the skin no longer sensitive; the scar gone.
       The summer before kindergarten, when I was five and she was six, was one of days with cold nights and hot afternoons. Ignorant of the ever encroaching school year, we went about our merry lives without a care in the world, much like any other children would. But our parents, to celebrate our final summer before we were swallowed up in a seemingly never-ending world of textbooks and homework, took us camping. We stayed in a large, two-room tent that housed Emma, my father, and myself, my father in one section and Emma and I in another. While he slept heavily in the farthest room from the zipped-down door, we sat, wide awake in the front section. We were both dynamic children, apt to bounce off of invisible walls with nameless exhilaration, so sleep was the farthest thing from our minds. It was not long before we started running out of things to talk and laugh about when Emma got an idea: fishing. A man-made lake was only a few yards from our site. There was a dock built specifically for fishing with no one outside to guard it, or notice us at all for that matter. So I agreed. I grabbed the tackle box after tiptoeing out of the tent and ran to catch up with Emma as she skipped away from me.
       In the shadow of the trees, we could just barely make out the rippling reflection of the water. Emma raced blindly through the trees while I struggled to hold on to the tackle box that was a substantial amount of weight for a five year old to carry. But somehow, I ran as well, and although she had been a few feet away to begin with, I attempted to close the space between us. And I would have, but I tripped. It was stupid, really. I tripped over my own two feet, and the tackle box fell out of my hands onto the ground where it was emptied of its contents. Silver hooks gleamed, bladed smiles grinning animatedly from within the menagerie of rubber lures and unused, brightly feathered flies. I glanced up just long enough to see my friend disappear into the darkness. I tried to pick up everything as quickly as I could, but I could tell that my knees were bleeding and to be alone, in the woods, in the dark.... I got up and tried whispering Emma's name into the trees, but all I heard in reply was the wind. I began to make my cautious way towards the soft ripples that I could see more clearly ahead. Then I ran; again. But the closer I got to water, the more worried I became. The silence crushed me, and it was getting hard to breathe. I stopped running and stepped out of the trees, but to no greater comfort. I looked all around.
        I heard it before I saw it. A wild thrashing in the water took me by surprise, and the choking muffled cry was enough to convince me that it was time to run again. I threw myself down on the dock and screamed her name, but Emma made no reply. The water was still moving, though, and I could hear her gasping for breath, so I reached my arm as far down as I could. I felt myself panic, but all I could think of was my friend, and how I needed to help her, that she couldn’t swim…. I started screaming again, telling her to grab my hand, until after a few moments, she did. I had her hand in mine and I believed she was safe.
      But she was heavier than I had thought, heavier than the tackle box that I had been carrying only minutes before. I tried to pull her to the surface, but she slipped out of my grip. I tried to use both hands, but it was cold outside, and the water was colder. I quickly lost feeling in my fingers, then my hands, then my wrists. I tried to wriggle her out of the freezing water somehow, but I couldn't. And she slipped farther and farther away from me until I lost her completely. Screaming at the top of my lungs, screaming her name, I begged her to come back, to try, but I knew she could not hear. And it was not long before the ripples stopped and the water settled and silence surrounded me.
       After that, I remember not being able to breathe, feeling my lungs contract and my throat burn, but my chest dry and empty. I made myself get up and run, run even though my legs burned and even though the cold air stung my eyes. I ran and fell, several times, disoriented by the pulsing blood in my ears. It took me a few minutes to find the tent again because I stopped seeing the world around me when she slipped beneath the cold surface of the water. I stumbled. Forced myself through the rough plastic and, wheezing, dragged myself to my father's side of the tent. I woke him up and started screaming again. After I had managed to utter a few intelligible words, he got out of the tent and started running towards the lake. I watched him go, but I could not move. I collapsed on the ground. The last thing I remember thinking about was the tackle box, and that, were it not for my dropping it, Emma may have survived the night.
       There is no way to forget. No way to go back to the harmony of youth once it has been tainted by the memory, the fear, of death. No way to close your eyes and without waking up to a harsh reality. No way to return to a dream once it is lost in the moments between sleep and waking.
I remember Emma’s hair, the graceful movement of her dark locks onto the slender bend of her shoulders. I remember her laugh…her smile. I remember the pain of ignorance, of not understanding what it meant to be dead. I remember thinking that she would come back. I remember the thick feeling of dread welling up inside when I realized that she wouldn’t. I remember not being able to cry.
       Sitting now on the bright tinctures of new swing-sets, you would never know the merciless reality of the things hidden here, for the laughter is too real. All that is left now is the burn of the phlogiston orb, the pink skin of ignorant youth, and the elation of living.

An Excerpt from "The Lethal Timepiece" by Lydia A.

It began with the descent of a coffee bean. In the green of Owen's eyes, there was another man overlapping his actions: a vivid deja-vu. His knuckles slept, digging into his chin and throat, his thorax leaning heavily over the steaming mug on the counter. Across the room, the apparatus gurgled stubbornly into the torrid soup and spat its creature into the coffee pot with bitter hisses and snarls. The dull repetition of these sounds was drawing Owen back through the eye of the needle into the warm smallness of sleep. He closed his eyes momentarily, allowing the weight of his head to fall, before blinking his way back to the present where a tiny clattering had tickled his ears. Reaching his hand down to the white tile floor, Owen captured between his fingers a bean, a coffee bean that had lost its way.

The back of Owen’s neck twitched, his brows flexing as he turned the black speck over, concentrating on something very far away. There was an itch somewhere in his brain, a small uneasiness that threatened to rise up, to disrupt the quietude of Owen’s inertia. From somewhere, he saw an image of himself, shaking his head, pursing his lips, pinching his nose, and his fingers raking the back of his neck.

            He shook his head, pursed his lips, pinched the bridge of his nose, and his fingers raked the back of his neck.

The motions had occurred as if beyond his control. For a few moments, he was lost in a contemplative fog, baffled by the accuracy of his deja-vu. The similarities suggested premonition, but Owen was not a spiritual man, and thus began to be haunted by the idea of such coincidence. His eyes were gaping, still dilated and encrusted with the sands of sleep. As he sighed into his coffee cup, his tongue seizing the inky heat, he mulled over the thought of deja-vu, thought about it deeply; dissected it and forgot its meaning, all the while rolling the little black dot between his fingers.

            The coffee-maker uttered a relieved sigh and quit its regurgitation, which jerked Owen back into his morning habituals. He glanced at the clock above the stove across the room from him, putting down his coffee mug as he realized with remarkable indifference that he was probably going to be late for work. With a bitter moan, Owen reluctantly allowed his legs to carry him out of the kitchen, through the living room, and down the hall to his bedroom.

It was often necessary for him to function in this perfunctory manner, because unlike the monotonous moles whose cubicles surrounded his tired work-space, Owen had dreams. He laughed at the thought of calling his occupation "work." All day, he sat at a desk accumulating paper, stacking it neatly in trays (supposedly to assume the appearance of organization, Owen often theorized); and throughout the day, various individuals would arrive to remove chunks of his white, rectangular mountain. He sometimes thought that if, one day, no one were to come to his desk to chip pieces from his ivory tower, that it would bridge the gap between the earth and moon, and that he could walk on it indefinitely, perpendicular to this disgusting routine, straight to that beckoning orb.

            Owen often went to the moon. He would lie on his back on the floor of his cubicle, his feet secure against the infinite reams before him, and walk up. Defying gravity and all semblance of reason, he would walk the entire 238,900 miles, in silence. His office shoes, brown loafers that were conveniently comfortable, kissed the edges of memos, faxes, announcements, reminders, clip-art birthday party invitations, and printable coupons from the coffee shop that no one liked, but that everyone went to because the good coffee shop was expensive and all the way across town. But Owen made his own coffee at home, and so the papers kept piling up until he was immersed in them, and could not breathe for fear of getting paper-cuts in his throat.