Slipped (or, Through the Drake Passage)

Slipped

(or, Through the Drake Passage)

It just happened, it didn’t look like it was supposed to happen that way, something about going out for a midnight stroll, out on the main deck as our cruse ship crossed—in the process of crossing—the Drake Passage, perhaps the most hazardous body of water in the world—so I’ve heard, and can now bear out; going from the South Shetland Islands towards the Argentine coast, and the city of Ushuaia.

Before this, my wife was simply making the bed over again for when we returned, and we started from the 9^th level where our room was and I slipped, and then I found myself chest deep in the water and choking. The Drake Passage was choking me. With both hands I waved at my wife, not sure if she saw me at first, I was bobbing in and out of the water. I was trying to get my breath back. Everyone was drunk onboard the ship, it was New Years Eve, 2011. Now that I think of it, I couldn’t have held onto the railing even if I wanted to, I slipped, fell on my face, slid backwards under the railing, and down. I did try to hang onto the arm of a chair, but I rolled so fast, and I heard my wife’s cry: “Oh God, oh my God!” I had swallowed a lot of water when I heard that second “…my God!”

No one came after me and that’s perhaps because no one was around, it was 3:00 a.m., and it was dark and there was water around me just the usual ship lights and the many windows blinking at me as this ship kept passing me.

I looked up, and she was all right only she was climbing over the railing. There was a moon and the water was plenty rough, and I tried to yell “NO, stay there!”

“Man,” I said “that’s some woman,” and I wanted to tell her: you never saw water like this before. She’s a good swimmer; she had a hard time at first seeing were I was, she couldn’t recognize me—she bumped into something under the water, a big fish I suppose, then she found me.

She’s a master swimmer, I told myself, all those lessons paid off, and I could just visualize her jumping over the waves as she was doing, like a dolphin to get to me.

Now we both were in deep water. I was trying to find something to say. Figured I ought to get whatever I had to say out now, and quick.

The water was endless, farther than I could see. She came up close to me now.

“For better or worse,” she commented, she had been bobbing like me, her neck high under the water—both of us drifting.

Now I couldn’t see anymore port holes of the ship. It was the biggest ship I ever saw in my entire life, I remember seeing its anchor, huge. I could no longer see anything sharp or clear.

“It made me shaky,” she said “to think I’d have to live life, the remainder of my days without you. Couldn’t do any good by myself, and so I took a couple of deep breaths and dove over the railing, off the stern with this lifejacket!”

And we floated for awhile, she floated better than me. Heard a noise, it was a seagull—I hung onto my little wife, and the last tings I can remember saying was:

“I guess you were right,” she knew what I meant; she always said we’d die together. Then I went down, and she was hugging me, and we never came back up.

Note: If you’re asking how someone can write a story if they are dead, about their dying, it’s easy, it was a dream—and who’s to say, how we will die? No: 616 (4-6-2010)