24 years underwater

24 years underwater

The swash whispered as the wave broke onto the shore, a delicate, rhythmic sigh that felt like the Earth was breathing with me. The seafoam, light as spun sugar, washed across the rigid pebbles in a gentle, bubbling lace before retreating to the deep. As another tide came, it felt majestic and mysterious, a vast expanse that was so empty yet so full of life all at the same time like a liquid desert made of dreams. I stared at that blue. It was a regal azure colour, the kind of shade that belonged in a stained glass window or a royal velvet cloak. It reminded me of something, though in the hazy peace of the morning, I could not quite recall what. It was a familiar feeling, weirdly familiar, almost an uncanny sense of deja vu that tickled the edges of my mind. I ignored it anyway, refusing to let a tiny mystery ruin the perfect stillness.

I shifted my weight, fitting myself comfortably onto the smoother pebbles. They were all different sizes, polished by years of wandering the tides, but they felt very similar like a huddle of quiet siblings resting under the sun. I hugged my knees tight to my chest and stared out at the sheet of liquid glass, watching the sunlight dance in golden diamonds across the surface. I closed my eyes and took a deep, salt kissed breath. In, then out. I blocked out the busyness of the city and the noise of my own thoughts, focusing my mind entirely on the sea. The beach had always been my favourite place, ever since I could remember; it amazed me how brilliant and versatile it could be. One minute, people are surfing and swimming, laughing as they treat it like a tranquil playground. It felt safe, like a cradle. But I knew its power, too, how in a split second, the characteristics of that same sea could change, turning into a royal blue abyss that commanded respect.

I started to loosen up slightly, stretching my legs out and feeling the lingering, honey like warmth of the oval pebbles against my skin. I was deep in my focused galaxy of thoughts, drifting through a peaceful void where nothing could hurt me. It was nice, being at the sea, finally taking a long overdue break from life. But as the sun climbed to its zenith, the light sharpened, stripping the regal softness from the water. The azure began to lose its velvet warmth, hardening into something sterile, piercing, and terrifyingly familiar. The diamonds of light on the surface stopped dancing and started to glare, hitting my retinas with the force of a physical blow. The beauty of the water began to curdle, turning from a sanctuary into a surveillance.

The transition was not a fade; it was a violent, jagged tear in the fabric of my reality. My stomach did not just drop; it inverted, a cold, oily nausea rising in my throat as the peace of the Mediterranean evaporated. I knew that blue. It was the colour of the sky just before a tornado rips a house from its foundation. It was the surgical, predatory azure of my father’s eyes. Specifically, it was the shade they turned when he stopped shouting, that terrifying quiet phase when the air in the house would grow thick and heavy, like we were all underwater, waiting for the strike.

The years of therapy, the thousands of dollars spent on the velvet couch, the breathing exercises, the safe space visualizations, it all disintegrated like wet tissue paper. I realized then that my mind had not healed; it had simply performed a long term burial. I had built a life on top of a grave, and the sea had just dug it up. I was not a twenty four year old woman on holiday. I was six years old, my spine pressed so hard against the kitchen baseboards that the wood grain left indents in my skin. I remembered the way the light from the hallway would hit his eyes as he loomed over me, turning them into two frozen, unblinking oceans of pure, calculated malice.

There was no soul in that blue, only the desire to dominate, to break, and to own.

The sensory details of my trauma flooded back with a sickening, high definition clarity that made the beach around me blur. The salt air was gone, replaced by the suffocating, stale scent of clove cigarettes and the biting, antiseptic fumes of the cheap gin he drank until his hands stopped shaking and started hitting. I could almost feel the phantom weight of his hand on my shoulder, not a caress, but a clamp, a reminder that I was property. I remembered the games that were not games, the way he would make me sit in total silence for hours, watching his eyes for the slightest change in hue that meant I was allowed to breathe again. Every mistake I made, a dropped glass, a loud footstep, a look he did not like, was met with a calm, surgical cruelty that was far worse than an outburst. He did not just hurt me; he erased me.

The sound of the waves changed, losing its musicality. The rhythmic hiss of the foam became the dragging sound of a belt being pulled through loops, a slow, metallic shirr that used to make my heart stop in my chest. The pebbles beneath me, once warm and comforting, now felt like the cold, unyielding floor of the basement where I was sent to think about what I had done. I felt the phantom sting of the cold air on my skin, the way he would make me stand perfectly still while he stood in the doorway, just watching me with those azure eyes, enjoying the way I trembled. He loved the fear. He fed on it like a parasite. And sitting here, on this beautiful beach, I realized he was still feeding.

A shadow began to bleed across the stones, long, thin, and jagged. It was a heavy, obsidian shape that seemed to swallow the light, moving with a deliberate, slow motion grace that made my skin crawl. It did not flicker like a bird or drift like a cloud; it was stationary, anchoring itself to me. I felt a sudden, oppressive heat at my back, the kind of warmth that comes from a predator standing close enough to feel its breath. My muscles locked into a primal rigor mortis, a paralysis I had not felt in a decade. My vocal cords felt as though they had been cauterized; I could not even whimper.

Behind me, the stones groaned under a heavy, unmistakable weight. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The footsteps were measured, echoing the same terrifying cadence of the boots that used to pace outside my bedroom door while I hid under the bed. Then came the sound that shattered the last of my sanity: the metallic, oily snick of a silver lighter. A cloud of clove scented smoke drifted over my shoulder, thick and cloying, wrapping around my throat like a physical hand, forcing the air out of my lungs.

I did not turn around. I could not look at the face that belonged to those eyes. I just stared at the horizon, where the azure water seemed to rise up like a wall, mirroring the man behind me.

“You really thought a few miles and a few years would be enough, Elena?”

The voice was low, vibrating through the stones and into my very bones, sounding exactly like the grinding of the tide against the rocks. It was a voice that had promised I would never be free, a voice that had whispered shh while my world fell apart.

“You are just like the sea, little girl. You always come back to me eventually. And this time, I am not letting you go back out with the tide.”

The ocean surged, a roar of royal blue that filled my vision, and as the shadow leaned down to whisper in my ear, I realized the beach was not a sanctuary. It was a trap, and the predator had been waiting for the light to change.