I couldn’t help going back to her. She had something, her charisma, it pulled me back underwater. Those waters were different. Only those who had dived right in them could know why.


I knew they were unlike any waters I had ever been in since the day I first fell in them. She pulled me down. She forced me to stay; that’s what I told myself. The next time, she didn’t have to keep me there, while my boat waited for me up the stairs, outside the water.


I knew it was my place and the more she pulled me down, the more I needed to stay. It was harder and harder to stay outside the water. I knew I belonged right where she was, but the more I went there, the less she came to me.


She didn’t disappear, she simply gradually stopped showing up and the more I saw her, the worse she looked. She was absent so often it made me come down even more, waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. It made sense that if I spent more time there, I would eventually see her again.


One more time, did she come.


I could never be more than four and a half minutes underwater. The moment I saw her, I knew I had to wait; I could wait; I would wait. The boat waited up there, I could always see it from where I was.


She appeared and came to me. Hadn’t I already seen her more times than I could count, I wouldn’t have recognized her. The shadows overcame her silhouette, a small presence. She wouldn’t talk, nor move when she got to me.


The rumble of the occasional wave crashing on the rocks came to my ears. My boat would break if it hit the rocks. I wouldn’t be there more than two minutes, though; I just needed to see her again.


She stared at me with those vacant eyes of hers. I wished I could have spoken at that moment. Whether it was because I needed to say something or scream at the pain that raked through my body, I’d never know, when her hand wrapped around my neck.


She had always been from a bigger species.


The blade I had always seen but never worried about, because of the charisma she had. Even when she held me down, I had the knowledge that it would be fine, because she was there. I stared straight into her eyes as she pierced my chest with her pointed blade.


That was the last time I saw her.


My eyes opened once more, light blinded me for a couple of seconds. I sat up and realized I was still underwater, where she had killed me. Invisible chains kept me there. There were pieces of wood all around me, covered in algae.


Time went by.


I never saw her again, but he came down to me.


I didn’t see her ever again, but he met up with me there every day.


I was chained down there, with those invisible strings that had always kept her down there. He didn’t know and I wouldn’t tell him; I could finally talk down there. Hopefully, my boat still waited for me up there. I knew I could never go back there, though, I knew that.


He began coming down every day, and I started being aware of what I had to do to go back to my boat. She had taught me what to do. Underwater, someone’s feelings vanished. I knew he would know what to do too once his time arrived.


I didn’t go to see him as much. I needed to keep down their anger hidden from my former species, in order to be able to wait for the day I’d finally break myself free from the chains. It was hard to leave them, they were furious with me; they said I was taking too long.


I could feel myself slowly disappearing. I knew I had to do it, or they would absorb me like they would have done with her, if she hadn’t broken herself off the chains, tying me to them, instead.


I couldn’t let myself become them.


The day arrived. I came out of the shadows, I had her pointed blade ready. I went to the stairs and waited, looking up at where my boat had once been, waiting for him to come down.


He never did. I patiently stayed there, feeling myself wither away into the deep ends, where they were waiting for me. He didn’t appear, as I ceased to exist, holding on to the blade that had cursed me down there.


I became one of them. She was there too.