By Louetta

Drowning


I swam across the lake alone. Halfway there I was taken prisoner
by some boys from the camp across the lake. Put in the canoe I
was bound hand and foot and taken to the far float. Once there I
was told the punishment for a girl caught spying was dunking.
Then they stripped me naked.

They tied a rope around my neck. I was told I would be dunked for
a minute at a time and then brought up and given a chance to
breathe. This would continue until the end. They dragged me to
the edge of the float and, naked and bound hand and foot, threw
me into the water.

Petrified with fear I found sense enough to struggle against my
bonds but it was no use. A minute passed and I was dragged up to
the surface by the rope around my neck and allowed to breath.
Then my head was pushed back under water.

Two minutes. Three. Four. Five. Each time they let me surface I
tried to keep my breathing steady. I had to concentrate on it
more and more and as the time went by I was getting shorter and
shorter on air. There simply wasn't enough for my body to
function properly. My mind became fuzzy and my muscles ached. As
time went by my brain became fuzzier and fuzzier and the pain in
my muscles increased it became harder and harder to get air when
I was allowed to.

By the tenth minute my body slowly began to go numb bringing me
closer to the time I would no longer be able to breathe at all.
My muscles and joints began to stiffen. I had more and more
difficulty getting air at all.

After fifteen minutes I felt searing pain in every fiber as lack
of oxygen began to squeeze the life out of me. I struggled
mightily, helplessly, desperately, futilely to lift myself up to
get enough air.

At twenty minutes they brought me up and held me there. I
screamed, I cried, I begged for mercy but it did no good. They
pushed me underneath the surface again. Every inch of me burned
with the pain. And slowly the pain turned to numbness, my fear
turned into fog, and I slowly drifted to the very edge of this
world, toward another, toward the blackness that would surely
come.

For the next five minutes I suffered terribly, every inch of my
slight brown body simply a conduit for pain. Slowly, slowly I was
being tortured to death. Every minute until they let me get a
little air seemed like an eternity.

At twenty five minutes I begged for help with my last breath.
Each time I went under I sank lower and lower as my muscles gave
way. One last time with a desperate effort I pushed myself up
just enough to raise my body and admit enough air to continue
living for another minute. Now I was only aware of the pain and
the agony of slowly suffocating to death.

My eyes tried to focus but more and more I was aware only of
suffering. I began to break down. Whatever composure I had had
now dissolved. Now I could barely get any air at all when I was
up. There was no respite from the pain. Now I was not aware even
of breathing. Without even realizing it I had stopped trying. The
water grew dark around me.

I felt the blood pounding in my head. My soft slender body
sinking slowly in the lake, every naked inch of me crying for
relief. From the searing pain, the increasing numbing of my
limbs, the desperate struggle for air, the lack of blood to my
brain. The dimming of my senses, colors gray, sounds a hollow
rush.

I felt the soft approach of darkness, then flashes of light, then
more darkness, then a strange quietness, a feeling of peace,
relief from the excruciating pain and then I drifted off to
nothingness. A final quivering of my naked body and then
nothingness. All that was left was my naked body hanging limply
from the rope around my neck.

Half an hour. My ordeal was over. They pulled me out. Some time
later I slowly began to emerge from the haze. I was laying naked
on the dock. I was still bound hand and foot. The boys were gone.

After an hour two fishermen in a boat came by. They unitied me
and one of them gave me his sweatshirt. It was big enough to come
down over my bare bottom and to cover me in the front. They took
me back to camp.

When they left I sat alone on the beach and cried.

louetta_keene@yahoo.com


