Jellyfish

I dreamt of jellyfish.

Peacefully I floated in the blue ocean and they were all around. Translucent, they undulated, propelling themselves through the warm salty water. They were so beautiful and alien. I felt one with them and their long tendrils, snaking like running droplets of ink.

Suddenly I was afraid. I could feel their thoughts and could tell they meant to harm me. Slowly they closed in, still pulsating, surrounding me. They swarmed, and their tendrils stung me over and over. My skin was searing, my heart pumping fast, my body twisting, flailing; I was tangled in them now. I thrashed my arms but they were wrapped in the tendrils. oh god it hurts oh god don’t let me die oh god….

I awoke in cold sweat. The tangled tentacles of the jellyfish were now the sheets of my bed. I was alive. I was awake. There were no jellyfish.

But where was Chelsea? She’d slept next to me because she was scared of the monsters.

I looked over under the covers to find her body, her face blue as the ocean in my dream, the sheets wrapped around her tiny neck like a tentacle. She’d choked to death in the night. She’d suffocated in her sleep right beside me while I experienced my horrid nightmare.

I shook her lifeless body, screaming her name, hoping somehow my anguished cries would bring my daughter back. I cried, hot tears of rageful sadness and not understanding.

I wept and my tears were the salt of an ocean - a dead, uncaring ocean without mercy, one full only of the beautiful pulsating forms of the heartless jellyfish.

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Credits to: the_itch