Browsing
I was on the internet, just idling browsing, when I started to notice a pattern. My searches, suggested ads, even words in unrelated articles, were all guiding me in certain directions. I don’t mean cookies or whatever. I mean a feeling of being pushed or pulled down a particular path, or series of paths, until I arrived at a particular point. A specific phrase.
Clever Abyss.
Drowsing
I didn’t know what it meant, and searching for answers didn’t bring me any closer to understanding if it was a coincidence or if something was manipulating me. So I closed the browser. Twenty minutes later, out of boredom and curiosity, I reopened it. I tried to simulate normal looking around, reading, and watching videos, but I knew, in the back of my mind, I was waiting to see if some unseen current drug me back to the clever abyss.
Five minutes of browsing and I thought I had my answer. Pictures of water, of rivers, were everywhere I went, but no sign of the clever abyss. Maybe the internet was just being wonky, pulling up odd results because the algorhythms were messed up or something. Still, it was a bit of a relief to not see a hidden hand behind the weirdness anymore. Just lots of river stuff and the same ads, over and over, for somebody that sold handmade scarves?
It was called Scarves by El.
I tried to let it go and find something longer to watch, but even on videos, I kept getting ads for “Scarves by El” over and over. Something about it bothered me. Bothered me more than just the annoyance of the ads. Why did “Scarves by El” sound so familiar? Why did reading it make me feel nervous again?
I opened up my text app and typed in the name. Scarves by El. Then, on a whim, I tried to make different words out of those same letters, almost like a little game. I didn’t even realize what my fingers were typing until I read it out loud.
“Clever Abyss.”
I felt a flare of panic in my chest as I closed the app and shut off my phone. I needed to chill. I was freaking myself out over nothing. I had two more hours before the train reached the station, so I might as well get some sleep if I could.
The idea of sleeping when I was so keyed up seemed impossible, but the more my thoughts circled like frightened birds, the more tired I became. The rhythm of the track, steady and constant, seemed to hypnotize me as the countryside outside the window slipped away like the end of the world. Soon I was drowsing, and then I was asleep.
Drowning
I woke up at the bank of a large, green river. I looked around for the train, the station, the people or some sign of how I got there, but there was none. Just me and the river. And in the distance, like a new birth, there was a cry. I didn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear.
Help. Danger. Please help me.
So I ran upriver, thoughts of how I’d come to be there gone for the moment. The sun was close to setting, and this part of the river was deep in shadow from the surrounding trees, but I still could make out the ripples from frantic splashing in the middle of the river’s closest bend. I called out that I would get help, but the panicked cries only grew louder. There was no time for that, it seemed to say. There was only me and now.
Tossing off my jacket, I plunged into the water, calling out that I was coming, thinking from the sounds I’d heard that it was some woman or older child stuck on a branch or rock and needing help before the water pulled them under for good. It was only as I drew close that I saw the source of the cries. It did look a bit like a woman, but only a bit. I had the strange thought that this wasn’t a woman at all. It was what a woman might look like if drawn by a shadow. What form might be given to the absence of a woman where there should be one. A person plucked from reality and replaced by a void.
A sneaky void that had lured me out into the water and was grasping me now. A wise darkness, pulling me into a cold embrace and whispering to me things I could not know and didn’t want to understand. A clever abyss, welcoming me home with a song of return and a gentle drowning.
I fought to keep my feet, but it was too strong. I struggled to breathe, but it told me it knew better. I felt myself die, and through that death, I felt myself being reborn.
Crowning
My new body was small and fragile at the crowning, but even as I crawled free of the old one, I felt it growing. In five minutes I had lungs that could take the air. In ten more, I had legs that could take the land. I found the jacket that had belonged to the old me and I put it on. I was still naked otherwise—a young woman wrapped in a jacket and looking harmless and sorely in need of help. I knew somehow there was a house further up the river. A family lived there, and they had a daughter that was just about my size. I could get clothes from them, get a ride to the station, and from there, I could go anywhere in the world.
The phone buzzed in my pocket and I took it out. It was a text message from the woman I had once called mother.
Mom: Cash, I know you feel like you need to do this, visiting the country where you were born. I wish I was able to come with you, but I understand you felt like you needed to do this on your own. Just know how much I love you. I may have found you there, abandoned and alone, but you are and always will be my daughter. Be safe and call when you can.
Crowding
I feel so full as I read the text. So full of love and so full of life. I have my own daughters now, crowding together tight, growing inside of me much as I once grew inside the clever abyss of the river. I will share them with the woman I call Mom, and then I will share them with everyone else I meet. No one will ever be alone again, and everything will be different.
I text her back as I walk toward the house where the family will give me clothes and passage.
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