DON'T PANIC!

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NEW PROMPT:
Write a poem or story about swimming in the ocean. It could be your first time or your latest. Describe the adventure.
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Standing on the empty beach in front of my rented cottage, I felt an odd, unearthly calmness to the ocean. No white caps broke the surface of the glass-smooth water. The horizon seemed closer than usual with the sky a blazing blue, unsullied by even one wisp of cloud.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I said out loud, trying to dispel the feeling of danger surrounding me. With that, I stepped gingerly into the cold water and waded in up to my waist. Missing was the gentle lapping of water against my body, something that never failed to help me through troubled days such as this.

The morning started out as usual when my cats woke me just as the night’s darkness slowly disappeared. “Okay, okay,” I yelled, trying to avoid multiple cat tails waving underneath my slippers as I walked into the kitchen. “None of you are starving, so give me a couple minutes.”

Ten minutes later, all fed and watered, my half-dozen roommates disappeared outside. That was the last I saw of them, six cats who usually came back after doing their “business” to sleep the day away inside our home. Today would be different, but I pushed worry about the missing animals out of my mind to concentrate on my newest novel.

By midday, my body was turning numb from sitting at the computer for hours. Outside the small room’s window, I could see the nearby Pacific Ocean and decided to go for an afternoon swim. Why else rent a place next to the ocean if not to go swimming on a whim? went through my mind while changing into my ratty, old bathing suit. It was still damp from yesterday’s swim, but there was nobody around to worry about my appearance.

Now, waist deep in the water, I looked around to check for other swimmers, possibly from the nearby cottages. Seeing nobody, I dove underneath the water and swam for a few yards before coming to the surface, gasping for air. I repeated this maneuver a few more times while looking for the usual fish that always congregated near the shoreline. Today, the water was empty, or so I thought.

Giving up on locating any sign of life, I stood high on my tip-toes with the water now up around my chin. When I looked once again up and down the beach for other people, I felt a nudge against the small of my back. Quickly turning around to face the horizon, the sight I saw startled me.

A dozen dolphins lined up in front of me with one marine mammal only inches away from where I stood. While I watched, mouth open in shock, this dolphin once again nudged me, gently pushing me toward the shore. All this time, the dolphin pod silently waited, until I left the water to stand paralyzed with fear on the beach.

Then, and only then, every one of the dolphins started chattering loudly as they raced away toward deeper water. One by one, as if participating in an aquatic ballet, each dolphin jumped high into the air. Instead of falling back as usual, the dolphins continued up into the sky, higher and higher.

I shaded my eyes against the burning sun to follow their course away from me. The ocean quickly turned into a maelstrom when more and more dolphin out further in the ocean joined the first pod. While the dolphins rose higher to escape the gravity of earth, their chattering changed.

With inflections of sorrow in their voices and in every language of humans around the world, these parting words came down only minutes before they disappeared forever.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish!”

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Microsoft Word count = 620

"The Writer's Cramp"  daily honorable mention for 10/11/08
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