Deathbed- A Dream Laid to Rest in Prose

Bubbles of jellylike trapped air rose upwards through the pool's cyan water. Before his eyes and all about him they climbed as he pushed/glided by cumbersome underwater breaststrokes toward the tiled edge. Here he hoped to clamber up the side and out of the pool. He did not really know why he wanted to do this- nor did he know how long he had been swimming, or how he had got there. It didn't feel important. Maybe he had swum until his paid session was over and it was time to leave, or until he was too shrivelled to continue. Maybe he had stayed underwater until his eyes stung unbearably. Maybe he had appeared out of thin air.
His biceps and triceps squashed and tightened as he tried to pull his lank bodyweight over the pool edge onto the dry tiles. Less easy than perhaps it might once have been. With a raspy grunt it was done and he tried not to sag as he stood up. His arms felt like dry old rope. Dry? If it were not for all this wet. Looking down he ran his hands over his body to brush off the main mass of poolwater. Paradoxically it felt new; lined and callused but hardly worn. Rather than dwell on this he proceeded to the exit corridor. In fact, he was drawn to it.
The white tiled walls of the pool area gave way to an open archway, and it was under this that the start of the corridor laid. The arch was one and a half men high and three wide. It seemed to be the area's only exit, so presumably the men's and women's changing rooms could be found on up the corridor. Walking one foot after the other under the arch, he saw that there were in fact many doorways lining the right and left sides of the corridor. The pool's well-lit shades of white and pale blue were here replaced with comfortably browner shades where light played sparingly through rays of dust. Inside he felt the beginnings of anticipation, conjuring itself from hidden depths he could not fathom. The first door on his right sat ajar and he knew he should enter. Right hand on the frame he swung himself slowly through…

Through the door was a tiled cuboid room contained within four blank walls topped by wide rectangular windows. Spaced out parallel across the floor were flat plank benches long enough for a body and as wide as the width of one and three quarters. All this was secondary information to him though, for one bench along from him lying on her side was an old and half-remembered familiar. With half-open eyes and a half-smile she was lying there on her bench watching him in the doorway.
"I know you. From the past, I think." Wryly and slowly, she said this with a smirk.
"Oh God but it's been so long- hasn't it? I know you, I think. There's so much past that has passed."
"Yes. There's so much to remember. Come here and we'll talk."
He took gentle steps toward her bench. He lay down on the bench, alongside and facing his old friend.

But as they shuffled into a perfect parallel co-alignment, she quickly did not seem so old. Across a fading gradient her body reformed into a smoother, more defined form. Time travel. Her face- so near- showed surprise and delight, telling him his body had changed too.

She poked his nose, holding the finger there. "Where have you been?"
"In the pool."
"Come on. Before that."
He sighed a breathy chuckle and pushed the finger away. His knuckles brushed on her belly as he raised his hand. "A mystery."
"The unknown. It seems to be all around. I seem to recall it followed you everywhere." A smile begetting mischief.
"I'm not so clever nowadays."
"Oh no. Not less clever…but maybe less interesting?"
"Aha. Not clever enough to be interesting." A sad smile.
"You were both, silly."
"Were. What did I ever amount to?"
"Whatever it was, it fascinated me. Trust me, you were a star."
"Whatever I am, was, I don't know. But I remember how bright you were."
Her young face wrinkled up into a huge smile. "Aww, that's-," she stopped. Her expression switched in a blink to an alert stare over his shoulder at something in the doorway.

He looked over, then in surprise stood up. There in the doorway was a five foot eight visage in the shape of a man, coiled in anger. His hair was short and rigid; his clothes spoke of conformity. The man screamed outrage and proclaimed to have caught the two amidst an episode of disloyal sin. The man swung his arms about in mad gestures and his eyes bulged disconcertingly. The man wanted a fight.
He struck out towards this man, shivering a little with fear. When he got close the man jabbed him in the gut with a clenched fist. Doubling over, another fist clamped down on his back. Grotty torrents of insane, vindictive laughter spewed from the man's heaving lungs. But…but he was so young, so young it all meant nothing. Stepping forward into the man's space he punched up and through a chin, a jawbone, a nose. Grabbing his shoulders he easily wrestled him onto the corridor floor and struck, struck, struck at him again and again. He pummelled his face, squashed his chest- kept going until…until the man was gone. Not a particle visible.
He exhaled. Heavens. His cold shivers were now hot and fluid. He seemed to feel conscious of every arrangement of blood pulsing about his body-frame. He recalled that this was an adrenaline rush. Slowly his pulse lowered and the world, or at least the corridor, came back into focus. He felt he had achieved something; that he was a little bit safer. With a start he remembered his friend, waiting for him back in the room. Hurrying, he returned.

And as soon as he was back in the room, as soon as he once again lay down with her, the room was gone. Everything changed, except the bench they lay on. Their new surroundings rattled and shook up dust from the floor and walls of wooden planks. The walls formed a narrow rectangle around the bench, and there was no way back into the corridor. There was a feeling of forwards motion, building.
She clung fervently to the bench now with monkey fingers, and when he lay down again her eyes darted around, reading his expression. He noticed her skin was a littler paler, a little less tangible. But those eyes, they only looked brighter. "What does it mean? Where are we going?"
"I don't know."
"I think I do. There's something inside of me, it's wrong." Her words hinted at panic.
"I'm sure everything's in tune. Just stay with me." His last dregs of adrenaline helped his confidence. She did not seem convinced- she gripped his shoulders with animal strength and said in a breath, "There's not much time left!"
"No, no. There's so much time. Calm down and we'll talk."
They held hands, they touched. The locomotive sped up a little more. They were oblivious. He could have been sure he sensed her heartbeat decreasing. After a moment of relative silence, she spoke. "Hey, it's wonderful to be here with you." At that he broke out into a colossal smile. The inward emotions he felt were wide and vibrant, but his face said it all easily. A similar expression spread across her own face. They stayed like that, beaming and half-laughing- breaking off one-anothers' chuckles with their own, like a kind of gentle chiding correction.
"Do you think," she said, putting a hand to his cheek, "all the times we met before this were the prelude to this moment?" For a moment his considered this.
"No. Every event was sovereign to itself. I wouldn't put a full stop on a throne."
"The past…every time, every coincidence was real. But it feels…gone."
"Old, forgotten kings." The room lurched as he said this.
"Clouds of vanishing sand particles, blowing in the wind."
"Aren't you the poet?"
"Hey, shut up! I'm a queen!"
"A dead, forgotten queen. Beautiful though."
"So long as the wake behind me holds on to that sovereignty, I can't be forgotten" She smiles like an enigma. He smirks a little. They're having fun.
"Now I'm confused…what about death?" Raising a hand to her chin, her smile is unblemished. "Death, I think I can deal with. What's a void? It's nothing."

The sense of movement in the room-which had been steadily rising-multiplied threefold, climaxed, and was gone. The wooden planks, the dust, were gone too. Their bench now faced into the black-hole heart of a rainbow kaleidoscope spiral vortex, spreading out across and towards them in many dimensions. Perpetually it approached them, but grew no closer. It was beautiful, simple.
"Here we are!" She yelled over the cosmic wind that emanated from the dark centre of the portal and toyed with her hair, drawing attention to her ever-paler skin. She was sitting up now, staring in. He followed suit, narrowing his eyes into a squint. The atmosphere of the room felt saturated. He stared into the abyss. "I can't make sense of it."
There was music in her voice when she said: "Nobody can…say, what's a void?"
He looked down. A melancholy curve played on his lips. "Nothing."
Lying down on her side again she moved with grace, and said, "Here we are in one moment in time. Lie down and we'll talk. There's so much past that has passed."
He obeyed. Side by side, the faced one another.
Look at her face, so calm. Her eyes were a watery tranquil blue. Oh god. Bubbles moved around inside him. When she spoke the words resounded across his senses. "Look at you, fit to burst with emotion. That's life. There are moments, you know, that are so intense…so full of feeling. I remember them; days that felt more real than others. You must be so alive right now."
His loving smile shook. "No-one's been more right. I could laugh! I could bawl! But you're so calm. So…" He trailed off. The bubbles quelled.
"I'm ready." Her hair blew faster now, the portal was widening. "This is a goodbye, friend."
"I guess I'm ready too. I'm content."
"I'm content." She slowly shut her eyes. She grinned.
"For now, we are content together." He gazed into the portal. It was so real, but it wasn't his.
"'For now' is as good as 'forever'. Not long after she said those words, she died.
He looked to the body. Then he stood up. He felt cold tiles on the balls of his feet. He breathed in fresh, white air. Turning, he looked to the body again. It was fading with the portal. Nothing compelled him to leave, so he simply stood there in the room (reverted to its old, plain, self) for some time and experienced the tremendous stillness that followed in the wake of her passing.



-AFTERBIRTH
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beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep- snap. Damn.

The young man sighed out a long and musty breath of warm air as he pulled himself upright out his thick orange sheets. His vision shifted in and out of a half-conscious blur. At the back of his head was a vast sense of fulfilment, fading. His routine passed that morning under a haze. He ignored the small things- whether his toothpaste dosage was pea-sized, the remaining battery level on his phone- and dreamed up the outline for new story.