Waterlogged

I have a memory that I can't shake, like a chill creeping up my spine. Every now and then I get some kind of impression that I've been here before, but I know it isn't deja vu. It's like I've found some way to travel from two points in time simultaneously, and somehow keeping my lunch in my stomach. One of me is here, on the side of the shore watching seaguls glide to coarse sand, picking at french fries thrown from the pier, but another is out there, just above water, taking his last breath in a submarine.

It started with a boat ride, innocent, really. I'd never been on a boat, thought it would be interesting to take a ride across the sea like those old sailors in Alaska. I had been swimming in the ocean before, when I first saw the beach. It was like love at first sight. I could scarce believe it to be real. I remember it being warm when the high tide lapped against my toes, and coughing up salt water when I was caught under a wave twice my size. I was lucky it wasn't a riptide, rather one of those pushing waves that sent me straight back to shore, still I was never scared of drowning, despite nearly doing so.

That changed when I stepped onto a small cruising ship about twelve years ago. It felt so unnatural, the swaying. I felt like a leaf caught in a breeze being tossed about, but at least once the leaf hit the floor everything would be still. When I'm in the ocean, I am part of those waves, and I am at peace even when she tosses me like a rag doll in the folds of her blue dress. There I could find no serenity in the water, as if the sea knew there was something man-made on her skin and she did everything she could to scratch it off. The sea was with anything that attempted to tame its waters, and I shared in her nausea at the very thought of being controlled. But it wasn't just the unnaturalness of the waves not being at my feet, it was the thought that this could very well be a metal tomb underneath leagues, crushed, twisted, and cold. Suddenly, I couldn't breath.

Wearing heels and a red dress on unsteady footing wasn't my idea of safety. I needed out. I remember briskly walking past waiters with horderves and champagne. I vaugley recalled a conversation about needing to become accostumed, something about sea-legs, but everything told me it was more than that. Then the vision hit me. As I breathed salted air speeding across the night bay, I was transported back in time watching shining lights not from a distance but right in front of me. A cacophony of smells, noise, language, bombarded my senses, but I couldn't see a thing. Overhead red lights flashed, men crashing into me. I took a breath to slow it all down, to see where I was going, but then I stumbled into three feet of ice cold water. Vision blurry and body aching I continued on to the main boiler room. How I knew it was the boiler room I have no idea, but I knew that maybe if I had released some torpedos, we would have enough boyancey to get back to the surface.

I treaded water all the way through, my captain's voice hoarse and muddy from barking orders at the other boys to seal off whatever leaks they could. Still I carried on, and pried open the hatchway left twisted open by the weight and pressure of the surrounding water bending the hull out of shape. By some miracle, I reached the control panel for the load we carried, and at once began loading whatever torpedoes I could into the chambers, but they were much too heavy for me alone. I tried calling out to the others, but they did not hear me. I had to do something, so I grabbed at the first out of the stack, and with great difficulty, loaded into the chamber and launched it. I reached for the second, hoisting it with my legs braced against its immense weight, and moved as quickly as I could to the second loading chamber, but we were still sinking, and we were gaining pressure. Another indent formed on the hull, jolting the submarine, and causing me to lose my grip on the torpedo. Before I knew it, I was pinned between it and another console. It was the first time in my life that I had ever felt afraid of dying, still I thought, maybe the others would notice I was missing, see on the radar that someone had launched one of our load and come running to me, but that didn't happen.

In a blink another moment of time passed, and I was more than half way underwater, watching the red lights blaring across the ceiling. My eyes were getting tired of blinking away droplets splashing into my face from a leak which sprung next to me a few moments before. I remember thinking, "please, not like this. Not with the ship." I watched as the water came up to my neck, then to my mouth, and knowing this might very well be my final breath, sucked as much air as I could when I could no longer reach my head above water level. I don't remember how much time had passed, perhaps an eternity until the burning in my lungs was too much to bear, and instinct to breathe won out over logic. Despite my best hopes, I sucked in a mouthful of sea, filling my lungs with water. I prayed then that whatever may pass, let my soul rest in the sea.

In an instant I was no longer in a dark submarine, but on the balcony of a ship sailing past Los Angeles coughing up whatever was left of my dinner over the side deck, not knowing how I got there. To this day, I still have no idea what happened in that moment, but I do remember looking up submarine accidents for the next month trying to figure out if what I saw was remotely real. Something kept tugging at my intuition, a class, a time, and a country. C-5, Spain, 1936.

That is what I found. Whether I was living another life, rebirthed, or what have you, this was no fantasy, nor a flashback to some navaltime movie and bad shrimp. It was real and it was terrifying. Ever since then, I have only been on a boat another time, but had no visions of anything. Perhaps it was simply some kind of connection to another time, a ghost wanting to tell its story, or maybe none of those and my addled mind making up stories, but I felt my life go limp, and I don't know what to make of that.