Ocean of Dreams

by Eli Moore

Many years ago, a young girl was lying in the middle of the storm. Her parents' shouts and yells caused the trees to bend and their stomps, the house to shake. Under the girl's blankets, it was hard to breathe and hot enough to sweat. So, when she sat up from her rumpled mess of a bed, she was met with the inquisitive face of a duck.

The girl stared at its stationary form at the foot of her bed, and blinked. The duck blinked back. It wasn't long before the girl reached for the plate on her desk and offered the duck her half-eaten sandwich. Her parents would do the same for guests—trace on a smile and offer food and drink. She had yet to get the smiling down, but she figured she had to start somewhere. Anyways, the girl figured they were both taking refuge from the storm, so it was only polite to share.

The two nibbled away at the remains of the sandwich when suddenly the storm escalated to rain. The girl and the duck could hear as the mother's tear pelted down onto the kitchen floor. The girl had covered her ears unable to bear the way her mother's stumbled and slurred as she sobbed at the girl's father. All the times she had to wake up and go about her day as if she hadn't been up in the night listening. She was so tired of looking her father in the eye and acting oblivious as he apologized.

The girl had her eyes screwed shut for some time when she felt the weird liquid sensation of water. Upon opening her eyes, the duck had disappeared, and more concerningly, her room was filling up with water. In a panic, the girl trembled as she climbed onto her desk. The door was only a few feet away.

The girl leaned over to peer into the water. She had never liked being in the water, not even in swimming pools. To her, it was an alien world that could suffocate you. From a distance she could appreciate the ocean's mysteries, but only at a distance. The floor of her bedroom and the miscellaneous items that had been strewn about were not visible to the girl. It was as if a deep abyss stared back at her.

That's when the girl tipped over and became engulfed in the cold chill of the water. When she tried to swim back up, the feeling of stringy tentacles wrapped around her ankle. The girl's hand stretched out. She could still hear the storm of her parents, but it grew dimmer the deeper down she was dragged.

This was when the girl first became lost.

Many years ago, a young girl lay at the bottom of the ocean. When she had awoken, the first thing she noticed was a great, big jellyfish that floated in front of her. Its flat bell fluctuated in wave-like movements. It entranced the girl. This kept her from noticing those same stringy tentacles that had pulled her down as they came up and cradled her face.

That's when the siren bioluminescence of the jellyfish spoke to her. It spoke of comfort, the tickle of kelp, sea slugs hiding in crevices, dreams, glittering treasures, fish in all shapes and colors, anything the girl could think of. All of it offered to her as a way to forget about home.

But there were two catches.

The first being that the girl could only visit once a month. Every time she left, she had to wait thirty days before she could come back. The second was that the girl could never exit the dome. She hadn't understood what dome the jellyfish was referring to, but either way, the opportunity presented had been too good to pass up. So, the girl agreed, and as the jellyfish untangled itself from her, it grew bigger and bigger. As it expanded, kelp sprung from the sand into a great forest. From behind the blades, fish poked their heads out and seals maneuvered above her head.

As the girl marveled at the sudden appearance of life, she noticed the dome the jellyfish had talked about. It had grown to the point where she now sat in her own aquarium-like world.

This was when the girl's memories first became confused.

Many years ago, a mother and father looked for their girl. They saw her every day, but it was like she drifted in that house. She woke up in the afternoons no matter how often her father yelled and belittled. She rarely spoke in their presence no matter how often her mother tried to coax a conversation.

Yes, they saw her every day, but she wasn't really there. This did not stop the parents from fighting. If anything, the tension increased and the screams grew louder.

For the girl, the house was constantly flooding. Most of the time it never went past her waist unless she went back to the dome. But there were days when the water reached the ceiling. She could breathe, but the pressure was unbearable; she could barely get up from her bed much less move around the house. On those days the sounds of her parents were muffled by the clog in her ears. They couldn't reach her.

The girl could handle it all, at first. The pressure of water and the weight of wet clothes. But as her limbs grew more accustomed to a stationary life, it became harder to act like a human being that had their life together.

Every night, the girl thought of those two rules the jellyfish had laid out for her. Sometimes, in her dome, she tried to bargain with it. Let her play with the seals twice a month, dig up treasure once a week, swim among the caress of kelp every day. No matter how much she begged, the jellyfish would not budge.

So the girl thought and thought every day. She dreamed about the dome every day. At some point she moved her mattress from her bed frame to the floor so she could lay under the water as her hair and clothes billowed around her.

Months passed by like this until the girl had an idea.

The next time the girl sank down to the dome, she joked with the crabs, listened to the octopi's intelligent ramblings, looked for sea slugs, nibbled at candied rocks, and when she had her fill, she laid on the sand and closed her eyes.

Her nap had finished, but instead of swimming to the top and passing through the bell of the jellyfish as she usually did when going home, she followed a school of fish. She went on more adventures, found more treasure, talked to more neighbors. Never had the girl felt so light and free.

Soon it was the jellyfish who bargained and begged. It told her this was dangerous, and she had to leave. But the jellyfish was ignored and the girl kept on playing. Time passed—it couldn't be said how much—and things started changing.

It was a small, unnoticeable thing at first. The girl had a harder time finding sea slugs, and when she did find them, they were back in the deepest crevices of rock. Then there were less crabs to joke with, fish to chase, seals to play with, and treasure to find. Soon the kelp started to become sparse, and so the girl finally acknowledged the jellyfish.

She called out to it. Nobody responded.

The dome was still there, but somehow less transparent and more opaque. The girl swam to the top and called out once again. Still, the jellyfish did not respond. She figured this was some sort of tantrum, and that it was time to go home. As soon as she exited the bell, the jellyfish drooped and sank down to the ocean floor. The girl tried to swim up, but no matter how much distance she made, she never woke back up in her bed as she usually did.

This was when the girl first collapsed.

Many years ago a girl was submerged underwater. Her arms reached out for something to grasp, but nothing was there. Her body, reduced to a strand of eelgrass, was sucked in before she knew it. The grasp of the ocean had her in its clutches, and she wasn't falling, but something about the way she tensed, and the way her insides felt like they would slip out at any moment reminded her of the plunge of the waterslide. The one her father took her to just at the moment where their relationship prickled like a sea urchin. The one where she first became aware of the bathing suit, she wore and the skin it showed. All that uncertainty vortexing in the pit of her stomach, whipping the moths around.

For a brief moment, the chaos reminded her of that Christmas in California. Bouncing from gift shop to gift shop with her father's family, with the father in question nowhere to be found. The cool night air raised goosebumps on her skin. She had wrapped her arms around herself for stability rather than warmth. Those were strangers that surrounded her. The only tie she had to them was blood, and she let it string her from place to place. Her nerves had tangled up. Tears started leaking and she hadn't been able to stop herself. She saw the way her cousins stared at her, and she still hadn't stopped herself.

She wanted her mother. Then and now, she wanted her. She wanted the sound of her voice and the feel of her hand brushing her hair. No rather, she wanted everything to go back to the way things had been before. When nothing was complicated or uncertain. When she was a matryoshka doll within a matryoshka doll. But this water was suffocating her. She thrashed as the burning in her lungs became unbearable. Her heart was pounding, her mouth was twisted up unable to scream, and she was alone.

Until the hum of a tune brushed her ears. Quiet at first, as though it were a ghost. Then, with sudden clarity, the sound flooded her body. It was oddly warm and familiar. It made her think of those long car rides with her mother that filled with conversation, the piggyback rides her father gave her before bedtime, and even that time at the beach with her parents, wrapped in towels and sitting on warm sand.

She realized, in this swirling of water, that these moments were here with her too. So, she did her best to stop moving. She didn't push against the pressure or rush water. She opened her mouth to call out, but the water rushed to fill her lungs, her vessels, to seep through the pores of her skin and linings of her organs. Her limbs stretched out, skin became translucent, body fluid and viscous.

In a blur, her end and the maelstrom's beginning meshed into one. The coursing swirl of hydrogen blue and phosphorescent green pulsed like her own blood.

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