"Obsession"
by Blackjack Gabbiani
Chapter Four/...i have never liked the water...
from my earliest memories, the water has been my downfall...
right now i can feel the water around me, pulling me farther and farther away from the world, and I can feel the white wings around me, just like before...
...like before...
mother never really did believe me...she clung to her belief of there being good in us all...in her world, she never believed that someone could do something like that...
...perhaps her world was like this...
...they held me down, beneath the water...i struggled in vain, out of reflex. they were going to kill me, i knew that, and gave in.
and then i saw it. white wings coming to me. i knew not if it was a demon or an angel, but it was coming to take me away from there, far away.
the great bird calmed me, took me in its wings as the breath left me, and I could feel the world melting away. death had no fear for me, not as long as this creature held me.
there was silence, and peace, and warmth, and stillness...
and then the world returned.
i was no longer beneath the waves, in the wings of the white bird. instead, i was in the chair by the fireplace, a blanket wrapped around me. for a brief second, i thought i had imagined it, but then i felt the water still on my skin.
mother told me there were many spirits of the water, but my tale of a white bird perplexed her. perhaps i had imagined it after all, imagined the safety it provided, the respite from a cruel world.
despite this, i have kept the image of the bird in my heart. perhaps one day i shall see it again, if only in a dream.
i am beginning to awaken. there is a calm about this place, as different as it is from the world beneath the waves. so this is where father has taken me; this is my new home.
it is like the water. this time, there will be no white bird to save me./
When I came to, in my father's home, the first thing I heard, through the open window, were the waves of the ocean.