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Susan
hung motionless in the warm, sapphire blue water.
Rays of sunlight pierced the water and danced
with the wavelets on the surface as they passed overhead.
The only sound she could hear was her heart
beating a slow relaxed rhythm in time to the dancing
sunbeams. Faintly, she could
make out clicks and chirps followed by an occasional thump
and what sounded like a splash or whooshing noise—like a
million bubbles bursting at once. She
pirouetted in the liquid blue turning toward the sound and
staring off into the distance. She
could see light blue above, dark blue to ebony black
below, and azure to the deepest, richest royal blue
surrounding her. Like
swimming in the Hope diamond, she thought.
The sounds drew closer and she strained to
localize the direction they were coming from.
Still not knowing what was coming, she felt at
peace and quite content to hang in this beautiful sea
admiring the infinite shades of blue that played around
her. Susan decided that blue
was her favorite color.
The clicks and chirps grew louder and more
frequent, accompanied by more thumps, splashes and the
rush of millions of bursting bubbles. Out of the deep blue
she could finally make out shadows moving and playing
among the sunbeams and sliding in and out of the blue
veils of water. A small pod
of bottlenose dolphins finally emerged from the dark blue
shadows and swam toward Susan as if she were the object of
their search. They split up
and darted around her, watched her with their inquisitive
black eyes and perpetual smiles. Eventually
they
approached Susan close enough to touch her with their fins
or nuzzle her with their beaks and she gently reached out
and stroked their smooth gray skin. The
dolphins dove deep beside her only to shoot up past her on
the other side and to launch themselves into the air at
the surface doing somersaults and spins.
With each entry back into the water she saw the
clouds of bubbles form and burst, gently caressing her
ears. She was very delighted
with her new playmates. It
was only when she saw them surface for air that she
realized that she did not have to. Nor
was she wearing any scuba gear, or clothes for that
matter, yet she felt no discomfort, no burning desire to
get to the surface to take in a much needed breath of air.
That was odd, she thought. But
at the moment she chose not to dwell on it, as she was
enjoying the water and her new friends too much.
After a fashion the largest of the dolphins
stopped in front of Susan and gazed deep into her eyes.
Susan wondered if it were trying to tell her
something. Susan could not
decide which it was but she immediately felt a chill run
through her. The dolphin’s
gaze lingered for a few more moments and with several loud
chirps the pod reformed, circled Susan several times,
darted away and returned only to repeat this new dance
several more times. Susan did
not know what to do. They
seemed to be trying to tell her something but she could
not translate the language of their dance or read any
meaning in their fixed smiles. She hung in the water as
the pod circled her slowly one last time. Once more the
largest dolphin paused to look into her eyes and then with
a low series of clicks, the pod swam to the surface for
one more leap into the air, dove past Susan into the dark
blue below, then down into the ebony black of the deep.
All was silent again: no clicks, no splashes, no
rush of bubbles. The only
sound she could hear was the beating of her heart, much
more rapidly now than before. Susan
began feeling more and more uncomfortable.
A sense of apprehension drew upon her like a
cloud blotting out the sun. She
fought
back the panic that started to rise deep in her stomach
and began to search around looking for some sign of the
impending danger. There was
no noise, no indication, no warning.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, Susan saw a
black shadow approaching! The
shadow loomed out of the darkness, hurtling toward her at
an unbelievable speed for its size. She
tried to swim to the surface as the massive black object
rushed toward her. Susan
looked over her shoulder while she struggled through the
viscous water. In her panic,
all she could see was a massive, scarred, black fin and a
lifeless black eye. It
pierced her through to her very soul: sucking the energy
from her body. She tried to
swim faster but the beast bore down upon her until the
sunbeams were extinguished, and the liquid blue turned to
solid black as the beast engulfed her...
Susan awoke in a panic, struggling against the
restraints that kept her from floating out of her sleeping
bag and about the cabin. She
looked around and saw there was no liquid sapphire blue or
solid black to be seen. There
was no beast crushing her and no water suffocating her.
Her breathing was beginning to slow down as she
wiped the sweat from her forehead hoping that no one heard
her struggling through her nightmare.
Not the kind of thing a mission commander would
want the crew to know about.
Susan released the restraints from her sleeping
bag and floated freely. Checking the time, she saw she had
an hour before Mission Control would officially wake them
up. She floated silently from
the flight deck, where she chose to sleep last night, to
the middeck and weaved her way past her sleeping crew to
the personal hygiene compartment. This was one of the few
places on the shuttle where one could have any privacy.
Once inside, she tried to compose herself.
Cleaning up in space wasn’t quite as refreshing
as a good shower was on Earth, but for the moment it
helped Susan calm down and collect her thoughts.
She gathered up her unruly hair, twisted it into
a bun, and secured it with a scrunchie.
She still had that gnawing in the pit of her
stomach, not quite as bad as before but it bothered her
nonetheless. Susan tried to
focus on the busy day they had ahead of them.
She wanted it to go as smoothly as the rest of
the mission had gone. The
launch went perfectly and the rendezvous with the International
Space Station to drop off the Crew
Return Vehicle, or CRV as it was more commonly known, went
mostly by the book. They also
unloaded the supplies the station needed to support a full
station crew compliment of seven that were going to arrive
next month on the shuttle Atlantis and a Russian Soyuz
capsule. Now that the CRV was
at the station, they would be able to evacuate all seven
crewmembers at once, if needed. Today
they had to rendezvous with the science experiment
satellite, SCIEXSAT, to remove some samples that have been
in orbit for a year. After
that task was completed they had some public relations
broadcasts to do and then they would prepare the shuttle
for tomorrow’s reentry.
As Susan thought
about the day’s tasks she felt the pain in the pit of her
stomach increase in intensity. The
pain
did not bother her—she knew it wasn’t a pain that came
from a biological cause—it was the sense of foreboding
that accompanied the pain that disturbed her more.
The discomfort brought Susan back to a time as a
child when she had a terrible dream, and the same
sensation of pain and foreboding. Growing
up
in a close family, with grandparents always around sharing
the chores and responsibilities of raising her and her two
brothers, gave Susan an appreciation of family not too
many eleven-year old children had. She
was especially close to her grandfather.
He spent much of his free time reading to her.
She could listen to him for hours as he read her
all the classics of literature, the comics, or told her
stories of his youth. It was
always a treat to come home from school and find her
grandparents waiting, eager to hear about her day’s
activities, and to share a snack. One
night, Susan had a dream in which her grandfather was
sailing away, leaving her all alone on the beach of a
deserted island. Susan awoke
in a panic, covered in sweat and with a strange pain in
her stomach. The vision of
the dream haunted her while she lay awake in bed trying to
get back to sleep. It was so
unlike Grandpa to ignore her. No
matter how much she called to him he just sailed farther
and farther out to sea with dolphins swimming beside the
boat. Finally, she could take
no more and with the ache in her stomach still there she
ran to her grandparent’s room. Seeing
them
sleeping soundly, she returned to bed assured that her
grandparents were all right—yet the ache in her stomach
persisted. The
next day Susan learned that her grandparents were to leave
on a trip and she felt the wave of pain and apprehension
recur. She told her
grandfather about the dream and asked him to stay.
She begged him not to go, not to leave her.
Susan remembered how he laughed at her and told
her that he would be back in a few weeks to finish Black
Beauty, the latest book he was reading to her.
The feelings she felt just grew worse when they
left and Susan knew, deep down, that she would never see
them again. Her fears became
reality as the plane her grandparents were on crashed
while landing on their return flight.
The pain and fear that nightmare planted in Susan
never returned, until last night.
It took many months for her to accept the loss of
her grandparents and many years before she stopped
anticipating hearing their voices when she got home from
school. Right now, Susan
found herself yearning for the soothing sound of her
grandfather’s voice reading Black Beauty
to her. Right now, she wished
she were anywhere but on this shuttle. ©
2009-2019, RC Davison |