Help me. Please.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t see – it’s so dark, it’s no longer black, it’s just…nothing. I can’t tell whether my eyes are open or shut, I don’t know which way is up.

Are those my  legs? I know something lurks beneath me – for now – but I can’t keep going like this forever.

“Come on in,” you said, “the water’s lovely this time of year.”

Ha! Once again, fooled by your not so secret smile. How many more times? I.JUST. CAN’T. BE. THIS. STUPID. But I am, I must be, or I wouldn’t be here: kicking for my life – again.

It’s so fucking quiet out here, it hurts my ears. Quiet and still. And black. There isn’t a word for just how black it is, nothing exists to explain it, but then again, it doesn’t matter does it? You already know. Don’t you? You, who promised me everything – then backed away like a murderer from a lifeless body. With a smile on your face, pleased with your work: Welcome to Wonderland.

I saw it in your empty eyes, why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I slap away the treacherous hand you held out? Why did I actually fall for this fairground attraction, this helter skelter hell?

I’ll tell you why: because you  promised it would be worth it.

“Come, follow where I tread, walk with me through Wonderland and you’ll never be lost again.”  But I am  lost. I am so lost, that there will never be a way back home. Not ever. This is it for me. Just me, the nothingness and this crimson tide on which I ride. They all float down here, don’t you know? Float like dandelion clocks on a fetid breeze; nowhere to go, no time to rest, just an eternal journey with no place to lay my head, and your  face, emblazened on my brain, etched on my memory forever. Your stupid, fucking featureless face: laughing at me, laughing at me, laughing at me! Chortling like you’d known it all along.

I was easy pickings, fair game. A restless soul. Blinded by the lure of plink-plonk tunes and twinkling lights, drawn to the promise of a place to stay and a warm embrace. “Here comes the summer, son.”  They were your vitreous words, spilling out of your lipless mouth on putrid breath. And I believed them.

I guess I can only blame me. It’s my fault that I spit out this saline, fallacious water and the constant, teasing lap of the tide taunts me with its metronomic rhythm, as if it’s counting down the last few minutes of my life. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Won’t be long now.

Well you know what? Hurry the fuck up. You’ve won, okay? I surrender. I am calling time and you can laugh your way to the bank, where you keep all your sinister tides and black, stolen hearts. Some currency. Trading in people’s dreams, then dealing them a shitty deck. Your mother must be proud – so fucking proud.In fact, I bet you’re just like her: Dead from the waist down and belly up…

This carpet smells of fish; five-day-old fish left out in the sun too long and and wasted hopes – just my luck to be facedown on it once more.  Never was a winner.

Yet, what is this? What is this golden honey that melts over my head, kisses my salt-stung cheeks and stirs me from my satanic slumber? Could it be… ?

You might not be able to stop it, but morning always comes. Always.

It’s a long walk, but someone has to do it…