Do Nothing

You don’t do anything, and for a while, that seems okay. You row along for about an hour before one of the swinging tentacles hits you in the back of the head. Immediately, you’re drenched in the stuff. It’s like a nest of fire ants is suddenly climbing around on the back of your head, crawling over onto your forehead, shimmering down onto the back of your neck. You stand up in a panic and swat the back of your head, but it doesn’t matter. The boat tips at your sudden movement, and you go overboard.

 

The initial shock only lasts but a moment. It actually feels kind of refreshing, like splashing your face with cold water on a hot summer day. Ice cold darkness envelops you. You sink, slowly, deeper into the abyss. You feel the strength sapping from your limbs, feel the last few beats of your ailing heart. You think of the life you tried to live according to Aristotelian virtue. You think of your poor mother and absent father. You see the people from your dreams, people you know and people you used to know. In these same dreams, you often returned to places you feared and hated, and rarely to places you loved. Good dreams were tantalizingly rare as of late, to the point where you began to fear sleep, something you could not have imagined when you were young. You vaguely remember filling out an application form for a secret society; the Wry Lawyers, they were called. Or was it the Rye Lawyers? You think of a mystical elixir called beer that old man Gunther used to rant about; "Back in my day IPA's were all the rage—that was why God punished us with this shitstorm".

 

Your mother once told you that when you were a toddler, you walked over to a baby bird with a broken wing on the ground at the park, and your mother thought you were going to help it, but instead you stepped on it, killing it. How is it that humans can be capable of evil before they can even form memories? You see a house with potted plants hanging from the kitchen balcony, swaying to and fro with the wind, yet never once falling in all those years. You see yourself soaring through a river valley, lush greens contrasted with vivid blues. You see a colossal mountain dotted with the husks of trees that were once taller than fifty men standing on each other’s shoulders. You see a city of white brick, as viewed from the eye of an albatross. You see Rephaites walking the earth once more. You see yourself on the day of your first kiss, your only kiss.

 

You find yourself weeping, despite your predicament. You marvel at the renewed beauty of life and rage against the dying of the light. You will not die. Not today, not now. Your teachers always harangued you with talk of your "untapped potential". Well, time to finally put it to good use. After all, is not the measure of a man how he acts when his life is on the line? With a herculean burst of strength, you propel yourself towards the surface, breaking through the still lacquer with no time to spare for your lungs.

 

You end up staggering to the shore, hacking and coughing up a storm. You feel a larger man than Wellington at Waterloo. Against the backdrop of the withered shell of what was once the greatest city in the world, you stand tall. You are invincible. You shall drain the blood of your enemies like the Spartans drained the blood of the helots. You shall be the herald of the new epoch. Nothing could possibly stop you in your relentless quest now. You are the son of Jesus Christ himself, you think, you are the Chosen One. How many have undertaken this same journey and met their untimely demises? Whatever that number is, it will not change today. You can already picture your triumphant return at the head of a grand procession. You take a step forward, the taste of impending victory upon your lips—and are instantly crushed to death by the claw of a giant spider that was alerted to the commotion. Oops, turns out there were spiders after all. Sorry about that.