The waves from underneath

When the man felt the pull of gravity on him, he screamed. The last time his voice was heard, but it was too late already. As he fell into the blue, vast ocean beneath the ship, the icy northern waters wrapped around his limbs and core. The waves dragged him under. A shock went through his veins and nerves freezing his arteries. He felt the dark emptiness below stalking him. Watching every of his desperate, hectic movements. Waiting for his limbs to tire and his hands to freeze. But he tried to swim, tried to hold himself up, while he lost meter and meter. Not knowing what might be under the masses of dark water he was now emerged in. The man struggled to keep his last breaths of air, while the cold began to cut though his skin, now reaching his very core. It pulled on every of his aching muscles. Submerged, his eyes risked gazing into the darkness below his feet. There was nothing. Like the world ended right there. Only darkness crept up from the depths. Nothing that he knew still existed. Not the gardens he saw in his youth in Dublin, not the songs they had sung in church nor his wife the still waited for him there. His cold mind would not let him remember. The memories faded, washed away by the northern water. He forgot how to taste and how to think. Now, no light was able to reach him anymore. And he continued to sink. The last light that his eyes could spot only revealed the saddest truth he had yet to bare. The mighty cruiser that had brought him all this way and only nearly home was reduced to a distant silhouette. And he could not hear the screams on board meant for him. The giant Empress of Ireland was now merely a shape in the light blue surface water, shaking in the ocean’s movement. And as the man’s lungs gave away their last precious air in pure panic, his green eyes watched the waves from underneath and how they carelessly enjoyed their elegant and mindless dance. The depths were coming closer now. The water was black and silent and screamed for him. And when he stared into the far, the distance stared back at him and as he looked down, the emptiness opened its gaping mouth and the light above him now faded completely. After another moment of dying, his dead-cold body felt a vivid push against it. The last sensation that his skin could manage to filter from the numb pain of the cold, was a pull, a pull further towards the dark. He tried to swim against it, but nothing would move. He tried to escape, but he was locked within the icy water. So, he fell an enormous distance in to the abyss. Suddenly, there was a light again. Dim and weak. The man’s frozen eyes tried to focus and rationalize, but every conclusion evaded him. Every thought dissolved in the salty water. So, he just saw, only witnessed. Then, the light came closer and closer, his size growing like a cloud rushing towards him. When the light was very close, he saw it. And he could just stare at it. And it stared back at him. Furious, how man’s little floating machines would wake it, for he was the king of the waves that he watched from underneath. And the nameless king spoke to him. And the man answered.