Psychosis

Chapter 49- Wheels Up To Wyoming

"But what use is it to be safe if you aren't living?" Isabel just stared at the fountain, into the water that suddenly looked very deep. Fountains were supposed to be shallow, but this one looked as if it didn't have a bottom. It looked as if Isabel could just dive in and keep sinking forever, and ever, and ever. Her friend had a point, but it was a point that Isabel was choosing to ignore. But her words did make Isabel wonder. What was the point of living in general? What was the point of keeping on when the events of the past were crawling just beneath her skin?

In that moment, she decided to find out if the fountain was as bottomless as it looked.

She took a step to the fountain, ignoring her friend's question of what she was doing. It didn't take her long to be right at the edge of the fountain, a few paces away from her friend. From this closer angle, the water most certainly looked endless. All she could see at the bottom was darkness, although she wasn't sure if that was because it was endless or the bottom of the fountain was just dark. But she was about to find out. She stepped up onto the ledge of the fountain, before turning around and facing her friend, who had a look that was part confusion, part concern.

"Isabel? What are you doing?"

"What's the point of living when the past keeps threatening to drag me down? What's the point when all I can feel the past crawling in my skin, calling me back to it? When all I can feel is pain and darkness and loneliness? When all I can feel is the empty spot in my soul and the chaos in my mind and the pain in my heart?" Isabel ranted, before looking back into the water.

"Isabel..."

"I don't want to feel anything anymore." Before her friend could even stop her, she let herself fall backwards into the water.

The first thing she noticed was how unbelievably cold the water felt. It was like little daggers were trying to pierce her skin. But she didn't try and stop it. She didn't even try and swim up towards the surface. She just closed her eyes and let herself sink lower and lower. The second thing she noticed was that the water was endless. She could feel her lungs beginning to scream for air, and she knew that if she just inhaled a breath full of water, this would be all over sooner. So that's what she did. She just opened her mouth and breathed in a lungful of water. Her eyes flew open when she didn't automatically start to drown.

She was breathing.

She was breathing underwater. She also realized that she could see perfectly rather than the slight blur that occurred whenever she had opened her eyes underwater before. She looked at her legs, wondering if she had turned into a mermaid like some stupid fairy tale she used to tell the orphan children back in Circia. But, no, she still had legs. So she just sunk lower and lower, seeing perfectly and breathing just fine. But that was when she realized.

The lower she went, the less she could feel. At first, she just couldn't feel the coldness of the water pricking her skin. Then, once she couldn't feel anything external, she stopped feeling on the inside, too. Her breath hitched when she realized she couldn't feel anything at all anymore. She had wanted this, but now that she had it, she realized how awful it was. She didn't want this anymore. But then it got worse. The darkness had surrounded her, making her unable to see anything. Her ears seemed to have quit working, so she couldn't hear anything. Not even her own breathing.

She was suspended in emptiness, and suddenly, she started to panic. She just wanted to drown. Even the pain of drowning would be better than the nothingness she was feeling right then. But she couldn't drown. She just kept breathing the water. There was nothing to tell her that she was even real anymore. She tried pinching herself, she tried hitting herself, she tried everything she could to just feel something, to just have some proof of her existence. But nothing worked, so she just sat there in her sea of nothingness.