Fall-Through Ellen Goodlett 1 Chapter One The B-52s - Rock Lobster When I was seventeen, I discovered an alternate universe. Well, discovered isn't the right word. It was more like "fell into." Columbus running into the Americas, not Einstein patiently working out the theory of relativity. I was sound asleep, curled around the full-sized body pillow I sleep with, when the sound of crashing waves woke me up. And I don't mean "woke me up in my dream," I mean I was wide awake, still wrapped around the pillow and wearing nothing but underwear (it was only early fall, after all), and there was the ocean, five feet away, spraying salt water in my face. In that half-conscious state most of us suffer through before we really wake up in the morning, this did not seem like such a big deal to me. Besides which, I didn't have to be awake for another half an hour. I pulled the sheets higher and tried to go back to sleep. The next wave splashed directly onto the edge of the bed and soaked my arm where it dangled over. Annoyed, I sat up and yanked the sheets around me. To one side of the bed, the plush carpet of my bedroom remained untouched. The computer on my desk hummed to itself in sleep mode, and my collection of bobble-head dolls wobbled uncertainly in the sea breeze beside it. The waves swirled around the base of my bed now. Tide was coming in. I jumped to the carpeted side of the room before recalling that both the door out of my room and my wardrobe were on the seaside. Morning sunlight glared in my face as I 2 squinted at that corner of the room. The ocean stretched out, vast and unbroken, the same clear slate face I had stared across a hundred times before, on every tedious yearly family vacation to the tiny beach in southern Maryland we frequented. Not a speck marred its surface. No land, no ships, no buoys ... No wardrobe, either, and no doorway out of my room. What the hell? I was finally starting to wake up. I dipped a toe in the water, but it didn't vanish as I'd hoped. It was freezing and wet and as real as the carpet on which I stood. It was also beginning to fill my room. Ifl didn't get out soon, I'd be in serious trouble. Adrenaline kicked in, and forced disbelief to the back of my mind momentarily. Worry about the present now; deal with its impossibility later. I pulled the top-sheet from the bed to wrap it around my torso toga-style, found a few safety pins drawer to attach it with, and discovered that I had, luckily, left my combat boots under the computer chair. I pulled those on and looked for anything else that might be of use. The computer, though I would mourn its loss greatly, would be no help here. Finally, I emptied the former contents of the plastic grocery bag that had been serving as my wastebasket liner and ftlled it with anything handy - more safety pins, a few pencils, a roll of duct tape, and the crappy toy compass pencil topper my father had bought me for one of the few birthdays he hadn't completely forgotten. Then I jammed the Incan-style woolen snow cap that my brother had left hanging on the doorknob onto my head, ignored the ridiculous ear-tassels, and shoved the mattress off of its frame. 3 This worked rather less well than I had planned, since the mattress, instead of floating, became immediately waterlogged and sank to the sandy bottom not three feet from where I stood. It did provide me with somewhat of a platform, though, so I stood on it as I edged out into the expanse of freezing water to peer around the wall of my bedroom. Luckily, it looked as though land was not far off. Just around the wall, beyond the bricks that must have been the outside of the hall bathroom, was my mother's flowerbed. The water hadn't reached it yet, but it was rising with every second. From the garden, I knew I'd just have to jump the gate that led to the street, and then I could plan from there. Tying my grocery bag, I looped it over one arm and waded out into the ocean. The bottom dropped away almost immediately. I spluttered in surprise before I caught my balance and began to swim in slow steady strokes toward the row of tulips ahead. I would not think about how deep the water beneath me might be. I would not think about the fear that had plagued me from childhood, when my brother had forced me to watch Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. I would not think about that long, unidentified object brushing past my leg, which was most likely just a piece of seaweed ... The piece of seaweed suddenly came to life, cinched tight around my calf and dragged me down. I didn't even have time to gasp in a last breath; instead I swallowed a mouthful of water and choked as salt stung my vision. I paddled upwards, but I'd never been a strong swimmer, and panic made me less coordinated than usual. The thing still had not let go of my ankle. Like the weight tied around the condemned man, it dragged me further into the abyss. My throat burned. I could feel my chest constricting already. I had to get this thing off me. 4 I yanked at my leg, but the rope just dug in harder. Stars swam in front of my eyes as I kicked wildly. I only shot down faster. The sunlight above me dimmed. My movements became slower. It was hard to move my limbs. My brother's hat floated off of my head, disrupted by the momentum of my downward sink. I didn't have the energy to grab it as my long curls burst free of its hold. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered reading that in the depths of the ocean, the first color of the rainbow that vanishes is red. I peered out of the corner of my eye at my auburn hair where it floated above me, and watched with increasingly detached interest as it faded from its usual carrot-top orangey-red into a dirty blonde, and from there to a dull brown. My eyelids felt heavy, but my lungs still heaved. My throat burned with a thirst worse than any I had ever known - the thirst for oxygen. And, without meaning to, even though I fought against the impulse with every remaining brain cell in my head, I drew in a deep breath ... And found I could breathe. My eyes popped back open yet there I was, still sinking rapidly, the surface a distant mirage now, and oxygen was flowing into my lungs. I grabbed the side of my neck, but thankfully no gills had sprouted. I gasped for air even as my brain screamed at me to stop sucking in water. Nonetheless, the oxygen kept flowing, much to the relief of my aching lungs. Was I really drowning, and I just couldn't feel it anymore? But I could move again. I felt my energy returning. I waved my arms experimentally, and the sensation of the water rippling over my skin sent a thrill through me. Still confused, but much less afraid of the tentacle-seaweed- 5 thing now that I knew I could survive down here, I rolled over to study it. It was, in fact, neither a tentacle nor a piece of particularly weighty seaweed, but rather, a rope. The end wrapped around my leg had a deft slipknot in it, almost like a lasso in an old western movie. Before I had any time to ponder this mystery, however, a voice interrupted my thoughts. "Welcome to Switzerland." If you have ever heard a loud noise under water, you will know that sound waves work differently down there. They vibrate faster, making it more difficult, if not impossible, for your brain to determine the source of the sound. A great way to drive someone crazy when scuba diving is to hover just above the back of their head (their blind­ spot, if you will) and tap on your aluminum tank with the tip of your dive knife. It was only due to this half-remembered anecdote from the scuba class I'd taken two summers ago in order to ogle the hunky lifeguard who taught it that I thought to roll over when my frantic glances in every other direction revealed no obvious source for the speech. As soon as I flipped over though, I wished I hadn't, because panic once more flooded my nervous system. Hovering not ten feet from me was the largest shark I had ever seen, primary characters from Discovery Channel's Perfect Predators included. My eyes darted to the stripes alone its sides, and back to the enormous snout in front of me. Definitely a tiger 6 shark. One of the most aggressive, my memory helpfully supplied from among its store of Shark Week trivia. I swallowed hard, and tried desperately to remember how to incapacitate a shark. If I'd only had something sharp, I could stab for the gills ... But all I had with me were pencils and safety pins.