UNDERWATER MADNESS

(Fear the darkness, because there is danger in the dark.)

The pond closes over Ross’s head, swallowing the world in a single gulp. Light vanishes—sound muffles. The surface becomes a distant ceiling he can no longer see.

Down here, the water is thick—muddy, warm, alive with silt that coils around his arms like smoke. His heartbeat becomes the only rhythm, thudding in his ears, echoing through the murk.

He reaches the siphon pipe by feel alone. His fingers scrape metal, then jammed sticks—packed tight like a bird’s nest. He yanks them free, finishing the job he was sent down there to do.

He kicks upward for air.

But everything changes before he reaches it.

A tremor shivers through the water. A vibration. A warning.

Then the current hits.

It slams into him like a charging bull, flipping him sideways, dragging him backward. The water becomes a river inside a pond—violent, directional, unstoppable. Ross doesn’t see the pump start, but he feels it awaken, furious that someone up above flipped the switch. What was he thinking?

Now Ross must fight to stay alive.

The suction grabs his legs first. Then his hips. Then his chest.

The siphon pipe is no longer content with water; it wants him. It becomes a predator. Its mouth yawns wide, a circular darkness pulling him closer, closer, closer. The pressure crushes against his ribs, flattening him, folding him toward death.

He claws at nothing. There is nothing to claw.

His hand slams against the pipe’s rim. Metal. Hard. His only chance.

He clamps onto it with both hands, fingers screaming, arms trembling. The suction tries to peel him off like a sticker. His body bends backward, spine arching, water roaring past his ears.

He cannot hear voices. He cannot hear shouting. He hears only the pump—cold, relentless, issuing orders to the beast dragging him toward its mouth.

His lungs burn. His vision pulses black. His world narrows to the size of his grip.

The pipe wants him. It pulls. It insists like a starving beast.

Seconds stretch, warp, distort. He thinks of the Río Grande—of fighting a river that wanted him just as badly. But this is worse. The river pulled him sideways. This thing pulls him in.

His arms begin to fail. His air is gone.

Then— A shift. A flicker in the current. A sudden stillness.

The suction stops.

Not slowly. Not gently. It dies in an instant, like a monster struck dead mid‑lunge.

The water around him goes calm.

Ross floats, suspended, weightless. A strange relief washes through him—soft, eerie, almost peaceful. Is this death? Is this what it feels like?

He lets go.

His body rises, drifting upward through the murk. The surface brightens above him—a pale, wavering sheet of light. He kicks once, twice, breaking through in an explosion of muddy water and desperate air.

The world returns in a single gasp.

He hears shouting now. He sees faces. He sees Joe, his brother—breathless, furious, terrified.

But underwater, Ross had known none of that.

Down there, it was only darkness, suction, and the thin metal rim that allowed him to say alive.