Drowning: Part 3, with a knife

The grandfather clock striked three, rudely waking me out of my philosophical delirium early in the morning as I clenched hard to a small carving knife I hid under my shirt during dinner. Lying restlessly on my bed I sweated profusely, mentally going over the argument to complete the journey, for love, to relief my mother the life-long burden and set her free. My life, an origami boat that followed a narrow, meandering stream of dirty water from its plundered motherland to an aghast frozen tundra, had long ago lost its sense of direction and meaning. In the dead silence of the night in the fatigue grey apartment block, a stone's throw from the bustling Chinatown, my soul, caged like an animal in an immobile and unfeeling body, had wanted to scream from the indefeasible shackles a thousand times the helplessness that no words can ever express. "I breathe, but live not, for I cannot walk and am forever condemned to the shadow of humanity, dragging my beloved mother along to certain miserable end!!" But such cries were completely futile and meaningless, for what imbecile would bother to pause to hear a migrant invalid's screams and wince? So now my guilt to die raged battle with my guilt to wear my mother daily till she herself collapses from death of a thousand cuts.

Suddenly my bed gave way and I dropped like an unstrung skeleton into the pitch black abyss. I splashed onto a sea of blood-red crimson, turned and witnessed the familiar idyllic Perhentian Island engulfed in consuming, multi-colored flames and towering smoke that stretches to the ends of sky. Parachuted infantries, shouldering automatic rifles topped with samurai blades that flickered like stars in countless floodlights, descended from the black sun and inundated the flaming island howling incomprehensible foreign tongue. Hounds of military planes roared thunderously past overhead, meticulously carpet-bombing the ocean with caskets that exploded the instant they hit water, violently rocking the sea bed and forcing walls of tidal waves after waves. Searching skyward as the apocalypse unfolded -- for Divinity I suppose, I paddled, stroked and wiggled with all my limbs and all my strength to stay afloat to no avail. My fighting will subsided, and I began my slow descend downward: the red sea water successively filled my lungs with every gulp, the deafening mayhem was slowly replaced by the soothing sound of the undercurrent, and my panic-stricken, pulsating muscles in my limbs were involuntarily relaxing in unavoidable surrender. I knew my end was near. I closed my eyes, awaited my inevitable fate -- a whimpering and unnoticeable farewell to the cruel, merciless world.

It was then a thin but powerful arm reached from above into the murky water and grabbed hold of my collar. He lifted my failing body above water with his iron fist that burned vehemently with his touch. While I coughed incessantly to regurgitate the sickly salt water from my system, I stared incredulously at this strange dark man with a stoic expressionless face, clothed in nothing but rags, floating halfway above the water. As I slowly regained my composure, his rugged countenance remained motionless and emotionless, staring straight back at me with piercing eyes in calmness unbefitting to the hellish destructions around us. Then, without a word, he swam away and gradually disintegrated in distance sea, and I slipped back to the sea with renewed strength.