Chlorine made a home inside of her. It burned her sinuses, sharp, metallic, bright. The scent of something too clean to be alive. Her throat ached, raw from the water she swallowed over what must be days now. Or had it been weeks? Time did not pass so much as circle.

She climbed the ladder slowly, rung by rung. The muscles in her arms trembling from effort or fear. She wasn’t sure which anymore.

Another dive. One more, and if she hits the water just right, it should work.

She stood on the diving board, toes balancing precariously at its edge. It bowed under her, a slight sway. The water waited below. Flat and expressionless, too still to be natural.

There were never any clues as to where the opening would appear. The surface never rippled. Never revealed any change of depth. The was no soft give at the center. It should look like a vortex, she thought.

Or what are those things called? The underwater tornadoes that pull you down? 

A whirlpool. 

It should look like a whirlpool. Like a wound in the world.

She inhaled deeply, stretching her chest until her lungs burned. She steadied herself. She had been a competitive diver once. Before this. She was judged and measured. Seen. She used to think about precision, about angles and clean entry. The geometry of perfection. 

None of that mattered anymore. Now, there was only the descent. The surrender to gravity, the faith in falling. The hope that there was a way home. 

She dove. 

An assault of sensory experience that was over too quickly to register. Muscles tight, wind roaring past her ears, the world dissolving, fear. 

The impact: cold, shocking, absolute. Water breaking, folding over her, filling her ears with the pressure of silence. Above, light fracturing into unreachable gold.

She kicked up, breaking through the surface with a gasp. The sky above was colorless, a lid placed over the world. 

Still here.  Always here.

How many dives had it been? A hundred? A thousand? 

She floated for a while, staring up, steadying her breathing, trying to feel the passage of time. She had lost hunger first, and then thirst. She couldn’t imagine wanting to drink water.

Her skin had gone pale. White, sometimes almost translucent. 

Another dive. One more dive, she told herself, and she’ll find it. She’ll find her way home.

She climbed out of the pool, leaving wet foot prints on cold concrete. She thought she remembered warmth. The weight of sunlight spreading across her skin. The scent of summer rain. But even the memories seemed far away. Belonging to someone else.

Back up the ladder. Toes curling over the edge. The pools surface glimmering faintly. Something moved below the water, slow and deliberate, like a thought forming.

She breathed in. She let it hurt.

She dove.

---

Whitney McShan is a Texas native who lives outside of Austin with her wife and son. Her work has been featured in Hellbound Books Anthology of Horror, Instant Noodles Lit Mag, and the upcoming anthology With Teeth. She is interested in the strange, the uncanny, and the monstrous.