The rock peninsula does not appear to be drawing any closer, though I am certain that a good deal of time has passed, and the swampwater churns gently as I am driven steadily ahead. As I realize this I find myself standing at the foremost edge of the raft. The displaced water slaps the wood, chills my bare feet. I look down at my toes curling over the edge and find that from this vantage point the water appears again to be dark and cold. I am suddenly aware of the thick, ominous space that spans between the bottom of my feet and the swamp's murky, unimaginable depths. It imposes itself on me, and I feel heavy, drawn into it. The blackness of it permeates throughout the limits of my awareness, eclipsing the warmth and lightness the ubiquitous sunlight of the open day had inspired. What I feel as I peer into it is not fear but a sense of desperation in the face of its strength and inevitability, though as I stare beyond my own warped, inscrutable reflection I am conscious of the paranoia and irrationality that bubbles over it.
Anxious to disembark, I lean forward, toward the stoic mountain, convinced that by doing so the speediness of the raft will be somehow increased. There are often moments in my day-to-day life in which my own brain betrays me by imagining in vivid, horrific detail the most tragic sequence of immediate events possible. Sinisterly, this internal tourette's usually deals with someone whose well-being I care for much more than my own. Sometimes it is as simple as playing out the immediate alternate future of a near miss, such as seeing my cat, Obie, suffering terribly, gasping for life with a crushed and ruined body after I have unsuccessfully avoided stepping on him. Other times, however... A CTA train rushing toward me as I stand waiting at the platform with my Anna... A moment in which if I were to push her only slightly she would...
Because I can not control these sickening images I see this as the darkest evil within myself, and it seems to me to be a curse that can hurt me at any time. A curse that intends to terrify me that one day I will succumb to the impulse in an instant of insanity that will destroy my life and the life of someone I care for forever.
It is this same curse to which I attribute the tendency of my dreamworld to take its cues from my immediate fears. In the instant in which I see the possibility of plunging into the dark water I find myself smacking its surface.
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