She's Lungs: A Narrative Fiction

It started with rain. It was pouring and came down worse than any storm. Thunder rumbled and shook the ground with every lightning strike. Soon the water was engulfing me and trapping me, drowning me in a matter of seconds. I gasped for a breath and the water was choking me. Then the water turned brown and bubbly and I saw my mother, and she was the one choking me now, a sadness in her eyes despite her actions. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she said as she strangled me through the murky liquid.

Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.

One day this woman's husband got really sick. One night he screamed loud from on top of his lungs while the woman was outside in the forest looking for some food. The woman came to see what was going on, but nothing was their not even her husband.

Every rumble of thunder from above made her wish that she had stayed in the rowboat. Each wave tossed her around as if she was a doll, and her lungs were beginning to sting with the pain of inadequate air. She felt like the storm tossed her around for a couple hours, but she wasn’t sure because she didn’t have a watch; however, she thought she could barely see a hint of the rising sun in the east, which meant that she had only been in the water for a good hour while the storm raged around her. The storm finally subsided enough for her to stop struggling and float with the current, but she had very little energy left to actually try to get to any land. She relaxed her body, and as the current carried her, went in and out of consciousness, finally blacking out just before she washed ashore a densely overgrown

In the early light of the conquest, her mind was racing. Knowing that she could swim in thirty-three degree water as a test made her more anxious and “afraid” (Cox 130). Cox could not retrogress and go back home, she had to encounter the face-numbing water and defeat the treacherous mile. She fought against the problems she may face and readied herself for the awesome outcome that would be after the pain. There is always a rainbow after rain right? Once she got ready and hopped in her mind went from zero to one hundred real quick. The signals inside Cox’s brain were sending off shocks telling her that there was not enough air entering the lungs and nothing could be done to calm it. In the predicament she was in it is normal to think it out but when your body feels “like I had a corset tightening around my chest” it is hard to chill out (Cox 133). Her mind was firing signals telling her to jump out but she was determined to finish what she had came so far to do. Cox’s mind was nostalgic most of the swim, but once she made the body and the mind come together and work as one she made the mile plus

“Shut up! I’m going in there and nobody’s going to stop me! I’m taking Rick with me!”

The darkness surrounded her; its pressure was oppressive like the depths of the deep sea. It engulfed her with the forfeiture of life; however it did not rip her soul from her body, instead it took theirs. She had lost people before, but never had their death been so profound as to diminish her own sense of self. Never before had the loss of someone been so close to her as to cause the quantity of grief she now felt. She couldn’t fathom how divers survived at the pressure of those oppressive depths or how some could even find beauty in the pitch black; there was nothing beautiful in their deaths. She didn’t know that the diver survives by slowly acclimating to the physical and mental strain; knowing that resurfacing

Time seemed to slow down as he approached the spine-chilling water. Rainsford could hear the quiet whistling of the air. It almost sounded as if the whistling of the wind was whispering to Rainsford. He was fraling in the air, trying to grasp on to something but everything was intangible. An abrupt sound interrupted the whistling and replaced it with the gurgling from the petrifying waters below him. Rainsford felt the rushing current pull him deeper and deeper into the frigid water. He desperately clawed the water. His feet were trying to grasp the non-existing ground. Franticly trying to get a breath, Rainsford thrusted himself up, only getting a few breaths of satisfying oxygen. Rainsford thrashed the through the rapid waters. He punched

As the powerful abyss consumes my convulsing body, my arms and legs propel me through the dark emptiness. The sloshing water lapping my ears, drowns out the sounds of the rushing water above, as I break to the surface. Tackling the sunlit board with one arm and hauling my limp body aboard the smooth, water-beaded paddleboard, a calmness immediately claims me, as I gaze above to the piercing blue sky. As I regain my footing on the wobbling yellow board, I can feel the sun’s rays dance over my skin and dry the water that cascades down my soaking frame. Leaning back and plunging the paddle within the depths of the Colorado River, my sinewy arms mechanically take shape, and thrust me forward.

I panicked and tried to sit up but was crushed under the weight of the white blanket that had fallen from the sky during my nap that now had me pinned down threatening to become my new grave. I could no longer feel my legs, kicking to try to free myself from this opaque prison was now impossible. With fear taking over every part of my being, I screamed as loud as I could, it seemed as though my screams held the same amount of power as senseless legs as the sound failed to travel past my face. I could not tell which way was up, or down, disoriented and with the weight of the snow crushing my chest, I was quickly losing the ability to breathe, I panicked further. I was drowning. With my arms stuck at my side and my vision becoming increasingly blurry, I could not hold on to consciousness. I slipped back into a mental void into what seemed to be a terrible

Annabelle and Ellen swam halfway, but their legs and arms were getting tired. Annabelle almost drowned because of her lack of strength, but she tried her best and made it to the other side. Right when they got to the other side, they were exhausted and all they could hear were the sound of their

His terrified screams were fully drowned out by the extreme blast of liquid. The whole building was demolished in just moments. As he plunged deeper and deeper in to the endless depths of this ocean that filled the town, he knew it was going to be a very tough ask to make it to the surface without drowning. The icy cold-water flooded into his lungs as he flailed his limbs in complete and utter panic. After what seemed like ages spent underwater, Jordan reached the surface, the prospect of death having been agonizingly close. He felt a bit of relief that all his limbs were still intact from the many hazardous pieces of debris, however now he sat stranded on one of the many scattered pieces of timber from the ruins of what once was his

“Clay, I know you’re having a hard time grieving, but she’s gone. And there’s nothing we can do about it” Tony replies back seriously

He hardly noticed the spray hitting him, a deep sadness numbing his body. Emotionally spent, he sat down cross-legged in the tub. This just couldn’t be, he thought. It just couldn’t. The sting of the water on the scratches and the bump on his head reminded him that it could. He felt the tenderness of the bump—somebody had cracked him there good. But the physical pain meant nothing compared to the fact that Rashida was dead. His wife. He let the water run over him until it turned cold. He struggled to his feet.

Mountains of water loomed, and as the others screamedin exhilaration, my body froze. I was sure there was a way to bypass thetreacherous waters ahead. My mind raced through Kim's instructions, but I couldnot get my thoughts together. I dug my feet in as tight as I could so most of myweight was in my legs. I paddled faster, intent on obeying every one of Kim's commands.