Freak.

Push.

Mutant.

Shove.

Monster.

Drop.

It didn't make any sense to him.

Water flooded his nostrils with the one last breath he had tried to take once his socks had been soaked at the tips. The salty taste of the ocean was burned into his tongue and seared his corneas- although they weren't very useful. But his eyes stayed open throughout the pain the saltwater brang. And he didn't know why.

His legs were useless; tied together with what felt like wire from the slicing feeling it left on his calves as he had struggled. The short-sleeved jacket he always wore had shimmied down his arms, resting between his hands which were tightly pushed side-by-side and making his shoulder blades jut out like wings on a featherless bird.

And still, he sunk. Down, down, down into the ocean. Where his feet were flapping like useless flippers and his toes had long gone numb from the cold water seeping into his woolen socks. Did he mention that they had tied his ankles together, too? With the weight of what seemed to be his shoes, worn and dusty- although he imagined that they were clean, now - and way too large on his feet. The laces weaved around the joint between his shins and feet.

His own clothes were causing him to sink until the tips of his toes touched the ground. His scarf had been abandoned on the dock above him, thankfully. He let out the breath that had been lodged in his hoarse throat all of this time. And he thought about his life, unwelcome and cold. The disability that separated him from the normal and abnormal. And he thought about now, the tightness in his chest and the soothing feeling from the ocean telling him it was.. Alright.

Maybe he would be crying if he wasn't already submerged in water. But he was. He couldn't pretend that he wasn't. He could never be so oblivious to the world.

He was going to die.

The bubbles floated into his nostrils as he coughed, hacking his lungs out in a desperate attempt for air. He needed oxygen right now. But he knew that it wasn't coming. The deaf laughs of children leaving from the dock were enough to tell him that air wasn't coming. No one else was coming, either.

He was alone.

He hated being alone.

Loneliness meant unawareness. But he wasn't unaware of his surroundings now. If only he hadn't been so stupid as to let them gently lead him to the edge of the wooden platform, where his feet couldn't feel the splinters and roughness of the hard, fibrous material due to the shoes they had so generously given him only days earlier. Of which he had accepted without thought because of plain politeness and the few possessions that he had.

Of which they had refused to let him touch. Of which they had slid onto his small feet and tied so tightly that he could feel the red substance that usually lazy-rivered through his veins cease to flow into his toes.

The soothing words they had given him were all fake, he realized as the irregular darkness of his vision took on a new type of gloom. It's alright. We're bringing you to a beautiful, peaceful place, they had said. They knew just what he enjoyed, too. They knew enough to scheme a plot that would take the thing he loved most and make him absolutely hate it. Seethe with agony at the dying silence the ocean gave him during his final moments on Earth.

And as he felt his arms and legs go tingly numb and his head lowered in defeat-no, acceptance. He had already accepted the fact that he was going to die - something around him shifted. Hope boiled in his empty stomach, of which was heavily heaving with both distress and the bruises of the fist that had slammed into it earlier. Maybe he..

No, it was probably just a fish.

He closed his eyes tightly, uselessly for the first time in the mere minute he had been submerged in this hellhole. Although, it felt more like an eternity had passed, from the seconds of shock he had been allowed to when his desensitized covered toes had brushed against the textured rock. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to-

That movement again. Like the swirling of a whirlpool, heading down, down, down towards him. The bubble of desire had long since been popped by the sharp stained-glass of despair. His eyes shut tighter, closer together in an anguished attempt to close out all of this tainted hope. The yearning for salvation would only murder the shattered remains of his soul.

But there it was again. And again. Closer and closer it got, became the only thing his tangled brain could focus on. Closer and closer, he could feel the waves of strangely warm breath heat up the skin on the back of his neck. Closer and closer, those damned gentle fingers wrapped around the restraints on his wrists that twined up his arms and clutched to his shoulders, encasing the limbs in a swaddle of thick wire.

And he struggled weakly, mind slowly closing the doors of thought and breaking down inside of them. A large kitchen knife seemed to be cutting up the misty clouds of ice into tiny little itsy-bitsy pieces as his toes left the rock he had been so precariously perched upon. And up he went, away from the kelp and loneliness and feelings of abandonment. Was he being taken to heaven? His breath would have hitched if he hadn't been underwater.

Had he died?

The lingering question on his mind as everything went darker than night. Pitch black. The next thing he knew, something downy and wet was stuck to his eyes like glue and his head was bobbing up and down nonchalantly. No, he wasn't dead.

At least, he hoped not.