A Brand-New Ghost Swims Away

Candace opens her eyes and starts to take a deep breath, then realizes quickly she doesn’t have to do that anymore. She glances at her feet. She is shocked she can open her eyes underwater without blinking constantly. I can see underwater, she thinks smiling, how wonderful.

Candace continues to look suspiciously at her feet. She frowns, my red shoes are gone.

Particles of glass float in the water around her face. I fell off the boat. My wine glass. Shattered. She remembers, vaguely, cruising around the sea with her husband, Kevin. The Ritzy Bopping Around Boat, they named it. A culmination of a lifetime of hard work, scrimped and saved. A retirement gift to themselves. Thirty years in the insurance industry.

“Who would have thought I would last that long?” Kevin chuckled, sipping his wine, and staring out at the sea. A flute of champagne shattered on the starboard just an hour prior.

 The brilliant sun plunged quickly, leaving behind shimmering purple, red, and orange streaks as the peaceful yacht rock soothed out of the brand-new speakers.

“I have always wanted to simply be a dolphin, that is on my bucket list, and…”, Candace paused her words, struggling to be heard over Christopher Cross. She tapped her red stiletto on the shiny white deck, not able to keep the beat, mostly hoping her husband would get the hint and turn down the music. He doesn’t. Kevin is smiling and tapping his feet easily to the beat, sipping his wine, not listening to her bucket list dreams. Candace feels annoyed. I just listened to his bucket list, how rude. She reaches over and turns Christopher down a notch at the same moment the unseen boat smashes apart her bones and shatters her wine glass into the sea.

“I have always wanted to be a dolphin, that is on my bucket list, and to swim and make friends with the mermaids.” Candace finishes her sentence and looks around her. Where is Kevin? She floats effortlessly. Cozy. She isn’t cold or hot. The crystal shards of her wine glass swirl around her head in the salty water. Everything is bejeweled. Like a disco ball, Candace thinks, then her mind pivots, why is the music turned off? The water is a sparkly silence. She hears a distant beep, beep, beep.

Suddenly, dolphins zoom by in a pack, diving deep past Candace as she floats just under the surface. The dolphins rocket up towards the surface, breaking free at the top of the choppy waves with a flicker of their tails.

Candace smiles and laughs with pure delight, then gives her bare feet a few hefty kicks to join them. She’s too slow. She watches them bounce away.

Candace tries again. She forgets and takes a deep breath and laughs at her mistake. No need to breathe! She pushes her arms through the water, as fast as she can. She kicks her legs like a toddler on a kickboard. Fast as you can, fast as you can, she thinks with excitement.

“Wait for me!” she yells out at the dolphins, “I’m finally here, joining you in the sea!” Candace laughs again as she remembers she doesn’t need to come up for air. I am just like the dolphins, she thinks, then yells out again, “Wait, I want to swim with you!”

But the words don’t come out, they’re only bubbles, dispersing fast and rhythmically into the air above her like puffs from a chimney stack: Blurp, blurp, blurp.

The dolphins disappear. Candace can hear their echoes underwater, but their beautiful sounds are growing faint, interspersed with beep, beep, beep. The beeps are growing faint and far between. Where are they going? Why are they swimming away? Am I a dolphin now? Candace is ecstatic, then a little crestfallen all at once, why won’t they wait for me?

Where is Kevin?

Suddenly a mermaid swims up and stops in front of her. The mermaid is smiling and holds a single red rose in her hand. Her tail and flipper are long and kelly-green and full of sparkly scales. The light streaming into the water makes each scale shimmy and dance. The mermaid is gorgeous. Her hair is long, the color of carrots, and her eyes are crystal clear and green. She hands Candace the rose, but it slips from her fingers and floats away. A pink peony appears in the mermaid's hand and like the rose, it slips from her fingers and floats away.

Candace watches the peony disappear and then glances down at her bare feet and feels embarrassed. Where are my shoes? She stretches out her arms and fingers and reaches up slowly and feels her bare neck. Where is my jewelry? 

A second mermaid, this one with a sparkly satiny plum-purple tail swims up. Her hair is long, thick, and black, and her eyes are crystal blue. Candace cannot believe she’s making friends with mermaids. Bucket list, she thinks, searching for Kevin once again. He shouldn't miss this. The orange-headed mermaid joins the purple-tailed one and the two mermaids embrace. They both have white daisies behind their ears. They point at Candace. They giggle and laugh. They throw the flowers towards her and beckon Candace to follow. They slowly swim away.

“Wait!” Candace shouts. 

 Blurp, blurp, blurp.

Candace thinks something isn’t right. Why are all the dolphins and mermaids swimming away? Why can’t I find Kevin?

Candace starts to panic but she doesn’t feel her heart race. She reaches her hands up to feel her long white-blonde hair, but when her hands meet her head her hair feels short and a little crisp but also a little slimy. She pulls her hands back to her face and turns them over in front of her. Why are my hands so blue, and so cold and numb?  She suddenly realizes she cannot feel her fingers or her hands. She can’t feel anything.

Candace glances back down at her feet. They are blue. Where are my shoes? 

She looks up and cries out to the dolphins.

She forgets about the mermaids.

“Please come back, I just need to find Kevin and let him know where I am going!”

Candace continues to float, feeling torn between following the dolphins and the mermaids and finding Kevin. I can’t just leave him, she thinks, on his retirement day. But he knows this is on my bucket list, to make friends with the mermaids and swim with the dolphins. This may be my only shot. Why is he hiding? Why is he ruining my one chance?

Suddenly Candace sees Kevin. He is in front of her, sitting on a chair. It almost feels like she is floating above him, but that doesn’t make sense, Candace muses, how could he be in a chair in front of me, when I am in the sea?

Kevin, her husband of over thirty years, sits as he always does, legs crossed and hands over his knees. He is wearing his usual scuffed black-laced Skechers. A good option for arthritic feet, the ad promised. The ad was honest. His head sits sadly in his hands. He is wearing his most comfortable reliable brown sweater. The Uncle Kevin sweater, Candace and Kevin call it jokingly, because it’s a look any middle-aged uncle can pull off.

He looks so alone, Candace thinks.

“Kevin?” Candace says softly. He looks up at the empty hospital bed in front of him. Candace blinks, but her eyes stay open.

“Kevin!” she says louder. Kevin stands up and visibly shivers, “I need to get out of here,” he says, without looking up at her.

“Goodbye, I will always love you, my lovey,” he says softly to the empty bed in front of him.

My lovey. That’s what he calls me, Candace thinks, panicked, because he isn't looking at her.

“KEVVVVVVVVIN!” she screams and waves her arms widely. “I’M RIGHT HERE!”

Kevin pauses and blinks, shivers again, then shuffles out the door.

Suddenly the purple mermaid appears above Candace. Candace looks around. She tries to blink. She tries to breathe. She is now lying in the hospital bed, but she is ready to go. This is not a place she wants to stay, alone.

She kicks her feet as fast as she can.

She swims away.