give birth to you, the name had made its way to Richard. One day he announced to me that your name was going to be Sawyer, like it had been handed down to him in a vision from God himself.” She began to laugh hysterically.
“That was very sneaky of you, mother. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
She sighed heavily. “I did.” Her eyes became unfocused and suddenly it was like she was staring through me and not seeing me. Her head began to make an orbiting motion, small circles.
“Mom?” I yelled.
No response.
“Mom!” I called out louder.
Her eyes closed and she blinked rapidly like she was trying to clear her mind. “Sawyer?” She asked, and then her eyes closed and her chin fell to her chest revealing an angry looking bloody wound on the top of her head. She needed help.
Soon.
“Stay with me, Mom,” I called over to her. The water was now above our waists and still rising.
Her eyes remained closed, but she spoke again, only she sounded like she was far away instead of right in front of me. “Mom,” she said. “I… I like it when you call me that. It’s much better than Mother.”
Then silence.
“Mom, Mom!” I yelled. Hoping for at the very least another incoherent answer.
Still no answer.
“Moooooom!” I groaned as the water rose and was now at chest level. If my mother stayed in her current position she’d be breathing in the murky water within the next few minutes. “You need to pick your head up, Mom. Pick it up!” My yells turn into screams.
I pulled at the restraints tying my hands together and growled when they didn’t give yet again.
I needed to stay calm. Think. Clear my mind.
With the water rising all around us and the fear of losing my mother and my unborn child’s lives, I harnessed my panic and attempted to find some clarity amongst the chaos.
I’d grown up in a home where the religion was strict and the enforcement of both God and my father’s laws were even stricter. I’d bowed my head thousands of times and recited words of faith because I was told they needed to be said. But I’d never truly prayed. I never put any meaning behind the words I was saying. I never believed them enough to be true or had the kind of faith that others found easy to trust in blindly.
Dear God, Universe, Ma’am, Sir, Flying Spaghetti Monster,
I don’t know how to pray anymore. Actually, I don’t think I ever did. I was taught to always give you thanks and never ask for anything because you would provide me with everything I needed and to ask for more would be questioning your will.
A sin.
But since so much has been a lie I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that asking you for something I need, not want, is okay. Maybe just this once.
I’d start by saying thank you for all you’ve given me but there isn’t any time. I’m going to jump right in and offer you a bargain. Maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t want to ask you for something so big without offering you something in return.
But I have to try because I don’t just have something to lose.
I have everything to lose.
Please, I beg you, spare my mother, she’s been through so much. She’s endured the unthinkable. She deserves a chance to live her bliss. To be happy. I want her to know how it feels to live without fear and be loved unconditionally by someone who doesn’t expect anything in return. And for your generosity in sparing her, I offer you me. But only after the baby is born and safe in her father’s arms. Then I’ll go with you. Willingly and happily the second I know they are all safe and together.
Please let my family live and I’ll do anything you want.
Anything at all.
I repeated my prayer over and over again and at some point, I must have drifted off to sleep because I was dreaming of a blonde woman with a bright smile and a purple silk scarf wrapped around her neck walking toward me. But her feet weren’t touching the water, she was walking over it. Maybe I was just hallucinating. Or maybe I was already dead. I felt the panic. The very real panic shoot through my veins like a jolt of adrenaline.
If I was dead. It meant the baby was dead too.
“No! I can’t be dead. I can’t be dead.”
The woman crouched before me and smiled. Her white pants and blouse were unwrinkled, unstained. She smelled like fresh linen. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her. “Don’t you worry. You’re not dead. Not yet anyway. Your baby is safe, but you have to listen to me very carefully.”
“Are you…God?”
The woman laughed and it sounded light and bright. Angelic. “Oh, darlin’, they wouldn’t want me running things. It would be like a two for one happy hour twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It would be a lot more college frat and a lot less holy afterlife. You catch my drift?”
“I think so,” I answered. “Who are you then?”
She clapped her hands together. “I’m someone who is here to help.”
“How?”
The woman thought for a moment, tapping a perfectly polished fingernail against her chin. “You know how when a bad situation comes up people tend to tell you to always look ahead and never look behind you, or something like that.”
“Sure, my mother used to say that all the time.”
“Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s all bullshit. It’s what’s behind you that counts. It’s what’s behind you that is going to save you. Don’t wait on your knight in shining armor to rescue you, as hot as they can be sometimes. BE your own knight. Rescue yourself. Finn might have rescued your heart, but the rest is up to you now.”
As fast as she appeared, and before I could ask her what exactly she meant, the woman in white was gone.
I opened my eyes and felt the water at my chin. Water was now splashing up into my eyes. I squinted over at my mother whose face was now only inches away from the rising water. I wished my dream were somehow real and what was behind me was really going to save me. The only thing behind me was the tree I was tied to and countless swamp animals waiting for me to shift from life to death so they could have at my carcass.
I wouldn’t give up.
I will never give up.
I felt a new resolve growing within me. A new kind of power, bravery. It was exactly what I needed to push on.
In a last attempt to free my hands I stretched my fingers under the water, searching for anything that I could use as a knife to cut through the rope. The water was flowing around us more like a river than a swamp so it was possible things underneath had shifted.
I touched something hard with my finger where moments ago there was nothing. It was at least six inches and broken or jagged at one end. I didn’t know if it was a pipe or broken piece of wood or rock, but I hoped it would do. I maneuvered it between the ropes and started sawing. I dropped it once and then once again before I could do any real damage to the rope. I growled out my frustrations into the rising water that had now reached my mouth. My thoughts were scrambled as I pressed my lips together tightly.
I didn’t dare look over to my mother knowing full well she had to be submerged by now. I couldn’t let anything distract me from the task at hand.
Both of our lives depended on it.
I had to hurry, but I knew rushing wouldn’t get me anywhere. I hummed the lullaby my mother used to sing to me during storms to ease my fears. And as my mind drifted over those times she gave me comfort when she had none of her own, I sawed away.
I took my last large gulf of air right as the water rose over my mouth and then my nose.
After reciting three verses of the lullaby in my head my lungs were burning, like they were on fire. With one last push of the restraints against the object, and one last underwater scream, something snapped and my hands broke free.
I emerged from the water, gasping for my first full breath of air in what seemed like forever. As my lungs took their fill it was as if everything stood still. The splash of each rain drop in the water. The
leaves falling from the wind rustled trees. I could see everything now. Everything smelled stronger. Sounded louder. Appeared clearer.