I was half awake when I felt the blissful tickles in my ears. It resonance hasten as soon as it penetrates inside my walls, catering that immediate pleasure to send shiver down to my spine. A melody like the old centuries tale coming from the deepest abyss of the sea — and I was hundreds feet upper, drowning in my best rendition of bed of roses. The sailor has long told me the story, of the ocean to claim that they lull our kind into our deep slumber, like how a mother harmonize with the phantom of her long lost daughter. The waves were dancing as it grows higher before dwindling to wash away the shore, following every whistle and the rhythm that soon become the kind of parasites that pierced deep in my brain. My father may be six feet under by now, but his appearance are vivid to my imagery, like the way this wound on my left knee are visible even after years of his closed fist striking through. If only he had his last breathe even to this point, he might have cursed me — his damned, unwanted son — for another endless night. I have decided my path to end the vicious cycle, and I wanted to hear the ocean sing for me.
Could you hear the whispers of my elegy?
A harmony to your ear — dear, don’t waste your tears.
They thought I was clueless, they thought I was another case of stupidity to have birthed in this wicked world. But I have become one with the ocean — if the ocean remembers what they see, then I remember what I heard, even when I was just another lump of meat hanging in the womb of my mother. We have always avoided the singing voice, for we believe that it’s just a call to our kind’s demise, feeding our chassis to whatever sneaking underwater. And so for years, none of us ever really heard it clear, except only one line before we quickly plug our ears with the cotton that my father always prepared at any time. Sometimes, the gentle voice turns into an entropy — it screams when it didn’t meet their demand — casting strong vibration like an earthquake to shake our hut by the shore. Sometimes, my mother’s vases would move an inch or two, and if it breaks, then my father would take the whole family inside the chamber beneath the ground. No one is allowed to go out until the next twelve hours, so we often prepared our dinner from the stocked up cans in mom’s bedroom. No eyes are allowed to sneak on the upper window — the curtains are closed, sometimes forcefully boarded with the furniture. I was curious, but I was never a rebel. Whatever creature that traps us inside this place are nothing but vicious, for I believe that they have taken my family one by one, starting from my sister.
She was always the good girl of the family. The trophy kid. We never bicker and she always knows when to share the food when I was crying for my smaller portion. She seemed like she wanted nothing but the perfect life that we already had in the shore — except it was never perfect — and I was too denial to admit that I have lived in what was equal to earth’s inferno. For a glance, my sister would always listen to what my father said, and it’s all because if she stopped listening, then my father would once again, gave her the only two options he would always give. Open hand or closed fist. My sister avoid the latter, but the latter was something that she often got for every tiny mistakes she has made.
And so, when I saw her throwing away the cotton and walk closer to the window, I just know that she wanted it — she planned to be one with the ocean — they hear my sister more than my father always has been. At first, nothing happened, except for the next seconds where she begin to ramble about the voice. Of, how mesmerizing it was, and how alluring they were altogether. Soon, her pupils dilated before her eyes turned into pitch black. Her mouth were left in agape, as if someone has taken her voice away. She danced to whatever she heard that time — a peculiar, eerie passage that we witnessed, and I knew that I can’t do anything by this point — none of us are allowed to. I saw the tears streaming down of my mother’s eyes as she was down on her knee, hopeless. My father opened his mouth and uttering words that seems like a curse — I can’t read it through, I had my cotton on my ears — knowing that he will lost another punching bag aside from my mother. They knew that she had no possibility to survive.
Dance, my dear, touch the shore,
Meet the white, cast your azure, see the evermore.
I can’t remember all the vivid imagery, for I was way too scared to imagine it all together. My sister — she had her bare feet touching the sand, with each of the shell began to pierce and left a tiny bleed in each step she has taken. But all of those are to be wash away by the ocean, slowly, taking her from the knee down, before it completely swallow the whole chassis of my own sister.
She never came back and we have to follow the rule.
We pretend that she was never part of the family.
Like now, I think I have just downed myself in the same way my sister was hypnotized. I heard the singing, and the reflection in my window shows my movement the same to my sister’s. The rhythm flows, beautifully, that I began to sway my hand in circular motion. I no longer sense the rusty woods, the empty glass of coffee, and burned cigarettes. The room no longer reeks like the dead body of my father, but it smells like the morning sea. The room greets me like my spotlight, as if I am here to hold my own kingdom. A place where I heard the crowd amidst the loud waves that collides the stones. I pass by the big mirror under the stairs, and I saw the vivid reflection of myself. I saw my mother — in her mischievous grin and runny mascara — in the dress that she wore after she follows my sister’s step, succumbing herself to the ocean to wash away her depression that was inflicted by the whole dysfunctional family alone. And I saw myself, the familiar visage that has long battling with loneliness and the devil that rooted in my brain, long forcing me to be somewhat similar to my father.
And my eyes were pitch black, just like the day I saw my sister.
The fate has strike me to death, putting me into this perpetual mockery of life through the way that I am the only one who stay alive. After mother left, and it was only me and the damned old man who never stop drinking, I had no choice but to stand up for myself. You think that I could’ve run away — but the closest from our place were nothing but a hilltop to nowhere. And God knows how many time I have found corpses laying for every miles I take my jaunt. Sometimes I left it all alone, but my father prefers to bury them to hide the evidence of his vicious deeds.
Have you tried and wended to the shore, dear?
Had the ocean ever become your perpetual company, dear?
I know that the ocean wants me.
And I always tried, million times, to succumb my life down with every particle of its’ might. After the day I gave the open hand on my father — strangle, because that was the safest way I could do to avoid him fighting back — all I did as a revenge to my loveliest two lady who had to live their life tortured by the hand of the blood that we shared. The old man didn’t fight back, as if he was ready to accept the fate. My hands were much more stronger than him — one that he never expect after I grew up to no longer become a boy, but another man like he was in his twenty. He lost his breathe within minutes, and I smell the triumph reeking from my own hand.
And so I buried my father in the ground beneath the lighthouse, for the ocean don’t deserve a heartless bastard like him.
But I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think it through that I become one. I was raised with his fucked up mind, and soon I become just as fucked up as he was. Another gauche to live by the shore, so day by day I keep asking whether the ocean deserves me — do they want my body?
Live along with us, stand by the coast.
In this abode akin to your eternal catacomb.
Don’t be afraid to bleed — we’ll kiss the wound.
Don’t be afraid to sleep — fear the ground.
And so, here I come. To the ocean that has long wanting me, flesh and bone. I promised to succumb to you after the day my father lost his breath away. I have longed for their touch — the people that I love — and the ocean, one that used to caress me with bliss from its’ warmth cascade. Now I want their blue to take me away. No blood, no tears, no sweat. I want to be washed away like I was born again. The clean slate that brings me purity, for I am ready to be taken into the unknown.
If humans can’t cure me with this deafening solitude and chronic insanity, then I believe the ocean will.
Tell me, ocean. Do you still remember my name?
Have your fate decide your death, my dear?
Have your fate catch your anguish over your fear?
Tarnished in blood, stained by dirt.
Plaints are revealed, corpses by the outskirt.
Heed your triumph, follow these heretical words,
The gates are open to the place where you first heard.
In this fathomless abyss, you are greeted by our kind.
Chaperoned by the music of toneless strings,
We welcome you home — to the deathless you choose to bring.
