He was a bullet swiftly guided through the azure pool. Twenty feet down and his chest tightened like a hammer pulled back to click. This was the farthest he’d dove since childhood, when dares were innocent and stakes unknown. He kicked off the bottom, throat rippling now as he felt the vacuum in his lungs, and he wondered when he’d learned the fear of drowning. For a moment he stopped kicking and let himself drift neither up or down, suspended in the last seconds preceding panic. Then he darted towards the surface, gulping down air and warm chlorine until his lungs stopped aching and he remembered to breathe.

Written in response to this week’s Six Sentence Stories challenge. You can read others’ takes on this week’s them “FLUID,” here. 

Featured photography by Ishai Parasol.