Had it been now, I would have had a seat belt on, but then, even if a car had them, we didn’t wear them, and thinking back, I wonder if in this case a belt might have done me in, if I might have been fumbling with the release, sucking in water all the way to the silty bottom.
But there was no belt in that giant Buick, and the impact and that dislodged windshield and the water drove me over the back seat. The clothes we had thrown there swirled around me and something caught over my head, and then I felt a pain in my spine. Realized I had been driven through the rear windshield.
The safety glass molded around me and then went away. I clawed the cloth off my face and looked down. It was dark where I was but light enough I could see the rear of the car and the dying taillights for a moment, and then I couldn’t. The dark took the Buick and Dad.
Above, I could see moonlight through water, and it beaconed to me the way dying people say they see a warm, bright light that invites them into it.
I’d been swimming all summer, but no one had ever praised me for my aquatic skills. I struggled like a dying frog with no real breath inside of me.
Then I saw a mermaid. She came swimming down toward me, and she was dark of shape and swift of motion.
I felt weak. I had the sensation of filling up with something and floating downward, and then the mermaid grabbed me, and up we went, her pulling me by my jacket. It had burdened me during my rudimentary efforts at swimming, gathering around me like a suffocating cocoon.
The light grew bright and the mermaid broke the surface of the lake, still dragging me by my jacket. The mermaid was black. I registered that. I coughed and spat, but the water wouldn’t leave me. I felt as if I was being absorbed by moonlight. Then the light was gone and the universe became a murky place and there was only the beating sound of the mermaid’s swimming arms and legs. Or so I thought before I realized it was the sound of my hammering heart.