How does it feel to drown? You might think you know because you’ve held your breath before. You’ve been swimming and mistimed coming up for air. You got a taste, but it’s like smelling the meal instead of eating it. But you felt a little of that all-consuming hunger for air that murders all other thoughts.

I was a sailor on a container ship. Neglect and years of cost-saving measures meant the old hulk was a death trap, a disaster waiting to happen. Our captain was drunk off his ass when he steered us into the rocks that slit the ship’s belly open, like a bear’s claws disemboweling a deer. The sea rushed in, trapping me in the dark, submerged in water as cold as death. I trashed around, trying to figure out which way was up. I was just about to give in and breathe my final breath of freezing salt water when the capsizing ship turned and a big bubble of air flooded into my compartment. For a moment, I could breathe, but the heavy sea moved the ship and with it the air bubble. I twisted and turned so I could push my face into the ceiling that had been a wall, just enough to keep my nose in that small air pocket. The ship kept swaying with the waves, and I had to scurry back and forth, so I didn’t lose it. In the darkness, I was like a blind dog trying to run after a ball.

I heard the rescuers as they boarded. The sounds of their voices and the shriek of power tools filtered through the bulkheads. I punched the wall with my bare fist to make a sound, to try and attract them, until all the bones in my hand were broken. It paid off. They heard and cut through to me. I never wanted to see the ocean again.

I was going to sue the company into bankruptcy, but they scurried away like roaches when the light turns on, vanishing into thin air with all their assets. So I had to get justice another way. See the rich old man at the bottom of the old well? He makes promises, then threats, then screams when the water starts flowing. Some of them swim, for a while at least, but the buck stops at the locked metal grate welded across the shaft. You see, what drowning does is it inverts your values. Suddenly, the thing that has no real value assigned to it, that you rarely even think about, becomes the most precious thing in the world, the only thing that truly matters. These old men suddenly learn the true value of something they took for granted. They learn how it feels to drown.