When I was just a little boy, I used to dreamt about the sea, but it’s not the kind of dream where I would be swimming in the cool, salty sea water while the sun radiating warmly from the blue sky. One of the dream I used to have is always about me, alone in the water, drowning.

Though I suppose I cannot exactly call it drowning if I’m still able to breath underwater in my dreams. But now that I think about it, am I even breathing? I couldn’t really remember since the dreams hasn’t occurred to me anymore for many years. I kind of forgetting the fact that I had these dreams every night when I was young for years until now.

What I remember for sure is that I’m floating in the the water—dark, and empty. I remember that whenever I was about to get this dream, I would be in another different dream before everything turns dark—like all of the colors will be sucked by the darkness, and when it happens, I would close my eyes automatically before opened my eyes again to took in my all too familiar surrounding like it was normal. Although it’s clearly not.

I even swore that I could feel the cold water on my skins, how the small bubbles will form whenever I move, how the salty water tastes on my tongue, or how my hair and my nightly gown would also fluttering along with my movements underwater, but I didn’t felt the sharp pain of the water on my eyes at all the whole time I was there.

I remember that I could moves around freely in the water, as if there’s no pressure from the water that hindering my movements. Maybe it’s because I was in my dream, but when I thought about it, it’s actually felt like I’m inside the water but at the same time, I’m not.

In my dream, I would be wandering around in the water for a time I did not know how long. There was always a side that was darker and another side that’s brighter in my dreams. I thought that the darker place was the deeper part of the sea and the lighter place was the surface since the sun or moon would be shining through the surface. I did try to swam to the lighter part for an uncountable times, but however long I did it, I could not reached the surface. It was like I’m moving in the same spot.

And whenever my dream reached its end, there’s this... ‘something’ that moving—or swimming—around far away from where I’m at to see clearly what it was, but I roughly was able see the shapes of that creature. In the midst of the dark water, it’s color always shone brilliantly contrasting the dark sea. Like it is the light itself.

I was never able to figured out what it was, but I always thought that it might be a fish or some kind of mythical underwater creature.

The time it spotted me and swam to my direction, I would be awaken.

When I’m awoke, the feeling of disorientation made everything feels so surreal I won’t even know I was still in that dream or not until a servant shakes me awake or sprinkled me with some water to get me awake for real.

I used to be afraid of that dreams a lot. Different with my calm state in the dream.

I remember when I told grandmother the matter of my dreams years ago, she used to say that it was just a dream, nothing more, except if I am the one that making that dream a source of my fears. And she might be right at that time. I was just a child that’s having an irrational fear toward a weird dreams.

But looking at the condition I’m in right now, I couldn’t say for sure that those dreams were just merely ‘a dream' like she used to told me.

Because, right now, as the water dragging me down to the sea and the impact with the water knocked out all the air I have in my lungs, it made me gasping like a fish out in the open air, though reversed. When I tried to inhale some driblet of air, what I get is not the fresh, satisfying air I desperately need, but a painfully burning sensation of the salty water that get into my respiratory system.

And with all that, I could only say that, I am, in fact, drowning.