Johnny Wraith Stories

I swam and swam. I closed my eyes as I swam. The currents stripped me of my clothes and my shoes as I swam; freeing me of the last things left over from the only other world I’d ever known. I swam. Or maybe it wasn’t swimming but something else, such as escaping, no, maybe I was becoming? So with eyes closed, I kept going, paddling and kicking, doing the Breaststroke, remembering Vatsulu’s words:

“Just keep swimming my brother. Go with the currents.”

“Just keep swimming my brother. Go with the currents.”

And so I went with the currents. I swam with the flow of warm water, and many colors flashed through my eyelids. I followed along cooler flows filled with music and sound, and most of it I didn’t recognize, though it ranged from signing birds, to African drums, to Brahms, and Chopin. I swam.

I opened my eyes, and discovered I was no longer in a canal, but deep in the middle of an ocean with no air or land in sight, but I wasn’t alone. There were fish, whales, dolphins, and sharks. The dolphins spun circles around the whales. The sharks chased and swallowed the fish, chewed them up, and spat them out whole again, but in new shapes and colors. Once a stout, silver fish, it might come back out a long, red one, or as a baby octopus.

And then from nowhere, a giant mouth opened up and swallowed me whole. “Oh shit. Johnny and the whale…” All I could do was roll up into a ball and brace myself for the teeth. I tumbled in circles in the dark and I bounced about the mouth and gullet, before the water rushed out and a light came on. I blinked a few times and shook the water from my ears and face, finding myself sitting on a tongue floor in a little cave with a lit lamp, paintings hanging from the fleshy walls, a small bed with a canopy, a desk, and a rocking chair. What appeared to be a buxom young woman without any clothes was sitting in the chair, slowly rocking. A pencil and a little book were in her hands. She stopped writing and looked over the top of her little round glasses at me.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“I was swallowed by a whale.”

“I see,” said she. Then she put down her things, hopped out of the chair, onto the bed, and opened her legs wide, showing me the white soles of her dainty feet. With her head lifted, she looked down at me over her porcelain belly, and through a great, bushy mound of bright, red hair. “That must mean it is that time of year for me. We have been brought together to mate,” she declared with a crooked smile and a wink.

Though I felt the blood rushing in, all I could do was stand up, erect, but I couldn’t step forward. She was a poised and ready young tart, enough to make even an old man desirous, but my feet were hesitant.

“Come on!” she gestured. “Just put that thing in here,” she pointed. “It won’t hurt, not at first. When you feel the sting, you’ll already be finished.”

“I can’t.”

“It sure looks like you can! All you have to do is take a few steps! I’ll put it in for you.”

“I can’t.”

“Good!” she squealed and clapped, closed her legs, hopped to her feet, and approached me with her hand out. We shared a formal handshake.

“You passed the test.”

“What test?”

“You are a man with more to pass on than bones to ashes and dust.”

Another riddle. Shit. I began to regret not taking the bait.

“Let’s go!”

The water started rushing in. Her legs turned into a fish tail and she took me by the hands. “You won’t be able to breathe under water any more, so you need to take a deep breath and hold on to me. Just keep your arms around me – don’t let go, and I’ll do the same to you. Put your mouth on my nipple and keep it there,” she pointed. “You’ll have to breathe through me,” she giggled. And so we were enveloped, fell into one-another’s arms, and I took my breath from her body as she took me off my feet and began moving her hips. We swam. We swam out of the behemoth’s mouth, and into the depths of the ocean. I couldn’t see where we were going because her breasts were in the way, but I could tell we were swimming downward.

“I have a friend you need to meet,” she gurgled into my ear. “It will be a long swim because the bottom is a long way down. You can go to sleep if you want. I won’t let go of you.”

And so as she swam, I fell asleep, and it was a pleasant slumber. I dreamt that she reached down and stroked me until I was spilling out, leaving a milky trail in our wake. She laid eggs as we swam. Little translucent eggs. They popped right out of her as she wiggled her hips and tail.

I dreamt of all the stories I would write. It was amazing how many ideas were born from that slumber, as I took air from her, slept in her embrace with her body rhythmically and softly flowing against me.

And I never knew her name.

When I woke up, she was gone. I was sitting before a stone sarcophagus in an ancient stone room with only one way in or out: a tall portal between two pillars with stairs leading up to it.

In the sarcophagus, in the middle of the floor, was a skeleton lying on its side.

Nothing but bones and dust.