The Midway: Prolouge

I could hear the water before I could see it, but I could already smell the salty air. The familiar sloshing and lapping of the sapphire liquid, the sparkling blue iris of Earth. Whatever drink he had given me was starting to wear off, but my vision hadn't quite cleared. The wind was whipping against my face, freezing my raw rubbed wrists from the ropes he had bound me with. As my vision cleared, at any other time in my life, I might have thought this view was beautiful.
I've always wanted to see the ocean, I just never got around to it. The only reason I knew it’s sweet siren song was because of the Nature Sounds Audio cassettes I purchased from a record store down the street. I suppose I was too busy with life; taking care of my dying father, keeping my eccentric mother tamed, and trying to pay the bills for school and home. I had a life, don’t get me wrong, it was just primarily day dreamed.
The first time in awhile I had gotten out of the apartment was because my best friend, Jasper, had come back into town from travelling abroad for college. We’d been friends since childhood, but he was the one who got to go on to bigger and brighter things. I was so happy to have him back that I didn't particularly care where we went. If you asked me now, I would say that I should have ran away from that bar, or from him.
Jasper stopped the car, hard.
“See, Rea? We made it. Remember when we promised to see it together? We’re here.”
I tried to mumble a retort, but my vocals hadn't made it to the tip-top shape my other senses had gotten to. Neither had my legs, apparently, since he had to pick me up out of the cherry red mustang, a gift from his father when Jasper went off to college.
“Easy there, Tiger-Shark.” I cringed at the childhood name he gave me when we were kids, “I didn't come all this way to loose you tripping over sea shells. No, we’re going to have a nice night. Look; even the stars came out to greet us.”
He wasn't wrong. Dad, before the doctors diagnosed his cancer, taught me how to pick out the constellations. Without all the city lights, the stars looked like they were on fire instead of the dying hind-end of a lightning bug. Strange though, I could have sworn that I saw Pisces in the sky, which was a long way from it’s celestial home.
He dragged me to the end of cliff and sat me down. How could he be smiling? Despite the moon, sitting above the water amid a sky of diamonds, drugging and kidnapping your childhood friend isn't exactly my idea of happiness.
“W-w-why, Jassssy?” I managed to stutter and slur the simple, yet imperative question out.
“You haven’t called me that since we were ten,” chuckling, “Rea, you and me have been together since the start. I wanted to come back for you, ever since I left, and I thought you would wait for me.”
He suddenly became enraged, in his own quiet, little way. Jasper has never been an emotional person; quiet and patient while others would kick and scream. I could see it in his eyes, the crimson rage that seemed to dance with demons.
“Then you stopped writing me. Your letters used to come in every week, then nothing for months at a time. You distanced yourself from me, which could only mean that you fell in love with someone. A pretentious douche-bag, I’m sure.”
“Jassy, my faaather diedd. He started getttting worse, and I-”
“Don’t lie to me! I can hear it your voice; the falseness. But I won’t fall for it. I came back here to give you a chance, one more chance to come to your senses. Tonight at the bar, you were supposed to apologize for it, to prove to me that you knew where you belonged. Then he came up to you, and the way you smiled said it all.”
“What guy?” The drugs had finally worn off and I became aware of what Jasper was prepared to do, “You think I was dating the guy who bought me a drink? It’s a bar, Jas! That’s what happens.”
He looked like he was about to respond, but instead he went back the mustang and came out with a cinder block. He carried it over to me and had started to tie it to my legs with extra rope. Jasper was too angry to realize the drugs were done doing his dirty work, and as he leaned down to tie on my anchor, I thrust my knee into his nose. He fell back, tearing up and cursing my name. I got up and ran, but the drugs appeared to still be lingering. The dirt and sand beneath my feet felt like sludge; I was too slow to get away.
He felt like a sack of bricks when he tackled me to the ground. My head must have slammed into a rock, because the next thing I knew was the hard, cold shock of ocean water. It filled my lungs as I gasped for air that wasn't there. Panic was the next thing to fill me. I tried swimming, but my feet were too heavy; I looked down and saw that Jasper had tied the stone block to me while I was out.
The last thing I remembered was the water, bluer than I thought, and the most luminous fish that I have ever seen, making it’s way towards me.