Drowning, Swimming contd By Joe Hakim

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When his wife found out she was pregnant, she stopped going out and getting smashed immediately. Keith did for a while as well, but boredom and the grind of the working week depressed the shit out of him. On the surface, he had everything, but sometimes he felt as though he was drowning.

His wife didn't mind him going out; in actual fact she encouraged him to, just so he wouldn't be moping around the house all weekend. 'So long as you get up for work and you're here during the week, I don't mind,' she would say. 'But if it ever starts to affect our relationship, or your ability as a parent... and if I ever find out you're shitting on me with some tart - then that'll be it.' 'I would never do that to yer, baby, I just go out to get smashed, y'know that,' he would reply. As he smiled, the memory of a blowjob from a blonde bird from Beverley in a toilet somewhere would flicker across his frontal lobes. Something was wrong, and had been wrong for some time.

Somehow, Keith had started changing into something else. It was all leading up to this, like tributaries leading to a river, leading to the sea. The contradictions, the shit job and the domesticity; it had all been put upon Keith and he didn't try to swim against it, he just went along with the tide. 'Fuck,' he gasped, the joint dropping from his lips. He had begun to shake, and he started to wheeze heavily. The sweats returned, thicker and quicker. What the fuck was happening?

Keith ran out of his front garden and into the street. Clutching his stomach, he felt his whole body shudder. His insides felt as though they were being rearranged, like a Rubik's Cube reaching its final pattern. Thoughts rushed around his head with no real purpose or reason, a dam breaking. He felt the sudden urge to be near the water. He began to move towards it. Living on the dock was expensive, but his wife loved it. She loved the rows of identical modern houses, the driveways, the grass; the relative quiet, the unknown neighbours. She said it felt untarnished. As Keith passed the houses, he imagined identical families all sat watching Sunday night TV - the mothers preparing the children for bed, the fathers recovering from the flood of the weekend rush.

He reached up and touched his hair. It came away from his scalp in huge clumps. Horrified, he held up it up to the moon and noticed the webbing that had begun to form between his fingers. He knew that he had to reach the water soon or he would die. He couldn't breathe at all now, and he could feel the gaps opening in his neck just below his jaw. Finally, he reached the edge of the water.

His arms pulled back towards his body turning into fins, so he had to slide beneath the railings. Wriggling free from his clothes, he felt his legs bond together. The inside of his head was nothing more than an unrelated series of images, and it made him feel seasick. Homesick. As he hit the water and began to swim, the murky brown water of the Humber flowed through his gills, and the last of his memories was eradicated as he headed towards the ocean.

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