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Floating
The stillness was total here in the isolation tank, and the water as warm as blood. He floated here, in the peace of it. His heart beat in his ears, made seemingly louder by the lack of all external noises. He heard his own blood move in his veins; the sliding of tiny pieces of him, pieces too small for even him to see. There was magic, he supposed, in even this small thing. Blair would have thought so. He would have smiled, showing teeth when he did, his face goofy and wise at the same time.
Alone. Floating.
When the water rose to take Blair, he knew that it would never recede again. He cried for an hour, desperate sobs, hating it, hating all water. Simon stood by, watching, and held him fast while he shook, his arms strong, his smell of Old Spice an anchor to this time and place. Perhaps the only anchor he would ever have again.
And it was Simon who led him here by the hand when the world became more than he could stand to see, who led him to the doctors and their soft shoes on thick carpets.
It was the doctors who led him here to the dark and still chamber, to the water. The water which held the world still and quiet except, he laughed inside, for the beating, the beating of that infernal heart.
Water embraced him, held him up, as it had pulled Blair down, and in this dark place he felt a kind of union with the dead, remembered a line from a Stephen King novel Blair had made him read. We all float down here.
You'll float too.
You'll float too.