Houdini couldn't do this one.
I think this as the team finishes nailing the boards down. I am the now the sole inhabitant of the room. There are no doors or windows. I am casual, sitting on the splintery 2x4 wood encasing me and smoking a cigarette. My final one, I tell the audience, who all look at me through the four separate wireless cameras set up in the corners of the room that is slowly filling with smoke. I smile to them and wave, a cock-sure gesture that I will be out of here shortly.
No need to worry.
After the cancer-stick has been extinguished, I sit Indian-style (such a crude term) and wait. My hands are together, as if I am in the act of prayer. I meditate and plan. Needless to say, the cards are already set and I will make my escape, as I am a master of these things. Magician by name, deception-artist by trade.
The water slowly fills the room. It is a nauseating 40 degrees, colder than I had expected, but that makes the biggest difference in the performance. The audience sees my reaction to the cold water and they are instantly both curious and afraid. The water touches my knees and my thoughts instantly turn to Violet; her eyes blue and transfixed on me somewhere out there in the television audience, wanting me to escape my plight and come out forthright and triumphant. Laughing and joking with the crowd as to how I escaped my predicament, unchanged and unhurt. She would be smiling through the television, pleased as the rest.
I sit and stare at the water. It pulsates as it is drawn into the room. I am steady and careful with my breathing. It doesn't vex me, the thought of my death being the substance of all life. Water purifies, it never stagnates while it is giving life to an organism. Why should I be frightened of it? The giver of life coming to take what it had rightfully given.
I don't dally as it reaches an inch, two, three, five beneath me. The splintery boards become tight with the exposure. I can't see the audience, but I know they are going wild. Violet is most likely creeping closer to the television set, telling me to do something, to get out and claim my righteous victory over the water. She will get nothing of the sort tonight from me. The last time we had spoken had been brutal; my heart broken in at least three places on account of her nefarious misgivings and cruel jokes of my character. Since then it had boiled underneath. It had boiled and boiled until, like a pot of hot water, it ceased to be, and only burned the Teflon surface. Only salt had remained.
The water is at my bare sides now, and I am breathing hastily, it is so cold and I need to acclimate. I dive under the narrow depths and return, wiping it from my brow and heaving a great breath strewn with the life-giving liquid. I have done nothing to render my escape yet. That would come as the box grew deeper and my plight increased. The ratings must be going crazy.
Violet will be getting nervous as I paddle my arms about, treading water roughly four feet deep. Maybe she will recall our time at the water-park, and how I nearly drowned. The large pool had generated waves of varying height, and had eventually come close to six feet. I had been so drunk that when one hit me, I had fallen. Then the next one hit, and the next. I drank a gallon of water between my stomach and lungs. She pulled me out, to my surprise, as she was no swimmer. She, being the one who leisured in the short-end of the pools and drank her vodka martinis. I had always grimaced at that. Martinis were meant for gin, not the insufferable vodka. Anyway, I had been saved at that pool. Immediately after I made an ass of myself, screaming drunkenly at the park managers that their rides and pools were hazardous. That they were for children to drown in. Violet quietly went off somewhere, obviously to drink. When I had been kicked out she was nowhere to be seen, and when I had met her hours later in the parking lot she was so drunk she made me drive. Not one word was uttered the entire nineteen minutes. The twentieth was where it stopped being civil; a long diatribe meant only to inflict damage. My self, my emotions and my spirit had hurt for days and months later.
Months later I am half-submerged in this room. I have to escape to show everyone who I really am, that I am a man with a message,that I am a man of patience. That I don’t take shit from anyone. I stand by my principles, which is something Violet would know nothing about.
The lights dim as the water reaches my neck, becoming little beacons in the corners. I have done nothing to insure my escape yet. I swim around the room, looking for little crevices to pry at to escape, finding nothing. I look to the cameras and say one thing. “Hello, I am alone in a room with no doors,” and continue to swim about, making my efforts look real. The threat of the danger is slowly building.
The little eyes of the cameras are red. I look at them constantly, with a gleam of self-satisfaction, pretending I am completely lost. I must know something to get myself out of my predicament, but I continually stall, hearing the audience in my ears screaming for me to find my way out, which I most surely will.
I can feel the hum of the stereo and the speakers in the next room as I put my head under the water. A man, my speaker of the moment is talking to the crowd, riling them up, telling them things such as “Will this man find his death? Or will he escape at the last possible second from this room? Or is it his tomb?” Words I had written for him days ago, when the idea was still on paper and forming in my mind. Jacob, Jacob you sweet soul. How much had he helped realize my goal? More than he knew, I thought. The man was stupid, but his morality compass pointed north every day of the week. He knew how to stir the people up, and he was doing a remarkable job, from the deafening outcry from the studio audience following his words.
The water is now past my neck, and an inch or so remains of breathable oxygen in the room. Only moments away from complete water solution. My forehead scrapes the boards and I inhale the last possible scoop of air I can manage before I go under for the finale.
Jacob’s words resound in the room, muffled. The audience is heaving and hawing and the reality of my demise, so imminent and close. They don't know why I haven't stopped looking futilely for a way out. Violet must be in an outrage, knowing how much I hate water, even though escaping a watery confine is a magician's most signature trick. Her face must be close to the television, remembering me drowning in a water-park.
My last breath of oxygen is held stoutly in my chest as I work around the room, eagerly searching for a way to break out. The eagerness is false. I must confide, it is all a ploy of the magician to tell you how time is running out before he breaks free. I am a master of my craft, and water has always been a base enemy, but still I am here, conquering my foe to win back the love which I have lost.
The last breath breaks free in the room and I have nothing left. The audience is thunderous. My lungs seize and contract, attempting to find the oxygen they had to expunge, finding none but water. Violet sees this and she is screaming at the broadcast, that something must be wrong and that I am a wonder that will not be ceased.
Eyes bulge as the water seeps into me, the bringer of life is not always so kind. Audience members are standing, looking, knowing...hoping that I will break free of my cage and be before them again to make yet another stupid elephant disappear with mirrors. I know different.
I gasp and gasp for breath that isn't there. Jacob is silent in their midst. I can feel the water draining slowly, too slowly. Sound starts to mumble together, and nothing is able to break the sounds apart. My lungs cease their violent pumping. Violet is breaking her television now, hopeless. This is my last trick, the best a magician could ever accomplish.
This is the trick of a magician dying.
Nearly eighteen miles away, a woman named Violet was wrapped in her sheets, deeply asleep.
Originally Published by Pyre Publishing's N: Volume II 2017