Kelp-Green Satin
Rebecca Cuthbertson
Layers of lilac organza drift around me like jellyfish tentacles, reaching for the light that dances in fractals on the surface of the ocean as I descend into teal depths.
The dress I’d spent endless hours creating, tirelessly stitching and adjusting, tightening a seam here, another layer of tulle there, would join me in my final resting place. It felt fitting to wear my graduation dress again, a decade after its debut. I wasn’t surprised it still fit. Physically, I hadn’t changed much. Mentally, I’d drowned many years ago.
Drowned myself at the bottom of a bottle one too many times. I’d tell myself tomorrow would be different; I just needed one more night to say goodbye to the only thing that stopped the trembling in my fingers when I spoke to literally any member of humankind.
Ribbons of satiny green kelp tickle my limbs, as well as my memory—that color feels so familiar, like promises and pinky-swears made long ago. It welcomes me into the depths. As I watch it trail past, I wonder if anyone at the party will notice I’m not there, or even care. Ten years since graduation, but what do I have to celebrate? I couldn’t bring myself to shake off the nerves. Even half a bottle hadn’t prepared me to face those I’d once considered friends, to exchange small talk as if it meant something.
Darkness consumes me, welcoming me home. A cluster of champagne bubbles escapes my lips with my final exhalation. They rise, twirling about one another and out of sight. When my body meets the ocean floor, a cloud of silt and sand billows around me.
Is this where I’ll spend eternity? Among the urchins and otters? Will hermit crabs live in my eye sockets and rockfish pluck the meat clean off my bones? Surely not. All the years of saturating my tissues with toxins must have made me unpalatable, even to scavengers. Though it seems fitting to give myself back to an ecosystem that once sustained me. The ocean had nourished my soul whenever I’d taken breaks from my sewing machine, and now I give myself back in offering—if it’ll have me.
I think about the girl who wore this dress once. She had so many dreams—each of them crushed by a dead-end job, endless credit card debt, and a world that told her that her dreams didn’t matter, that she had to be realistic.
I almost think I can see the silhouette of a dolphin in the distance. It brings about my final smile. I wait one more heartbeat before parting my lips and inhaling deeply.
A vibration in my pocket breaks my trance. While watching my rippling reflection in the water from where I kneel on the dock, I pause for a moment before sitting back and fishing my cellphone from the pocket the girl I once was had sewn into the gown.
A photo illuminates the screen. Two young women with arms wrapped around each other, one in lilac organza, the other in kelp-green satin, beam up at me, their eyes aglow with hope and opportunity. Two words lay below the photo: Miss you.
I stare at the screen, mortified by what I’d just considered—what I was about to do to the girl in the lilac organza. Lifting myself off the dock, I walk back toward the city lights in search of kelp-green satin.
I tell myself tomorrow will be different.
And it is.
Rebecca Cuthbertson
Having grown up on the southwestern coast of British Columbia, Canada, Rebecca Cuthbertson spent her days watching the horizon for orcas and sea lions, and combing the beach for sea glass and other treasures. The Pacific has always been part of her life and holds a piece of her heart. Author of the coastal BC-set sci-fi horror series, Undead Waters, Rebecca also likes to dabble in various creative musings when she isn’t wandering the local beaches.