A TWENTY-HOUR NIGHTMARE

From up the sky, the Indian Ocean was a stupendous panorama. The azure ocean was in a word, breathtaking. It was so blazingly blue, it seemed ethereal. My mind was drunk with repose. Then, like a full-stop to my train of delightful thoughts, everything began to go haywire. The tropical weather changed abruptly for in a short time a massive tropical storm struck my twin 'safari' with full intensity rocking it up and down in a wave-like motion. I was wrenched violently against the seatbelt. Another gust of choleric wind hit the 'safari' causing an ear-splitting series of bangs. The skies blackened. A blinding awe-inspiring light burst from the heavens, followed by a deafening roar and space was awash in an icy quagmire. A bolt pierced space in channels of electric cadence. Suddenly, the cockpit lights went out. The engines sputtered, coughed their last as I pushed the nose down, hoping the engine would start in the swift glide. The only sound was the wind. Disaster loomed at a distance. Conditions were growing deadlier by the minute. The fragile 'safari' was gabbled by the wind and tossed up like a coin before coming down to a thunderous plunge in the least welcoming sea. The tail touched the water first. The sea was unwelcoming indeed. Violent squalls churned the seas. Within an hour I was nearly disorientated and hope was first ebbing away. I wasn't ready to die yet. Something told me to hold on for a while. Here I was in a perilous condition, trapped in an endless sea that was criss-crossed by turbulent waves and unpredictable weather but to surrender was tantamount to suicide. Lying precariously on the life jacket in the little equable sea, my mind drifted to the whimwham of my past life in a repentful recollection. The idea of time disappeared in that moment -- of uncertainty. Something kept telling me that I might make it. I was filled with this speculative orgy of unprecedented proportions until I began to see things. A mermaid sat there, a resplendent smile flashed across her strikingly beautiful face. She swam closer to me in the lithe and graceful motion. Her presence was forceful. She gave me a haunted consumptive look -- then a lopsided depraved smile. Tension was crackling like static electricity. "Let's go," she ordered and began to pull me in a vice-like grip. I wanted to scream for help, pray, kick, turn-all that into a nightmare from which I could wake. The bellicose mermaid derived some peculiar kind of fun from harassing me. At one time she laughed in such a weird way that my heart began to beat in intermittent paroxymal thuds. Giving me a mean, ferrety

look, she pulled me away and we began to sink towards the abyss. I was dead scared to resist as we sank to the very brink of this bottomless abyss. Her realm was the most terrible and rendingly pathetic domicile I had ever imagined as to exist. Everyone and things were wallowing in the foulest of treachery. An apparently old mermaid was resting vis-a-vis a human skull. She had the dazed, detached aura of a sleep-walker. Another, cow-eyed with boredom and blinking often like a day-flying owl, gave my captor a vast pneumatic embrace. I was led to the inner chambers where a thunderous ugly-as-sin roar burst from. Mermaids were dancing like mad. On seeing me they came rushing out at me. One gave an abrupt, horrible expunge of hot fumes. There was this brash, obese, stubble-bearded, fanged, clawed, drooling hairy mermaid monster who came in a wild stampede and gave a kick like a galloway bullock. i screamed. That seemed to turn them on. They rushed to me in the most appating hulabaloo shouting in tumultous and outlandish way. they carried me ceiling-high to a room whose contents will always remain entrenched in the stores of my mind. There were human skulls, genitals and pails of blood, to name a few. A mermaid moving like a moon beam as if in a fluid, shadow silent stalk-entered the labyrinth, a dingy poorly-lit room. Suddenly, she was master of innuendo exuding fire fumes as she talked in an unintelligible mermaid dialect, her jaws moving like hydraulic presses. She resembled the remains of a garage sale. She suddenly let out a grotesque, surrealist yelp which sent the other horde of mermaids into an impassioned beastial dance. I was let go unceremoniously with several kicks. However, I was elated to have survived the damnable ordeal. My life jacket still tucked by my armpits. I did not know how much longer I would live. I clang to it the way a tick holds on to a cow's hide. Suddenly, I felt the bump of a hard-moving body against my feet. A crocodile! I became dead-scared. Morale was petering out to abysmal levels. My life hang a balance-thrust like a drawn catapult. I swam like a man, a finger hold from insanity, kicking, caring less of direction. I was not going to give up that easily, I psyched my brain. I had been afloat for hours on end, it seemed to me. A flicker of hope stirred. The first rays of dawn began streaking out in hues of red red and indigo. The interplay of contrasting colours gave a kind of gungho enthusiasm to my sagging morale. I looked for planes but saw none. Acting as if on cue a monstrous crocodile lunged for me but was a shade too late. I let out a yelp and twisted away as another slid by. The crocodiles were there in a pack, sizing me up. My life was reaching its cut-de-sac. A bull came for me at breakneck speed: it was axiomatic that I wouldn't live another minute. The shark was so near now. my mind was stretched to the

limits, racing my heart frozen. The misanthropic creature was very near -- so very near. I was part of a million atoms floating hopelessly in a sea of vanity and death. I was balanced on mortal fear. Barely a centimetre away, I lunged at the diabolic creature. With all the strength I could muster I slammed a blow between its eyes. its mouth aghast with pain, a sardine shot in and it swam away. Two more bulls came from opposite directions as if shot from a gigantic cannon. I pushed my feeble body a touch away. The two beasts collided in a deafening bang like fuselade of automatic weapon fire. Reality was being as magical and ellusive as dreams and wishes. A chopper was heading towards me in great speed, a canister dangling from it. I stretched to reach it as one of the bull crocodiles made a last attack. I hit out with the violence of tornado. it was with an emotion so murderous and unspeakably evil. A deep groove furrowed its face which was alight with blazing malevolence. For a split-second, our eyes locked. There was a plethora of impassioned avarice, an overdose of desire in those eyes. The beast was airborne now as if to fulfil a fanatical ambition. I waged war for survival from the possible annihilation. Triza was at the hatch, holding on to the canister. The point of no return was nigh. The victor and the vanquished were yet to be known. My body dangled like a carcass in a butcher shop. The crocodile got me at the back. Red hot streaks of pain rushed through me but the zest for life was overriding. The chopper began to ascend. Finally free from danger I cast a glance at the sea. The pack of crocodiles was still there, staring at me. I waved. The crocodiles watched intently and then swam away -- very fast. Dangling from the canister, I became a single pulsating spirit suspended in infinity. I had closed my head from the clap of doom. Triza gave me a long hug and led me to a comfortable seat. the effulgence of the tropical sun was a godsend that midday. The rays danced and bounced in a blend of beautiful colours. It was like I had woken from an awesome nightmare. "I can't believe I am alive," I said to Triza and fell on her lap and slept.