Hayden's Escape

​Hayden stood a good distance away from the swirling vortex that was known as Thor’s Well, a place just off the Oregon coast where the entire Pacific Ocean seemed to drain into an eighteen ft. wide hole on the rocky shore, yet still she could feel the spray.
 
High tide was just beginning, and the well was at its most dangerous.
 
Especially now, ever since the military had sectioned it off for quarantine.  It along other random sites all over the US.  Sites now thought to be portals to other places.  Possibly other dimensions.
 
Of course, none of that mattered to Hayden.  No, she was here because her mother used to bring her here, back before any of the current nonsense.  Back when the world was still asleep and dreaming it was awake.
 
“I should throw you in, and me too,” her mother used to tell her, from as far back as she could recall; always the scent of brandy thick on her breath.
 
“Throw you back to your father.  He didn’t want you.  Why should I?” she’d ask, as she petted Hayden’s long silver hair.  Petted her like some kind of rag doll, or mutt she’d happened to find on the street.
 
“Nothing about this place makes any sense, yet here I am… supposed to make it all work, and not just for me.  Nooooo….” she would say, as she wobbled closer and closer to the churning hole.
 
Hayden had never known if her mother was actually going to throw her in, as she so often threatened, and so she’d always just hung on, clinging to her mother like one of those toy monkeys in the shop. 
 
She’d always wanted one of those silly monkeys, until one day the similarity dawned on the young girl, as she sat there in her mother’s arms, clinging to the deranged woman for all she was worth.
 
After that, young Hayden couldn’t even look at the toys in the drug store window without being reminded. 
 
“This section is closed, ma’am,” a voice had called to her as she had hiked out onto the jagged rocks that surrounded the large phenomenon; a former sea cave that had collapsed and had become a place where the ocean could swirl around itself, before falling twenty feet, only to be sucked back out into the thrashing sea.
 
Yet Hayden hadn’t paid the voice any mind, as she hadn’t really planned to stay all that long.
 
“No one would even care if you died,” her boyfriend had told her, as she held the gun to her temple.  “No one cares about you,” her husband had screamed at her many years later, the time he’d beaten her into the closet.
 
And it was all true.
 
No one had cared if she lived or died. 
 
Not back when she was a child.  Not when she was married.  And certainly not now.
 
Hayden looked down at her stomach, at the place a child now grew… despite all of her best efforts.
 
And then she stared out onto the answer to all of her problems.
 
“At least it should be quick…” she told the stars, as they were just then beginning to peek out from behind the setting sun.
 
Hayden had thought the location of her self-righteous suicide was fitting, you see.  As it was the same place her homicidal mother had threatened to murder her more times than she could count.
 
Closer and closer she crept on broken and bleeding feet.  But Hayden paid it all no mind.
 
Because death is like that, when it sings its sweet serenade of love.
 
Because death is the lover that never denies you, never rejects you, never refuses your kiss.
 
Just then a large wave crashed all around her, threatening to pull her down into the rushing water as it flooded the one-time cave.
 
Hayden’s toes dug stubbornly into the sharp rocks, as she fought against the massive force of the oncoming water.
 
“Not yet…” she breathed, when it looked like the waves had settled again.  Because life is like that, holding you fast to your suffering because it’s all that you know.
 
But then she sighed, looked down once more at the child she could not save, and jumped.
 
You see, Hayden didn’t like not being in control. 
 
Because entirely too much of her life had been like that, one mountain dumped on her after another, and even though she’d climbed them all… it still hadn’t been enough.  Would never be enough.
 
Because she just hadn’t been built for this kind of world.  With these kinds of rules.
 
Down into the swirling water she sank, the icy waters of the Pacific closing in above like some kind of funeral shroud.
 
But just as the darkness closed all around her two large arms encircled her.
 
“Hey now, that’s not as good an idea as you might suspect,” it said, soft and sure in her ear.
 
And then a moment later she was once again on the Oregon coast.  Only this time she was being held firmly in the arms of a god.
 
“Wha… who…” she stammered, and then she fell asleep.
 
 
#HaydensDream
#ComingSoon
#RebelSunSeries
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© Raena Exe 2022

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

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