The Kid (Part 4): Man in the Mirror

[JSample]

The Kid: A Semi-Autobiographical, Somewhat Tongue-in-Cheek Journey of Self-Discovery
(Or, What Happens When I Write a Quicksand Story and Cast Myself as the Hero)

by Jason Sample
August 2017-November 2018

(If you haven't already read Part 3, it's at viewtopic.php?f=14&t=19530#p125736.)

In Part 3 of our story what would have once seemed a dream come true to Jason, a desperate damsel trapped in quicksand and for whom he must become her hero, devolves into a living nightmare as Angela sinks helplessly beneath the surface of the mudflat despite all his efforts to save her. He suspects that the Kid has both delayed and manipulated him to bring about this cruel turn of events so as to mock Jason and to satisfy his own fetish-level cravings at the cost of the young woman's life, but even the worst that Jason can imagine of his monster pales before the horror of Angela's final words of accusation as the quicksand takes her under.

Standard disclaimer: As always, this story is "semi-autobiographical"; in the course of it I touch on certain aspects of my own quicksand fetish, both positive and negative, that pertain solely to myself. I do not presume or pretend to speak to or about others' experiences of their quicksand fetishes, nor about quicksand fetishism in general. Your mileage may vary.

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The Kid (Part 4): Man in the Mirror


“You… promised!—”


Jason stood alone in the mud in stunned silence, his breaths coming in shallow, trembling gasps as he stared at the surface of the mire, shocked by what he had just seen... and heard. Angela’s final, forsaken cry of dereliction had sliced to the core of his very being. He had indeed promised to save her, and she had trusted him to do so. But despite all his efforts on her behalf he had failed her… and now she was gone, claimed by the quicksand as its own. His stomach began to twist upon itself as he envisioned the poor girl sinking helplessly ever deeper into the clinging, smothering ooze, trapped, terrified, unable to breathe, while he just stood there looking at the place where she had vanished into oblivion. He felt for certain that he was about to throw up, and he surely would have had it not been for the voice that suddenly broke the silence from behind him. It was a familiar voice... too familiar.

“‘Angela’s sobs were choked off as she disappeared beneath the surface,’” the voice intoned from memory, “‘the quicksand forcing its way into her mouth and nose as she tried to take one final, desperate breath, while the muck gradually filled in the depression that her face had left when she went under.’”

Jason turned slowly to face the Kid, who was standing at the edge of the pit and gazing intently at the spot where the merciless mire had overwhelmed the defenseless young woman. His monster had gotten what it wanted after all, Jason realized; the Kid had watched the damsel in distress sink to her doom in quicksand, for real, and he had quoted Jason’s own words from decades before just to rub it in his face. From deep in his heart, Jason felt a seething fury spark against his younger counterpart for his utter lack of compassion and empathy for the suffering of another, a fury that only intensified as he looked down and saw where the Kid’s right hand was... and what he was doing with it.

“What kind of a monster are you, Kid?!” Jason raged as he grasped the rope attached to his belt and began heaving himself back toward the edge of the mudflat. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he shouted, fighting his way through the shallow mud while he pointed back at the place where Angela had sunk. “She went under! She’s going to die, damn you!” Jason scrambled back onto solid ground and grabbed the Kid by his shoulders, still trying to shake some sense into him. “I promised her that I would save her, and she trusted me! Don’t you give a damn about that?!” he cried in tearful, powerless anger at the younger, seemingly heartless version of himself.

The Kid stared back at Jason blankly for several seconds before speaking again, his voice a low monotone in reply. “You promised her that you would save her, and she trusted you,” the Kid said to him slowly and deliberately. “Don’t you give a damn about that?”

“What?” Jason reacted in surprise, taken aback at hearing his own words repeated to him.

“She went under. She’s going to die. Damn you,” the Kid’s methodical, accusing grumble continued as he took Jason by his shoulders and turned him to face the spot where Angela had disappeared.

“What are you...?” Jason asked uncertainly, now at a complete loss over the Kid’s uncharacteristic words and actions.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the Kid growled slowly and heavily as he pointed with his left hand toward the place where Angela had taken her final breath... and with his right toward Jason’s pelvic region. Jason’s eyes followed the Kid’s right arm and hand downward... and he shuddered in shock and revulsion as he saw where his own right hand was... and what he was doing with it.

“What kind of a monster are you... JASON?!” his doppelganger roared at him in righteous indignation, and as Jason looked back at his accuser he saw to his horror that the face before him was no longer a memory from his past but had become instead his own reflection in the here and now... and Jason realized that he no longer knew where he ended and where his monster began.

If you wanna blame anyone for what’s happening now, the Kid had insisted when he had first shown up, go look in a mirror!

Jason staggered at the edge of the mudflat, stumbling and almost falling in as his world spun crazily before his eyes. Is this all my fault? he asked himself incredulously as Angela’s final, fearful moments replayed horrifically in his mind. Is this what I really wanted to see happen? It had been one thing to acknowledge in abstract self-reflection that his monster was just as much a part of himself as he was of it, but the appalling yet arousing sight of the terrified young woman sinking helplessly into the sucking mire despite all his efforts to help her had now brought that reality crashing down upon him with sickening certainty. I tried to save her… didn’t I? Jason retched as his stomach began heaving again at the thought of the doomed girl suffocating in helpless agony beneath the sodden surface, and it was only through sheer force of will that he was once more able to keep himself from vomiting.

“You have a choice before you, Jason,” his own voice echoed inside his head as he struggled to maintain both his footing and his focus, “the most crucial decision that you will ever make.”

This can’t be happening, Jason protested to himself amid the dizziness that threatened to catapult him back into the mire. His fetish had always been for the fantasy of the damsel in distress sinking to her doom in quicksand, not for it to happen to anyone in real life… right?

“It is a question that only you can answer,” the voice persisted as it reverberated through his consciousness. Jason felt as though his entire life had been leading him to this moment as he looked out toward the spot where Angela had vanished, seemingly an eternity ago but in fact only moments before, while air bubbles began to gather and pop on the surface where she had gone under.

“Are you a monster, Jason…” his own voice thundered inside his head, “or are you… a man?”

Jason gazed at the place where Angela had breathed her last, still holding in his hand the rope that was attached to his belt. “You promised!” she had cried in an anguished voice of betrayed hope as the quicksand had swallowed her before his eyes. Yes, I did promise, Jason conceded to the dying young woman now hopelessly entombed within the clutching grip of the deathly mire… and you trusted me to keep that promise.

You… trusted me.


And with that recognition of Angela’s final, despairing demand on his character and integrity, Jason knew what he had to do.


He turned and sprinted across the dirt path toward the tree where he had tied the other end of the rope, ignoring the jutting rocks that poked and scraped painfully at his bare feet as he ran. It was a good thing that he had never really mastered ropes and knots during his brief stint as a Boy Scout, he thought as he pulled at the flimsy knot that he had tied earlier to secure the rope, amazed that his pathetic effort had held for as long as it had. Come on, he grumbled impatiently, untie! as his fingers fumbled with the braided cord until at last it acquiesced to his efforts. He then threw the knotted end of the rope to the ground and began racing back toward the mudflat, one end of the rope’s fifty-foot length still anchored to his belt while the other lay loosely at the base of the tree, his plan formulating itself on the run as he again crossed the path as quickly as his out-of-shape physique would allow.

The fatal factors that had thwarted his earlier attempts to save Angela flashed through Jason’s mind as his feet pounded the dirt. He hadn’t been able to reach her before she went under because he couldn’t get close enough to her, and he couldn’t get close enough to her because he hadn’t had enough length of rope and because he had been afraid for his own safety, afraid of what might happen to him if he weren’t careful. The solution, he realized as he quickly approached the edge of the mire, was simply to have more rope, and not to be afraid for himself. No fear. Then he would be able to get close enough to her to save her, no matter what. There was still time. No fear. It all made perfect sense, he concluded, eyeing the spot where Angela had disappeared beneath the surface as his six-foot, two-hundred-fifteen-pound frame hit the edge of the pit and launched itself into the air. No fear…

There was just one loose end to his plan… and it was trailing on the ground some fifty feet behind him.

Decades before, Jason had indeed taken his religious beliefs seriously, despite the Kid’s mockery of them; Jason had even gone so far as to enroll in seminary in the mistaken belief that he was “called” to ordained ministry, and he had come away with a pair of unmarketable master’s degrees for his time and trouble. He had once genuinely believed that sincere prayer would be answered with heaven’s blessing, but that had been a long time ago, and in the decades since his worldview had become completely secular. So as his body soared over the surface of the mudflat in its ballistic trajectory, it was with not a little surprise that Jason found himself praying for the first time in many years. Not to any god in any imagined heaven; no, the object of his prayer was much more down to earth. Jason found himself praying… to the end of his rope.

“Snag on something, damn you!” he entreated the loose, knotted end of the rope as his body arced toward its landing spot near the middle of the mudflat. “Snag! Snag! SNAG!”

Jason’s bare feet hit the mud essentially where he had hoped, a foot or so in front of where Angela had sunk beneath the surface. His legs knifed into the quicksand as if it were warm butter until the viscosity of the muck overcame the velocity of his mass and his descent abruptly slowed and stopped at the level of his waist, his abdomen smacking the surface with the force of a gut punch that knocked the wind out of him. Dazed by the impact, he momentarily forgot just why he had made this boneheaded leap, the only coherent thought he could formulate being, So this is what real quicksand feels like… After a few seconds’ disorientation he recovered himself and, remembering what he was doing and why he was doing it, he plunged his right arm into the mire in search of the girl while he reached back with his left and began pulling lengths of rope from behind him, knowing that one end was securely tied to his belt while the other… well, the other was obviously still loose, skittering across the dirt path several feet at a time with his every yank. This was either the bravest thing that he had ever done or the stupidest, Jason reflected as he concentrated on finding Angela within the muck even as he sank deeper into it himself, not wanting to look back to see if the rope were about to catch on anything. If all he had succeeded in doing was to doom himself along with her, he didn’t want to know it yet.

It’s only been a minute or so since she went under; she couldn’t have sunk that far, Jason argued with himself as his right hand probed the mire below its surface, hoping that Angela had been able to hold her breath. She’d gone under slowly; wouldn’t she still be sinking just as slowly now? Unless she’d started struggling again beneath the surface until she had lost consciousness or, worse, had instinctively tried to breathe and had filled her throat and lungs with thick, choking ooze. Jason shuddered at the thought; if the fictional words that he had written decades before and which the Kid had quoted from memory after Angela had disappeared into the quicksand were now to prove prescient, she’d be lost even if he could pull her out. Where the hell is she? he worried with growing apprehension as precious seconds ticked by; had he misjudged where she had gone under? If I don’t find her soon…

His anxious worrying ended abruptly as his searching hand found her left arm, suspended away from her body in the mire about a foot below the surface, and to Jason’s startled surprise it jerked in response to his touch. She was still conscious! His hand followed her arm through the thick mud until he reached her torso; judging by how deep his own arm was, he estimated that the top of her head was about four inches or so below the surface, and as he began wrapping his arm around her body Angela suddenly and violently began grasping at him and thrashing her body deep within the mire. She was definitely conscious! He couldn’t decide if she was trying to take hold of him or fighting against him, but she still seemed to have her wits about her.

However, Jason realized that this welcome development brought with it a new set of dangers. Yes, she was still alive and literally kicking beneath the surface, but the unexpected possibility of rescue had caused her to begin struggling in earnest again, threatening to pull him under with her while risking the exhaustion of what supply of oxygen remained in her bloodstream and perhaps leading her to try to breathe while she was still submerged. And even if she were able to resist that urge, Jason knew that he would have no leverage with which to pull her and himself to freedom until and unless the end of the rope hung up on something, anything, behind him. He redoubled his left-handed efforts to pull the rope toward himself as he concentrated on securing his grip around Angela despite her frantic movements, hoping that the knotted end would somehow snag somewhere before he pulled it over the edge of the mudflat and into the quicksand with them. If that happened, he reflected grimly, his last-minute heroics would have merely betrayed Angela with one more false hope, consigning them both to the sucking blackness that had already consumed her body and had now dragged him down to the bottom of his ribcage.

Doesn’t anyone ever hike this damn trail anymore? Jason fumed as he continued pulling the rope toward himself. Now would be a really good time for another park visitor to have decided to brave the fallen trees and rocks to enjoy the view of the river, he thought… unless, of course, Angela’s earlier willingness to… enjoy herself… in the mud at this spot had been due to her already knowing that this was a seldom-traveled, well-secluded area. She had certainly seemed as surprised to see him standing before her as he had been to see her masturbating in the mud, he recalled; that would also explain why her earlier cries for help and his loud urgings to her hadn’t attracted anyone else’s attention. As he continued reeling in rope, Jason began to fear that, despite all his efforts on her behalf, he would soon join Angela in an eternal embrace in the smothering depths of the quicksand, never to be found or seen again, when without warning the rope behind him went taut in his hand.

Jason blinked.

Had someone come along and taken hold of the rope after all? No, it was still stretched out at ground level, and he had heard no one’s voice calling out to him. The knotted end must indeed have snagged on something on the ground… but what? Jason tugged again at the rope; it still held. He then pulled as hard as he could against it, but it was still holding on whatever had caught it. Fearful of jinxing his good fortune, Jason resisted the urge to look back to see what had happened behind him and gave his full attention to pulling Angela up and out of the muck, even as he noticed that her movements against his body were slowing. She was running out of air and time, he recognized, and he began looping coils of rope around his left shoulder and armpit to try to secure the rope tightly to his body as well as he could before he plunged his left arm into the ooze to join his right in a desperate attempt to extricate her from the mire.

By now more than two minutes had passed since the quagmire had taken her, and Jason realized that the young woman was no longer moving at all in his arms. She’s passed out, or worse, he worried as he pulled awkwardly against the mire’s grip on her body, sinking deeper into the mud to his armpits even as –– yes! –– he felt her form slightly ascend in his grasp. Despite the thickness of the muck that had engulfed her, Angela’s violent, last-minute struggles after she had felt his arm around her had loosened the quicksand’s grip on her body enough for him to make headway, and now that the rope had somehow snagged on something behind him he finally had the leverage to try to pull her upward.

Jason began kicking his legs in the mire to keep them free as he momentarily extracted his left arm from around Angela and out of the mud so that he could reach back and again tug on the rope. It was still taut. Taking a deep breath, with a monumental effort he pulled on the rope as he continued kicking and managed to heave himself and the girl a couple more inches upward and back toward the edge of the pit before looping another coil of rope around his shoulder. He reached back into the muck with his left arm to take hold of her again, and then, calling on every reserve of strength remaining in his arms and upper body, he arched his back while flexing what biceps he had against the mire’s hold on her, sinking to his shoulders as he struggled to pull her body upward. Several seconds passed in agonizing slowness as Jason continued kicking his legs while straining his muscles against the muck’s begrudging grip on Angela until finally, miraculously, her head broke the surface of the quicksand before him. It was an incredible, beautiful sight, he thought, like watching a baby being born from the womb of the earth. Holding her body securely with his right arm, he pulled his left arm free from the muck and tilted her head back to bring her entire face above the surface as he quickly wiped thick layers of ooze away from her mouth, nose, and eyes.

Jason paused momentarily, panting from his efforts, amazed that he’d been able to pull the girl up from the depths of the quicksand as he gazed at her face, the beauty of her features evident even through the mud that still covered them. But something was wrong. Oh, no! he realized as she lay motionless against him, she’s not breathing! “Angela, no! Breathe! Please!” he cried as he began shaking her head with his hand, his heart breaking at the thought that after all he had done he had still failed her. He shook her head again and then slapped her cheek, lightly at first and then harder, to try to rouse her. No such luck. Was she merely unconscious, or had she died in his arms even as he’d tried to pull her free? He pressed his index and middle fingers against her neck in search of her carotid artery, probing for a pulse as he’d learned to do in a long-ago CPR class, and after a few fumbling seconds he found it, weak but steady. She was alive! But she still wasn’t breathing. Jason quickly opened her mouth, only to be confronted with a mass of thick, sticky ooze within. “Oh, no,” he murmured in dismay as he realized that she had indeed tried to breathe before he could pull her up from the quicksand. Even though Angela’s face was now free of the smothering mire, she was silently suffocating before his eyes, her life slowly ebbing with each passing second.

Jason began scooping and swiping the muck from her mouth with his fingers, clearing it away in the hope that the mud had penetrated no further into her body, until at last he had removed enough so that he could see the back of her throat. Pinching her nose shut, he inhaled deeply and pressed his mouth against hers, exhaling to try to inflate her lungs, hoping against hope that they hadn’t become impacted with choking ooze from her last, desperate gasp for air while she was still beneath the surface. To his relief he felt her chest expand in his embrace; despite her having taken in a mouthful of muck, it seemed that she had done so reflexively after losing consciousness, and in her weakened state its viscosity had prevented her from inhaling it down her windpipe. But even though her lungs seemed to be mostly clear, she still lay unmoving against him; was he indeed too late? He continued holding his mouth against hers, breathing for her in the anguished hope that, having denied her body to what would have been its miry grave, he could somehow cheat death itself of the limp young woman into whom he now sought to restore the breath of life.

After half a minute or so of his pushing seemingly fruitless lungfuls of air into her body Angela suddenly stiffened and spasmed in his arms as her lungs choked air back into his, and Jason pulled his face away from hers as ragged coughs and gasps began emanating from her throat. For several seconds she struggled to clear her airway as her consciousness returned, taking in deep, heaving breaths through her mouth before finally opening her eyes and looking up at Jason in incredulous, unbelieving wonder, utterly unable to fathom how it was that she was once again able to see and breathe. “You… you…” she gulped and gasped as she stared uncomprehendingly into the same eyes that had watched her sink helplessly beneath the surface what seemed to have been an eternity before, “you…”

“Yes,” Jason smiled back at her, gently wiping the remaining muck and ooze away from her face, “I promised.”



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To be continued in Part 4: “Girl Meets Boy.”

[JSample]

To be continued in Part 4: “Girl Meets Boy.”

Sorry about the typo; "Girl Meets Boy" is Part 5.

[quagmire_uk]

Another brilliant part!

[JSample]

Another brilliant part!

Thank you!