03 Jul The Deep End

Have you ever done something so dumb as a kid that it scarred you for life? I don’t mean embarrassing dumb. I mean life-altering, body-mangling, lose-a-part-of-yourself dumb.

Yeah. That kind of dumb.

I’ve never told this story in full before. Not to a therapist, not to my parents, not even to Dr. Hammond, who spent years trying to pry it out of me with soft eyes and coffee breath. I guess I’ve always thought that if I kept it locked up, it would shrink and die like a sealed-off wound.

But it didn’t. It festered. And I’ve still got the hand to prove it. Or most of it, anyway. The bones are mine. The fingers? Not so much.

This happened when I was nine years old, during summer break. My parents were working full-time back then, Mom at the hospital and Dad in IT. I was an only child, which meant I had plenty of unsupervised hours and a full backyard pool all to myself.

They trusted me. I was a good swimmer. I’d passed all the levels at the Y. The deep end didn’t scare me. In fact, it fascinated me. The quiet down there, the weightlessness, the feeling like time paused when you touched the bottom? I lived for it. That water was my sanctuary.

And at the bottom of that sanctuary, on the deep end wall, was a small, circular, metal vent, about the size of a saucer. That’s where the suction from the pool filter pulled debris in. A little current ran to it constantly, but it wasn’t loud, just a dull, persistent whisper under the surface. The grown-ups never mentioned it. The first time I noticed it, I remember wondering where everything had gone.

So I started testing it.

It was innocent at first. A pine needle. A torn-off blade of grass. I’d dive down, press the thing into the center of the vent, and watch it disappear, like the pool was eating it. I don’t know why, but it thrilled me, like I’d discovered a secret passage to another world.

Before long, it turned into a ritual. I’d scavenge the backyard for little “offerings”—twigs, dead bugs, even the shiny foil from a popsicle wrapper once—and I’d take a deep breath, slip beneath the water, and feed the drain. It became a game.

My private game.

That’s how it starts, right? Stupid games. Stupid kids. Nobody ever tells you how fast something can go from harmless to irreversible. One moment you’re playing pretend. The next, the air’s run out, and you realize the world doesn’t care how young or clever or sorry you are. You’re just stuck.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, this game—this drain feeding obsession—I got good at it. I held my breath for longer and longer. My lungs got stronger, my dives smoother. I liked the pressure in my ears. I enjoyed how the noise of the world cut out when I went under. It was just me, the shimmering blue, and the gentle vacuum of the drain waiting for its next gift.

I never really thought about what was happening to the stuff I pushed in. I imagined a tunnel, a chute maybe, carrying it into some underground tank—but I didn’t care. What mattered was the moment. The pull. That sensation of watching something vanish into a place I couldn’t follow it to.

Until one day, I did.

I remember the heat. It was early August, and the pavement by the pool was too hot for bare feet. I ran across it with a towel in one hand and a plastic army man in the other—one of those cheap, green little guys with the rifle molded to his chest. He was the offering that day. Something about the fact that he was a guy instead of a stick made the ritual feel different, more real.

I dove in, and the water swallowed me, cool and thick and quiet. I kicked down hard, drifted to the bottom, and faced the drain. I pressed the little soldier into the center, just as I always did. At first, it resisted. It was too big, too solid. I twisted it a bit, and the suction grabbed it, but not fully. One leg stuck out. So I pushed harder, and I felt it jerk a little. Then my fingers slipped, and the suction caught my hand.

Not the toy. My hand.

It wasn’t painful—not at first. It was more like a yank, like when your sleeve gets caught on a nail. I instinctively pulled back, expecting it to pop free.

It didn’t.

The drain held tight. The fingers that had wrapped around the toy were now lodged inside the metal circle, and I could feel the suction lock in around the knuckles. I tried to yank my hand back again, harder this time. Nothing.

The panic came fast.

My body twisted, legs kicking up bits of debris from the pool floor. My lungs were already tight from the initial dive. I realized—horribly—that I’d stayed down too long before this even started. I’d been showing off to myself. Now I was down thirty seconds or more, hand stuck in the wall, and the clock was ticking.

I remember the moment I knew I was in real danger. It wasn’t when I started thrashing. It was when I stopped thrashing—just for a second—and tried to think.

My brain said: “You’re not getting out.”

The thought didn’t even sound like my voice. It was cold and final, like a judge reading a sentence.

I turned toward the surface. It looked so close. Ripples danced above me, bright with sunlight. Air was right there, just a few feet away. I could see it.

But I couldn’t reach it.

My chest spasmed, and pressure bloomed in my temples. The blood in my ears started to buzz. I remember thinking about my mom. I don’t know why. She had a yellow blouse with little white flowers on it. For some reason, I imagined her folding laundry.

The thought was absurd, but it hit hard: She won’t know where to find me.

That was when the real panic set in.

I didn’t know then what oxygen starvation does to your thoughts, how it scrambles logic and makes you forget that pain is coming. That death is coming. I just knew I had to move, that I had to get free.

But I couldn’t.

I was nine years old, and I was about to die in my own backyard, offering a plastic soldier to the deep end drain.

And it was only just beginning.

* * * * * *

I don’t remember the exact second when fear became something else—something thinner and sharper. Not just panic anymore, but this sense that time had changed shape. Like I wasn’t inside it so much as watching it collapse.

My fingers were caught. That was all that mattered. My fingers—three of them, I think—had slipped inside the pool vent and gotten wedged between the narrow slats of the cover. The suction had pulled them deeper, and something about the way they twisted must’ve made them lock. I didn’t know how to reverse it. I was just a kid. And the more I yanked, the more they jammed up.

It wasn’t like a trap snapping shut. It was worse. It was slow.

Every ounce of strength I had went into trying to pull back. I planted both knees on the pool wall and kicked off, bracing against the tile, but it barely moved me. I could feel the tendons in my hand stretching, the skin on my knuckles scraping against the inside of the metal ring. Searing pain shot up my wrist, but it didn’t matter.

What mattered was the burn in my lungs. I’d been underwater for maybe forty seconds by then. I remember that number because I used to time myself. I was proud of hitting forty. Sometimes I could even make it to a minute—but not while fighting. Not while flailing and twisting and burning through oxygen like a lit match.

I looked up again. The surface seemed farther away than before. I think that was the moment I first realized I wasn’t going to make it—not if I didn’t do something fast.

I thrashed harder, trying to wedge my other hand between the metal ring and my trapped fingers to create some kind of leverage, but the vent was flush with the wall. There was nothing to grip, and the suction was relentless. It didn’t roar. It hissed, constantly. Patiently. Like it was waiting me out.

I kicked off the bottom again, screaming into the water this time, bubbles exploding from my mouth. It was pure reflex, like my body trying to spit out its panic.

And that’s when I knew I was really in trouble. I’d wasted most of the air I had left.

Everything after that came in fragments. Like frames from a film left too long in the sun, memories flickered:

The blood pounding in my ears, so loud it replaced the pool’s silence. The way the sun wavered above me, shimmering like heat off asphalt. The sting in my nose as the first tiny mouthful of pool water slipped in. My lungs convulsing, trying to breathe, trying to breathe, trying—

No air came.

My chest pulled against itself. I coughed underwater, which meant I inhaled. It was only a little at first, just enough to burn. The chlorine hit the back of my throat like fire, and my body jerked, reflexes taking over.

It was then that I started slamming my head against the pool wall.

I don’t even remember choosing to do it. My vision had narrowed to a gray tunnel. I think I was trying to knock myself out, or maybe just shock myself loose. Either way, it didn’t work.

But the pain awakened something within me. I remember opening my eyes and no longer seeing the drain, just my own reflection in the brushed steel. My face was bloated, cheeks puffed with trapped breath, eyes huge. My lips were trembling like they didn’t know what to do.

And in the warped glassy surface, I thought I saw something blink.

Not in the drain. In me.

There’s a moment—right before you black out from oxygen deprivation—where your body gives you one final jolt of clarity. Not energy or strength, but a sudden, crystalline understanding that you’re about to die and no one’s coming.

I had that moment.

And then something in me cracked.

I started wrenching my fingers, twisting them, one at a time. I heard something snap. It could’ve been the plastic army man, or it could’ve been my middle finger. I honestly don’t know—but it didn’t help. The vent wouldn’t let go.

My vision went white around the edges. My thoughts felt sluggish, as if they were dragging through molasses. I stopped kicking. My legs floated upward, limp, my body rising just enough that my shoulder socket began to strain.

Then darkness folded in.

I remember what it felt like, losing consciousness underwater. People think it’s this peaceful drift, like going to sleep. It’s not. It’s violence internalized. Your brain doesn’t go quietly—it screams. Even when the rest of you gives up, that one little animal voice keeps howling no no no no no until the lights finally go out.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The lights went out.

For maybe five seconds—maybe fifteen—I don’t know.

But when they came back on, when I blinked into that murky half-dream space between life and death, something had changed.

I saw the drain, and I saw my hand, still stuck inside it. And I saw my mouth, moving toward it, not from choice, but instinctively. It wasn’t a decision. It was need—that raw, brainstem-deep need to breathe again, no matter the cost. And some part of me, some buried, reptilian core, understood what I had to do.

There was only one way out.

I opened my mouth and bit into the meat of my own hand, just below my fingers.

The pain didn’t register right away. I was too far gone for that. What I remember is the pressure of my teeth closing, the resistance of skin, and the way the current tugged at my wrist while I gnawed.

There’s no nice way to describe it. I was eating myself.

I bit until the blood filled my mouth, hot and thick and wrong. I bit until the nerves woke up, and then the pain hit, bright and jagged, exploding behind my eyes. My jaw clamped down again, and I felt something tear.

I screamed.

No one heard.

But something gave. I think the muscle tore. Fingers shifted. My arm bucked back, and suddenly—just like that—I was free.

My body shot toward the surface, ragged and wild, one hand trailing ribbons of red behind me.

I don’t remember breaking the surface of the water. I just remember the sunlight and the sound of someone yelling my name from far away.

Then everything disappeared.

* * * * * *

I don’t know how long I was unconscious.

I’ve tried to piece it together from what my parents told me, what the neighbors saw, what the paramedics guessed—but none of it matches up. Trauma screws with time. It folds it in on itself. I remember flashes, but not like a dream. Dreams don’t hurt.

The first thing I remembered was the burning. My hand. My face. My throat. All on fire. Not hot—raw. Like every inch of me had been scraped clean with sandpaper, exposing all my nerves directly to the summer sun. I remember coughing. The taste of blood and pool water in my mouth, thick and chemical and warm. My stomach clenched and twisted like it was trying to turn inside out. And I remembered the pain in my hand. No—not just pain. I remembered the absence. Even then, I knew something was gone.

When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer in the water. I was on the concrete, lying half-curled on the edge of the pool deck, the filter still running behind me. I could hear its distant hum. It sounded small. Meaningless. Like the motor of an aquarium pump.

My head was turned sideways, cheek to the concrete. One eye stung from the chlorine. The other was staring straight at my arm, at the stump where three fingers used to be.

They were still there, technically, but not whole. My middle and ring fingers were shredded. The pinky was barely hanging on, what was left of the skin peeled back like wet paper. The muscle had been torn in a spiral from the first knuckle to the palm. The bone in my middle finger stuck out like a snapped chicken wing. I’d bitten through most of it.

I wish I could tell you I screamed, but I didn’t. I just stared.

My brain hadn’t caught up yet. It was still too far underwater, stuck in the blackout haze of oxygen loss. The pain registered as pressure. As weight. As static. I remember blinking once, just once, and thinking: That’s not mine. That’s someone else’s hand.

Then came the sound of feet on gravel, followed by a voice, female, high-pitched and panicked.

“Oh my God—Eli?”

It was our neighbor, Mrs. Delaney. She’d come outside to water her begonias, take out the trash, or maybe to enjoy the sun, I don’t know. But she saw me. And when she screamed, that was when I started to cry. I remember it wasn’t loud, not even sobbing, just these weird, animal whimpers bubbling in my throat, half-swallowed. My body trembled on its own. I don’t remember sitting up or speaking, but I remember her arms around me. I remember her yelling something about a towel and pressure. I remember she dialed 911.

I remember the sirens.

Everything after that was a blur of blood and misery.

* * * * * *

I spent three weeks in the hospital.

The surgeons were unable to save the fingers. There wasn’t enough viable tissue. Too much had been shredded, and what was left had gone too long without oxygen. They did what they could. Skin grafts, some nerve work, antibiotics to fend off infection. I came home with bandages that looked like boxing gloves and a drip line running into the crook of my elbow.

And questions.

So many questions.

Some of them came from the doctors. Some from the cops. And some came from my parents, who I think were too afraid to ask directly. Everyone wanted to know what happened and why. Why I had been alone. Why I had done something so reckless. For a while, it looked like my parents would be charged with negligence. They weren’t.

I told everyone it was an accident, that I got stuck.

I didn’t tell them about the ritual or the offerings. About the way I used to talk to the drain, as if it could hear me. I didn’t tell them I fed it.

Who would believe such a thing? They’d think I was disturbed, or worse, lying. So I gave them the simplest version of the truth I could live with, which is that I got curious and pushed my hand in. That the suction was too strong, I couldn’t pull out, and that I lost consciousness.

That’s what went into the official report.

No one asked why the injuries were bite wounds. They assumed I hit the wall or that the vent had chewed me up. No one could imagine a child chewing through his own hand to survive. No one wanted to.

Except Dr. Hammond.

She was my therapist after the incident. She was kind—older, with soft features and a voice like a lullaby. She never pushed or accused, but she looked at my chart and at me, and I could tell she knew. She once asked me, very gently, if I remembered what freed me.

I told her I didn’t.

She nodded and didn’t bring it up again for years.

But she knew.

And I knew she knew.

* * * * * *

The phantom pain didn’t stop for years.

Even now, sometimes, I feel my missing fingers twitch in the dark. I’ll be half-asleep and get the sensation of curling a fist, only to wake and find the prosthetic beside my bed, detached. My brain still hasn’t fully accepted the loss.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was the silence.

No one talked about it after the first year. Not the neighbors. Not my parents. Even I stopped thinking about it during the day. But at night, when the house was quiet and the dark settled in, I’d hear the drain again. Not literally, of course, not the mechanical hum—but the pull. That memory of being held down, of watching the surface drift farther away. Of realizing that death wasn’t a figure in a robe, or a monster under the bed—it was suction, relentless, patient, and indifferent.

For me, death was a hole the size of a salad plate, and I fed it—until it wanted me.

I never swam again. Never went near another pool, even as an adult. I can’t handle bathtubs. Even the deep end of a hot tub makes my pulse quicken. Nowadays, I stick to showers. Standing water gives me flashbacks.

Sometimes people ask about my hand. I tell them it was a lawnmower accident. Or fireworks. Or a camping trip gone wrong. No one ever questions it. They don’t want the truth.

But maybe you do.

That’s why I’m telling this now.

Because somewhere out there, some kid is poking around a drain, or a chute, or a pipe, thinking it’s harmless, and that they’re in control.

But they’re not. No one ever really is.

And by the time they realize it, it’s already too late.

* * * * * *

They told me I was lucky to be alive.

The surgeon, the nurses, the paramedics who scraped me off the pool deck. Everyone said it, over and over again—”You’re lucky”—like they couldn’t believe it. Like surviving something like that was a blessing rather than a near-death experience. But I know the difference. My body wasn’t blessed. It was desperate. There’s a distinction.

The truth is, I didn’t feel lucky. I didn’t feel anything for a long time.

Coming home from the hospital, everything was hazy. I remember the smell of fresh laundry—my mom had tried to wash everything before I got back. I remember how she flinched when she looked at my bandaged arm, and how my dad kept calling me “champ,” like he was afraid I might break if he said the wrong thing.

They didn’t know how to help me. Nobody did.

They gave me books. Bought me toys. Took me to counseling. Everything a kid’s supposed to get when they’ve been through something “traumatic.” But it didn’t stick. I couldn’t focus on cartoons, friends, or homework. For far too long, every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the deep end—stuck, spinning, drowning—my lungs ballooning and collapsing in my chest like rotted bellows.

I started sleeping in the hallway outside my parents’ room. I never told them why. I couldn’t. I just needed to be close to something living.

Because even after they drained the pool, even after they removed the vent cover, I could still feel it pulling. Not in the backyard. I felt it pulling in me.

It wasn’t about ghosts or demons. I don’t believe in that sort of thing, not really. But I do believe in the body’s ability to remember pain. It gets stored in strange places. Knots in your shoulders. Tics in your eye. Sometimes in your breath—especially when it’s taken from you too soon.

And mine was.

I was nine years old when I learned that survival isn’t noble. It’s not a slow-motion scene from a movie, or some beautiful struggle against the odds. It’s teeth. It’s panic. It’s the part of your brain that doesn’t care who you are or what’s right. It only wants to live. And it’ll do anything to achieve that. Even if that means destroying the parts of you you need the most.

My parents told me, once, that they had the option of fitting me with cosmetic prosthetics. Silicone digits, jointed fingers, something to look “normal.” I refused. I didn’t want to erase it. I wanted it to stay ugly. Visible. I needed people to see what I did, even if I never admitted how it happened.

I didn’t deserve to forget. I was the one who played the game, who pressed my hand into the mouth of the machine, over and over again, like I was offering it tribute. And when it finally bit back, I was shocked. Angry, even. But why?

It was simply doing what it was designed to do.

That’s the part people never understand. The filter vent didn’t malfunction. It didn’t suddenly grow stronger or snap shut like a trap. It did exactly what it was made for. I just happened to be stupid enough to meet it on its terms—and I lost.

But I survived. And that survival, as it turns out, is a scar all its own.

* * * * * *

Dr. Hammond was the only person I ever told the full story to.

It happened two years after the accident, during a particularly bad winter. I’d been having nightmares again. Not of drowning—but of biting. I’d wake up with my teeth clenched so tight my jaw ached. My bedsheets were full of holes where I’d shredded them in my sleep. My mom thought I was sleepwalking. I knew better.

In my mind, I was still down there, still chewing.

During one of our sessions, Dr. Hammond asked me to draw what I remembered. I picked a blue crayon and scribbled out the shape of the pool. I drew the drain. I drew myself next to it, arms too long, mouth open.

She asked me what the picture meant.

And I said, “I fed it.”

Just like that, without hesitation, I confessed.

And Dr. Hammond—God bless her—didn’t flinch. She just looked at the drawing and said, “What did it give you back?”

I remember staring at her for a long time, my mouth dry.

And I said: “Myself. But different.”

She didn’t write anything down after that. She just nodded and let the silence play out between us. After a few minutes, she offered me a cookie. I took it with my left hand.

That was the last time I saw her.

We didn’t need another session.

She’d already given me what I needed.

* * * * * *

I’m in my twenties now. I work in an office, and I wear long sleeves. I don’t talk about what happened, not because I’m ashamed anymore, but because it doesn’t feel like a story I own. It feels like something I borrowed from the edge of death, and every day I keep it is a kind of loan I haven’t paid off yet.

But I’m telling it now, here, because I see the way kids talk. The way they film themselves doing stupid stunts in bathtubs and storm drains and sewer tunnels. All chasing the same thrill I chased.

You’re all under the illusion that you’re in control.

Let me be clear: you’re not.

You can’t bargain with something designed to pull you under. You can’t win against suction, or gravity, or physics, or instinct. And when the moment comes, when your air runs out and the panic sets in, you’ll learn just how thin the wall between life and death really is. It’s not some dramatic fall or final breath.

It’s teeth on bone. It’s the sound your own flesh makes when you decide that being whole matters less than getting out.

So if you’ve got a drain in a nearby pool, maybe don’t treat it like a game.

Don’t talk to it. Don’t feed it.

Consider this a warning.

The next time it pulls, it might not let go.