By Louetta Drowning I swam across the lake alone. Halfway there I was taken prisoner by some boys from the camp across the lake. Put in the canoe I was bound hand and foot and taken to the far float. Once there I was told the punishment for a girl caught spying was dunking. Then they stripped me naked. They tied a rope around my neck. I was told I would be dunked for a minute at a time and then brought up and given a chance to breathe. This would continue until the end. They dragged me to the edge of the float and, naked and bound hand and foot, threw me into the water. Petrified with fear I found sense enough to struggle against my bonds but it was no use. A minute passed and I was dragged up to the surface by the rope around my neck and allowed to breath. Then my head was pushed back under water. Two minutes. Three. Four. Five. Each time they let me surface I tried to keep my breathing steady. I had to concentrate on it more and more and as the time went by I was getting shorter and shorter on air. There simply wasn't enough for my body to function properly. My mind became fuzzy and my muscles ached. As time went by my brain became fuzzier and fuzzier and the pain in my muscles increased it became harder and harder to get air when I was allowed to. By the tenth minute my body slowly began to go numb bringing me closer to the time I would no longer be able to breathe at all. My muscles and joints began to stiffen. I had more and more difficulty getting air at all. After fifteen minutes I felt searing pain in every fiber as lack of oxygen began to squeeze the life out of me. I struggled mightily, helplessly, desperately, futilely to lift myself up to get enough air. At twenty minutes they brought me up and held me there. I screamed, I cried, I begged for mercy but it did no good. They pushed me underneath the surface again. Every inch of me burned with the pain. And slowly the pain turned to numbness, my fear turned into fog, and I slowly drifted to the very edge of this world, toward another, toward the blackness that would surely come. For the next five minutes I suffered terribly, every inch of my slight brown body simply a conduit for pain. Slowly, slowly I was being tortured to death. Every minute until they let me get a little air seemed like an eternity. At twenty five minutes I begged for help with my last breath. Each time I went under I sank lower and lower as my muscles gave way. One last time with a desperate effort I pushed myself up just enough to raise my body and admit enough air to continue living for another minute. Now I was only aware of the pain and the agony of slowly suffocating to death. My eyes tried to focus but more and more I was aware only of suffering. I began to break down. Whatever composure I had had now dissolved. Now I could barely get any air at all when I was up. There was no respite from the pain. Now I was not aware even of breathing. Without even realizing it I had stopped trying. The water grew dark around me. I felt the blood pounding in my head. My soft slender body sinking slowly in the lake, every naked inch of me crying for relief. From the searing pain, the increasing numbing of my limbs, the desperate struggle for air, the lack of blood to my brain. The dimming of my senses, colors gray, sounds a hollow rush. I felt the soft approach of darkness, then flashes of light, then more darkness, then a strange quietness, a feeling of peace, relief from the excruciating pain and then I drifted off to nothingness. A final quivering of my naked body and then nothingness. All that was left was my naked body hanging limply from the rope around my neck. Half an hour. My ordeal was over. They pulled me out. Some time later I slowly began to emerge from the haze. I was laying naked on the dock. I was still bound hand and foot. The boys were gone. After an hour two fishermen in a boat came by. They unitied me and one of them gave me his sweatshirt. It was big enough to come down over my bare bottom and to cover me in the front. They took me back to camp. When they left I sat alone on the beach and cried. louetta_keene@yahoo.com