Strange Cliques have Unique Barriers Assigned (S.C.U.B.A)

A peculiar place lies in a space unseen by mankind. Floating in between waves of sand is a dome of water. A reversed island. Within it exists a species called ‘Buzos’, evolved from humans.

It had been their ancestors’ deep love for scuba diving that led them to adapt to the water over generations. They’d unleashed their inner merselves, surrendering to the calm of the water world.

A discovery marks this deviation in homo sapiens.

“I can’t breathe”, a Buzo forefather had choked on sticking his head out after a particularly soothing dive. Only ducking underwater relaxed his lungs. Equipment set aside, he’d rushed to his wife to inform her about this breathlessly. The bathtub became his bedroom.

Their child was born with this fishy tendency as well. She only ate duckweed and never left her kiddie pool. The family broke into a massive aquarium when normal conditions weren’t cushioning their survival anymore. The employees, of course, had a mighty scare upon the sight of a man asleep on a reef with a baby cradled in his arms. 

The beach was too crowded and the aquarium too afraid. They were fish out of the water. A safe escape was found with the construction of their special island. And so, the chain of the Buzos began.

I swam upon this knowledge on my trip to Brazil. My best friend Wifton and I were enjoying a good surf when the sunlight reflected off a wine bottle, catching our attention. A paper was inside it, tied into a scroll with a rustic twine. Intrigued by this classic yet charming object, we uncorked its glass neck and read the content. 

“The earth hides a secret place,

which protects cousins of the human race.

A dune of water takes center stage,

floating among rippling sands of beige.

The blue hemisphere has brimmed with life,

Ever since a diver told his wife,

“My love for SCUBA has become a permanent lifestyle”

But to society he was a creature very vile.

The diver disease spread soon, 

Daily life turned into a boon.

Nature extended her hand of friendship,

Engineering and architecture created a kinship,

For the community isolated itself to this place of acceptance.

And the Buzos led a harmonious existence."

Whilst I saw it as a fun party story, he became obsessed. 

“Seriously, you’ve clicked on till the 20th page of google. Go back to sleep, Wifton”, I’d said that night.

“I can’t sleep until I find out more about these Buzo people. There isn’t a single string of the internet that mentions them. Isn’t that strange, Agnos?”, he questioned with a glint of madness in his grey eyes.

“Are you really going to believe that tale from such an unreliable source?”, I gestured towards the bottle on his desk, visible from the screen light. I was his only friend. He was an eccentric person, bullied throughout his childhood. But I saw past his weird ways, mostly because I felt like a misfit with my gap tooth and freckles. I thought they were adorable additions to my tawny brown face; the beauty standards didn’t include them was all.

Wifton started skipping meals just to explore the shore, desperate for more evidence. He incessantly talked about this foreign place, hell bent on finding it. 

“Can we get a boat and search?”, he begged, tussling his pale hair. “The bottle was found here, they have to be close by.”

“Sure. Why stop at a boat? Let’s get a private ship and have a grand tour. I’m sure the Bermuda triangle is sitting up there, a magical Dorito waiting to spew us into another dimension. You were probably Columbus’ apprentice in a past life, might as well make some use of it”, I rolled my eyes.

 But the severity of the situation dawned on me on the last day of our stay.

 Hunger woke me up at midnight. I called for room service, grateful for the luxury. I’d have to go back to nasty college food soon, after all.

“Sir, not that it’s any of my business but there seems to be something wrong with your roommate”, a wobbly voice told me once I’d finished ordering cream cheese bagels with dark chocolate and rum truffles like the healthy man that I am. 

“I know, he’s nutty as a fruitcake. Wait, can you send up some of that too?”

“I don’t think you understand, sir. He’s yelling into the ocean as we speak…”, I heard Wifton’s screams in the background, muffled over the telephone. I sprinted to the lobby at once.

He had thrown himself to the Atlantic and swam far. I could see his dot-sized figure, my eyes widening and my muscles tightening. 

The hotel management followed him on a raft but came back with disappointed faces. Everyone assumed it to be a case of drowning but my intuition pointed elsewhere.

Ironically, my sarcastic statement from earlier turned true. I insisted on taking a motor boat by myself after lying about needing some time alone. 

“Have you boarded the flight yet?”

“Mom, please don’t be mad but we’ve extended the trip. We’ll be back next week, I promise. Please inform Wifton’s family too”, I said as I began my journey to find him, wherever he was.

I wish I’d been there earlier. It might have made all the difference. So all I can tell you is why he was murdered.

                                                                                  

Wifton’s POV

I was too tired to fight against the tides. The sound of the waves playing catch-catch with me and the taste of the savory air were the only things poking at my senses for my body was numb. Surely, one of them would look through their transparent wall and rescue me. Maybe I could catch up on my sleep schedule till that happens…

Cruel light disturbed my rest. I aggressively began coughing up something grainy and warm. 

“Need help buddy?”, a woman approached me. “I think we have a new member in the family, Evlina.”, she said to her companion. Both of them were wearing what looked like inverted fish bowls on their heads. 

“Welcome to the Buzo Island, blondie”, Evlina announced. “I take it you’re unable to enjoy oxygen anymore? Not to worry, we’ve got just the place for you”, she pointed to the humongous liquid structure behind her.

I sprang up, new energy whizzing through me. 

“Yes, yes. I need the water…”, I pretended to cough. “The air is getting suffocating.” 

I was aware of what I was getting myself into. There was no way I could live this lie. But my curiosity for these creatures was wild. Especially since they occurred recently in history. So, I went with the flow.

“I’m Briella”, Evlina’s friend introduced herself. 

“Wifton”, I shook her hand. Her skin was pruned into a raisin. They looked like humans in diving suits, despite the head pieces. It was probably their internal organs that showed a clear adaptation to water.

They led me into the human aquarium and I was left to debate if it was the water that took my breath away or the beauty of the place.

A shade of mint blue tinted the liquid. The floor was alive with quaint plants of kinds I couldn’t even have dreamt of. Its walls of water were touched by the morning sun, forming shadowy rays.

But what made my struggle the most worthwhile was looking at the people. Every face wore make up of contentment. They lived completely true to themselves, among a group that embraced their quirky qualities. 

“This is what it feels like to have a nonjudgmental society”, I spoke through my ‘underwater translator’ that Briella had hung around my neck. She nodded, smiling ear to ear. 

“You are one of us and therefore are welcomed here.”

It sounded like music to my ears. I finally found a world that took me as I am. Well, not truthfully but the feeling of being part of the group was so reassuring. I just had to figure out a way to tweak their system so that I could survive too.

 My two guides busied themselves with their graceful swimming. Grabbing the opportunity, I slipped outside. Liberation washed over me. 

“I have found my planet!”

                                                

                                                                              

Agnos’ POV

I was approaching the horizon as the sun rose. “Where are you, Wif?”, I questioned the crisp air. 

We had had a fight of sorts hours before the incident occurred.

“No wonder everyone dislikes you”, I had blurted after seeing Wifton’s notes, breaking down every line of the scroll’s poetry alongside elaborate diagrams of an unrealistic island.

“You don’t.”

“I’m beginning to doubt that. Your behavior is getting bizarre. I didn’t want to tell you this but Nathan cancelled on the trip because of you, mate. And the staff keeps whispering things behind your back.”

“You know I’m an odd duck. I’ve always felt like I was from another planet and didn’t belong. So, I’ve made myself immune to what people say. Why is everyone so allergic to being themselves any ways? We’re all cuckoo on the inside. But we’re forced to be drones, molded to fit into norms. I just want to allow my inner child to look at the world with new eyes. I want to keep my mind open to possibilities, because otherwise I’m just another mannequin produced in this factory.”

“But why the need to discover that place?”

“It gives me hope. No judgements exist there. People do what their heart desires and let others do the same within the limits of not hurting each other in any way. Imagine the bursts of creativity among them because they wouldn’t be bound by the fear of coming across as strange.”

“Well, snap back to reality because in our world, nobody is going to understand that.”, I had ended the tense conversation.

 I couldn’t resist the crippling guilt. For the first time in my life I prayed to ‘God’ or whatever power people said existed that my friend was okay. It didn’t matter that he only ate cereal in front his reflection or that he had once embarrassed me with a dance outbreak in the middle of our college hallway. He was simply being his authentic self. And how refreshing was that? To see someone so raw among a sea of sheep. 

Maybe it was the magic of missing a friend so much, but my brooding was interrupted when I spotted something. There it was, the land of those Buzo people in all its glory. I couldn’t believe my skeptical eyes. It resembled his diagram so closely.

I saw him kneeling on the land as I sped up the motor boat. Ticklish sprinkles of water mixed with my delight of reuniting with him. An apology was shaping up in my head already. 

And that’s when it happened. 

“He’s an imposter, Brie!”, a willowy woman with a water helmet ran towards Wifton who was building a sand castle.

Her friend showed up with a weapon that looked like a snorkel with a razor-sharp edge. Her features quivered with rage, poppling the water in her helmet.

I felt as though I was stabbed in the abdomen. Wifton, however, actually was. 

An electric pain hit me as I watched his life evaporate. 

“These disgusting beings don’t belong here”, the criminal walked away casually, rolling his body to into the ocean.

I went back to the hotel with a head hung as low as the staff’s.

It has been two years since I lost my best friend. After months of overwhelming sadness and bitter regret, I’ve pulled myself together to view his death in a positive way. I no longer gnaw at myself for not reaching there quicker. I now think of it as an important message, one that God bottled up in a person to be known by us sailors of Earth.

One major flaw of communities is their rigid norms. Anything outside the box is spat on. We say people come in all shapes and sizes so why do we expect everybody to fit within that tiny box? There’s an assortment of packs outside for the misfits labelled ‘stupid’ or ‘ugly’. The funny thing is that in another circle, these abandoned categories may find the comfort of being the norms. Cultural differences aren’t enriching anymore when we’re at each other’s throats all the time. My friend suffered a poor fate because he didn’t fit into either of the groups he was exposed to.

It’s upsetting enough that this exists across cultures. Can the world at least cut down the fights among their own people?

The Buzos and us humans were unaccepting of each other. But one thing we can learn from the Diver folks is that they were a tight-knit group, allowing each other to blossom in peace. Novel information about them did surface on the internet; that’s how I traced back their history. I didn’t bother telling anyone that he was killed because that would just make an invitation for war. And besides, the Buzo Island was on a mystical vibration, showing up at unusual instances of need.

My dubious nature is now softened because I am open to alien concepts. Wifton was a kid at heart, letting his imagination bleed into his logical thinking. And that made him believe in things that the rest of us didn’t allow ourselves to, being imprisoned by rules. Inspired by this, I second guessed anyone who mocked astrology or the actuality of a sky diver species that had sprouted wings.

Of course, more than anything, Wifton taught me to be myself as fiercely as I could. I no longer shy away from random solo performances in the hallway.