Breath Hold

Maëlle uncoiled it across the rubber mat, meter by meter, letting her palm run along the sheath. The room’s lights were off. The open doorway framed a strip of almost-gray sea, the dark outline of Arabia’s mountains across the gulf, and, just below, Dahab’s promenade, where a man was stacking plastic chairs outside a café. Each time the rope slid over the floor, it made a faint sound like crumpling paper.

Ninety meters below the surface, she saw her drowned brother again. She wants to go deeper.