Learning to Swim

          	On May 13, 1994, Jason Voorhees was one month away from his forty-eighth birthday.
          Hardly aware of the fast-approaching milestone - the achievement of having lived (so to speak)
          half a century - Jason preferred to mark time in victims. He'd actually stopped counting heads
          long ago; now it was just more, more, more, each drop of blood spilled another second of his life,
          another ounce of tribute to his mother, another step toward redemption.

          	So it was that Jason measured his life & purpose, and so it was that when he found himself
          eroding in a sea of toxic waste, being flushed from Manhattan's sewers, far from any victim, he
          had a profound sense of timelessness. 

          	Drifting quietly in the vile current, his hearing and vision both gone and what remained of
          his head just above the surface, Jason thought. For the first time in a long time he thought about
          something other than his purpose. He thought about what was happening to his body. It didn't
          really hurt; pain was a sensation he'd left behind. Like so many things, like fear, like death, Jason
          had let the notion of pain go because it hindered him. While he could still feel flesh and muscle
          peeling away in thick ropes and the insides of his eyeballs running down his mottled cheeks, it
          wasn't anything more than an inconvenience. A considerable inconvenience to be sure, but he
          wasn't anywhere near finished with his mission therefore this was not the end, just a stumbling
          block.

          	His body rocked slightly as the current pulled him deeper into the tunnels, and something
          flickered in the bowels of his mind, those unused parts that always slept. Floating...swimming.
          Trying to swim. Crystal Lake.

          	Of course he then thought of his mother, and the way she had chewed her fingernails to the
          quick as she watched him wade out for the first time; so worried, so protective and so right. But
          Jason had begged for her to let him feel the cool water embracing his body, hiding his ugly, bony
          frame beneath its black mirrored surface. He was so sure that he could be like the other kids at
          the camp once he got out there in the water. He would swim with them - past them! - and he'd
          win their approval. Even the counselors who normally avoided glancing in his direction had
          watched with interest as he entered the lake. He found his gaze wandering from Mommy's
          nervous stare to the faces of the others watching, forgetting about her. They all wanted to see
          him, and he wasn't going to disappoint. Pushing off from the bottom of the lake, throwing his
          arms out and closing his eyes, he'd left the warm summer world above for the world below.

          						*******

          	Jason was apprehensive about the entire thing, reflecting his mother's concern, but nothing
          was going to stop him now and as he felt his head submerge, his heart quickened - he'd done it! A
          smile, the smile that no one ever wanted to see, spread across his face, and he felt a surge of
          happiness even as he drifted downward. He almost wanted to laugh. Then he did, and he sucked
          the filthy water into his lungs and his pounding heart screamed.

          	Jason spun underwater, opening his eyes and seeing only distorted shafts of light at absurd
          angles, each one teeming with particles. It was all dirt and bugs and fish guts, all the terrible
          things Mommy had warned him about and each panicked gulp brought more of it into his body.
          He couldn't breathe! He was losing air and the filthy water was settling like lead in his chest,
          pulling him further down!

          	Suddenly the shafts of light all around him were torn asunder, and he was struck by a
          violent current. He was going to die. The lake had claimed him and he would be rooted in the
          earth at its darkest depths. Food for the giant fish that were surely watching him even now with
          their unblinking, hungry eyes.

          	The current was coming from a pair of thrashing limbs. He recognized her sweater, felt her
          arms under his, and was jerked into the warm summer again. Almost as if the water in his lungs
          was reviled by exposure to the sun, it gushed from his lips and returned to the lake, leaving his
          lungs two deflated sacks of tissue.

          	Jason's mother beat on his back as she hauled him towards the shore, where stunned gasps
          were turning into groans, into some sort of resentful, spiteful sound...? Jason just stared at his
          reflection in the water, air forcing its way back into his body whether he liked it or not. The
          counselors and kids on the shore were actually disappointed. He had finally caught their
          attention by nearly drowning himself and now they were angry with him for not following
          through. The all-too-adult cynicism that resides in every child came out of Jason's mouth in a
          tired sob. 

          	If anything, this was only going to make life worse. But Mommy, who'd been right about
          the lake all along, would protect him. She'd keep him away from both the water and the kids. His
          dad used to say cuss words like "bastards" all the time, and Mommy would cover Jason's ears
          and shout back at Dad in pretty much the same language. Now, as Jason looked at the campers,
          his stare concealed by the thick skin of his brow, he reasoned that everyone at Crystal Lake was
          pretty much a fucking bastard. And yet his heart ached at the realization. He couldn't ever be like
          that and he couldn't ever be their friend. 

          	Not unless he learned to swim.

          						*******

          	While lost in the memory, some of that reasoning ability was dredged up from the dormant
          place in Jason's psyche and he sensed that he was being eaten away by the toxic waste at a rapid
          pace. Most of his skin was gone; acidic waves were lapping at bone now, and even worse, some
          parts of his body had already been exposed long before the waste engulfed him (like his ribcage)
          and tendrils of the stuff were squeezing & spurting their way into his innards.

          	There was no attempting to swim in this vile soup now. His limbs were nubs. His face was
          gone too, and he withdrew from his head, withdrew from the notion that the movement of the
          human consciousness is limited to the brain. Jason withdrew into his torso and felt around.
          Streams of waste were filling him, bursting through his lungs and weighing him down. Strings of
          muscle and arterial tissue, worn thin, gave way and snapped. It was all coming down, this body
          was useless, no swimming out of this one.

          	Not that he'd ever learned how anyway. He could trudge across the lake well enough, and
          just several hours prior he'd clawed his away along the bottom of a stormy harbor, and even
          kicked himself to the surface. But he couldn't move freely in the water. And any movement in
          this shit only hastened its erosion of his body. Jason fought off a strange feeling that was coming
          in with the liquid - fear - and withdrew further into himself, into his black heart. 

          	Drowning again. His heart thudded against softening ribs. Drowning again. This time, he
          wouldn't be able to rest & wait while the fish (who were actually quite small) picked at him. He
          would be all gone in a matter of moments, and then what? Would he just become one with the
          waste and go wherever it went? Part of an endless current, helpless in its grip?

          	Jason didn't have any control if he didn't have a body. He didn't have any means of fulfilling
          his purpose. This meant failure, it meant those fucking bastards had beaten him for real. Worse
          yet, being caught in the current meant that he would never see Mommy again; even to be scolded
          and reprimanded by her would be better than this. Especially when she was probably worried
          sick about him. Jason had gone under again and this time she couldn't pull him out.

          	He had to pull himself out then. HAD to. Body or not, he had to swim.

          	Jason curled into a ball inside his thudding heart and wrenched it free of the torso. The
          remains of the vessel drifted away from him; no longer a part of Jason. Gone. The toxic waste
          couldn't truly kill him, but the heart was still vulnerable, so he infused it with his essence,
          threading himself through every fiber of muscle and riding strong atop the river. 

          	He was swimming now, he knew it. He was boundless and free and confident, and before
          long he would be able to get back to his mission. Jason would just need to find another body out
          there, like a ship adrift in the sea, and he would climb aboard and steer it back home.