This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/camwalker22 on 2026-05-25 17:55:45+00:00.

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Slowly does it.

That’s my mantra for helping adults get over their fear of water.

The first session could be something as simple as getting a coffee in the cafeteria and looking at the pool through the tall glass window.

In the second session, we might sit in the viewing gallery.

“Can you smell the chlorine?”

“Listen to the splashes.”

“Notice the echo.”

These are things I might gently say.

Eventually, when they’re ready, we’ll poke around the edge of the pool deck. Watch the play of light on the ceiling. Greet the lifeguard. Maybe dip a toe in.

It really doesn't have to be fast–take this one woman I teach; she’s an elderly widow who never learned how to swim despite being married to a fisherman for fifty years. Over the course of a year, she went from almost fainting by the sliding doors of the centre to being able to swim laps faster than men decades her junior.

“You did great today, Miriam,” I said as she climbed out of the water after our most recent session.

She palmed her face dry, failing to conceal a satisfied grin.

“Aye, I did two more widths than last time! If there was an event for eighty-one-year-old granny breaststroke, I reckon I’d not be far off being Scottish champion!”

I couldn’t help but laugh as she pulled off her swimming cap.

“You know what, lassie?” Miriam said between breaths. She ran a quivering hand over her grey hair and winced as all the aches and pains that didn’t exist in zero gravity returned. “I think I’m ready for the loch,” she said, closing her eyes and wobbling on unsteady legs. Her hand shot out to grasp the rail, and she stayed quiet for a long moment before she spoke again. “When can we go? Tomorrow?”

Miriam’s ultimate goal was to swim in the saltwater loch that her bungalow overlooked. She’d described the many mornings she’d risen in the dead of night to boil the kettle for Angus, her late husband, and watched his little skiff glide out into the Sound of Mull. When she described it, I felt as though I myself was sitting in that little kitchen watching a tiny boat disappear through tendrils of fog. I swallowed down the lump in my throat.

“Are you sure you won’t be too tired, Miriam?”

She pushed her shoulders back and made a point of walking smoothly to collect her towel. “I’m absolutely positive.”

Who was I to deny the woman her dream?

“OK, let’s meet at the beach for, say, ten o’clock?”

The smile she gave was one you might find on the face of a teenager discovering they’d aced the test they’d studied for all year.

“I’ll be there! I’ll be there early!”

“Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

We parted, Miriam heading into the changing rooms and me cutting through a fire door to walk home. Once I’d climbed the hump leading up to the sports facility, I was greeted with the picturesque sight I never grow tired of. Scotland. Coastal Scotland. Gorgeous beaches and crystalline water backdropped by Highland peaks. Bracing westerly winds slapping the freshest air you could hope to breathe right in your face. Gulls and puffins riding thermals, darting in and out of clifftop hiding places. Harbour seals gliding around upside down, barking madly at the shore.

I love it here, and the feeling is evidently mutual. Since I moved north, I’ve been so inundated with work that I’m earning more than ever I did in the city. I might well be the only trained swimming instructor between Glasgow and Stornoway. My only regret is that I didn’t move here sooner.

Home, I closed my front door and shouted a hello to Alfie. When there was no discernible response, I poked my head through into the living room to see him sprawled on the sofa, snoring. I gently closed the door and set about making the dinner. Once it was done, I banged the butt of my fork three times on the pine dining table, and Alfie came barging through.

“Hard life, eh?”

Alfie doesn’t work.

“Go on then. Tuck in.”

He inhaled his meal. I could tell he wanted more.

“That’s it, Alfred. Finito. I’m not making you any more. Say, do you fancy a walk down to the beach? I’m meeting Miriam there tomorrow. She’s going to try and have a swim. What do you think about that?”

Alfie didn’t know who Miriam was. It was just another name. Another word. I have trouble remembering them myself sometimes.

We wandered to the enclosed beach as the sun began to set. Hard pebbles and shingle give way to a short sandy slope littered with kelp. To the right are high bluffs covered in boreal trees, and to the left is a flat igneous shelf cratered by rockpools.

“Not a bad spot,” I said.

Alfie looked at me quizzically, and then back in the direction of home. He’s lived here all his life, unlike me. His cloudy eyes have been looking at this spectacular landscape for so long that its beauty is lost on him.

“You don’t know how spoiled you are.”

We walked shoeless across the sand and hopped up onto the rocky shelf. Dark pools dotted with molluscs and shells lay undisturbed–each one a universe of its own. Behind us, a narrow gulley jagged its way back through a high slab of rock, curtaining everything inside in a veil of shadow. We found a perch and looked over the water.

Breathed in.

Breathed out.

In.

Out.

Tension melted.

Worries evaporated.

There was no room for anything other than us, in this place, in this moment.

Rapping insistently on the door to my state of mindful presence was a sound I’d never heard before.

I know the squawk of a gull. The caw of a crow. The tweet of a robin.

This was none of those.

I turned, craning my neck to study the crevice from which the exotic clee-clee-clee was emanating. I half-expected to see a flash of yellow as a canary darted out of the dripping cleft. Or maybe someone’s pet parrot had escaped and got stuck in there?

clee-clee-clee.

clee-clee-clee.

clee-clee-clee?

There was something of a question in its call. Whatever it was, I didn’t have the answer.

The next morning, as I was about to leave, I found Alfie waiting by the door, intent on accompanying me.

“You know I’m working, right?”

He didn’t move.

“Alright then. Come on.”

We walked down to the beach. The weather had closed in a little, and that mischievous wind I loved so much was pushing the water over on itself, sending the faintest mist of spray across us. I spotted Miriam dragging a wheeled canvas trolley on the uneven shingle and rushed over to help her. Alfie got there first, and it was just as well he did, because she listed sideways awkwardly in that way that foretells of a broken hip on impact. Instead of going down hard on the rocks, her hand landed just above Alfie’s bottom, and she recovered.

“I’m so sorry, laddie! I nearly went down!” she said.

I helped her onto the sand, and once she’d got her breath back, I facilitated a proper introduction between the two of them.

“Lovely to meet you, Alfie. Quite the pair, aren’t you?” Miriam said with that trademark twinkle in her eye.

“I like to think so,” I said, patting him affectionately. “Strange having you with me while I’m working. How about you stay here with Miriam’s stuff while we wander down to the water? Sound good?”

Alfie sat down obligingly, and I turned to the elderly woman. Before I could ascertain her wishes, she was removing her bobble hat and woollen cardigan.

“Do you have a wetsuit, Miriam? It's a lot colder in there than the swimming pool.”

“Aye, I’ve got a wetsuit: my skin,” she grunted.

Part of me panicked, thinking she was going to strip naked, but instead she disrobed to reveal she was wearing a swimming costume underneath her many layers. Alfie and I exchanged a look.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” I asked as she stood there shivering with a towel wrapped around her shoulders.

“I’ve waited more than eight decades for this. I’m ready.”

As we approached the waves, I felt her resolve faltering.

“It’s–it’s very big, isn’t it?” she said, the wind pulling at strands of grey hair poking out from beneath her swimming cap. “And deep. I don’t know how Angus ever did it,” she continued, breaking into a brittle titter at the end.

I stopped her where she was.

“Myriam, do you remember your first swimming lesson? That time I explained about hydrophobia?”

She nodded.

“There’s something similar called thalassophobia, which means fear of deep water. It’s not uncommon for people to experience a combination of both. And while you’ve become confident in the pool, this is something very different. Why don’t you follow me?”

I changed course and she followed me to the rocky shelf, which, to my mind, was somewhat similar to the pool deck she was familiar with. The tide was such that the water hadn’t risen high enough for the waves to be as intimidating from up there.

“Oh, this is nice, isn’t it?” Miriam said, a rush of colour enlivening her weathered face.

I agreed and sat with my ankles dangling in the cobalt water. Miriam, to my surprise, joined me.

“Ahhh, lovely,” she said when her toes broke the surface of the loch.

“Can you smell the salt?” I said.

Miriam closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.

“Listen to the splashes…notice the echo…there’s nothing to be afraid of…”

Clee-clee-clee?

I turned around to see a wet, gleaming horror dragging itself across the shelf. Its long, chitinous body was four feet wide and the colour of pond scum. Two huge pincers hulked over four skittering legs, bringing a pair of bleak eyes held up on stalks ever closer.

Clee-clee-clee?

A gnashing beak clacked together,...

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