(~5,000 words)
Content warnings: Depictions of peril

My dad had always been a daredevil. For as long as I could remember, every few years, he would get some new crazy idea about quad biking across the Sahara or camping in a reserve in the middle of the Congo. You could always tell the pattern. He would come home from the office and sit in front of the television in complete silence. Then, after a few weeks he would start muttering to himself about how inefficient his colleagues were or how he was being swamped with useless paperwork. Finally, he would keep the TV off altogether, and sit in silence, glaring at anyone who tried to ask him if he was alright.

Every night you could hear his breathing get a bit more heavy until, a couple of months in, he would burst into the house with a beaming grin on his face and an expensive looking brochure in his hand. When I was little, he would drag my mum on these escapades, but as you might imagine, they’re not together any more. So now he asks his sister, my Aunt Sarah, to go with him. She was, at the very least, more willing to be pulled around the world. And sometimes she would even have a go at skiing down a black diamond mountain or feeding a lion herself; especially if Dad was footing the bill.

At the end of this particularly long cycle of depression, he showed me a website: ‘Leonard Fristisé’s Pool of The Abyss: a unique test of your resolve, versatility and your brainpower.’ The webpage went on: ‘Discovered on a secluded island in the Arctic Ocean, the abyssal pool has tested thousands of businesspeople, philosophers and celebrities. See how long you can submerge yourself in the pool before you’re begging for air. (Current record: 2 minutes 46 seconds)’

Despite claiming to be used by quote ‘thousands’ of famous people, only three names were listed on the website, none of which I had heard of: ‘Philip Mortimore (philosopher), Sam Dennis Georgeson (political leader), Elizabeth Quinton (opera singer).’ Searching for those names on the internet yielded very little results; mostly random Facebook profiles that were definitely not the same people.

I always worried when Dad got these dangerous obsessions; but I knew that, when he did, it was impossible for anyone to pull him away from them until he did it. Something about this one though, made me feel absolutely sick to my stomach. The only picture on the website was of a bald man with dark sunglasses covering his face. He was bending down to the side of a pitch black void in the icy ground; too dark for the camera to pick up any detail. The man was kneeling in front of a stain. But clad in a startlingly red snow jacket, it felt like the man was beckoning you to take a step forward on his behalf.

“Why would you want to dive into that?” I asked when he showed me the website.
“It’s no different from all the other stuff we do,” he laughed in response.
“At least those were safe. Jumping into a hole in the middle of nowhere sounds like suicide.”
“Complete opposite! This is what makes you feel alive!”
“You don’t have to go through all that trouble to feel alive.”
“One day you’ll learn Kid. The only way to feel alive is to close your eyes, hold your nose, and take the plunge into the unknown.”
He patted me on the back vigorously, and the conversation was over. As I thought of my dad taking that step I knew that, at the very least, if I couldn’t stop him from doing this I needed to be there when he did it.

I had never actually gone with Dad on any of his adventures but convincing him to take me as well as Aunt Sarah was extremely easy. He was planning on going the day after the new year, when my college was still broken up for the holidays, and I had just turned 19 so I was more than capable of standing on the side-lines of a freezing cold expanse. And as for money, he barely thought twice about needing to book another ticket. He seemed delighted that I was taking an interest and even hinted that I could join him on his next desert quad-bike adventure next summer. I would have to lightly tell him later that that really didn’t appeal to me.

—

Months passed and soon we were flying to a tiny, run-down airfield in the middle of an endless tundra; pitch black except for the lights from the airfield. Barely anyone was on the flight, (who would want to come here?) but I had read that there were a couple tiny settlements and research posts dotted around. As we exited the plane and stepped out into the freezing atmosphere I saw a small, tanned man with a thinning hairline and expensive looking sunglasses. He was holding a large cardboard sign with our surname scribbled on it in big letters.

“Leonard Frist, pleasure to meet you!” He shot out a cracked, ungloved hand for my dad to shake, before also offering it to Aunt Sarah and then me. He turned back to my dad. “You must be our pool’s latest inhabitant. Have you much experience with similar types of deep-sea exploration, SCUBA diving or the like?”
“No Mr Frist,” my dad started. I had been sure that, on the website, the man’s surname had been Fristisé; although it was more than possible he liked to shorten it for brevity or so the tourists can say it easier. Dad continued, “but I’m no stranger to dark, claustrophobic places. I went spelunking in Brazil couple years back. I may even beat that record on your website.” Mr Frist smirked at this. Aunt Sarah and I exchanged a look.

Mr Frist lead us to a snowmobile; a dirty, chipped thing with a shiny sidecar attached it. “Initiate gets to drive.” said Mr Frist tantalisingly.
“But he doesn’t know where to go,” Aunt Sarah pointed out.
“It’s a straight line,” said Mr Frist, “And I’ll be sat right behind.”
Dad was already perching himself at the front of the snowmobile, leaning over the handles like a teenager who had just got his first motorbike. Aunt Sarah and I silently stepped into the side car next to him and, after Mr Frist had showed Dad where the accelerator pedal was, we shot into the snowy darkness.

The only light was now from the headlights of the snowmobile, but they were pointed squarely in front of us; the side car felt like it was about to get enveloped by pitch blackness. I think Aunt Sarah had sensed that I was feeling scared or more likely she felt me shaking through the many layers of coats I was wearing and gave me a hand to hold. I gripped it tightly.

The site for The Pool of The Abyss looked like how I imagined one of the science outposts would look. Large floodlights on metal poles pointed downwards towards an invisible point in the ice, encircled by flimsy black and yellow warning tape which tugged at their iron pickets in the wind. A metal hut had been built next to the site for Mr Frist and his guests to prepare.

We walked into the hut and decanted our coats after Mr Frist turned on the electric heaters. Once we had settled down Mr Frist made us toasties from a kitchenette in the corner. We sat at a little faux wood table and Dad tried to plumb Frist for information about what it would feel like in the pool. Aunt Sarah said that if Dad thought it was worthwhile she would definitely be coming back to do this herself next year. Mr Frist just smiled behind his sunglasses, a contented man who had the attention of everyone in his domain. Except me. I stared out the window at the site just a few dozen meters away. Mr Frist noticed.

“Nervous to see your daddy plunge into the abyss kid?” he smiled.
“No, not really,” I mumbled, picking at my toastie. “He does a lot of things like this, so I don’t really feel anxious when he does dangerous things.”
“The Pool of The Abyss is the safest place in the world kid! Many people have been through it, and I’ve led every one of them. Nothing to worry about at all.” Mr Frist laughed mockingly. I made a sound with my throat, the kind of sound that confirms I heard what someone had said, but nothing else. I went back to staring out the window as I took a big bite out of my toastie.

Walking up to the pool was relatively easy. A few sleepers had been laid out and the snow had recently been scraped away to make a clear path to the site itself. Once we got there though, it felt like my stomach was about to be pulled through my chest.

The ‘pool’ was a small, rough hole in the tar-stained ice only big enough for one person. Pointed edges of the hole jutted out, making cracks that protruded outwards like hollow veins. Black liquid sat on the surface, reaching the lip of the ice but never overflowing. From outside the warning tape, I could just about see the surface of the liquid caught the colour spectrum like a flat soap bubble. Standing cheerfully next to the hole, Mr Frist beckoned my dad forward.

“Time to remove your clothes.” I could tell by his tone that it wasn’t a request.
“Excuse me!” Dad shouted. Always the macho type, he did not take kindly to revealing requests. Standing next to me, Aunt Sarah stifled a giggle. “You didn’t mention that when I signed up for this!”
“Do you normally enter pools of liquid in a puffer jacket?” Mr Frist asked seriously. “I thought someone with common sense would have guessed that.”

Dad bristled and looked at us. The howling wind and snow continued to blow through the site, making Dad seem fuzzy and distant. After a few seconds standing in silence, he began to unzip and remove his massive coat, then his jumper, shirt, undershirt and vest, before starting on his trousers. Every article he removed he threw in Aunt Sarah’s direction and with every layer he removed, his body shook from the cold more and more. Eventually he reached his underwear. Aunt Sarah was barely trying not to laugh, her woollen gloved hand firmly in her mouth as she sniggered.

He was thin, malnourished. I could see his rib cage poking through his skin. I suddenly thought about how many meals he skipped when I was at his house. He looked down into the pool and his eyes retreated backwards into his skull. He could barely stop his hands from shaking but other than that he was still. Unmoving. Staring into the pool. His snow-covered hair blew in the screaming wind.

With an outstretched hand from Mr Frist, Dad was led to the lip of the hole. Then I had a sinking thought: Dad had not been given any sort of life jacket. Mr Frist had not attached him to any sort of rope or harness. Through the blizzard I could see Dad’s lips move. He was saying something to Mr Frist; something weak and quiet but certain. His left leg moved, pivoting on his frozen heel, beginning to turn away from the hole. But as soon as he started turning, Mr Frist stepped forward and, with sudden force, pushed Dad into the pool.

He flew backwards, landing on the placid surface with an almighty crash. The black liquid spilled over the ice in waves, making a thin current as it moved and settled in front of us, the soap bubble texture making a sheen on the ice. Aunt Sarah gasped; I shot under the tape to Mr Frist. I had to pull my feet up from my knees to wade through the syrupy solution that now covered the site. “He was about to walk away! I saw him!” I tried to shout over the wind but heaps of snow flew into my mouth and made me choke the words out.

“Lots of people feel the need to walk away when they get here,” said Mr Frist plainly. “Would be a waste for him to get all this way and not go through with it.”

I turned to the pool. The once-still liquid was now rippling over the surface. The consistency was so thick that Dad had completely disappeared. I tried to look into the pool to make out a silhouette but there was nothing. Nothing but the liquid void pulsing and exhaling as the ripples slowly died down.
“I told you, it’s perfectly safe,” said Mr Frist. “You can jump in after him if you want to.” I looked again into the deep abyss. I could almost see the liquid deepen and fluctuate, descending infinitely into nothing. I shook my head. “That’s what I thought,” said Mr Frist. I forced feeling back into my shivering legs and returned to Aunt Sarah who pulled me into a hug.

We stood behind the fluttering tape, not taking our eyes off the pool. For 60 seconds we waited. Then two minutes. Three minutes. Five minutes. I remembered the record time that had been displayed proudly on the website. Mr Frist stood over the hole, also staring into it. His smile was gone but there didn’t seem to be a hint of wavering fear or anxiety. He simply stood down the hole and waited.

Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. Twenty-five minutes. Aunt Sarah didn’t let go of me. Both of us wanted to scream something at Mr Frist but the cold seemed to fix us to the spot and the roaring wind had already made our voices hoarse and weak. We tried not to think about the possibility that my dad, her brother, was gone. I could feel a tear start to creep around my left eye before it froze fast just above my cheek. We would have to tell everyone that my dad had died in a hole in the middle of the frozen tundra. If we made it back.

Another thought had suddenly hit me in the stomach. The only way we were getting back was on Mr Frist’s snowmobile, which he had the key for. If something had gone horribly wrong, would Mr Frist even let us leave? Was he about to pull us both into the pool too? Or was he going to let us run in fear into the endless tundra to meet our ends dehydrating before freezing to death. Thirty minutes. Thirty-five minutes. Aunt Sarah pulled at my arm, about to take me back to the hut to get warm when suddenly

CRASH!

An ashen white flurry of limbs broke through the surface of the pool, gasping for air. I spun round. Dad had re-emerged, flailing like a hooked fish and shooting his soaking wet arms around feeling for the surface of the ice. The air that had been building in my chest for the last half hour flew out of my mouth as I ran towards the hole. Mr Frist jumped to the edge and threw out a chapped arm for Dad to grab on to before pulling him, with one sharp tug, onto the ice.

I grabbed Dad’s shaking body and held him tight, feeling him shudder through all my layers. Aunt Sarah approached cautiously to the side of me, in case I was throwing Dad off balance and needed to be removed from him. But Dad laughed and ruffled my hair as Mr Frist positioned a large towel over his body. “How long was I in there for?” Dad asked breathlessly. Mr Frist checked the watch sewed into his coat.
“Thirty-five minutes, 48 seconds!” he called as he patted Dad on the back and led him towards Aunt Sarah so she could guide him back.
“Get him back and switch the heaters on!” shouted Mr Frist to Aunt Sarah. “I’ve got a stash of gin in the generator room!”

I let my arms fall to my sides and watched the two of them stumble back to the hut, my dad singing We Are The Champions in a slurred, shivering tone. I picked up one foot and looked down at the rainbow fluid which flowed around the soles of my shoes.
“Your website said two minutes 46 was the longest anyone’s spent in that hole,” I muttered towards the ice. Mr Frist, who had been waiting for me to move, spoke:
“That’s not the longest time kid; that’s the shortest.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. I flinched away, still half expecting him to push me into the pool, but instead he outstretched his finger towards the hut and beckoned me to join my dad.

—

For a few weeks after the trip, I couldn’t get Leonard Fristisé’s Pool of The Abyss out of my head. I went back to the website, it was still there. I put the URL into a website that lets you look at past versions of other websites and there were plenty of archived entries going all the way back to 1991. I cycled through the website at different points in time. The style and marketing had changed many times, but the gist was still the same. Notably, on all versions of the website, the same three people were mentioned: ‘Philip Mortimore (philosopher), Sam Dennis Georgeson (political leader), Elizabeth Quinton (opera singer).’ I noticed that 1991 was the year that this archive had started recording snapshots of websites, so it was likely that Fristisé’s business went back further.

Months went by. Dad never had a depressive spiral again. He also went on less daredevil adventures. For the most part he stuck to safaris and visits to ruins. Aunt Sarah didn’t want to join Dad on any more excursions so I went with him instead. Several times Dad offered to pay for her to go back to the abyssal pool, since she had said at the time that she would be interested in taking the plunge; but now she would politely decline when the subject was brought up. Whenever I told her about the things she was missing out on she would smile and say she was glad I was having fun, but it felt like she was judging me.

He became completely committed to his work. We had always been well off. Dad had been a lawyer for a good few businesses already. But with the extra work he was doing, he was able to convince a bigger, more corporate client to put him on retainer. He started going to parties for massive brands and advertising firms and travelled more for business than he did for pleasure. One day, he invited me to come along with him and I saw a side of him that never seemed to exist before. He would flit from group to group of suits for hours and everyone seemed to know his name. One time he pulled me into one of these groups. He would let everyone know that I would one day become a great lawyer in my own right. I hadn’t thought of following in my dad’s path, but in that moment, it felt natural.

All night, powerful people from massive companies would shake my hand. Many of them would hang on my every word when I told them about the trips me and Dad had taken. About how there was no experience like gunning through the desert on a quad bike, the hot wind rushing through my hair. A religious experience. What I really wanted to talk about was Leonard Fristisé’s Pool of The Abyss, but something stopped me. Maybe they wouldn’t believe me; maybe I’d find out that they had all visited the pool. I didn’t know which I wanted to find out least.

The morning after, I told Mum that I had found my calling. I thought she would be happy that I was finally making an adult decision. Instead she sighed and put her fingers over her temples as if I had done something unbelievably childish.
“You’ve seen what that job has done to your Dad. I don’t know why you’d want to make the same mistake?” She asked seriously, staring directly at me.
“It was stressful, for Dad, in the beginning.” I pieced together my excuse from words that were coming to my mind in the moment. “But he worked out how to deal with it. And ever since we went to that pool he -”
“Don’t even mention that place,” she spat all of a sudden. “It was not stress that your father was dealing with. The thing that weighed him down can’t be removed with a trip to the abyss. Remember that before you follow him there.”
“You never appreciated everything he did for you! Everything he gave us!” I screamed this. Maybe it sounded better in my head. Mum smirked a bit, but deep down, I believe she understood that, for the first time in my life, I had made my decision.

Dad never talked to me about what he had experienced in the Abyss, except to say that it had made him. That it was responsible for all the good fortune we had experienced after that moment, and before that moment too. I couldn’t argue with him. With Dad’s help I was able to get into a prestigious university where I studied law as well as many great works of English literature. During that time, I dated a few girls and a few boys, but nothing serious ever came of any of it. The more I talked about my grand ambitions the less people seemed to be interested in me. Eventually I stopped seeing any reason to engage with my peers and instead found joy solely in my studies. Besides I was able to get exceptional marks on my own. During this time I saw Dad less as my life became my own, and after my first year I moved into an apartment in the middle of the city.

In an exceptionally short space of time I was offered a pupillage at Dad’s firm. On my first day he showed me his office overlooking the city, laughing at how you could see all the people in the city running around like headless chickens. Then we both sat down and he just stared down at me. From across a mountain of papers, for what seemed like the majority of the meeting, we sat in silence as I used every synapse in my brain to avoid squirming.

“This is where your life’s work starts, kid.” He spoke, finally. “People don’t understand the sacrifices that have to be made. The sacrifices that we make, for all of them. They are ungrateful. They will tell you lies and they will tell you that there is another path. You do not listen to them but you continue to sacrifice yourself for them. Because they don’t want to admit that there is only one path to eternal bliss.”

The words seemed to exude from him. Even though his mouth was moving it sounded ethereal; and it was in that moment I realised that, although he was living, my dad was not breathing. He seemed to no longer have any need to breathe. I suddenly started hyperventilating, but I controlled myself, didn’t let anything show. I nodded and thanked him, before Dad got his assistant to show me to my new desk.

By the end of my first quarter, I had earned more money than I even imagined as a kid. After a couple of years I started laughing at how ludicrously big the balance numbers on my bank statement were getting. But then the office started to feel cold. At first I thought it was the air conditioning, but one day I was typing up a report and I noticed every keystroke felt like a nip from a feral animal. After that, everything I touched in that building struck a piercing chill from my fingers into my body. Papers would appear at my desk and the ink would peel off the page onto my fingers and stay there for days. I started grabbing the papers full-fisted and I would hammer my keyboard to ignore the pain fissures for hours at a time until I welcomed each needle of cold which jolted through me and I could focus, single-mindedly, on the work which needed to be done. And there was always work to be done.

I no longer looked at the other people in the office. Instead I looked out the window at all the people smiling and running around like headless chickens. I would feel lucky because I wasn’t like them. They were ungrateful and they could never understand the sacrifices I was making so I stopped thinking about them. I stopped thinking about the pain too. I stopped thinking about the cold and the ink that would stick to my body and the eyes that burned themselves into my heart. I would stand, at the window in the office that used to belong to my dad, and see all the people standing and screaming outside like headless chickens and all I could think of was how every single ungrateful person below me had the nerve to make me feel guilty for sacrificing so much for them.

This needed to be fixed, and I knew there was only one way to do it.

—

Looking at the website for Leonard Fristisé’s Pool of The Abyss brought back so many memories. I could almost hear the howling wind and the whistling of the warning tape blowing in front of me. It felt like my stomach was full of the black liquid that had filled that horrible pit. I booked my ticket and by the end of the month I was on the plane to that same airfield.

Mr Frist met me at the gate. I had hoped that he wouldn’t recognise me, that I would be just another visitor to him, but even though I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, his smile told me that he knew we had met before.

“The kid’s all grown up,” Mr Frist smirked, looking up at me through the sunglasses. “Ready to give it another go?” I nodded and Mr Frist led me to the snowmobile. He handed me the key; I looked at him with shock. “Initiate gets to drive,” said Mr Frist matter-of-factly.

The ride to the site was long. Even with the headlights I could barely make out where I was going. Half a dozen times I had to slam on the brakes because I thought I was about to roll over an imaginary cliff and Mr Frist laughed each time until eventually we made it to the site. I could see the floodlights approaching from a glint in the distance, getting closer and closer until I didn’t even need the headlights from the snowmobile to guide me.

Sitting at the table in the hut, Mr Frist placed a cheese and ham toastie in front of me and sat opposite. I stared at my reflection in his sunglasses, making eye contact with my own frightened eyes, and picked at my sandwich.
“Who are the people on the website?” I asked.
“Great thinkers, great statesmen, generally great leaders. Like your dad!” He smiled and pointed at me, as if the comparison between me and Dad was the point of the joke.
“Elizabeth Quinton was a leader? I thought the website said she was an opera singer?” I asked, trying to meet Mr Frist’s gaze.
“Leading the world of opera can be just as taxing as leading the world of law,” Mr Frist cooed “Also she had heard of a physical effect that could make her a better singer.”
“What effect?” I asked.
Mr Frist pointed to the left of his chest. “Once you’ve entered the abyss, you don’t need this any more,” he said quietly, as if he was divulging a secret. “That’s why she was only in there for less than three minutes.” Another laugh. “But I suppose she was a leader in a way. Leader of her own destiny. But I suppose you had to be if you were a woman back then.”
“If they were leaders, why couldn’t I find anything about them?”
Fristisé shrugged: “Every empire falls eventually.” He paused, looked at my uneaten toastie. “Not hungry?”
I pushed the plate away. “Let’s get it over with.” The silence hung in the air, I noticed that Mr Frist’s throat and stomach did not move up and down like mine did.
“If you say so,” he said.

I stared into the pool, the same reflective, soap bubble surface that seemed to descend into nothingness. I had removed all layers of clothing and now I stood, shivering by the pool. The wind rushed through my ears and between my legs and I felt like I had made a massive mistake coming here.

“If I turn back now, you’re going to push me in aren’t you?”
“Absolutely not. Why would I do that?”
“That’s what you did to Dad.”
“Your dad asked me to push him in. Couldn’t build up the courage to jump on his own.”
“So I can leave? You’ll take me back to the airfield and I can go home?”
“That’s your choice,” said Mr Frist. “But after coming all this way, are you really going to turn back now?”

I looked into the pool. In the distance, the wind screamed. I didn’t want to jump in, but I couldn’t find the determination turn back. Without thinking another thought, I closed my eyes and stepped forward, my feet leaving solid ground, awaiting the abyss.