SECOND PLACE WINNER
in the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025!
Nuala O’Connor described Silfra as ‘… a skilled, atmospheric meditation on absence and violence, set against a stark, broody landscape. Twisty and sensual. Great, intriguing title, too.’
Listen to Jess reading her story:
It has been 729 days since I was last touched and now I’m on a minibus inching away from Reykjavik. The rain has sheeted down relentlessly for the past week. The receptionist at the hotel says Icelandic rain has a special quality, it comes from every direction. From the sky. But also upwards, from the ground, and sideways, from the swirl of the wind.
Each successive excursion wears a groove in my brain. Geysers. Waves. Rocks. Wind. Cold. The bus is small and stuffy. The driver is enthusiastic. He talks of history, geology. I try to listen. I watch the raindrops skittle across the bus window. There is lava as far as the eye can see, frozen in motion, so the stones look as if they could stand up and walk away at any moment. On top of the lava is a strange green moss; a key ecological lynchpin, though the driver does not use the word lynchpin. He says the moss is important. It is the product of a symbiotic relationship, unique to Iceland. My fellow passengers and I are dutifully impressed for a minute then, as the lava field continues beyond all reason, the novelty wears off and it is just grey and green tumbling on forever, interspersed by floating clouds of steam.
Today’s trip is to the split in the mid-Atlantic ridge, known as Silfra. The driver tells us this is the Icelandic word for silver. Through the window, the lagoon appears as smooth as a mirror. The surface shimmers, fractures concealed beneath.
I follow the others down the steps. My face is needle-pricked with cold, despite the hood on my expensive coat. Mist hangs heavy over the cliffs. The driver introduces us to our guide for the next activity. Here, we will snorkel between continents. I am unable to make meaning from any of this. The scale is off. The activity seems absurd. I can’t remember why I thought this would help.
After day 365 passed, I waited to be healed. A year gone. Friends encouraged me to get out more, to try harder. I wanted to try. Somewhere between day 365 and now, I come to realise I am a symbiont, locked in association with you.
On day 721, I took a flight. A week and two days until I would mark a second year. Too long to be quivering still.
I booked the holiday in the hope it would help me become a less faulty version of myself. A good sign, people told me. New horizons. Progress. I nodded along.
I didn’t say, if I let go of the grip with which I contain myself, I will scream and scream until my insides are outside and a wildness takes over.
I didn’t say, I am terrified to move beyond this place.
I don’t say, I am bored of my own thoughts and impatient with my own fissures.
Up the steps. Into the plane. I stowed my luggage. Buckled my seatbelt. Looked down and watched as a string of islands gave way to the emptiness of ocean.
The trailer smells of sweat and dried out rubber. It reminds me of PE lessons. My heart stutters at the sight of the diving suits. The rack rattles as one after another we clamber into the changing space. The suits shiver on their hangers, as if occupied already.
We are told to undress. I haven’t taken my clothes off in front of other people for even longer than 729 days. The guide tells us Icelandic people are very at ease with communal nakedness. I feel heat rise up my throat, a panic spreading.
The guide laughs when he sees the looks on our faces.
- Don’t take everything off, he says, - Keep your leggings and thermals on. Just lose the outer stuff.
The guide holds himself with the ease of someone whose body obeys him. He reminds me of you because of that. For the first time in a long time, I feel my attention snag. I take the drysuit by the hanger, careful not to brush fingers and he smiles at me as I do.
Some six months before I start counting days, you walk into the pub with my friend Beth and get a round in. Beth slides the tray of drinks onto the picnic table and it lurches as you sit down. I like the way you split open the crisps, making it clear they are for sharing. I lick salt from my fingers and think you seem nice.
On that night in the pub, I fizz gently with possibilities. It’s nearly summer. We stay until the sky turns inky and the midges drive us out of the beer garden.
Inside the drysuits, all bodies are smoothed blank. We are the same now except for the things that can’t be changed. Our height. Our hands. I feel the boundary of my hidden shape, encased in another skin. The suit seems to contain the memory of the glacial lake we will soon be swimming in. I worry I will freeze. My thighs are cold already.
Back outside, we are told to line up. Our physicality is assessed. To stop water finding its way into the sleeves, straps are positioned, cuffing each wrist. As the guide looks me in the eye and pulls a rubber strap tight, my stomach spasms. Next it is the neck straps which are thicker, longer. Something inside me trembles. As he steps into my space, the air around me shifts. I’ve not let anyone come this close for the longest while. This time he doesn’t make eye contact. More gently than I expect, he folds the excess collar of the drysuit down. We are given hoods to cover our necks and heads. The guide helps me peel the hood over my skull. The rubber grips with an intensity that makes me feel I am already underwater. It’s difficult to hear. His mouth makes shapes but I can’t discern the individual words. When he moves my hair so it is captured by the folds of the hood, it is the most intimate moment I have experienced in months.
Then he looks at me.
– How did you get that? he asks, finger almost touching my face. He means the scar.
It's been 729 days since I was last touched. There’s a scar, just under my right eye. I got that on the last day I was touched. When you last touched me.
The guide hands out snorkels. He demonstrates how to bite down on the mouthpiece. We are told to suck the pipe to get used to how it feels. Already my breath is changed. I am suspended, caught between two states. Above us, the sky has lightened. The rain stops.
On day 2, they told me I was lucky not to the lose the eye. I nodded and tried to feel lucky. They asked what happened.
– Fell into a coffee table, I said.
– Oh aye? Come at ye did it? said the consultant. I pressed my lips together and refused to say anything more.
In the waiting room was a poster saying ask for Ani if you needed to talk to someone without your partner present. No relevance to me anyway. You weren’t there. You left as soon as the blood leaked from my face. I might have shouted at you to go.
There is a ladder into the water. The first moment of descent; a pause to see if the drysuit will hold. Below my eye, my skin tingles in the place where his finger didn’t quite touch. I try to focus. The guide tells us not everyone makes it into the lagoon. He says people expect scuba to be like skydiving, where after the first movement, you let gravity do the rest. But it’s not like that. You have to propel yourself forward, you have to choose to move. Staring into the deep, the sensation of falling and not moving at the same time, it confuses people. Then there is the cold. Despite the straps and the hoods, water does seep in wherever there are joins. My cheeks go numb. My lips feel too large.
We are instructed to practice rolling. Lie back, says the guide. Look at the sky, take out the snorkel. Breath normally. Float until rescued. The suit will keep you buoyant.
This is new. It hasn’t occurred to me that physical things could protect me. I wonder if this is escape.
By the time my eye healed, 67 untouched days had passed. Of course, that’s not true. Lots of other people touched me after that night; the anaesthetist, the consultant, innumerable nurses. They were all very careful to tell me what they were going to do before they did it. Their touches don’t count.
When the stiches dissolved, I took the eyepatch off. Seeing the world with two eyes again felt like an assault. Too many edges. Too much space. I did a lot of blinking. I avoided bright lights. And being alone with other people.
Diving is a head game, our guide tells us. You have to override your body’s instinct to get you out of a situation in order to experience what you came here to see.
I roll and roll and roll.
Face down, face up.
Breathe out, breathe in.
Water, sky, water, sky.
Water.
When I keep my face down I’m stunned by how the cavern drops away. The water is diamond sharp. Sunlight shafts uninterrupted and the rocks and spaces beneath me fall through layers of green becomes blue becomes brown until only darkness remains. Some reflex kicks in, my head jolts up and back. Water trickles down the pipe, liquid ice burns the roof of my mouth. I understand now, why depths frighten people. My senses are screaming. I am falling. I am stuck still.
Day 0.
There was a moment between impact and the bloom of pain spreading across my cheekbone. My fingers dabbed in wetness, not knowing if it was blood or tears or the contents of my eye socket. I was on my knees and you were above me. The wash of relief when you left. In different circumstances I might have shouted after you not to slam the door.
We swim further on. There is no shore, no horizon, only below or above. The difference between our languid pace and how each new glance reveals something freshly incomprehensible makes me dizzy. Our guide points to make sure we realise what we are looking at. This is the section they call the cathedral. Instead of spires grasping upwards, there are pinnacles inverted. On land, I thought this a fanciful name. Now, I see the schism where two continents continuously wrench apart, the fracture between them. I am undone. Within the gap is the detritus of the shock, the perpetual movement of the earth. I exhale. The air hisses through my clenched teeth. I suck and the cold rasps my mouth.
A moment. Only look down.
Spit the pipe.
Water. Sky.
Water.
Jess Dolan is the recipient of a New Writers Award 2025 from the Scottish Book Trust and her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2024. She is based in the Scottish Borders and writes about the relationship between people and places.
I am partially sighted in one eye, so this resonated with me.
The writing is excellent and I enjoyed reading it. I like what you did with the day count. Really works well. But I have to say I get the same reaction at the end as I did from reading the first place winner. I just think, “And…?” The story ended, but it doesn’t feel like a satisfying Ending. Know what I mean?