Termann is a competitive free diver about to attempt a world record. This is the entire focus of his existence in this story, in which motivational language starts to bleed into psychopathy. Published as a tiny, tiny book by a now sadly mothballed German English-language publisher (but still available from them electronically), this is funny and alarming in equal measures.

“Even in the 1960s, doctors conjectured that at a depth of fifty meters a human being would be squashed like a swatted fly. The French physician Dr. Cabarrou carried out experiments with plastic containers—the vessels imploded at a depth of forty-five meters. […] Today, physicians speculate whether the limit lies before or beyond three hundred meters—the blood is redistributed and becomes so heavily concentrated in the center of the body that circulation fails. ‘The heart drowns in its own blood.’”

First published in Readux, 2014