Cotton

Hardly anybody can explain what happens to the human mind, when we are put in extreme circumstances. How can one extreme experience shape and form the mind of a child; and how will it affect you as an adult? Can it propel you into a world you never thought existed?

In "Cotton" Claus Henriksen takes you on a rollercoaster ride into one thrilling adventure after another, always keeping a door to mystery open.

STORY:

When Donald Cotton was eight years old he drowned. Everyone thought he would die, because nobody survives ninety-two minutes under water. Donald did. Today he is twenty-six and works for the local newspaper in his hometown of Almeida about forty-five minutes from Santa Barbara on the California coast. He is successful, lives in a great house, dates beautiful women, and is enjoying his life. However, Donald is about to discover that his experience as a child has opened his mind to a whole new world. A series of visions will catapult him into one breathtaking adventure after another as he struggles to understand his newfound capabilities.

Claus Henriksen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Claus Henriksen graduated from the prestigious Danish School of Journalism in 2001. He has worked for two major Danish newspapers as well as a local newspaper and done lots of freelance work for magazines.

Claus Henriksen is 43 years old and recently moved from California to Copenhagen, Denmark with his wife, multimedia designer and acclaimed photographer, Kira Gall Henriksen, and their two children, Patricia and Nicolas.

"Cotton" is his second novel.

Prologue
Donald Cotton was no more than 8 years old when he drowned. It was no surprise that the whole affair came as a complete shock to everyone in the family as well as his friends from school and all the people in their neighborhood.
Donald�s father, Robert � not Bob, never Bob � got very angry. How could his son have been so careless? And how could the family have allowed a thing like that to happen? Anger was Robert�s immediate reaction.
Donald�s mother, Eleanor, could not stop crying. Every time she found a little breathing room and the tears stopped falling, she would think about her son drowning, and she would start to cry all over again. Crying helped Eleanor cope with the horror of the situation.
Donald�s older sister, Penny (short for Penelope) did not speak for days after it happened. She was simply in a state of shock, and the family had neither the right tools nor the energy to see to her. So Penny would walk to the bridge or sit under a tree in the garden and just think. Even when the family ate together she would not say anything. Since the accident she simply couldn�t find anything that seemed important enough to say to anyone, not even in her own family. Silence was Penny�s way of dealing with the tragedy.
But the biggest surprise to everybody in the little town of Almeida was that Donald did not die. It was a good surprise, a wonderful outcome to a terrible ordeal, but no one had ever survived more than 25 minutes in that lake before. No one understood how Donald could survive 92 minutes in the ice-cold water. Yes, there had been other accidents in the past. In the last 40 years two people had drowned and died. But not Donald. Donald lived.
In the years that followed Donald�s horrible experience everyone would tiptoe around him. He attended school like any other normal student. What confused most of the folks in town was probably that Donald acted and spoke like a normal student.
How could he be, though? When would they all be able to see his strange behavior or feel his sudden anger or hear his slurred speech? When would he reveal himself as the half vegetable they had all expected him to be? When someone is lying in the water for a certain amount of time, the brain is denied oxygen, and certain things happen. They all knew that, even his parents.
But Donald didn�t speak differently than before. He had no memory loss and no physical injuries or pain. He did not have problems concentrating. Indeed he seemed to be even more capable of focusing on the jobs at hand like his homework and chores.
Even Donald could not sense any changes in his body or his mind. In fact, he could hardly remember anything from lying there on the bottom. He did seem to remember that he saw people walking around, but in spite of his young age he knew he should probably keep that to himself.
What Donald did not know was that his mind had opened up, and he could talk to people he had never been able to talk to before. However, he wouldn�t find out until he was 26 years old.