MicroHorror

Table for One

I awoke with my head still pounding from the blow, strapped to a rickety old metal table. It was difficult to see with sweat-seared eyes; wherever I was it was dark, damp, and moldy. I was somewhat near to some walls; from what I could see even they oozed moisture. I watched it slowly trickle down, a rat below lapping at its driblet.

A clanking door from above indicated I was no longer alone. To my astonishment it was Parker. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years; he appeared heavier but it was mostly water weight. His hair (disheveled as always, never courting the friendship of a comb), and his mustache were much grayer than before. He loomed over me.

“Hello, sir… my, how time flies.”

“Chris–”

“No need to grovel; surely you realize you won’t talk your way out of this.”

“But I–”

“She was my daughter! My little girl! You got her drunk.”

“I only had water, she insisted–”

“Enough! I imagine you’re pretty thirsty about now, aren’t you?”

I watched him walk away. He fiddled with some devices. There were so many machines, gears, and cables surrounding us. From above my head a drip began, its target–my forehead. Slow… steady, in this quiet brooding place, save for that electric hum, it was the only sound.

“There, that’s not so bad, is it?”

“Listen–”

“You may not think it’s much now, but give it a while. I’ll be back; I’m interested in the number of ways you can beg for death.”

He walked back up the staircase, his shoes scraping as he chuckled to himself. He must have activated some sort of heating contrivance as well, because the room got hot very quickly. He was right; it wasn’t so bad–at first. But by the hundredth drip I’d lost count–count of the drips, count of the time he’d been gone, count of my prayers. I panicked, searching for a way to free myself, my mind began to scramble, I couldn’t concentrate.

Days past now… or weeks? My stomach was growling, empty, my throat aching, parched and pleading for relief. Perhaps that little rodent would help me? He could chew through those restraints; certainly I’d locate some food to reward him. Or maybe he’d just start nibbling at me, skipping the middleman. The door reopened. Parker staggered back down, a bit intoxicated himself, seeming as though he’d never stopped giggling.

“And how’s that thirst now?”

“Look, if I could just–”

“You know, all this time you’ve been able to help yourself. Sure, just wiggle your hand a little, feel the string?”

In my agony of waiting I hadn’t even noticed a string dangling from the apparatus above me, thin enough easily to be missed, especially with my sweat-basted eyes. I clutched it.

“Give it a pull. There’s a nozzle of water positioned right over your mouth; bet it’d taste really sweet right now.”

Starting to pull the cord, I hesitated.

“…Yes, I’d be careful if I were you. Let me show you.” He turned and dialed a knob on one of the instruments further to the right; the lights glowed brighter.

“Feel it? The whole table is electrified, so when you quench your thirst you’ll fry yourself. A bit unnerving, isn’t it? She perished at the bottom of that lake and you’ll die from water–one way or another–as well. How long do you think you can hold out?” Parker adjourned and clumped his way back up the stairs bidding me goodbye.

How ironic that this singular element struggled as both friend and foe with myself cast as its barren, desolate battlefield. Contemplating what would subjugate me first, dehydration, madness or electrocution, I observed the little rat climbing by the equipment across from me. He also seemed to be chortling. And there I lay, staring upward, too afraid to even cry.

Ben remembered the image of Kyle in the passenger seat, just after the car went into the patch of trees. His friend’s chest was mangled, his red-soaked mouth opening and closing.

Ben reached for the glass of water but stopped. Through it, he could see the pills the psychiatrist had prescribed him. They were huge and yellow and distorted. He pulled the bag away and the pills shrunk to the size of Skittles. They seemed harmless.

So Ben washed four of the yellow pills back with the water and moved to his bed. On the way, something crunched under his foot. It was last night’s Chinese in a to-go box. Ben wiggled the lump of cold noodles back into the box and slipped into bed. He’d clean it later.

Ben was nearly asleep when things started changing. The paint speckles on Ben’s ceiling took sharp definition and pulled downward into stalactites, limestone globs glistening with moisture. The air warmed and the shadowed room widened, extended into what looked to Ben like a cave.

Ben stepped out of bed onto the cavern floor, the warm moss-covered stone that felt strangely like carpet. There seemed to be an infinite amount of space here, shadows covering endless hallways, water dripping against stone, leaking from the walls like sweat. As Ben explored, he passed formations of rock which were strangely familiar, as if someone had chiseled the hallways of a memorable place from stone.

Ben stepped on something. That something was familiar, crunchy then gooey, but Ben couldn’t remember what it was. He looked down and his bare foot was soaked in stringy, brown mud and water. A puddle, Ben thought, then shook the glob back to the cavern floor.

Suddenly the air was hot and Ben could feel his heart thud behind his eyes. His mouth felt coated in sand. Water. He needed water. Then the walls began to sway, pulsing with scalding, steaming water.

Ben ran through the dark cave, stumbling over boulders into walls which sometimes gave way, sometimes shattered into his skin like glass. He ran desperately for water, cool water, until he came to a spring. It was dry, but from a stone leaked water. Ben beat on the stone until it produced more and filled the spring.

The water was cool on his skin and it glided over him, carried him along into the spring like a buoy. Ben drank and healed his raw mouth, gulped and gasped and drank until he felt heavy and relaxed.

Ben’s movements slowed. As the spring carried his relaxed body along, the cavern walls too calmed, flattening, trickling with quiet rivers. Ben watched the ceiling move upward and away, the stalactites retreating with it into shadows. From high in the infinite darkness, it rained on stone, echoing, lulling Ben to sleep.

There was a knock at Ben’s door, but nobody answered.

Ben’s girlfriend Alex opened the door. “Anyone home?” She wedged herself into the doorway with two boxes of Chinese under her arms.

Alex wasn’t supposed to be in town until next week, but she knew Ben was crushed from Kyle’s death, so she decided to surprise him–cheer him up a little. Ben loved Chinese.

The room was dark and when Alex flicked the light on with her elbow, it illuminated the chaos which was Ben’s floor. Two chairs lay on their backs, a mirror shattered on the floor. A box of old Chinese food sat in pieces on the floor, crunched and decimated, browned noodles strung through the room to the bathroom. Alex filled with worry and hesitated to move for a moment. She set her boyfriend’s surprise on the floor, took her jacket off.

She entered the bathroom and heard dripping water. Loose knob, she thought. She moved to tighten it, then turned stiff and pale. Her eyes locked on her boyfriend’s bluing body floating in the bathtub, shaggy hair like black seaweed wedged, plugged in the drain.

It happened a week ago.

I swiped a bunch of beers from my dad’s stash and met my best friend Joey down at the far end of Redemption Spring. That’s a funny name since it’s basically a cattail-riddled marsh fed by a stream. Joey liked our beer days. Well, Joey liked to drink. It allowed him to open up, you know? So he could let his emotions out, which he seldom did. He was kind of an introvert.

After we’d killed almost a six-pack apiece, we got to talking about girls. I told him how close I was to getting Ellen Reiger. I said she’d be a great spring fling but I’d have to get rid of her by summer, what with all the parties and other girls and stuff. Joey turned furious. He told me to leave her alone. That she wasn’t going to be one of my “use ’em and lose ’em” girls. You see, Joey grew up next door to Ellen. Their moms were friends and they’d known each other since the cradle. I guess to him it was like I was taking advantage of his sister.

This pissed me off. I reminded him of the guy credo, “bros before hos.” That was a mistake. He stood and grabbed a hold of me. We struggled, almost motionless, him gripping my shirt and me gripping his arms. It was test of strength but it looked like a test of wills. Maybe it was. Our anger climbed together. Our faces displayed a growing hatred. I wanted to punish him, hurt him for letting a girl come between us. I believe Joey was thinking the same thing.

Joey’s foot slid in the mud, near the pond’s edge. He lost his balance and leverage and I threw him to the ground. His head hit a log embedded in the bank and he rolled into the water. He wasn’t unconscious, just a little stunned, but it didn’t take the fight out of him. Or me. I jumped into the pond and took him by the hair. I held his head beneath the murky water. He tried to stand but couldn’t against the slippery pond floor. Joey’s mouth opened and large bubbles belched to the surface. I held on. At once, instead of expelling air, he drew in a gulp of water. It looked like a clogged drain coming clear. His body jerked several times, then stopped.

I dragged Joey’s body to the log. There was a space beneath it. I jammed him under and locked him in with large rocks. No one knew we were there, or even that we were together, and the pond was lousy with crawdads. By the end of the summer there would be only bones.

Guilt is a funny thing. It’s a black seed inside you, fertilized by the heart and watered by tears. It grew fast in me. Getting rid of it was the only thing I cared about.

I heard the back door open. I sat here at the kitchen table, listening to the sloshing footsteps, but I kept my gaze down as the figure entered. I recognized the wet clothes and couldn’t bear to look into my victim’s face. He stood before the table a moment as if waiting for me to say something. One of our empty beer bottles hung from his hand. He raised it to his mouth and coughed into it, then set down the bottle full of murky water.

Joey turned and walked out the way he came in. During the hour since he left, the water in the bottle hasn’t stopped moving. It swirls and churns with an awful anxiousness.

In a moment I’ll put the bottle to my lips. I know that it won’t be my stomach, but my lungs that the water will find. But it will kill the seed of guilt and make things right. And maybe this wretched water will wash clean my sin.

“It is time,” said Poseidon. “Time to call in the debt for all humanity’s offences against me.” He raised his arm out of the salty deep and his golden trident glinted on the horizon.

Prometheus, ever the champion of man, brought forth his fire in defense. People saw the event as nothing more than the rising of the sun on the rim of ocean mists, but the cloud above it was like the shadow of a great green face whose emotions reflected the deep turbulence of the ocean.

“What about when he was gentle?” asked Prometheus. “What about when his children played at your feet and their voices thrilled with delight?”

“I call all creatures of the deep this day…” boomed Poseidon’s thunderous voice.

“What became of the souls you devoured? Where are the ships that drowned all hands at sea? What of Titanic?”

“They taunted me. Said even God could not sink her.” Poseidon continued with barely a pause, “…to rise against the scourge that poisons my shoals, that causes explosions in my belly, that chokes my sweet tropics with clouds of dark refuse…” his voice rolled on like a great wave.

“What about the cities you have taken, the settlements dispossessed? Atlantis, Doggerland, Pavlopetri, many more! Has there not been reckoning enough?” Prometheus’ voice was wrung with empathy, but his intervention only poured fire on water.

“They dissolve my subjects’ skins with sores and pour out foul, corrosive waste. They corrupt. I was free to everyone,” he said, “but they made profit from me, used me as both a weapon and a balm, and yes, mankind, my memory is long–longer then the half-life of the world–but my patience has reached its crest and must now break.”

So came the Ashrays, Bunyips, Cetos, Dragon Kings. So came the Grindylows, the Kraken, Melusine and Loreley, the Selkies and all monsters of the deep. Even the Naiads and those who dwelt in shallow pools and wells and waterfalls obeyed his bidding. They rose and carried out their works of lore, to lure and kill as many as they found. Madness took many folk and drove them to jump from cliffs. Others rode horses of death into deep pools. Men fell under siren spells. Women took mermen to their bed. Each perished. Then Poseidon shook the ground beneath the seas, and all the land he retook for his domain.

A lone ship sailed the ocean that was Earth. The Charon picked up any who cried out; keelhauled them until there was nothing left but shreds of flesh at the end of tattered, bloody rope.

Poseidon heeded no cries for mercy, but threw his great head back and laughed and laughed. Yet as he laughed new islands dared appear, born from fire inextinguishable in the deep, so that as mankind died, land was reborn. Together water and fire gave rise to life.

My slick fur shined black against the green brine of the Farallones. I slipped through water like silk. And with power from each tail flick, my fins guided me on a foray for fish and squid. My sweetheart swiftly followed. We brushed each other with every agile turn and playful pirouette. Her dark eyes caught the sea-sparkle. Mine were glazed. Ileana, Ileana, my love. We waltzed in oblivion in our liquid ballroom. A ballroom that plummeted two miles down, much deeper than any September sun could go. It was low; glowed on the horizon through the crags in the rocks that broke day into night. Magenta spilled on the water, dissolving with the silhouettes of waves.

We patrolled the border, on the lookout for sharks that lurked in shadows cast by jagged rocks that jut up the ragged edge of the old Pacific shelf. They also skulked in sunken wrecks for which these Islands of the Dead had been named, and renamed as Devil’s Teeth–this archipelago of mountainous incisors scraping sky–whose mouth had swallowed ships in storms.

The sun was moving quickly. I saw a dimness, as if an empty shadow, loom. We had skirted much too far from all the other seals. And my lady, too, from me. Ileana, come quickly! I said. But in that moment, when she had turned to look, my lady was snatched in the jaws of a giant shark still lunging its twenty-foot body into the air, four thousand pounds, gnashing serrated teeth into flesh of my beloved Ileana. And she was gone.

Every year I return to this place, wishing to find her spirit undissolve from the watery grave and dance with me again. But my guilt is not assuaged. My blood roils with vengeance and I pray to meet the monster that devoured my bride. I will gouge out its eyes and have it choke on them. And send it back to the hell-forsaken place from whence it came, to that abyss where only devils dance. It is September again. I swim this piece of shelf, searching, plotting. Where is it?

Suddenly, a splash. Fish scatter. I turn and there’s a glint–the metallic gloss from a black seabird diving from the granite punching through the water surface. The cormorant’s face is vivid magenta and his blunt, hooked bill scoops a hake cod. I hear its plaintive croaks underwater. I stare at the wake of bubbles as they disappear with the flits of phytoplankton. I stare into the growing silence. I ponder my next move.

The sea convulses beneath me. I feel its tympanic heartbeat. I turn to see the source of thrust. It must have come from eighty feet below–a massive hulk racing toward me–scissoring, great white teeth scissoring.

The bridge was slick with ice. Carmen smashed her foot on the brake and let out a hollow, soundless scream. “Mommy, are we going over?” her daughter asked, her hands clutching Teddy like a life jacket.

“I love you, Audrey,” Carmen told the little girl. She reached over and put her hand on Audrey’s and held it tight. “If Heaven can’t wait… then Heaven can’t–”

“There’s a party down there! Don’t you hear the music?”

The car flung over the side of the massive bridge–just a pebble dropping uselessly into a puddle, splashing noisily and leaving the grandiose structure behind, forever unchanging, forever defiant to the torsions of nature.

With a lifeless plunk, the automobile sank into the water, which began to flood slowly inward. As it rose and swirled, an angry formless thing, its icy touch began to numb Carmen’s flesh. But her daughter only wondered about the party. “Do they know about my birthday, Mommy? Only two days from now, you said. Are they celebrating just for me?”

Carmen let out a wretched, wailing sob. She tried to wrench her daughter out of the seat. “There is no party, honey, but soon we’ll see Gran–”

The passenger door came off and sank away, the water coming in faster now. A small man with a large, black mustache and chalky-yellow eyes swam into the car. He wore an old bowler cap and a pinstriped suit with tails. He grabbed Audrey.

“Audrey!” But mother was too late. The water filled her mouth, then her nostrils, then her lungs. Her vision wavered and danced, her throat burning. She saw Teddy grow faint as he was tugged away, Audrey guiding him from view. The darkness came.

They traveled the water only briefly, passing through a cloud of thick, jelly-like substance. Teddy and Audrey were suddenly in a dry, dark room, resting in large oak chairs.

The table before them was massive and lined with smiling little girls, their faces petrified and their bodies stiff. Balloons came down from the ceiling. “Welcome,” they all cried out simultaneously. A small, delicate music box sat at the center of the table, producing cheerful notes.

The mustached man sat at the opposite end of the table–he offered a Cheshire grin. “Welcome to the party,” he said to Audrey. “Only the loveliest ladies are allowed to come to Gibberton’s party!” He threw his hands up and motioned toward the little girls.

Audrey noticed the strings this time, as they lifted their arms and laughed. “Gibberton throws the best parties,” they tittered, all at once. She gripped Teddy harder.

“I want to go home,” she said.

Gibberton eyed her closely. The music box played louder, the notes becoming more aggressive.

It took them a long time to get the car out of the lake. The temperature had dropped substantially in the time it took for the Sheriff to arrive at the bridge. Already the water had begun to freeze over.

Carmen was inside the car, her skin pale and her pupils milky. But Audrey was nowhere to be found. After several hours they had to call it quits.

“It’s a real shame,” the Sheriff said.

“What’s that?” the Deputy asked.

“Her birthday was only two days from now.” As he said this, a teddy bear floated to the surface of the lake, a memento of the dead.

A faint echo of music drifted up from the depths of the lake.

A crescent moon of sand and stones curving around the bay, punctuated at either end by a sharp, black, jagged outcrop of rock. On the edge of one sat a church, battered by the blinding wind and icy waves, but still there, and still standing. This was where the woman was heading.

Sand slipped through her feet as she stumbled along the shoreline, her eyes fixed on the speck in the distance. If she could just reach it–then what? She doubted that she’d find anyone else there. Anyone alive, anyway. Shelter, then. Better to be curled up in a dingy corner of a rundown building than huddling against the waves in a damp cave. But more than that, the church was somewhere to go, a goal to fixate on. She had nowhere else to go.

She had known this beach all her life. Memories used to swamp her mind with just a breath of salty air. Childhoods spent exploring rock pools, skipping over bounders and rocks in search of tiny, defenseless creatures to gawk at, capture and release. How young, and stupid, they’d been. She remembered whole days of expeditions, long walks deep in thought, clandestine moonlit kisses…

A shock of cold brushed against her feet, yanking her out of her daydreams. She shrieked as she scrambled backwards, out of the water that had crept up around her ankles. She’d strayed too close.

Her eyes drifted up from the tiny ripples of surf around her, to the crashing waves rolling towards her. A boat, only a small one meant for fishing, was pinned to the rocks, smashed by the sea. A small stain of red hull and broken sails slumped in defeat. It doesn’t pay to be careless, not these days. Who knows what would emerge from the depths if you dared enter its territory.

She shook herself out of her trance and managed to get to her feet and keep walking. Get to the church.

In her memories, the sea was blue, glimmering in the sun. Now, in reality, it was always stark, unyielding gray. She hated the sea these days. It had ceased to be a source of joy and familiarity and had become something to be feared. As a child, she’d often heard her grandfather say:

“The sea has no mercy, for king or commoner.”

She’d never really understood that, until the ocean had shown what lay beneath its immense, cold depths. Until something had risen and taken everything. Now, whenever she looked out at the stark gray mass that shifted and stretched on forever, all she could see was possibility. That things lay beneath the water that could destroy houses with a single tentacled swipe.

And that those things could come back.

Her town used to be a fishing village. Once. Now, all there was to show anything had ever been here was a few ruins, and human detritus littering the beach with every tide. Driftwood, scraps of twisted metal. The odd pathetic scrap that might once have been something living, or might have been just a lump of cloth and seaweed. She never looked close enough to be sure. Nothing else was there to ever suggest anything but water, sand and stone. And one, lonely, scared human.

This was here before you, the sea seems to whisper, as she turns her back to the wind and stumbles on. It will endure you. And it will be here after you.

Prague was a hell of a way from Seattle. Paris hadn’t been much, all courtyards and pigeons. But Praha? Wow. On her first day here, she’d looked up at the castle over the Vltava and decided that Sally Nowak was finished, history. She was Sal now, like Kerouac’s Sal Paradise. Freewheelin’.

She glanced across the bar. 11 p.m.: Honza would be here soon. Another sip of Pilsner, then back to her book: Myths and Legends of the Old Town. What a place. Ghosts around every corner, creatures living in the wood and the stones. Old Golem was best–the clay man the ghetto Jews had brought to life to protect them. To meet him tonight in Josefov’s mazy street, wouldn’t that be the coolest? Scary, sure, but… wow.

She looked up now to see Honza opening the glass doors, and watched him walk over. Those big black eyes–the pupils so dilated the boy looked permanently stoned. And that shy smile reminding her of his kiss that made her melt like a s’more. Honza Hastrman, the gentle gent, treating her so special. But, Jesus, she couldn’t fall for a guy she just met ’cos he had Johnny Depp’s cheekbones and was slack as a puppy.

Could she?

“Hi,” she said.

He didn’t sit down, just sort of hung around, real close, combing her hair with his long fingers. “Hi, Sal,” he said, gazing down at her, she reckoned, the way every girl wants to be gazed at. “Let’s go for a walk, get away someplace.” And his English so good, too, but with that hot accent that made her want to curl up, get her tummy tickled.

“Sure,” she said, taking his hand.

Over Charles’ Bridge: the statues staring, the castle all lit up, a fairy tale. Then down the worn steps to Kampa Island. Nobody around, the night so warm, still. At the watermill pool, they stopped to look out over the river.

“You can’t see him,” she said, pointing.

“Who?”

“The Vodník. The water demon guy. The statue. He’s over there somewhere.”

“You still reading your book?” She felt him nuzzle her neck. “Tell me about our Vodník.”

“Well, he’s got gills and he’s green. Lives in the water, most of the time anyways, and he collects the souls of the drowned, keeps them in sorta ceramic pots down at the bottom there. And he loves the ladies, dotes on them.” She started towards the steps. “Let’s see if he’s in, Honz.”

“Don’t be crazy.” His hand came out to hold her back, but she was already on the tiny wooden jetty, out of his reach. Christ. Too much of that fabulous beer perhaps, ’cos here she was pulling off her jeans, peeling off her top, her panties, laughing. She dropped into the water. So cool, deliciously cool. She’d not skinny-dipped since she was a kid.

He said, “It’s dirty, Sal. Come back.”

“It’s gorgeous. You chicken?”

His cute little sigh came to her, but then, in no time at all, he’d stripped and was naked in the pool, too. Jesus, the body on him: lean, taut as a fishing line. She wanted him now like some badass crazy girl. But where’d he go? Oh, there: swimming round under the water, brushing against her hips, easy as an otter. Then he surfaced, hardly a ripple, and faced her, hair dripping, the eyes so seriously big, black. She put her hands on his shoulders to draw him over, eat him whole.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s lovely. Like you, Sally. You’re gorgeous. The most beautiful girl ever. Ever.”

His lips on hers now, his tongue probing, caressing, then sliding down her trembling body to find the spot, hitting it just perfect. She murmured, “Oh, God,” and let her thighs embrace him. Then a delicious warmth spread through her as she said, “Yes, yes,” and shuddered for a second time, and, Jesus Christ, a third, while he lovingly took her down to his dark home.

Every morning I check the bottles I filled the day before. Today there’s a centimeter between the liquid inside and the bottle top I screwed down yesterday.

For a moment I press my lips to the dewy plastic before wrapping the bottle in a bag to stop the water escaping. I’m putting them in the cellar, hoping the dark and cool make the water forget about getting out, remind it of the well it came from, not that rock spinning through space.

The man on TV says water on Earth came from that comet billions of years ago. The news goes on about how far away it is, or isn’t, where it’s going to go. And that the comet’s approach makes water act strange, the seas get higher, rain don’t fall no more.

And they talk about how it happens, like reacting to like, blah-blah chemistry stuff that no one but college guys gets anyway.

All I know is we get drier. The water just goes, back up to the skies it came from. No one can do nothin’ about it, not scientists, governments, the man at the diner, no one. We just gotta wait it out an’ fill up water bottles, so my Dad says.

Getting to the cellar seems harder each week. I used to just jump out the side of the house and run round the back yard when I wanted. Now I’ve gotta wait until Dad says, watches me go. ’Cos water bottles are precious–I mean everyone wants water. So now Dad tells me to go as fast as I can and not look at anything ’cept the cellar door, which I’ve got to unlock fast, run in and then lock back up again so I don’t get followed in, while he stands there with the gun.

So today I put the bottles in my skirt like in the old pictures and when Dad said “Three” I ran to the cellar. I heard shouts and then my Dad’s shotgun went bang and again, but I didn’t look, just kept unlocking the door and then ran inside, throwing the bottles on the ground and getting the door closed.

Outside I could hear what sounded like fightin’ but I got the padlock on as I was told before the banging started on the door. It sounded like Al Griffiths from next door, hollering at me to open up and come out with his water–which was a lie because I got the water from our barrel first thing this morning. So I sit very quietly, near the door ’cos I don’t like the dark.

I didn’t used to mind it but then Kerry-Lee, down the road, said she saw this man dead in the street one night with his eyeballs all shriveled and ants drinking out of them and cats licking where the blood came out. I don’t know if she was making that up, but the thing is, I believe her. The dark ain’t a good place to be nowadays.

It’s gone real quiet outside. By now Dad should be calling me to come inside and because it’s not a school day–hasn’t been a school day since Mom died with her hair and face all shriveled–it will be time for biscuits with jelly and TV.

Instead there’s just light under the door, like someone’s walking backwards and forwards trying to be quiet. And clacky noises like a gun being loaded.

And there’s a scuttle click of claws on the tiled floor in the dark bit of the cellar that’s been coming closer and closer while I sit here. I swear I’ve seen eyes in the dark.

In my head I can feel feet, and teeth, and tongues scraping over my eyes. In my ears.

So I’m going to sit here, with my eyes closed, and wait till my Dad calls me home.

And hope it ain’t long.

Least I’ve got the water safe.

For now.

When I am done with them, I drag them through the woods behind my cottage to the little pond. Dead leaves and twigs tangle into their hair. The soft dirt colors their backs and buttocks a drab brown, which contrasts vividly with the blood smeared across their breasts and bellies. But none of that matters, for it is all washed away.

I leave them in the pond for that is where they belong. They say humans are mostly made of water. I know it’s true because of how much they cry while I’m working; salty tears flee from their eyelid captors. I leave them there, one stacked upon the other, weights around their ankles–a firm, fleshy layer atop the muddy floor.

I do the dirty work, but the pond truly transforms them. Weeds grow between toes, in the crooks of elbows and, in the oldest ones, through eye sockets. Fish nibble at fingertips and nostrils. As they decompose, pieces float up and feed the ducks and geese. But the water itself is the most important thing. From the moment they sink it seeps into their pores and lungs and seeks out its kin, the water that lives inside them. The pond water’s weight and its gentle currents erode the vulnerable bodies until the water inside them is finally free. Until all that’s left of the corporeal cages are bones.