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August 01, 2005
Volume 5, Issue 1
You are standing by a lake.
Michele: The Stain Remains
I scrub, but the stain does not disappear, or lighten. I rub the cloth on a rock, but the bright splotch of red remains, shaped like an eye that stares at me accusingly.
I throw the shirt into the lake, wait for the wind-ridden current to take it away, to carry it eastward towards the beavers, where it may end up as damn filler.
It catches on a lily pad instead. The bloody eye gapes at me and as the shirt shifts with movement of the water, it folds and wrinkles until the stain is not an eye, but a finger.
I stand at the lake, accused and guilty.
Laurence - The Lost Lakes
Evil Ned rubbed his hands together and cackled as the massive pumps churned into the night.
"Are you sure this is going to work, Ned?" asked his sidekick Ralph.
"Minnesota will pay dearly to get their ten thousand lakes back!" said Ned.
Ralph stood by the last of the lakes and watched the water level slowly sink. The shore shrank away, and he walked along the muddy lakebottom.
"I feel bad for the fish," said Ralph. "They'll die."
"A sacrifice I'm willing to make," said Ned. "Oh, and grab a few of those fish. We'll grill them for dinner tonight."
The Eschatologist: Witness
I can't help coming back to this spot.
There's a boat ramp a quarter mile down - I can see it from here. The water gently laps at the shore, and that old oak with the frayed rope that was so great for swinging still hangs a good thirty feet out over the inlet.
It's quiet here this late into the year, the winter months piling up. No one will come around, not until spring anyway.
That must have been what made it so perfect, I think, as I stare through the icy water down at my tethered lifeless body.
Ted: Night Fishing
The old man looked out over the water, again. His insomnia was so bad that he slept maybe four hours out of thirty. For the tenth straight night, he cast into the freezing, dark water.
He had no pole, nor a line a hook or bait. But he remembered fishing when he was a boy, so he fished now. He could remember when all he had to have to fish this lake was a worm and a hook.
His daughter found him in the morning on the balcony of their Phoenix apartment . "Come inside Dad. Get to bed. Dad? DAD!"
Andy: Forever
Brilliant light, a burning kick to the chest, and I stumble backwards. My legs collapse under me, heels locked in mud, and I hit the water, sinking into the shallows as crimson streaks twist and swirl across my face.
Through the white glow of headlights rippling across the water above me, I see her kneel, her hands clasped in prayer. Another flash. Muffled thunder.
She crashes facedown, settles on top of me, her black hair spiders around her face, her eyes grow vacant, distant.
"I love you," she mouths through a cloud of blood and bubbles.
And I believe her.