Let's call it Chapter 2 for now

Since I have had some encouragement to see where this weird little tale is headed, I sat myself down at my computer and let my fingers fall on my key board where they may.  I do not know why or who or what will happen, but am willing to take the ride if you are.  So, without further ado...



Below - Chapter 2 of the "Joshua" post

Stewart watched as the twisted wire slowly sank beneath the green muck that was the pond’s surface. The ripples of its entrance created a brief sunlit window under the water. It made him blink. Light that intense rarely made it through. Things swam past him, fleeing the light and the wire’s decent. He grabbed for one of them and stuffed the wriggling thing in his mouth. You didn’t let a meal get away. You never knew how long you would have to wait for the next one.

The wire continued to fall. It was silent, like most inanimate things, and emotionless about its new location. For a moment it hovered even with Stewart’s eyes and he started to reach out and catch it. Then the moment passed and he watched it fall away into the deepening green black of the bottom of the pond. He didn’t trust things that fell in from above. There was pain and fear and agony whenever something broke the surface and invaded his world. More than that there was removal and permanence. He had seen what that had done to the carp that lay rotting beside the pond. Removal meant death. Death was permanent.

Slowly Stewart turned and swam for the shelf he used as a resting place. He settled himself and watched the green ceiling of the pond mend itself, shutting out the bright and painful light. He let bubbles slip out the corner of his mouth. It took them many seconds to rise to the surface and once there they lay caught against the slime, trapped and unable to release the carbon dioxide they contained into the air only millimeters away. Eventually the water would reclaim the gases. The swirling algae would grow a bit lusher where the bubbles had stopped.

At the surface the algae regained its uninterrupted mass; the only evidence that it had been disturbed was a strange swirled line where the wire had cut through, a darker green scar among the lighter green mat. Stewart looked down. The wire was no longer visible. Not because the light was so dim, Stewart didn’t really need much light to see his world, but because it had fallen beyond.

Once in a while he would swim down. Down where the light was less. Down where the water was heavier. Down where it was thicker and harder to breathe. He remembered the time he had swum so far down that he had found a strange rock filled with holes. It had been flat and smooth and tasted like the pipe near the surface where cool water sometimes seeped in. The rock had been very far down. The water had been heavy and thick and hard to swim in. He felt the holes in it more than he saw them. It was when he had his face, his cheek, resting against it that it had grabbed him.

A tremendous weight pressed him tightly against the rock, pulled the heavy water against his other side and past his face, further into the beyond. He struggled against it. Pushed with all his strength to get away. He could feel pieces of himself tearing away and slipping with the water through the retched holes.

He knew death. He had given it to many smaller creatures in the pond. He knew permanence. He knew both these things were hunting him now. And then, for no reason he could understand or decipher, he was allowed to escape. All the weight was removed and he swan hard for the green ceiling of his home. He had never been afraid of anything before. He had never worried about anything before. The pond had always been his. Now it belonged to something else. Now he worried.

The places on his side where the grate had allowed the outflow to pull his flesh from his body tingled with the memory. He shuddered in the security of his cove and peered into the darkness of down. The wire was probably resting beside the weird rock that waited for its meals. It would stay there a very long time. He wasn’t going to get it.


~ Peace and continuations