Deathdream #1

i have absolutely no idea what this is, other than that it turned up in my head late one night, sometime last week...

Deathdream?


The moonlight on the lake gave the wavelets and ripples a milky appearance as she swam through them. Briefly pondering the question of how she had got here, or why, she thought she recalled being pushed off a boat, but could not be sure. She gave a mental shrug, deciding the how and the why did not matter and, for now, continued to swim. The water was neither cool nor hot. Rather, it was just about the same temperature as her body. She didn’t think this was odd, nor the feeling that her body was suspended in nothing as she swam.

Making little headway, but not yet tired, she glanced to her left, towards the shore. It was a brooding, black mass in the moonlight. She thought she saw the shapes of foliage along the line of the water, bulking up and receding, as if over a low hill or dune. But whatever it was, there was nothing at all in it that reflected the light of the nearly full moon, which filled the sky with its blazing light. The mass seemed, instead, intent on sucking the light out of the air, absorbing it like a sponge.

Turning her head away, she swam on. Progress was slow, yes, but it was not a struggle.

Presently, she saw something sticking up out of the water – a forest of oddly-shaped stumps. Swimming closer, she was able to determine that these were, in fact, statues. Strange steel representations, they seemed bolted to the lake bed, with their shoulders just below the waterline. Every now and again, a conjunction of wavelets would conspire to show her a brief glimpse of the curve of a shoulder, nothing more. Of that visible above the water, they had short, pole-like necks, and oddly shaped heads. Each was a flat dome, with a stylised face cast on to one side. And perched on about half were peaked military caps of one style or another. Real ones. Every face was turned towards the dark, light-sucking shore. Though each gave the appearance of scowling, the whole scene was one of wistful melancholy, which almost made her feel sorry for these steel constructions. However, she could not avoid the strange knowledge, or conclusion, that it was important that she, too should have a hat. Treading water for a moment, she chose a dark green one with an especially high peak, plucked it from the head of the unresponsive and uncaring statue, and settled it over the wet straggles of her hair, which she could feel sticking to her cheeks like damp seaweed.

Swimming on, she began, not to tire, but to falter. Her horizon across the water became closer and closer and, when she eventually floundered and got a mouthful of water, she stopped. Realising that there was little left in her, she turned on to her back, and made her slow way towards the shore. When her hands touched the smooth rock of the lake bed as it rose sharply behind her, she put them flat to it. Feeling the undulations of the rock as she did so, she crawled out a little, backwards, then stood, her nightdress clinging to her body and tangling her legs as she turned to look a the shore.

There, she saw several wooden cabins. Above the waterline, they nevertheless stood on waist-high stilts. Wondering who might live there, she took the nearest crooked walkway ramp up to one of them, and followed it to a small decking area outside of some French windows, which were open to the night. Just inside these windows, end-on, was a bed. On the end of the bed sat two young girls in pyjamas, dressing gowns, and slippers. Each had a pair of trousers in her hands, which she was holding up to the moonlight streaming through the open windows. The swimmer had the curious impression that they were washing the trousers in the moonlight.

She asked the girls, “Are you ok?”

The older one turned to regard the swimmer with a stern look, and said, “Well, I would be – if they paid me. Aren’t they supposed to pay me, at my age?”

“How old are you?” asked the swimmer.

“Ten,” was the firm reply.

The swimmer was at a loss to answer the girl’s question. Instead, she turned to look over her left shoulder at the lake, and was mildly surprised to see a young man of twenty or so. He was standing on the ground with his back to the railings, the balustrade level with his head. He turned to look up at her as she asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Biffy,” was his curt reply. “Who the hell are you?”

“...I ...I don’t know,” she replied.

 
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