Tide & Scale by Beka Gremikova

Author:Beka Gremikova [Edited by Beka Gremikova && Hannah Carter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quill & Flame Publishing House
Published: 2023-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

Hunger

Julia Skinner

The rippling marsh sucks at my feet as I stagger to the edge of the pond. An almost invisible sheet of water stretches across the land, as if the pond behind me is reaching reaching reaching to grasp any soul who dares stray close to the edge of the road ahead.

It is, of course.

I rasp a breath, chest thudding in time with the water’s feral hunger. A dull, muggy fog blankets the air around the edges of the marsh, clinging to the bowed trees and wisping across the hole-ridden road. Storm clouds rumble above. It is the same kind of wet day as when I first came. Young, sarcastic, a mind full of dares. Back when I was…more me. Now I’m more the water. More the hunger. It pounds in my chest—a single, insistent drum.

Wrapping my muddy arms around my stomach, I slosh toward the empty road. There is a faint growl of motor and rubber in the air, the sound of some lonely truck rounding the distant bend. My heartbeat races. Finally. Something to feed the water’s hunger.

Barely anyone comes past here anymore. Not now that there are so many reports of disappearances, of monsters snatching passengers from their cars.

“They get it wrong,” I whisper. The water hisses back, threading through my sopping wet clothes. “We…we don’t touch the ones who drive on; we only claim the ones who touch the water.”

My friends warned me of the creatures who dwelled within the pond—about the veins of black that twisted beneath their scales, of fish that could walk like men. “Guess I’ll just die, then!” I laughed, throwing my camera around my neck. It had been a challenge: prove to everyone that the rumors were false or come back with proof that they were true.

Feed me, the water in my veins hisses. Feed. Feed. Feed.

I reach the end of the marsh and come to a stop. I am bound here. I cannot touch dry land. None of us can. Once upon a time you could, a small voice inside me says. It…feels strange to think of that time. The time before the water sank into my soul and claimed me. I glance upward, toward the dark clouds.

The water within them calls to me, prickling through my skin like thousands of needles.

I stand, frozen, for what feels like a lifetime. Waiting for that rumbling vehicle to pull closer, to satiate the gnawing need in my stomach. At last, a lone pick-up truck with peeling blue paint comes into view, clanking down the overgrown road.

MINE, the water roars in my skull.

The truck pulls to a stop. The door swings open. A man in overalls steps out and stares at me. To his eyes, at least from this far, I am nothing more than a drenched young man. “There are monsters in that lake,” he says with a heavy drawl. “You shouldn’t be messin’ around there, bud.”

His tone makes my lip curl. It grates against my spine like all the voices from my past used to.

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