A Swimming Rat

The things I see when I go mad...


Lacey says...

There are nights when my life comes terrifyingly close to resembling a Lovecraft story.

So, I'm in a mood.  Like I get.  I find a park, go for a walk.  I'm sitting by this brook watching the water.  I'm listening to the ducks fight somewhere off in the black distance.  Out of the darkness I see a glimmer spread across the ripples.  The eerie light from the lamps scatters into tiny, dancing specters.  There is something moving out there.

It has a head.  A small one with dark, beady eyes.  Eyes that couldn't possibly see well in the water.

The head guides a long body along the short waves.  It has fur.  It is damp and glistens in a way I swear I can smell.

It has a tail.  A skinny one that twitches back and forth, like a propeller,  slicing the night's reflections into smaller and smaller pieces.

It doesn't belong there. I know it!  With every molecule in my body I can feel how wrong it is.  A criminal of nature.

I know what it must be.  It looks just like one.  It's the same shape, and the same color, but in the water?  I've never seen an amphibious one; I would have never even imagined it.  I've always thought it would drown in water, like it's suppose to.

But there, I just saw it again!  It swam right past me, right underneath me as I stand on this little bridge.  How can it swim so fast?  My god, what would it mean if it lived in our water?

It could sneak up on us.  Like some villain in a mask would sneak up behind us in the night, out of the shadows.  Like tentacles that wrap hopelessly around us, its disease could spread.  A parasite that grows in the fluid of our innards.  It could poison us.  Rape us from the inside out.

What happens when something invades territory it doesn't belong in?  Infection.  Corruption.  Polarity.  Imbalance.  Chaos.

I'm scared of  this stranger in the dark.