It was the thumping sound that roused her. Dull and hollow like a finger tapping on the top of a wooden box. Her eyes fluttered, trying to grasp hold of something familiar. They settled upon the glow high above—dim, distorted, but bright enough to cast dancing shadows around her range of vision, limited though it was.
Warbling sounds, high pitched and insect like, followed. She tried to turn her head to identify the source. No good. Then to the other side. Same result. Her eyeballs were just as stubborn, refusing to roll around in their sockets. She attempted to move her legs. Nothing. Then her arms, fingers, and toes. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. If she were paralyzed, why could she sense the cold ripping into her skin? If she were emerging from a coma, where was the jolly nurse welcoming her back?
Where am I? And where are my clothes?
There were other things she could feel but not see. Something long, coarse, and crooked was clamped down upon her bare thighs, her naked torso angling slightly upward. A tangle of rope or wire ensnared her right foot, her arms, bent at the elbows, restrained at her sides.
Her self assessment was interrupted but the chirruping insect sounds. This time they were lower pitched. And much closer. Voices! Which she couldn’t make out; it was trying to discern people’s conversations while submerged at the public pool.
The thumping sound also intensified. Ripples diffused in wide concentric circles on the plane directly above, disturbing the glow. At her periphery, strands of hair defied gravity, wavering, reaching upward for the faint light.
Inclining body, floating hair, rippling surface, muffled voices, distorted light . . .
I’ve been buried alive in a watery grave!
She reflexively tried to haul in a breath, realizing too late that in another millisecond her lungs would flood, her body choke and spasm. But nothing happened. There could be only one explanation for that. She was already dead.
Then why am I conscious?
Was this her fate? To be trapped underwater, immobilized, staring up toward a heaven she could never enter, tormented by the chatter of gargantuan ant-demons, for all eternity? It sounded like some kind of hell alright. Had she done so poorly in life as to merit this?
The thumping sound returned. Gnarled tentacles, the presence of which had gone unnoticed up till now, bobbed against the gray expanse above. The long, rough barrier holding her under gnawed at her upper legs in sync with the oscillations—an indication that both objects were connected, somehow. With nothing supporting her backside, her thighs began to slip free. She filled with hope. Until everything went still.
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP
The water’s surface undulated. The gums of the beast bit down upon her thighs, again. The voice—only one voice—sounded more human than insectile, but still muffled and incoherent.
“Gaawl!”
“Gaawl”? Did it just say . . . “girl”?
Yes. A little girl. Waiting at home for her momma. Wondering why she hadn’t returned from a rare night out with her girlfriends by 11:00 PM like she’d promised.
Panic set in. She had to get back to her eight-year-old daughter. She willed her chest to rise and fall and pump oxygen back into her waterlogged lungs. But there was nothing for it; they were a useless set of sodden bellows.
The ant-demon bellowed in rage. (She would have jumped if she were able.) It was if it could sense her despair. The pressure on her thighs eased for a split second before an enormous, unseen object tumbled in. KERPLUNK! Something at her right ear snapped like a brittle femur.
That THING is in here with me!
Enraged by the ant-demon’s intrusion, the beast chomped down on her thighs. Her exposed rear-end slammed against a bed of muck, kicking up a cloud that bloomed upward, outward, obscuring her only source of light. The pressure on her legs lightened. The long craggy object lay upon them as dead unsupported weight—no longer moored to the monster. Had the intruder torn its jaws apart? Which would explain the snapping sound at my ear.
A sense of exhilaration washed over her, one that would have sent her heart—if it could beat—fluttering with anticipation.
She was free.
Her thighs scooted out from under the beast’s broken jaw. Her knees, shins, feet weren’t far behind. She slowly ascended through the dissipating muck cloud. The returning brightness refined the contours of the creature above the surface into something conspicuously human. Only a few inches more and she’d finally discover what—who—it was. Something that would either tear her to pieces, or welcome her with open arms. Either alternative would liberate her from the living nightmare in which she’d been entrapped.
Perhaps this was all one bad dream. The cold blast would jolt her out of it once she emerged. Her eyes would flash open to rays of sunshine beaming in through the slats of her bedroom window. And the figure standing before her would be that of her precious little girl, waiting patiently between the bed posts for her momma to awaken.
Her face broke the surface. An icy breeze eddied across her lips, into her gaping mouth, nostrils, before glissading off her forehead.
Okay. Anytime now. WAKE UP!
But she didn’t. Maybe she was dead. She was about to meet her Maker, or one of His angels sent to retrieve her. A very large angel with wavy black hair. No halo. Standing waist deep, his back to her. No wings, either. Soon, he would turn toward her. She would meet his radiant face, his celestial eyes. He would greet her with a seraphic smile before sweeping her up in his powerful arms to transport her heavenward. There, she would wait for her daughter, watching her grow into a woman, full of years, with a family of her own.
He started to turn clockwise. His profile came into view—a prominent jaw, sweat or water rolled down the side of his right cheek. He continued to pivot until she was able to look him full in the face. It was rugged, swarthy, handsome. He stared straight ahead, over her. Hey, Gabriel or Michael or whoever you are, I’m down here! He looked down. His vision swept over her nude body hovering at the surface. She could feel her cheeks blush. Their eyes locked. His expression was stolid, until something cognitive registered . . . followed by a reaction she did not expect.
His eyes widened as he belted out an expletive. Okay, perhaps he isn’t an angel—or at least not a very good one. Instead of cradling her in his arms, he flinched backward, attempting to put as much distance as possible between himself and the repulsive thing beneath him. His flailing arms generated waves that flooded her mouth and nostrils. He was trying to bury her all over again, to send her back to the underworld. Where she belonged.
Heaven didn’t want me after all.
And just like that he stopped thrashing. He gathered himself and stood to his full, great height. He lowered his head to examine her; his eyes became slits. Curiosity replaced fear, then, a look of recognition. He spoke for the first time (aside from the expletive) to someone standing at a distance, behind her, or so it seemed. What he relayed wasn’t so much a statement as an exclamation. Pronounced with such finality, such clarity, that it answered all her questions, with two simple words . . .
“missing woman!”
The “gaawl!” wasn’t a reference to some other girl. It was to her. The missing woman. The object of their long search.
That’s when she became aware of the sharp pain at the back of her skull. A throbbing, pulsating sensation. Recollections of that hellish night flooded back into her brain, which had been shredded by lead fragments and left to macerate in the noxious brew flowing in through the open gap. An exit wound.
The stranger bent down to retrieve something floating on the surface. He gave it a few shakes before placing it on his head. He pulled it down snugly. A policeman’s cap. He stepped aside, revealing the remains of the aquatic “beast”. Which was nothing more than the broken limb of a downed tree jutting into the water toward her.
This was no beast. Just as he was no ant-demon. Or angel for that matter. With her vision pitching and rolling on the wavelets, she was able to make out the marshy environs she’d last observed by the light of a full moon, in a state of abject terror.
As the unbidden memory of that hellish night replayed in her mind, everything became clear. Including the identities of the real monsters who had stuffed her naked corpse under the branch of a half-submerged tree to rot unnoticed, abandoned in a fetid swamp. And the inexplicable horror of what they had done to her beforehand.
In her mind, or in her spirit, she unleashed a cry awash with vengeance and rage. The policeman shrank back. Crows cawed and fluttered among the bare treetops.
And then she sunk into merciful oblivion, only to reawaken, this time in ethereal perfection. After her body had been properly laid to rest. Thanks to her hero, who had thump, thump, thumped across a downed tree, at the risk of breaking his neck, slipped and fallen in, snapping the limb that had held her under.
She was determined to hold onto this corporeal world a little while longer. Until she had exacted her revenge on her bloodthirsty killers.