R J Hembree - Writers' Village University

50
shadows lurked in predatory stillness. Bill craned his neck to look through the rear
window at the parking lot.
"Daddy, the water is coming through the bottom of the door!”
“Bill,” Rachel cried, “Please don’t let it get us.”
“Hold on.” He pressed the accelerator again. This time, he rocked the steering
wheel as he turned it. Rachel let go of his leg. She reached into the rear seat to
take Annie's hand. The vehicle lurched; Water splashed the hood. Droplets
splattered the windshield like flecks of dirty saliva. "We must be caught on
something," Bill said, frustrated. He punched the center of the steering wheel. The
horn blared.
The wheel unlocked and the jeep slipped back onto solid ground. Bill
slammed his foot on the brake. He stared at the narrow peninsula of land between
the Jeep's front bumper and the pond. In the water off shore, a milky whirlpool
hinted at something moving, unseen, beneath the surface.
He exhaled.
Annie’s breath tickled his ear. “Are we safe, Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“This place sucks!”
Rachel’s hand crept across the console and nested in his.
He drove past the copse of young willows to the exit and stopped. In the
rearview mirror, he saw the pond. Its surface rippled like the hair on back of an
agitated cat. The log bobbed gently, as though nibbled by the teeth of a submerged
animal. Slowly it began to sink. One end rose and pointed at the sky.
“I don't want to come here again,” Annie said.
“Okay,” Rachel said. She looked through the window at the road beyond the
Jeep's hood. Her fingers tightened. Bill felt her wedding ring pressing into the palm
of his hand.
He pulled onto road and drove past the pharmacy. The two ducks still
crouched by the building, but more had come and formed a flock. Some of the
ducks preened their feathers with bright orange bills. Others forged for food in the
stick weed that bordered the parking lot. Beyond the white birds, the pond shrank
and the hedges closed around it, fencing it behind naked thorns.
Laurel Wilczek lives in the beautiful Pocono Mountains in Saylorsburg, Pa. A
graduate of Moravian College and a member of Writer's Village University, Laurel
considers herself a cross-genre reader and writer. She discovered a love for the
literary short story during her participation in the MFA program at WVU. Laurel
believes that life is simply fiction minus a plot and designated word count. She
shares her writing space with her husband, two children, three nosey dogs, and a
cockatiel named Pipkin.