Flash Fiction #5: The flood

Sixty-three year old Frank Morrison, of 44 Dryden Dale, husband to Margret Morrison, father of two very successful young men (of whom he was very proud), looked out of his bedroom window one morning only to find the world had drown.

            “Is everything all right, dear?” Margret asked, stepping into her slippers and donning her robe. “You look pale.”

            “No,” he said with an air of defeat, “I really don’t think it is. Or will ever be again.”

            “Oh? Why is that, dear?”

            “Because the world seems to have gone and drown itself, that’s why.”

            Margret chuckled at that, never quite believing him until she peered between the partially drawn curtains for herself.

            The weathermen (and women, let us not forget the women) had been predicting a flurry of showers all week. Light and occasional, they had alleged, with sunny intervals.

So much for the sun! Frank could not see so much as a hint of it. Not that he expected too, of course, considering how the sky was a jamboree of dark greys and swarming thunderheads.

He added this to the mental list he kept filed away at the back of his mind under the heading: one more thing the weathermen (and women!) have gotten wrong in my lifetime.

“Do you think everyone’s all right?” He asked, staring out over the lake to have risen, overnight, can you believe it?, in the middle of the Dale. It was deep; standing perhaps only five feet below the bedroom window, and it would only get deeper still. “Do you think anyone got hurt?”

Margret turned on him, placed a soothing hand on his shoulder, and smiled a little.

“I’m sure everyone is fine, dear.”

It was a lie, he knew. One even she would have found hard to believe.

Suddenly Frank felt very frightened. Horribly, terribly, frightened. What in god’s name was happening to the world these days? They had lived beneath the shadow of global warming for as long as he could remember, so was this (whatever this really was) part of that larger promise of things to come? He hoped not, although he could not discount the possibility.

“Not everyone,” he said simply enough, and pushed his finger out towards a dark shape floating on the water.

It took a long moment for the shape to veer towards them and pass beneath the window. Frank immediately recognized the face. It was Penny Womble. Frank pushed a hand to his mouth a preyed.

“Do you think we’ll be all right, Frank? They’ll come and rescue us, won’t they? I mean, they can’t just leave us like this ...”

He didn’t know, he only assumed they couldn’t. But if the rest of the world was in the same predicament ... well ... he wouldn’t have liked to have guessed what they’d do.

It was then Frank saw Gary Bower’s yellow Intex Challenger listing restlessly beside a slightly crooked street lamp. He knew it was Gary’s because he’d helped the poor kid patch it up the previous summer. In fact, he could just about make out the small patch of white plastic on its side where they had remedied the problem.

He opened the window, took off his robe, and smiled at his wife.

“Now what do you think you’re doing you silly old man? Put your clothes on, you’ll catch your death.” Margret blustered.

“I’m going to get us out of here. I’m going to swim out there, get that boat, and I’m going to get us out of here.” He said.

“You’ll drowned.”

“I will not, Margret. I can swim just fine ... or, at least, used to.”

Despite his her best endeavors  Frank climbed out of the window and dropped into the water.

He vanished beneath the surface of the water, his hands pushed into the air, his fingers curled into his palm leaving only his thumb sticking up. Margret heard herself call out his name, and a moment later began to wonder if those words had been the last thing Frank had ever heard.

She began to weep.

Then, a sound. A splash of wet panic as Frank broke the surface ten or fifteen so feet away from the house. Much closer to the Intex than Margret thought he would be. He was not swimming, but he was doing a nice trade in treading water nicely, at least.

Frank waved at her and did a kind of awkward doggy paddle towards the inflatable yellow boat. He snatched at its side as he got close and hauled himself into it.

There were no ores so he half laid himself out and began scooping his hands through the water, gaining enough momentum to inch him forward. That was when he realised the nose of the thing was splattered with blood.

Then the feeling of horror and terror came again ... of being awfully lost and unsure about everything ... and, of course, not being sure where – or from whom – the blood had originally come.

Hopefully, it wasn’t Gary’s.

As he paddled the boat towards the house with his hands, he became aware of something hiding just beneath the surface of the water. He couldn’t tell what it was straight away, it looked like a cluster of dark objects oddly bound together, but as his hand scooped through one final time his fingers caught something.

His breath snagged in his chest as three of four upturned, water-bloated faces turned rose to the surface. The faces were purple, the eyes wide ... some were even missing.

He was almost at the house now, almost at his wife’s hand, and almost ready to push out his own hand when a fresh sound broke at his back. A wave broke, the boat rocked, and some great undercurrent pulled the boat away from the house and back into street.

Frank sat bolt upright and studied his surroundings. He saw nothing apart from an occasional ripple spreading outward, and even then never managed to put the oddity of those ripples and the undercurrent together.

There was something in the water.

As impossible as it should have been, there was something in the water ... and it was pulling him ever further away from the house. From Margret; from hope.

She started talking as he drifted back, her mouth moving in ugly little curls, but he could not tell what she was saying.

He pushed his fingers back into the water and this time felt something graze against their tips. His heart stalled.

He leaned over the edge of the boat and peered helplessly into the silt stirred murk. Yes, there was definitely something there; something dark and ill defined. It took a second more before he saw exactly what it was: faces, grey, angry, and hateful.

A scream scorched eagerly at the back of his throat and eventually let out without warning.

He never put his hands back in the water despite how much he desperately wanted to. Instead, he sat cross legged and watched Margret and the house drift out of sight; reducing to a pinprick.

There were hands under the boat ... dozens of hands carrying him to god alone knew where. They scraped and scratched and occasionally broke the water’s surface.

The water was alive. Suddenly the boat rocked and rolled and eventually tipped and Frank went over. Half screaming, half gargling  Frank was pulled beneath the water. A brief splash of blood colourised the monochrome ocean and disappeared. The boat reset itself and drifted back towards the street ... waiting, it seemed, for the next optimistic victim.