Swimming in the lake at dawn has always been my way of clearing my head. The surface is so calm it looks like a black mirror under the moon. I jumped off the dock and swam twenty meters out into the lake, feeling the icy water numb my arms. Everything was peaceful until I stopped to float on my back and my feet touched something. It wasn’t seaweed. It was a firm, lingering brush, like an open palm that stroked my right ankle from bottom to top. I sat up abruptly, swallowing bitter water.
The bottom is more than ten meters deep. I kicked hard to get back to the dock, but the sensation of density in the water changed. I’m no longer moving through liquid; the water around my waist feels dense, heavy, as if I were swimming in cold oil. Suddenly, a sharp tug pulled both my legs under up to my knees.
I screamed, but the air came out in bubbles as my head went under for a second. I broke the surface, thrashing with the desperation of a trapped animal. As I looked down over my shoulder, the clarity of the water revealed a terrifying sight: there’s nothing holding my legs down. There are dozens of elongated shadows emanating from my own feet—dark threads sinking into the abyss and pulling me toward the bottom with a rhythmic, patient force, as if my own limbs had taken root in the darkness.
