Flash Fiction: Water

/ Claire Fuller

rogers-sunset

I told them I saw her, under the water, hair swaying, eyes blinking. They brought the horse and cart, and Lewin stood on the back with a pitchfork, stabbing the lake, while all the village watched. It made me laugh, to see how they believed my joke. But the nag reared up and Lewin fell. There was screaming but no one jumped in to save him. We was all too afeared.

After that they wouldn’t use the water. Not even warmed. There was terrible thirst and then hunger. They ate the nag. Soon I think, they will eat me too.  

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This is a Friday Fictioneer story, inspired by the picture above, this week provided by Roger Bultot. FF is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, who posts a picture online every week, and writer around the world write a 100-word story inspired by it. Click here to read stories by other writers, or here to join in.

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119 thoughts on “Flash Fiction: Water”

  6. I was confused at first by the nag rearing up and thought that perhaps it was a horse and not a woman in the water. A scary piece, sometimes superstition itself is more scary than the consequences. Well done.

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  9. That first image is chilling. I found myself thinking of a scene in the classic movie Night of the Hunter where Shelly Winters in drowned in her car. The camera does a long underwater pan of her sitting behind the wheel, hair billowing out in the current. It was a stunning shot. Well done.

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  28. That’s interesting. I seem to have read this differently from the others who commented. I read the narrator as male, and thought that the rumour he’d spread was of some creature like a mermaid. Full of superstitious dread, the villagers go to try and deal with the menace (hence the pitchfork), and in doing so they create their own myth. For what could have caused the nag to rear if there was nothing in the water to frighten her?
    Superstition is a terrible thing, and we still suffer from it even today.

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  30. Oh heavens, this was aesthetically beautifult to read! The simplicity of the end communicates so much more emotion than you’d expect for a one-liner. Gosh, bless me with the ability to hit the right notes without an array of glorified synonyms. xx

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  40. Pingback: Flash Fiction: Water — Claire Fuller | PSU ECONOMICS

  42. Great post of unintended consequences and feelings of guilt. Depending on consequences and what this person really did to let happen a bad thing it can be really traumatic. Here the consequences were the worst that can happen.But actually the person did not intend bad things and did not force to happen.

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  47. I found this short tale to kind of funny in a way that you should be careful about what you joke about. That it has consequences. The detail really inspired my imagination. There wasn’t too much or too little. Very nice.

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  57. Really still interesting after that long time. As I read it again, I think the horse must have seen her… the narrator did not say that she did not exist, perhaps he just made a joke, that he saw her… or what he told about her…. maybe he did not joke at all and said Te true but want it to be a joke after what happens….we do not know what happened to her. The narrator is of course depressed, and of course at least one pawn sacrifice….we should keep this story in mind for our behavior to other people!

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  58. Well this mean, you made a good story, because you made up a really defined story but open in all direction… you do not judge nor value… and as I read this story, I thought I could be any of these characters there… just a matter of point of view.

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