Set to flaneuring by an errant urge, U R stumbling tired-eyed through nobody’s withered jacaranda forest. Ruts carved by old shopping carts criss-cross its floor, vibrant purples now doubly flat, and these leylines R trickster guides to…whatever’s up ahead.
Light dwindles and gradually blues until in the darkness U can barely pick your way from footstep to footstep. But U have to move. U imagine—hope U imagine?—a pursuer, a hidebehind guardian hulking and grotesque who pushes U pushes U pushes U until U stumble into a clearing.
Call it intuition; U know U R alone now. In roaring solitude the trees bear down on Uou. You want to call where you aRe now a “glade”, but it’s too wretched. “Glade” is too pretty a word for what you are seeing. Adjusted to the dark, your eyes decipher scorched earth, crooked shadows, and, unexpectedly, a gnarled chunk of twisted steel.
You stretch to your full height and see by the light of a sickly moon that this steel is a corrugated circle, a giant drum filled with dirty water. The whole non-glade hums.
From here on we are all in on this Pool.
Something unliving moves wasted, wingéd, wave-drawn across the water’s surface. A filter gulps the dead and belches more brackish liquid out. You refuse to breathe.
Its floor—the Pool’s floor, remember, we’re all in on the Pool—holds mystery behind a suspended curtain of algae. The Pool sucks you in slowly, starting with your gaze. Then the tip of your nose (U realize, in a detached sort of way, that U have detected no scent this entire journey). Your ears follow with a pop. You couldn’t breathe if you wanted to.
It—still the Pool—eats your neck. The Pool chokes down your shoulders. You do not draw any nearer to the bottom as your chest slides in. Ankles away!
The Pool does not even respect you enough for a quick splash, but at this point you’re all in on the Pool. The air slides shut above you: You shall drift.