Haunted Waters
Deep below the lake’s murky surface, there sits—intact—a house. A two-story structure of
Carpenter Gothic details like elaborate wooden trim bloated to bursting. Its front yard: purple
loosestrife. Its inhabitants: alligator gar, bull trout, and pupfish. All glide past languidly: out of
window sashes and back inside door frames. It is serene, and it is foreboding. Curtains of
algae float gossamer to and fro. Pictures rest clustered atop credenzas. A chandelier is lit,
intermittently, by freshwater electric eels. And near a Victrola, white to the bone, a man and a
woman waltz in a floating embrace.
Phroggers It is a nightmare floating low to the ground, listless along the landscape like a blood-red fog—or phrog, as they say. Dark souls, holed up, hidden in people’s houses, living directly in their shadows (without their knowledge). And for what? Let your imagination go dark, and dank, and dire. For it is for no good, none. The inevitable attack comes in the ink of night for no other purpose—but the kill. Eyes peer from behind coverlets stacked on closet shelves; from a barrage of hat boxes; or from that long, trailing, draping gown: soon to be your shroud.