The Girl In The Water

Photo belongs to dreamertechie of deviantart

The grass crumpled beneath me as I lay down, preserving my imprint on the riverbank. This area was free, public land, and because of this, whilst it had been kept clean, the grass had been left to grow long. I plucked a daisy that was growing beside my arm and turned the stem round and round between my fingertips, watching as the flower head spun hypnotically. Glancing down at the river below me I smiled, the steel gray water moved lazily passed,so slowly you could barely see the movement except when it tugged at the grass blades which had slumped forwards from the bank into its depths. The sun shone brightly down on us, as it hit the river it seemed to be absorbed, sparkling back at me from under the surface.
In the water my reflection stared back at me, gray like the water, her eyes were framed by dark lashes, they seemed to sink into mine, probing. Her expression was challenging, questioning, and didn't seem to match the look on my own face. Testing, I raised my lips into a smile and, whilst my reflection also smiled it seemed disjointed, fake and wider than my own. Shaking my head, I put it down to a trick of the light and instead watched the sunbeams sparkling inside the river.
My reflection was moving. I was unaware of moving my arm but her's definitely was, it seemed to be reaching up towards the surface of the water, a finger extended, as if trying to touch the sparkling light. As I watched her fingetip grew closer and closer until, finally, it broke the surface of the water, a small pink-white finger, protruding only an inch or so out of the river. The girl in the water looked at me expectantly and beckoned, the rest of her hand emerged and reached for mine. Cautiously, I reached out to grasp her hand but as I did she lowered hers back into the water, confused I met her eyes then followed the path of her hand, reaching down into the water.
I gasped in shock. The gray water was ice-cold, where it should have been warmed by the summer sun, I pulled my hand back as a reflex but something in the water had hold of it, I tugged desperately, panic rising and speeding my heartbeat. I felt sick and faint, dizziness making my head swim and slump forwards, I briefly gave up fighting to free my arm, trying to stop the sickness from rising. My toes were tingling, I forced myself to look down at them and felt instantly sick again. They were gray. Not just my skin but my shoes too and it was creeping up my leg, the tingling following a path to my torso, robbing it of colour as well. Desperately I pulled back on my arm, I gained maybe an inch but my hand was stuck fast. The colour was draining out of my body, stolen by the water which was getting bluer and bluer by the second. My reflection grinned at me as her own shoes began to be coloured in, as if my an artist's paintbrush. Her dress was painted red, to match her shoes and strands of brown streaked her gray hair. The more of me began tingling the more she smiled and gained in colour, a sense of defeat washed over me and I collapsed back into my indent in the grass, panting hard from the exertion of my fight.
Finally, after what seemed an age, the tingling faded; I propped myself up on an elbow, staring into the water. The girl looked back at me, smirking, and seemed to get up from the position I was in and turned her back, walking forwards and sinking into the depths of the baby blue river. I stared at my hands, silent tears rolling down my cheeks. The skin was ashen, I looked like a corpse, even the bracelet I was wearing had been coloured gray. I stood up, backing away in horror as I turned to run. My fast footsteps were muffled by the thick grass as I ran as far as I could from the river and the village where I'd lived for so long. My hearing was dominated by the heavy pounding in my ears and my hurried breathing, I didn't hear the splash of water behind me.

A girl, thin and shivering, climbed slowly out of the river water, which began fading to gray, her red dress clung to her body, she stood, wobbling on unsteady feet. Eventually she stood steady and shook her body from side to side, water droplets flying from her clothes and hair, each drop glittered with every colour of the rainbow. At her feet a puddle of the same colours was forming. As she grew more confident with her balance she took a few unsteady steps, stumbling like a toddler, before she could walk comfortably, slowly towards town, a village where she knew there was a newly vacant house. A house where she'd fit right in, unnoticed by the neighbors. As she walked from the river another girl, a lot younger was coming up the path towards it, they passed each other without meeting eyes or acknowledging their presence. The young girl had a bucket and went towards the stream, leaning to the side with the metal buckets weight, she dipped it in, filling it to the brim before she raised it again and leant forward to splash her face and wash her hands. As her fingers touched the water her eyes widened and she screamed, loud enough to bring the villagers running. By then it was too late, the steel gray water sparkled, in the river and in the bucket, but the girl was gone.