Word count 1033

                                                  

Duke rushed into his house at 10AM on Saturday.  After he shut the door, he bent over gasping for air.  When he finally could speak, he said “Shere, you won’t believe what I just saw.”

“Probably, but why don’t you try me?”

“I was walking by the lake watching the Johnson boy Jeb waterskiing when something came out of the water grabbed him and dove back in the water.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe you.  Belle Lake is a fresh water lake that doesn’t have anything larger than carp.  I’m not buying a man eating carp.”

“It most definitely wasn’t a carp.  I didn’t get a close look, but it appeared to be about ten feet long with large scales and big teeth.”

“You’ve been watching too many crazy movies.  Despite movies like ‘Puddle Sharks’ there are no large and dangerous fish in the lake.”

“OK, but I saw what I saw.  You may change your mind when Mr. Johnson reports to the Belle police.”

The next day after Mr. Johnson confirmed Duke’s story, a scuba diver attempted to find the Johnson boy.  The scuba diver disappeared.

Shere became a believer.  Monday night at 3AM she woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.  She logged into her computer and researched the lake.

Tuesday morning she told Duke that she had a theory.  To ensure she could make herself clear, she documented her case:

Ex biology professor Chad Simon moved to a shack next to the lake five years ago after unethical genetics experiments got him dismissed from Obregon University.  He had very little contact with the community and rumors pegged him as a typical movie mad scientist.

Four years ago Jerry Danz disappeared while visiting relatives in Belle.  The last time he was seen, he was walking towards the lake with fishing gear.

A couple of months after that a toddler strayed from a family picnic next to the lake and was never seen again.

A couple of weeks before Jeb Johnson disappeared; a car was abandoned by the lake.  It belonged to a man from Chicago who couldn’t be found.

All of the disappearances occurred when the fishing at the lake was bad.

Those are the facts.  Here’s what I think that they mean.  Simon made some monster with DNA experiments.  Normally it eats fish, but when the fish supply is low, it is an opportunistic killer.

After Duke had absorbed all of that he said “I’ve got to admit, it all holds up.  What’s next?”

“We tell the police.”

When trying to convince the police failed to the extent of being pushed out of the police station, Shere sent her case to everyone in Belle with emails via ‘Nextdoor Belle’.

Nothing happened for two days, but no one got close to the lake, or so it seemed.  Then the town woke to the horrible smell of rotting fish and smoke from the Simons shack being burned to the ground.  Simon either escaped alive or was burned to death, no one knew.

Two days later, Belle News reported that the lake had been poisoned by rotenone and strongly suggested that Shere’s Nextdoor Belle email had spurred someone to burn the Simon’s house and poison the lake.

Shere asked Duke “Did I really screw up?”

“If you got rid of the lake monster indirectly, maybe you are a lifesaver.”

That night everyone in Belle on the disaster call list got a robo call “Get out of town fast.  The lake monster is amphibian and left the lake before being poisoned.  It is killing anything that it can find.”

Shere told Duke “I’m grabbing one thing before we go.”

Before they got into their car, they noticed all of the tires were ripped apart.  Then they heard rustling in their hedge.

As Shere aimed the .45 automatic she had grabbed on the way out she said “We aren’t dead yet.”

The excellent marksman fired five bullets between two red glowing saucer shaped eyes a foot apart.

                                                Return To Belle Lake

“How do you feel about coming back to our house Shere.”

“Duke all I know is that the Federals say it is completely safe.  They checked the burned ruins of mad doctor Simon’s place and didn’t find anything alive.  Of course there are rumors about remains of his weird animal creations, but nothing provable.  The National Guard and FEMA have thoroughly checked out Belle Lake for miles around.”

“I talked to a loose-lipped guardsman in town.  He says that there was another monster like the one that you killed.  Sure glad you are an expert markswoman and grabbed the 45 auto before leaving the house.  Probably government mad doctors are experimenting with the monster that is a lookalike for the one you shot.  You know I have dreams or nightmares about twenty foot long super reptiles?”

“You and me both Duke.  But I’m pretty sure that everything will go back to normal, and the horror will fade.”

Upon returning from what used to be Duke’s usual Saturday walk to the lake, he told Shere “I’m not screaming like the first time I saw one of Simon’s creations, but it was pretty upsetting.  The nightmare isn’t over.  I saw something like an anaconda with legs cross the path in front of me on the way home.  I don’t think that it saw me.  I’ll start to pack.  Why don’t you call the Belle Lake neighborhood line to let everyone know that we need to evacuate again.”

Shere came back from the phone looking stricken.  “Before I could call the neighborhood line, I got a call from the line.  I was told not to worry about the monsters.”

“But that’s good news isn’t it?”

“No need to worry about the monsters because both China and Russia have launched a nuclear attack on the USA.”

“What can we do?”

“We can hope that we are killed immediately or wait for death by radioactivity.  I chose to use my gun, stick my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye.  Want to join me?”

                                                                      The End

Appeared in Black Poppy and Dark Dossier (defunct) as two stories “Lake” and “Return To Belle Lake” and in Sirens Call (defunct) as one story, and World Of Myth.