ࡱ> `b_7 ZbjbjUU 7|7|Vl4 <M$C c   `HU  0M   WATER-BORNE The pond glistened with reflected early morning sunlight. An unbroken field of duckweed covered one whole half of the square water-filled depression. Lily-leaves both small and large poked through the surface of the shimmering water at irregular intervals on their long stalks, casting shadows into the murky depths wherein the small goldfish began their day along with the rest of their world. A child's giggling laughter filled the air from the large Victorian house situated at the end of the dew-covered garden as a toddler bounced out of the newer glass patio doors, over the stone paving.... towards the pond. She was unseen by anyone else. A flock of newly-awakened birds passed overhead, squawking raucously to one another as the earth warmed below them in the bright sun, creating thermal currents on which they could ride, soaring higher and higher into the sky whilst the child beneath them reached the edge of the pond and knelt down on the ragged brickwork edge beside it, looking into its depths with a sense of wonder. She tentatively reached out and brushed the surface of the liquid, scooping a handful of the fresh cold fluid into her hands, proceeding to fling droplets into the nearby bushes with a merry chuckle. She looked about her with glee and reached into the pond once more with her pale chubby fingers. Something stirred within the shallow depths of the water. Something that gathered speed and size as it surged upwards from the very bottom towards the tiny human that perched perilously on the edge of the water. Something alive. Something sentient. Something that was unseen until it was too late. The child could not comprehend the huge shiny transparent mass that rose from the water in front of her. She did not know what it was and she did not have the time to work out exactly what her eyes were showing her. She felt only confusion. And then pain. She uttered a cry, which was cut off almost immediately as the thing surged over her head, engulfing her entire body within its transparent mellifluous mass. Smothered, she struggled to escape, but the shape was constantly adapting its configuration to prevent her from doing so. Her small body was compressed and suffocated inside the thing as it tightened its grip on her. When she had ceased her most violent struggles, it sank back to the pit of the pond from whence it came, clutching its prize deep within. With a faint ripple, the sheet of duckweed appeared to pull itself back over the surface of the water, concealing all evidence of the small body in its interior. After a few minutes, all life signs were extinguished from the girl's body. Inside the house, the child's mother had heard but a faint splash and no more. The noise only served to remind her that the fish needed feeding. When she went outside to feed her aquatic pets, she found the three-year olds body floating in the middle of the water. Quite dead. The screams were heard two miles away. * * * The Police had left. The Ambulancemen too. She still felt shaken, despite the relaxants her Doctor had given her. The tearstains were wiped away by the sodden handkerchief, only to be replaced by new ones as she shuddered, gasping for breath, screaming for her baby to be returned to her. The droplets fell like rain down her protruding accented cheekbones as she wailed at the misfortune life had imposed upon her family that day. She felt wretched. She felt alone. She felt scared. Life was such a fragile thing, and it could be taken away so easily and so quickly. Her daughter was dead. And now her life as a mother was without meaning. She had tried sleeping, but even the powerful effect of the pills failed to allow her more then five minutes blissful, forgetful rest. She would jump up from the bed with a start, and the memories of the day's events would come flooding back to her and the glittering tears would flow again. She wandered around the nursery, looking at her child's belongings, holding them with fond recognition, fondling them, clutching them to her breast as her body convulsed in grief again and again and again. She wished her husband were here. But he was away at his place of work where he could not be contacted. His mysterious experiments overrode everything else in his life and she hated him for that. In the evening, as the night drew in and the air began to cool once more, she decided to shower in an attempt to make herself at least look respectable for the next day when her brother would arrive as she had requested. He would be on his way from France now. She locked the house and turned everything electrical off downstairs before heading up for the bathroom. Once there, she slipped out of the flimsy light dressing gown that was all she had worn throughout that day, revealing a classical flawless bone structure, and neatly stepped over the crumpled form of the silk material to open the bathroom window. A cool breeze wafted in, brushing past her naked body, raising goose pimples on her lean attractively tanned torso. She stood there some ten minutes in the cool draft, looking out through the window slit at the garden bathed in moonlight. The garden where it had happened. She thoughtfully leant her chin on her arms as the wind blew gently through her long auburn hair, seemingly assisting to wipe away her troubles. With a start, she suddenly remembered why she was there. She turned away, went to the airing cupboard and lay towels out on the carpeted floor before stepping into the shower and turning the water on. Her skin crawled under the cold jet of fluid and she gasped with the shock of it before the water warmed up as the immersion heater kicked in. Steam rose from the floor mat as the nozzle squirted hot water onto her back. She stood there for a while, feeling slightly better for the cleansing effect of the shower and then she proceeded to soap herself down slowly, still in shock over the day's events. The water got hotter. So she turned the control knob back a little as she washed down her smooth slender legs. But that had no effect. The temperature of the water continued to rise. As her rounded shoulders felt the near-scalding water run onto them, she let out a shriek and in desperation she turned the heat control right back to "Cold". It seemed to have no effect. She tried turning the water off altogether, but somehow the water still came pouring out, getting hotter and hotter and hotter. She panicked, turning to the misted glass sliding doors, scrabbling at the edges with her long fingernails, breaking some of them off. The door would not open and her fingers ached, making any further attempt impossible. As if to make sure, a wall of water rose up, defying gravity to sit "hovering" in mid-air, covering the glass surfaces. She touched the water wall incredulously and her fingers jerked back in a vicious reflex. The water was boiling and the skin on her hands was red, burnt. In a final attempt to escape her nightmare, she tried to scramble over the top of the doors where they stopped short of the ceiling, but she wasn't tall enough. Her entire body was wracked with pain. The once beautiful unbroken skin on her back was bubbling up terribly and peeling away in shreds as the water pounded onto it. Her arms were bleeding from her escape attempt. Her legs were bloody, pulpy masses of sheer agony. Her feet were nearly numb with pain as the water seemed to begin to fill the cubicle, rising above her refined once-admired ankles, revealing a red muscle structure as the skin was washed away almost as if it had been doused in acid. She turned to face the nozzle of the shower, screaming tortuously as the water went into her mouth and eyes, droplets like small steaming bullets. Her breasts were scorched and the skin there too was removed effortlessly by the misty incandescent steam that the water had become. The spongy fatty tissue fell away, diluted in steam. What was left of her arms was ripped open by the sheer pressure of the water and the heat. The hot liquid turned dark red. Bones began to show through as the water that swilled around in the shower cubicle reached the woman's thighs, peeling away flesh and muscle.... As she died, the last thing she felt was the wedding ring on her finger, burning, cutting into the bone, almost red-hot... Once she was dead, the water receded and the ruined remnants of her body slumped against the tiled wall, sliding down onto the melted plastic mat. The glass doors cracked as they rapidly cooled and then the water stopped pouring from the nozzle. The control dial finally clicked properly into the "Off" position. Her neighbours had heard the screams of course, but knowing of her tragedy earlier that day, assumed it to be a further show of hysterical grief. They had listened, concerned, until the cries had ceased. Returning to their own affairs, they could not have known that the screams had only stopped because the woman's vocal chords had been boiled away. * * * There was no reply from the doorbell. There was no reply from the strenuous knocking and repeated shouts; the sounds simply resonated through the great hall It seemed that there was no one in. But the curtains were still pulled and besides, he knew better. His sister wouldn't have gone anywhere and she had nowhere to go in any event. He thought about taking a wander round the back of the house, but then another thought struck him. He quickly returned to his car and rummaged through the debris in the glove compartment, smiling to himself as he found the small Yale key in its resealable plastic bag. He would have hated to smash the door down. He locked the Mercedes, leaving it parked on the gravel driveway and rushed back to the front door as he impatiently ripped open the small bag with his teeth. The key was slotted into the lock and with a tiny squeak, he eased the door open slowly. Everything looked in place. But the drawn curtains had perplexed him. It was nearly two o clock in the afternoon and he would have thought his sister to be up and about by now. Unless the Doctor had knocked her out with something to relieve her stress? Maybe she was still asleep? After gingerly roving around the ground floor in case his sister was around and not in bed, he decided she must still be upstairs after all and he padded up the grand staircase with his thoughts. She was not in bed. In fact, her large berth had not even been slept in. There were signs that someone had lain on top of the sheets, but they weren't as ruffled as they should have been. He remembered with a smile his sister from her childhood days. When they had both been children, growing up together, discovering the world as one, an inseparable team. Whenever he had passed her bedroom in the early morning, her sheets had been thrown everywhere as if she had been fighting with them. A running joke had developed concerning this fact and they still laughed about it to this very day. He knew she still seemed to have a problem with bedsheets. Her husband, his brother-in-law had told him, the man who had split their team, taken his sister away... He shook his head of those thoughts. Looking around the bedroom, he found every sign that his sister had probably intended going to bed. The teasmaid was set to turn on at nine AM, which it presumably had. A congealed mass of tea sat in the china cup and another cup full of what looked like cold cocoa was on the bedside table by the lamp, which was still switched on. He drew the curtains and opened the leaded window to blow away the stale air and then turned the table lamp off. He wandered round the other bedrooms, but they were empty too. Empty and dark. When he found his sister, or rather, the remains of her scorched body, he was physically sick in the sink bowl. She was deformed. Melted by an intense heat. Her red body sat at a grotesque angle in the shower. Some of her limbs had bones protruding at obscene angles through her flesh, and her face... Her face. It was fortunate that the bathroom window was open or the stench from the rotting flesh would have been overpowering. He sobbed. His sister had been one of the most beautiful people to regard and now she was reduced to...to this. A once admired, well-bred woman. His sister. The sister he loved above anyone else in the world. His cohort, a partner in an almost sexual sense. He couldn't bear to look at her body, but his eyes were dragged back again and again. Eventually they settled on a gold band on a finger on her left hand. Her wedding ring. He didn't know who had done this to her, but in his distraught state his thoughts slipped to her husband, his brother-in-law. If he ever got his hands on the man he would kill him. He wanted to kill him. For making his sister unhappy. For splitting her up from her brother when they had had so many plans. Plans to travel the world together. He wanted to kill him for effectively ignoring this fine, upstanding woman whose intelligence was now wasted, raising his child in this barren backwater. Dammit, the man cared more for his stupid experiments than for his own wife!! What kind of a man, what kind of a husband, what kind of a father was this? Whatever had happened to his beautiful sister, he blamed her husband for. He sank down onto the toilet, his head in his hands. A column of water smashed up into his rectum, breaking his coccyx with the sheer force of its entry, snapping his spine in seventeen places and killing him outright. His bloody, shattered body fell to the floor and a pool of blood began to form around him as the water settled once more, back into the toilet bowl. He never knew what hit him. * * * The car crunched roughly up onto the gravel driveway and clanked to a halt. The coarse ratchet of the handbrake creaked as the lever was wrenched upwards and the headlights flicked off, leaving only the dim starlight as a point of reference for the tall, suave looking man who emerged from the sports-car. He looked up at the house. It was in total darkness. Locking his car with the infrared transmitter, he noticed the Mercedes parked at an angle nearby. So his brother-in-law was here, the interfering.... If he didn't know better, he would have sworn that there was something going on between that man and his wife. But that was being ridiculous. The woman was his sister. His brother-in-law might very well be a self-righteous imbecile, but he didn't think that badly of him, even if the guy was the type to try and turn a woman against her own husband, to a certain degree of success... He arrived at the huge front door of his house to be greeted by an automatic security light which snapped on at his approach, temporarily blinding him. The door opened with a slight squeak as the key was turned. There was nothing but darkness within the large echoing hallway. Was everyone asleep? Probably, given the circumstances. He had been told of his daughter's death at the laboratory, despite explicit instructions that his work should not be interrupted with what he saw as such trivial news. Still, it wasn't important now. The project was complete, a resounding success and even now, his new products were being mass-produced by the barrel-load. His previous experiments were nothing compared to this new chemical breakthrough and an even bigger fortune would soon be his. A richness beyond all belief. Then see his wife try and leave him!! Then see his wretched brother-in-law try and turn her against him. Him, with immense fame and a fortune to rival any other!! He laughed to himself aloud. He would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Whatever his wife saw as shortcomings on his part, well. His money would surely far outweigh any other considerations or problems. Removing all these thoughts from his mind, he took his coat off and headed for the kitchen to fix himself some food. He didn't want to wake his wife at this hour, not if she was asleep. She wasn't expecting him this early anyway. He had given estimates that he would be away for another two months at least, but he had succeeded in perfecting and testing his new formula early. Besides, she would no doubt be hysterical after the death of their child and he wanted to enjoy the calm before the storm as it were. Knowing her, she would not appreciate what a tremendous breakthrough he had made and it might take him a while to convince her that his news outweighed her trauma. He had loved his daughter, but his work came before anything else and, in his eyes if in no one elses, his perfected experiments would soon see him showered with awards as a result of his becoming the saviour of mankind.. He sat and watched Newsnight on BBC2 with a plate of sandwiches on the coffee table in front of him. He laughed at the way the presenter smirked to himself and toyed with those being interviewed, and his thoughts drifted to the future. Soon he would be on the programme. The BBC wouldnt stand a chance. When the programme was over, he read the parts of his daily paper that he hadn't been able to catch up on earlier and then headed upstairs to bed. His bedroom was cold. The bed was empty. There was a cup of cocoa on the sideboard, which he tipped over when he turned the lamp on. Cursing vehemently, he grabbed a handkerchief from his top drawer and mopped up the cold coagulated fluid from the carpet and the bedsheets. He rose and closed the window and drew the curtains. He wondered where his wife was. He walked along the hall towards the bathroom, cleaning the spots of cocoa from his jacket sleeve with a fresh handkerchief. He pulled the light cord by the bathroom door and, still engrossed in cleaning his jacket, he ran the sink taps, washing away the strange gunk in the bowl. It looked like someone had been sick... Turning to fetch a towel, his tired eyes failed to see the body on the floor. Only when his foot bumped against something solid and heavy did he look down. His brother-in-law was on the floor in a pool of dried, caked blood. His wife was in the shower, a messy lump of burnt, boiled flesh. Despite his normally cool, calm persuasion, he was shocked. He removed his jacket, carefully laying it over the body on the floor, almost reverently. Then he took off his shirt and, with eyes half-closed, he covered his wife's naked body, and then closed the cracked shower doors so that she was hidden from him. He switched on the extractor fan set in the outside wall to remove the smell of death that lingered despite the open window and then turned back to the sink, looking himself in the mirror incredulously, wondering how this could have happened. He turned back to the sink & put the plug in the hole and then began to bathe his face in the lukewarm fluid that filled the sink, washing away the stresses of the day, washing back his unusually messy hair to restore it to its normal tidiness. He tried to pull his head out from the sink, but he could not. A kind of suction was pulling him in. With a gasp of air, he jerked his neck and his head pulled up viciously, free from the water. He shuddered, pulling air into his lungs with gasp upon desperate gasp. He had been...pulled into the water. He had felt his face compressing under extreme pressure. As he stared in terror at the sink full of water, he saw a bulge appear in the rippled surface. The water was moving. Rising up from the confines of the porcelain to meet his face. As he watched in absolute undiluted horror, the water began to adopt a new shape. A thin cord of water appeared, almost like a rope, whirling about in the air, unbroken, attached to the water still in the bowl and seemingly almost solid. He gurgled and tried to cry out as the "rope" twirled around his neck, defying his ham-fisted attempts to loosen it by continuously forming and reforming into new shapes, shapes that slipped through and over his fingers. His eyes bulged as the thin line of water slowly squeezed the life out of him. He was being strangled. His face turned red, his mouth opened and closed silently as he sank to the floor. On his knees now, he began to plead for his life, but his vocal chords were restricted and he could not utter a sound except for the rough hoarseness of his breathing. His vision went black and stars formed in the darkness as his body succumbed to the lack of oxygen and he died... The cord of water loosened and dropped the body to the carpet. It whirled about in the air before retracting back into the sink. Ten minutes later, an underground water main inexplicably burst, flooded the foundations of the old building and violently short-circuited the electrical system of the house. A fire started in the basement and within thirty minutes, an uncontrollable blaze was raging. The house was burnt to the ground less than two hours later and nearly all signs of the three bodies within were destroyed in the heat. * * * It was called a tragedy. Scientists all over the planet Earth praised the work of one of the dead men whose charred remains had been found in the ruins of the ageing house. His chemical expertise was second to none. But, there was at least one consolation, whilst his death was a great loss, everyone was just grateful that he had managed to complete his greatest work shortly before his death. His legacy to mankind. The ultimate manipulation of chemical matter, with perhaps an infinite number of likely uses for the future, and with a potential for new directions in science and planetary exploitation that no one had ever considered before... No one knew what had caused the fire that had apparently killed the great scientist and his wife. No one seemed to care really. But perhaps this was their mistake. * * * The agents of Earth are ready and waiting. One of the enemies of Earth has been eliminated. But the death of one man will not stem the flow of mankinds violence against his own world. Still the desecration of the planet goes on and the time has come to strike back. Who will be next? The oceans of Earth, teeming with life, are alive in themselves. Water, born. END Andrew John Summersgill 06/11/94, v2.0, revised 26/11/95.   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