Ah Friday. You know what this means don’t you? We have made it through an entire week and managed to maintain relative normality. That’s right, this week flowed smoothly and in a more or less ordinary fashion for me. I kind of want to say that softly lest the crazy come out of the woodwork today, but I think I managed a regular work week. All that is needed is for Friday to cooperate and all will be well. So let’s get Friday started and see if we can sneak into the weekend with no catastrophes.
Okay this seems like a fun story to write. Not sure what is coming out of the lake but I know chaos is eminent. Maybe if I contain chaos on the page it won’t spill out into the day. Fingers crossed. But this was a fun one.
Friday, August 19th; The fireworks screamed through the sky.
The fireworks screamed through the sky. They exploded in the dark expanse blotting out the stars and leaving an after image of spots dancing in his eyes. Cameron blinked the images away. He turned away from the sky and looked around at the happy relieved faces of the crowd. They made it. They were safe. He smiled back at them and hid his worry. There were other worries, but no one wanted to think about that right now.
Now they wanted to celebrate surviving, making it through hardships and horrors to make it here alive. No one wanted to think about the hardships they still had to face or the horrors that might lurk in the darkness.
Cameron understood the need, the desire for a moment of peace,, a moment of pure happiness. It was like coming up for air and taking a deep breath even though you knew there was still a lot of rough water to swim through. This was their breath and he would do nothing to interfere with the night’s undiluted happiness.
He kept his smile on his face and offered the same sort of comments the others were using. Gratitude for their survival and relief that it was over. In his mind, he couldn’t stop the list of problems that was waiting for the morning. He couldn’t stop naming the obstacles they had to overcome.
‘It is the price of knowledge,’ he thought. He wished he could simply enjoy the relief, but he knew too much. ‘But me knowing helps them.’ He reminded himself. He knew that such joyous abandon was not in his nature. Cameron had always taken any victory as a step in the battle not a winning of the war. It was simply his nature. Using his nature to know that more was coming and to help create plans to deal with it while others celebrated was much more in his style.
He was only at the celebration because the people needed to see that everyone was celebrating. His superiors made that clear to him. As he made his way through the crowd Cameron wondered how long he would have to stay among them. His list of things that needed to be settled was growing longer and ignoring it made him feel twitchy.
He risked a glance up at the sky but before he could tip his eyes skyward, he caught movement at the edge of the lake. Something was moving under the water. Something big. When the next explosion of sound and light filled the sky, Cameron concentrated on the water.
Something was definitely moving beneath the formerly placid waters. By the light of the fireworks he could see that whatever it was seemed to be moving from the center of the lake towards its edge. He glanced around, tearing his eyes from the movement. No one was looking towards the lake. Faces were tipped skyward to watch the display. Even those they set as guards were distracted.
‘Not good,’ he decided. Camron slipped out of the crowd and towards his supervisor.
“Ah Cameron,” Micha said. “I see you’ve set aside your gloom and doom to join us.”
“Something is in the lake,” he said.
“Yes, yes, “Micha said, we have a fishing expedition in the morning. “Glad to see you are thinking of a hobby.”
“No,” Cameron said. “Something big is moving from the center to the edge.”
Micha frowned and turned towards the lake. An explosion of light from above showed them that the something Cameron saw was indeed moving towards the shore. It was large and it was beginning to edge itself out of the water. Glistening flesh, shining from the water and reflecting the green and gold lights from above was slowly easing a large blob of a body out of the water.
“Oh my,” Micha said. His eyes went wide and he strode off towards the nearest of the guards.
Ten til Midnight 