Swimmer

The water was cool, if a bit murky. The lake was the color of tea, owing to its past as a logging route. Great banks of long tree trunks would bob and sink, staining the lake. At least, that's what the boy's grandpa said. He dove off the dock, slipping into the cool water as easy as an otter, his sunburned skin drinking in the cooling water.

The lake was very deep, and quickly he was over the vast, deep edges, paddling softly with the easy grace attainable only by the happy few who know the width and depth of summer break. He turned over to his back, the murky, tea-colored haze buoying him up on billows of cool water. He flicked his hands with a careless annoyance as he skirted a patch of loosed seaweed, sending it bobbing away. He watched the clouds, listening to the empty hum of the lake in his ears.

He slowly noticed more patches floating about him, and bobbed to vertical, wincing as his feet kicked and brushed the slippery, brown strands of weed. The strands twitched and clutched with their soggy strength, and he sighed as he started to plot a course out of the muck.

Deep below, the twitching strands stirred the muck they were rooted so deeply in. The mud puffed… then bulged, rising softly in a great mound. Then it opened eyes, great sludgy orbs the size of cars. It slowly rose, freeing its gnashing maw, and drifted up to see what its feelers had found.