October 5, 2022.

We sit and watch the lake, because we can’t think of anything else to do.

We know that somewhere under the endlessly roiling water, stirred by the frigid winter winds, rests a being incomprehensible to us. Only a night ago, those of us who still lived watched in dumbfounded and traumatized silence as its forked tails disappeared back into the deep waters, churning its waves, the whole lake lifted by the immensity of its form, the beach surging with that algae clotted slurry. I thought to myself, inappropriately but unavoidably, ‘eureka.’

The youths, some of them orphans now, huddle together, whispering suggestive names for the being, all of them crass and too concise. They call it a “creature,” a description which seems lacking. A creature suggests it less than human, subjugant in a grand hierarchical structure. The being I saw is something closer to a vessel of a vicious and uncaring God.

My husband is dead. I’ve seen enough of the body, tangled through the wreckage of our cottage, to assure myself of this fact. I consider myself fortunate. At least I have a body. Many have nothing, just an unexplained absence, the vessel of God having swallowed them whole.

I find myself awaking from sleep, my bones crying out for the comfort of a bed. Impossible, now, my bed shredded, scattered with parts of Andrew across a fifteen meter stretch of our ruined village. The night shatters into an assemblage of broken shards of nightmares, visions of the still lake appearing before my eyes as my spine forms to the hard earth beneath it, my lungs to the harsh and cold air of December.

When morning dawns, I awake again, despite my best efforts. The displaced water of the lake has returned to its normal level. The displacement has abated, and the foam laps naturally at the shore. I say to myself, inappropriately, once again, out loud, this time…

“Eureka.”

The youths look to me, like I’m sharing some hidden wisdom, but I just shake my head. I have nothing to say. My words have left me with Andrew. My words have crawled into the lake with the vessel of God.