The Water by the Road

A Story by marinabee

This is a short horror story about a fictional character named Wesley, an introverted young boy, who, over the course of the story, finds himself at odds with a mysterious entity. Work in progress!

Wesley was in his mother’s car. They were driving home from a trip to the doctor. Such trips were always accompanied by a sneaking dread--the the overly-clean, hospitalized smell of the office always made him shiver. Even at the age of 11, Wesley could tell the adults disguised the truth; hospitals warped the stench of death with their sterilized hand sanitizer smells. This particular trip to the pediatrician had consisted of merely an x-ray, for which Wess was very grateful. He had fallen on his hand the previous day, and his mother consequently decided it was necessary for an X-ray to ensue. The x-ray had been slightly unnerving, as any activity occurring at the doctors’ would be; he hated the feeling of being poked and prodded without his permission granted. Wesley was a solitary person, and very much liked his Personal Space. However, he had been appeased with a sticker, and a large, spherical lollipop, the kind that has gum inside. Wesley liked those the best; the experience of the lollipop continued even after the candy part was gone.

Wesley happily chewed his cherry-flavored gum the whole way home. He did not pay much mind to his surroundings outside of the bubble that was his mother’s car, devoting the majority of his attention to the sticker he had selected on his way out from the office. It was a square image of batman, in comic form. Wess had always liked the comics’ versions of heroes better than the movies. To him, the comic heroes always seemed somehow more straightlaced in their heroism; the emotional turmoil that the comics lacked made them significantly easier to identify with.

If Wesley had bothered to look out of his window as the car passed over a bridge by his house, he might have seen something there, barely out of the water, in fact out just enough to watch the faces of the people in their cars as they passed.