The Daily Tourniquet

Lake of Gods

By

Jason White

George Pennington hadn’t had a drink in six years, but for the past week, he kept a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey close at all times.  Tonight was no different.  He sat on a bench in JC Saddington Park, sipping the smoky liquor while below him Lake Ontario lapped lazily at the rocky shore.  A cool breeze blew at his back from the north, but George felt nothing but the dread memory conjured: his long time friend, Steve, grasping at his throat, the blood spurting from between clenched fingers.  He remembered the man’s final gargles as his eyes stared vacantly while his body was dragged into the lake.

He looked at his watch.  It was 1:55 in the morning, nearly a full week since.

He lit a cigarette and held its nefarious smoke in his lungs, sending his vision to blur and sway.  He had surpassed his limit of excess days ago, but every time he sobered, mostly in the grey of early dawn, the dread thickened within his chest, like iron clamps squeezing the life from his heart.

Every night since his friend’s disappearance, George had returned here.  The first few nights, tears had pooled in his eyes, his voice loud and eulogizing the life he had witnessed dim and then fade to nothing.  Every night, there were no answers to his alcohol-soaked prayers, and after tonight, perhaps he’d continue living within Port Credit, the town drunk with an unlikely story to his rants.

However, as there was no deity there to explain to him the things he’d seen, he resolved that after tonight he’d never visit the lakeshore again.  He imagined he might move away, head deeper into Toronto, become forgotten or at least dismissed as insane by his hometown.

But he had a right to be insane, didn’t he?  He and Steve were best friends since the ninth grade.  From first sips of intoxication to the first taste of a woman’s sex, they had experienced everything at the same time.  Marriage, family, drunkenness, and sobriety, nothing had ever come between them.  Until last week, when Steve had forced George to this very spot, to watch something he had said was, “Outta this world, man!”

Outta this world it indeed was.  Or perhaps it belonged to the lake, living deep within its polluted body. But none of that mattered anymore.  What did matter were the tears that flowed from the wide and anxious eyed Sandy, Steve’s wife.  Also the shouts from his own, after stumbling home from his late night walks, reeking of whiskey and unresponsive to Lindsey’s own barrage of questions.

“You were with him,” both wives accused.  “Where did he go?”

His answer was always the same.  “I don’t know.”

It wasn’t a complete lie.  He didn’t know the name of the thing that took Steve, and he did not know where within the lake, or why, it had taken him.  All he knew were the facts of what his then sober eyes had told him.  Facts of which were distorting and changing as the days progressed, with each emptied bottle.

Perhaps I dreamt it all, he thought, while sitting on the park bench, exhaling smoke, the ghostly whispers of his wife and that of his dead friend within his ear.  A dream, and Steve had only summoned me here to say goodbye.

It was plausible, after all.  “Married life is a disappointment,” Steve used to say to George’s nods of approval.  “A bickering wife, a screaming kid, and a life free of such chains burning slowly away each day.”

Yet, George knew that the only real rationality behind the story of his memory was that he was wide-awake when it happened.  His heart had pounded too painfully inside his chest, his breath coming in quick gasps as he sweated within the chill air, for the experience to be anything but carved from the rock of reality.  It was no dream.  And Steve was gone.

George tossed the butt of his cigarette into the air and tilted the bottle to his lips.  He looked at the time.  2:05 am.  Exactly one week ago, they were sitting behind a bush, watching a couple sitting on this very bench, when the water before them had begun to ripple …

… as it now began to ripple.

“You remember Tom’s wedding?” Steve had whispered.  “Well, I was taking a walk sometime after we left, you know, to get away from the wife’s bickering about my manners, when I came here.  Some old homeless man was sleeping on that bench over by the shore there, when something came out from the water and grabbed him.  He didn’t even scream!”

Tonight, while sitting on the bench, George’s heart began to palpitate.  Shadows moved out there, on the lake’s surface.  Yet he remained unmoving, his breath caught in his lungs.

“I’ve come back nearly every night,” Steve had said.  “It doesn’t always come.  But I know it will tonight!  And I will give her the homage, the worship, she deserves.”

The couple had seen the moving shadows; they had heard its massive body scrambling upon the shore, looking for purchase to lift itself out.  “That’s some odd fish,” the man had said before realizing the extent of the thing that was approaching too quickly for its size.  As the couple ran away, their mouths screaming out the memory of the impossible vision, Steve had run towards it.

Tonight, its bulk was a shadow beyond the park lamp shining above the bench. George stood up.  As though through magic, the dread disappeared and he smashed the Canadian Club against the bench.  Broken shards sprayed across the pavement.

George knew what this thing was, even if it had no known name, and tonight he would stab the broken end of the bottle into its flesh until it looked like nothing but pulp.

A week ago, Steve hadn’t had the chance to offer his reverence.  The creature was too excited at the presence of the young couple, too pissed off at their running away.  Steve had made it to its feet, where he went to his knees.  The beast barely looked at him.  It instead swiped at his neck with one of its many arms, and Steve’s blood sprayed into the grass.  Around the beast, miniature versions of itself stepped forth, bending over and making mewling sounds as black tongues lapped the blood away.

There was only one answer.  This thing, this beast, was a rare animal of some sort and possibly endangered.  Perhaps it slept for years, decades, only awaking when it was time to spawn.  Spending some time this past week in the library, he had looked up creatures that hypnotized their prey, but could only come up with the ermine, a small, nocturnalraccoons to their death.  There was also the cuttlefish, a sort of octopus that used flashing lights to entrance its prey.  But there was nothing such as this… mammal that danced before its meal, mesmerizing rabbits and

The beast stepped out from the water, onto the rocky shore before him.  Tonight it crawled upon four arms and two massive hind legs until it stood not a foot from George.  Hundreds of eyes studied him.  For hours, it seemed, he stared his fingers uselessly gripping the neck of the broken bottle.  Then it rose upon its thick hind legs, standing at least ten feet tall.  deep into their many abysses,

George never thought that this close, the beast would be so beautiful.  It pulled back its magnificent head, opened its massive maw, and screamed at the night sky.

Steve was right.  The creature before him was no mere animal, and She deserved fealty, loyalty, sacrifice.

George fell to his knees.

Thoughts of his wife and kid, thoughts of Steve and revenge, melted into the sudden, faraway past.  When he spoke, his voice trembled, but he knew his old friend would have been proud.

“Goddess of the lake,” he said. “My life…”

As he held out his wrist, the Goddess huffed, its breath reeking of rotting fish. The broken glass was like a blade to muddied earth as it dug into his wrist and forearm.  Blood spurted on the pavement before the creature. Miniature versions of itself, five in all, came from behind the Goddess, licking at the blood with their long black tongues.

Again, the Goddess roared, all four arms held out at its sides.  She then stepped back and landed down so that She faced him.  She then opened Her large mouth, displaying rows of a thousand sharp teeth.

Shooting forward, the Goddess’s mouth clamped around his throat, and George faced the clear night sky.  Her teeth tore into his flesh, and he smiled.  He felt no pain, only the satisfaction that Steve would have been more than proud.  He’d have been jealous.