Madison Woods’ Friday Fictioneers has an interesting photo prompt this week. The clouds look almost like waves; they remind me of one of those ambiguous pictures where you don’t know which perspective is the right one – so I wrote a story assuming that the rolling white breakers are the top of the water…
In the Depths
Everybody loves riding the waves. But you have to learn not to look down. It’s all right when the water is choppy and foamy, but sometimes things grow calm – and then you see them. The ghost cities, drowned and empty.
Children weep when they first notice the underwater towers. Parents soothe them by saying it’s only a trick of light and water on ordinary reefs. I believed that when I was little, and then my friends and I dared each other to swim down and touch the coral.
It’s not coral.
People lived down there under the water, once. How? Why? When? I don’t know. But we don’t look down any more.
A Number of Things 