Short fiction: Velká Řeka

Semi-nude model 1970s. CC0 1.0 Universal. Courtesy of Archive.org.

It is early afternoon on a hot midsummer day, and I’m standing on the shore of River of Tears Lake, soaking up the sun under a cloudless sky. At this time of day, the lake appears like any other, as it takes the darkness of night to make the light of the fireflies under the water to be visible.

There is a distant muffled sound somewhere at the perimeter of earshot — an indistinct repetitive series of thuds, rapid and…