Bog Princess
There, in a thin sliver of moonlight, among the floating debris, a small mound was rising. The forest was so deafeningly quiet the travelers could hear their own heartbeats at the back of their heads. Mesmerized, they watched the black mound elongating, gracefully tracing patterns through the still water.
This was no mound — it was a head. Slowly, slowly the bog spilled out the rest — the long, black hair crawling with swamp creatures, the torn, drenched dress, and the translucent limbs. But what glued them to the spot was the eyes. Unmoving, intent, with the pupils so large they could swallow the moon. Her eyes held a hint of laughter and something so sinister that the men were surprised to find their legs still holding them up.
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For a moment, the forest held its breath. The stillness felt thick on one’s shoulders. Finally, the “lady” beckoned them with her gaze. Moving as if in a sickening dream, they followed her into the bog, their eyes no longer hiding the pure terror they felt. No matter how they begged their bodies to obey, they couldn’t stop and marched deeper and deeper into the bog. Once at shoulder level, the “lady” gently touched the first traveler on the top of his head and pushed him under the water with what was now, unmistakably, sheer amusement. She eyed the second traveler gleefully, drinking in his horror and utter helplessness. She knew that at that moment, he was at last being true. While his friend thrashed wildly under the water, he didn’t contemplate aiding him, instead making empty promises to the skies so they saved his small, miserable life. Even until the very end, when his friend jerked to a halt and floated atop, he reserved a foolish hope that she would spare him. How pathetic.
She turned to him, weaving her long hair around his neck, and slowly, methodically started tightening the noose. He was at her complete mercy — imploring her with his silent, wailing eyes, swearing he would be a good, kind man if she let him go, that he would worship her until the end of his life and beyond, and she knew he was not lying.
But his cries and terror were too cheap a conquest for her to be after. What she hungered for was to see someone’s realization that they were a finite, meaningless being, who were, without doubt, soon to be consumed by death. And there, there it was — the urgent, honest epiphany of his demise, the instant at which all the trivial layers of his ego fell away. And as sudden as it began, so it ended.
