KIYA2245
The rain didn't fall; it suffocated. It turned the silver surface of the lake into a sheet of hammered lead and the earth into a hungry, pulling throat.
"Is she breathing?"
The voice was high, thin shattering like glass against the roar of the wind. I couldn't tell who said it. In the dark, we weren't people anymore. We were just shapes. Just five shadows huddled over a sixth.
"I don't know," another voice whispered. "I can't... I can't feel anything. My hands are too cold."
I looked down at my own palms. In the strobe-light flashes of distant lightning, they looked black. Not the black of shadows, but the thick, sticky black of something that wouldn't wash off.
It's just mud, I told myself. It's just the lake.
But the smell was metallic. It was the smell of a penny pressed against your tongue.
"We have to go," a third voice commanded. This one was steady. Hard. It was the sound of a door locking. "If we stay, our lives are over. Do you understand? Everything we worked for. Gone. Over a mistake."
"It wasn't a mistake," someone sobbed. "It was an accident."
"The police don't care about the difference."
We stood there for a heartbeat that lasted a century. Below us, she looked so small. She looked like a discarded doll, her pale dress a white flag surrendering to the mud.
"She's moving," I gasped, my voice a jagged edge. "I think... I think I saw her hand move."
"You didn't," the Hard Voice snapped. "Don't look back. Just run."
So, we ran.
She walked away. She was fine when we left her.
But as I stood in the bathroom that night, watching the pink water swirl down the drain, I realized the most terrifying thing of all.
I couldn't remember if I'd pushed her, or if I'd tried to catch her.
And ten years later, I still don't know.