Fortnightly Writing Competition: RIVER (Voting until Sept 2)

[Baron]

We're all familiar with plot twists and meandering plots. Does your story flow? Does it branch? Is there danger and excitement, a sense of wonder, or placid tranquility that tickles the soul? This fortnight, I invite you to write a story on the theme of ...

RIVER


The theme is flexible - any stream that flows will do. I can even open it up to the liquid nitrogen flows of ice worlds or the atmospheric rivers that bring nothing but rain right when you don't need it. Artificial or natural, industrial or pristine, channeled or free, raging or calm - rivers form a backdrop to our lives, but also run through the heart of them. Vacations, transportation, romantic venues, water source, obstacles, flood threats, habitats, drowning hazards, recreation ... rivers are infinitely flexible plot elements. The metaphoric flow of a river also mirrors that of storytelling, starting at the beginning and wending its way towards some sort of conclusion. Will your story drift like Huckleberry Finn's raft through childhood adventure or tumble tragically over a waterfall like Roland Joffé's Jesuit missionary?

Deadline is August 28, 2025 at midnight Hawaii time. No word limit. Good luck to all participants.

[Sinitrena]

Oh, this topic has some ideas flowing already, let's see where my mind swims!

[Mandle]

                    Bear Teeth

Spoiler

      Mind focused on her daughter's death, Yasuko Ue sat at the table grinder, sparks zipping off her plastic face shield, preparing for revenge.  Her little Asuko had been found by the riverside, ripped apart, and the beast would be back.  It was a seasonal animal.  It reappeared at that exact place every year.  Her eyes narrowed as she pushed the weapon harder against the wheel, the flying sparks growing white hot, matching her rage.

      When her daughter went out of the house that morning, Yasuko shouted her the usual 'Take care!' and heard back 'You, too, mom!' and then the door between them closed forever. 
      Not hearing Asuko come back after school didn't worry her that much.  But as she put the broccoli in the pot, she glanced up and saw that the neighborhood had grown orangely dark, shadows from houses reaching up the walls of others.  Around eight, she started messaging Asuko's friends, asking if they were with her.  None were.  Notifications from the friends' parents started popping up on her phone, the broccoli now limp and abandoned in the cold pot.  They were asking stupid shit like 'She didn't come home?' and 'Have you seen her?'
      Then one message jumped up, saying, "My daughter said she saw Asuko going into the woods."
      Fuck, she thought, dread pouring concrete into her stomach, replacing her flighty panic.  Then police it is.

      And police it was.  And then townsfolk, and even people from away, once the news broke on national TV.  And then the Japanese Self Defense Force.  There were search parties scouring the mountains for days, JSDF choppers bending pine tops over in their downwash, all around the sleepy little mountain village that had been slammed into the spotlight. 

      Then they'd found her, found her torn little body, thirty miles from where she'd gone off into the tree line, the sun glinting off the flowing river there in flickers across the towering rocks along its banks.

      Yasuko tilted the forward edge of the weapon around a few degrees, rounding it off, eyes darting between the diagram in the zoology book on her worktable and the work itself.  She took her foot off the pedal of the grinder, and it whirred down to a stop.  She pulled up her plastic faceguard and blew the last filings of hot iron off the end of her masterpiece.  The weapon was ready.

      It was a long drive up the winding tree-lined roads to where she knew the beast would be again.  She'd hired professionals to track it.  It came back to the riverside on this exact day every year.  She parked her car by the side of the road, much like the one Asuko had walked off of thirty miles away.  And, just like her daughter, she went into the forest.
      Unlike her daughter, Yasuko was armed.

      As she cornered the boulder, placing one hand against it, calling it 'old friend' in her mind for the last time, there was the turn of the river her daughter had died on, and there was the animal her private investigators had tracked over the last five years.
      She fell into a running crouch, the long iron pincers she had ground and bolted together up under one arm.  The beast was in a squat, shoulders twitching, a hand obviously on its crotch.  She knew the fucking thing would be masturbating into the river on this of all days.  The PIs had told her so.
     
      Kenichi Omori was about to finish when he heard feet swishing up low behind him.  He got up from his squat, trying to yank up his pants as his head exploded with shattering pain.  Then, he felt his face, half in the river flow, dragged up into the eyes of some woman.  Oh wait, yeah, he knew her eyes from the internet.

      "Ahhh," he said, shaking his bloody scalp, red droplets flying, splattering on rocks on one side and bleeding away in the river's flow on the other.  "You're her mother."  His teeth turned crimson as the blood from his wound poured down into his mouth.  "You know what..."  He looked like he was about to tell her something terrible, so she just let go of his shirt and he fell like the sack of shit he was, tumbling over, and then she was on him with her weapon.

      "You know what?!" she spat in his face, and she pulled apart the long arms of the pincer, placing the short jaws at the other end against his thigh.  "Here's THIS!"

      He screamed so wonderfully to her ears at first, as the sharp metal incisors at the end of her weapon pierced his upper leg.  Then she ripped the pincers away, opening them and dumping the chunk of flesh to one side with a splat.

      She thought she'd steeled herself for the screams, through all the years while fantasizing over this moment, but they still horrified her.  This was sacred ground, after all, so Yasuko raised the pincers over her head and brought them down squarely on the beast's forehead.  Now that he was as silent and dead as her daughter, she took her time to bite him again with the weapon, once in the side of his ribcage, tearing the chunk away there to expose white stripes, and then again at his waist, dragging out purple ropes.

      Once the scene looked convincing enough, she took out a plastic bottle from her jacket pocket and said, "Fuck you, you child-rapist piece of shit," and then, through tears, she poured the water mixed with bear saliva over his wounds and walked away, her weapon ridged with carefully researched teeth over one shoulder, feeling fulfilled and empty.

[close]

[Baron]

Nice to see an entry already. Keep 'em coming, folks! 

[Sinitrena]

The Path of the Fish

Spoiler

The river had dried up. One day, there was a steady stream of water, the next, an empty bed, a chasm, cut the town in half. The single bridge over the river now stared down on mud and, where the sun shone hot on the ground, even just dry sand and soil. The pillars of the bridge had markings for all the other years the water had receded, but none of them were as low as the lack of water was now.

It smelled of fish and death now, as all the creatures living in the water slowly died. When the water stopped, the fish still swam through the trickling rivulet for a few hours, being trapped more and more in the middle of the bed, then there was nowhere else to go for them and they flopped for a bit on the mud, and then they didn't even move any-more.

Further down the former stream, where people used to dump waste and excrements into the water, it stank of shit and piss. A dark miasma hung over the whole town, a fog of dirt and sick odour.

It was a sudden change, and a slow one too. First, the water left. One minute the current was strong and wild, then it trickled away, the stream became smaller and smaller, it became slower and slower and then it was gone - from one day to the next.

But even before the water receded, the animals in the forest around the town acted strange, as if they had an inkling that something was wrong, but nobody paid attention then. The beavers at the small arm of the river, that split a bit further down, had left their dam behind, the goats on their fields hesitated when the farmers brought them water from the creek, the birds circled above the town as if they were waiting for something.

*

"We have to do something!" the leader of the smith's guild said. "Deepen the riverbed, so that the water flows stronger."

"Where there's no water there's nothing that can flow." the miller said. His watermill had stood still for three days by now. "No matter how deep you cut into the ground."

"The mayor nodded wisely. "That is so. That is so."

"Than we need to dig around town, on the fields, build wells." the smith insisted.

"All our ground water comes from the river. And digging wells takes time. Time we do not have." the miller said and rubbed his balding head.

"Indeed, it takes a long time." the mayor said, adding nothing to the discussion.

"Then what do you suggest?" the smith hissed, turning an angry face to the miller.

"Isn't it obvious? We need to go to the source of the river, walk along it's course, and find out what stopped the water." the miller said with a shrug, bracing for the resistance that was sure to follow.

"Are you insane?" the smith nearly screamed, "You want to go into the cave? There's demons and ghosts and wild beasts and -"

"Very wild, very dangerous." the seemingly wise voice of the old mayor added.

"Stories. Nightmares. But I can't say I want to go." the miller said, "I do think it's the best, nay, only choice we have, though We have to figure out why the river suddenly dried. And the source is underground, we all know as much."

"And you are willing to go? You?" the smith shouted.

"A volunteer. Nice. Nice." the mayor rubbed his hands.

The miller rolled his eyes. "Obviously not. I'm not insane, contrary to what you believe. I am, in fact, fat and old. This is not a job for me, or any of us. I'm sure we'll find a young hero -" Or idiot, he added under his breath. "- who's willing to go. And if there isn't, the dungeons are full of cut-throats and thieves."

*
The river, when it flowed, came from a cave. There was little space between the water surface and the roof of the tunnel then. Now, a deep hole led into impenetrable darkness. Here, the sun had not yet dried the mud.

The smell was even worse here. In the town, it could at least drift away, but here it was stuck under the low natural roof. A bit of leftover water still dripped from the walls, giving the cave an eery echo whenever one of the drops struck the ground.

How did they end up here? A hero or a thief, both suggestions sounded reasonable in their own way. Yet here they stood at the edge of the cave, the miller, the smith and the mayor. It was the miller's idea. It was the mayor's responsibility, and the smith had the right physique, the right body, the strength needed for this endeavour, and some weapons and tools and knowledge thereof at hand.

In the few days since the river had dried, the people had become desperate. There was no water to drink, no fish to eat, no stream to carry the logs they felled as their main business down to the valley. There was no quick way to reach the next settlement, for the river was the best means of transport. They were thirsty, fearful, cut off from the world.

And so the town had voted. And they had lost.

*

"This is all your fault." the smith said once the light of their lanterns no longer reached the mouth of the cave. "This was your fucking idea."

"So it was." the mayor added.

"I didn't mean for us to go. I can't believe there's no idiot available who wants to become a hero." the miller said.

"Well, apparently, we're the idiots here!" the smith shouted and his words echoed from the cold walls. "What do you even expect to find here?"

"A blockage." the miller stated the obvious. "A cave-in, maybe, or a different tunnel the water now takes."

"And then?" the smith asked.

"Yes, and then?" the mayor asked.

"We open it back up." And then we drown. he didn't say out loud. "Obviously."

"Obviously."

*

Soon, leftover water seeped into their boots. With every step of the way, their feet sank deeper and deeper into the sludge. Their steps created puddles, the puddles filled with water, until it seeped into their boots and held onto them like a sucking spirit.

And then, the mud was replaced by more solid, but also more slippery stone. A bit of a runlet still streamed down towards the town here as the cave became steeper. It got lost in the mud somewhere, never to be seen again. But their feet slipped now, they struggled with every step, leaving muddy footprints behind that only slowly washed away.

A cold, stale air let the fire in their lanterns flicker and reflect from the wet walls. In some places, the cave became wider, in others more narrow, but the roof got constantly closer to their heads. No other caves, no other streams, led away from or towards the former river.

And then they suddenly stood in front of a wall. Blank, smooth stone stared at them like an impenetrable obstacle.

The miller held up his lantern, shining the beam above his head. The light couldn't reach. It only penetrated the darkness so far, leaving them with utter darkness falling from an unending hole.

"What now?" the smith asked.

"Climb up?" the miller asked, not sure himself.

"You want to climb up there? You always with your stupid ideas!" the smith hissed through clenched teeth.

"At least I have ideas!"

"Gentlemen. Calm yourselves. Anger won't further a solution" the mayor's voice rang hollow in the empty cave.

*

The tunnel did not continue above the waterfall. Once, it did, now, no longer. Stone on stone, one boulder on top of the next, sat in the former bed of the river and formed an impressive wall. They were stacked on top of each other as if someone had placed them there, larger and smaller stones mixed with each other, tiny ones put into the cracks to fill them out. Only on the top, where the roof was low here right above the waterfall, a small gap still remained, not quite large enough for a person, but without a doubt enough room to look through or even to crawl through for a child.

This was not a cave-in. It was a wall, a dam, a man-made obstacle. And it was a sturdy one. With nary a feet wide platform to stand on before an inevitable fall down the dry waterfall, the three men couldn't get any proper grip on the stones.

They tried. They pulled at one of the smaller stones, hardly more than a pebble, but it was stuck under the weight of the larger rocks above it.

And they were lucky that it was so firm. The mayor grabbed for the stone but his feet had no grip. The ground was still slippery, there was still the tiniest amount of water trickling through the wall, where one or two pebbles had been washed away by the strength of the backed-up river behind the dam.

The mayor held onto the stone, onto the dam, for a moment before his feet found steady ground again. But now they stood in front of this next obstacle, this obvious cause of the town's predicament, without any idea what to do. It was build to hold the force of the water, it was certainly build to hold their weak attempts of loosening it.

Behind the wall, water purled. It was the trickling of a current, flowing down a river-bed and into the unknown, as well as the gentle sloshing of a massive dammed lake. They hardly heard it at first over their heavy breathing and the constant annoyed bickering between themselves, but then the sound reached their ears. And the light that was shining through the gap above the wall reached their eyes. This was first obscured by the lanterns that still carried enough fuel to enlighten the cave, but was slowly consumed by the flames.

"We need to see what's behind this wall, before we make it collapse." the miller said after a while where they tried to balance on the narrow ledge.

"Are you insane? You want to climb up there, right after we climbed this bloody wall here?" the smith gestured behind himself where a dark chasm led back to the town.

"That might be difficult." the mayor added his wisdom.

"We don't know exactly what is there. If the wall collapses while we're here, well, then..." The miller's voice dried just as their river had.

"Then what?" the smith hissed.

"Yes, then what?" the mayor asked.

"Then we'll get pushed down with the water into the waterfall."

"What waterfall?" the smith asked.

"I can't swim," the mayor protested.

The miller rolled his eyes. "Then we are in agreement, let's figure out what lies behind the dam."

*

An immeasurable cave was the answer. A high ceiling let little light from fungi or other plants fall onto the glittering surface of a natural lake. The water sloshed back and forth against the walls, most of them natural, cut out of the stone by years and centuries of water scraping away at the minerals. Just one wall had not been build by the constant force of water. Nor was it created by gravity, nor was it initially made of stone. Here, visible from over the edge of the wall, a small wooden scaffold peaked out from under the water.

Hanging there, where the three men had managed to remove some of the boulders and throw them down into the river bed below, the miller inspected the scaffold.

"This wood wasn't cut." he mused, hardly able to breath as the stones pressed into his massive belly. "It was gnawed." The miller knew a tiny bit about dams because his watermill was located on an artificial canal, so that the water's current would be strong and even where it stood.

"Don't be silly." the mayor said, not even seeing the wood yet.

"What do you mean?" the smith said, as he slipped for the third or fourth time trying to climb up the uneven rocks.

"Gnawed, like animals do. Like beavers." the miller said as water splashed into his face and he nearly lost his hold.

"Bullshit." the smith said, finally reaching the top of the wall. "Beavers don't use stones. And beavers don't live in caves."

"-or at least don't build their dams in caves. But who does, for that matter?" the miller challenged.

"Yes, who does?" the mayor asked from below.

"Damned if I know." the miller answered his own question and a little smirk for his clever choice of words danced on his lips, just before one of the stones gave way under him, struck the mayor and rushed down into the abyss.

*

Three tunnels led into the cave and four away from it, with one blocked now. A deep, dark lake was swashing and sloshing far beyond all vision, deep under the mountain and deep into the ground. Here and there, every now and then, a wave build in the middle of the disturbed surface, sometimes straight, sometimes round ripples like the waves drifting away from a stone dropped into the water. At other places, whirlpools appeared suddenly and disappeared just as quickly. A minor roar hung in the cave and called from the walls, silent, but loud in the quiet of the underground lake.

Few fish swam here in the cold, clear water. They didn't mind the dam, as they had never swam up the waterfall, but the other paths into the cave also hardly allowed them access. All other paths from the open were longer, the three rivers flowing in the depths of the mountain for many, many miles.

One was narrow, steep and fast. It rushed over natural steps and through many a curve and twist until it finally reached a steep wall. Water sputter out of the cliff in a high, pressurized bow, falling down, down, down into the valley where it splashed into three small lakes, one on top of the other, each connected through a small waterfall. No fish had ever taken this path into the secret lake under the mountain.

A second was shallow but wide. It flowed and flowed, the current never strong. Here and there, its stream came close to the surface where the mountain flattened into hills, peaking out in swamps and mud-lands far away from the mountain. It was not the preferred path for most fish, but its wetlands were inhabited by countless insects.

The third river was the path of the fish. It was not as grand as the stream that led to the human town and where it came from the side of the mountain the ground wasn't as fertile and level as where the town stood and where other villages followed its path into the valley. But it was steady and calm, it was rich and clear, it was clean far into the hills and the lowlands beyond.

Not far from the mouth of the cave, where it split into several rivers and other streams added to its waters, some beavers had chosen one of the brooks as their home. Little dams blocked the river's path, flooding the lands and creating a cosy little lake for their pleasure.

Uneven sticks stood out from the wooden barrier and one of the beavers gnawed at it with his sharp teeth while another dragged more sticks over to the water to replace weakened parts of the structure.

The waters behind the dam were calm and steady, hardly ever interrupted by the ripples of water the countless fish here made, until one of them jumped out and high into the air. It sailed over the dam and came to a stop right in front of an old beaver who directed the younger members of his family in the old and traditional art of dam-building.

"What is it?" the beaver said, looking down at the fish but receiving no answer.

The fish had returned to the depths of the river. With a sigh, the beaver waddled down to the water left downwards from the dam and put his head into the shallow puddle.

"What is it?" he repeated to the fish.

"They've come for the dam." the fish said, still a bit exhausted from his journey down from the underground lake.

Not far from the dammed brook, a herd of goats grazed in the fields. There had been an influx of friends and families in the last couple of days. More and more goats and other animals had moved from the shores of one river to its sister.

One of the goats hopped over to the little dam and the council of fish and beaver there.

"What happened?" the goat asked, dipping his beard into the water and tickling the scales of the fish.

"They've come for the dam." the fish repeated in his bubbling voice.

"Who, the humans? Well, we expected they would."

The beaver nodded. "It's not surprising. Are they at least competent? Do they know how to break a dam, do they understand the flow of the water, the current and waves? Will there be a challenge for us?"

The fish gurgled angrily. "How can you be so nonchalant about this?" His scales glittered in the evening sun. "We gave several schools to this problem, to this solution. We lost several schools to it!"

"It was a necessary sacrifice." the old beaver said.

"Bullshit." the goat bleated. "It was their own damn fault. They were too stupid to listen and didn't avoid the river like they were supposed to."

"Fish can't exactly jump over the mountain paths like you folks do!" The water rippled and bubbled away from the fish.

"Gentlemen, please." the beaver sighed, "If the plan works, it was a good plan and a worthy sacrifice. If it doesn't, we're all lost and we'll all die. If we hadn't stopped the water, they would have suffocated sooner or later anyway, we know that. We found enough of our friends dead down the river. But if we get these humans to move, we can break the dam and the river can live again. Nothing of this has changed just because they send someone to figure out what is going on."

"But if they break the dam, it was all for nothing, then my pupils died for nothing!" the fish seethed.

"So, we stop them." the goat said.

"Easy for you to say," the fish said, "you're not exactly capable of going into the cave. Actually, what did you even add to this plan, why are you even here?"

The goat shrugged. "Because the dam was my idea, idiot."

"Fine. And what's your plan now?" the fish asked.

"Well, that depends. You haven't answered the question: Are they competent? Do they know what they do?"

The fish bubbled. "How would I know? I don't know anything about dams, except that they stop the water." And give beavers an easier way to hunt! he mumbled under his breath, "And I know nothing about humans except that they dump all their shit in my river."

The beaver shook the water from his fur before diving head first into the lake his family had created. He resisted the urge to hunt down one of the many fish swimming here and followed the river back to its source instead.

*

The water rippled. Air bubbles drifted to the surface where no light of the ceiling plants reached the waves. Silence hung over the lake. Only the sloshing and purling and dripping of the water could be heard.

The beaver was tired. He listened for a moment, but when he heard no voices echoing in the hall, he turned on his back and drifted on the agitated lake for a while. Water dripped down from the wet ceiling of the cave, disturbing the little rest the old beaver could get after his long and arduous swim up the river.

He knew that humans were loud. But no voices carried over the water, no heavy breathing and moaning and groaning disturbed the calm of the cave. The beaver listened for a while. Humans were not exactly subtle, but now no sound reached his small ears.

When he was certain that he was alone, he swam over to the dam he and his family had build and then – at the suggestion of the goat – re-enforced with stones just like the humans usually did.

Little water swashed over the edge of the dam where they had left it open just in case they needed to spy on the humans. Now, there was more, a larger hole. The wall was lower now, a little bit more water left the cave on its former path, but not a lot.

The beaver climbed up the scaffold and spied over the edge. A dark, empty hall lay before him. No light from the ceiling reached here, where his own back blocked the last few beams of the fungi. The beaver almost turned back. No humans were here, nothing to see.

But then he spotted the tiniest bit of light blinking up the massive wall of the waterfall that was now a waterfall again. There was enough water dripping from the dam to have a steady flow down the smooth cliff.

He waited a moment longer for voices to reach him, but there were none. And then he started his own climb.

"Stupid goat!" he grumbled, "Why can't you do this stupid climbing?" But the job fell to the beaver. Clawing into the stones and holding onto the rope the three men had left behind, he came about halfway down the fall before there was enough light from the lantern to see.

It illuminated a gruesome scene. All three lanterns had broken and two had lost their fire in the puddle underneath the dam, but the third had spread its flames. Only parts of the clothes had stayed dry, but those the flame had eaten. Blood had spilled from several wounds, mostly at their heads, but most of it had been washed away by the returning river. Some of the stones of the dam had fallen after the men, some before. The beaver didn't really care.

One of the men still moved, moaned and groaned. He looked up at the beaver hanging from the rope that had not been able to save him as too much water made the ledge too slippery for them, as the water rushed underneath their feet as they allowed more and more of it to slosh over the edge of the dam and their exhaustion would not allow them the strength they needed to hold onto the structure.

The beaver cackled, then jumped down the last few feet of the waterfall. He shook his fur like a dog, throwing droplets of water over the flames, extinguishing the last of them. And then his sharp teeth penetrated the miller's neck until they gnawed on his vertebrae as if they were wood.

*

The goat had chosen a spot above the mouth of the cave. Some of the stench had drifted away. The sun had dried some of the corpses of the fish, others had been shovelled away by the humans. There was a trickle of water here now, there was just enough water dropping over the dam to form a small current through the long and winding cave from the underwater lake to the town.

Some people still came to the cave, looking and waiting for their heroes, for the people they were willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the town. But no water in the river meant no water to drink, no water to fish, no water to carry the logs into the valley.

And even now, when there was a bit more water coming from the cave again, it hardly reached the other end of the town. It seeped away easily here, where the ground was sand and soil, not solid stone as it was in the tunnel, and where the sun stole the last drops of it away into the sky.

Days had passed, then a week, and the three members of the town council had not returned. And the water that did return was not enough. And so fewer and fewer people came to the cave and more and more packed their things.

The goat bleated happily, cackling like a hen, when the beaver reached his outpost.

"I take it they did not reach their objective."

"I take it, they're incompetent. I didn't even need to do any repairs, the dam is stable." the beaver reported.

"Good."

[close]

[Baron]

One more day, peeps. Gather in those tributaries and start the words a-flowing!

[Baron]

Well, it looks like we've got ourselves a two-horse race! For your consideration, the entries are:

Bear Teeth by Mandle
The Path of the Fish by Sinitrena

Voting will be in-thread for your favourite - no need for complications with such a small pool of entries. Feedback is forever appreciated. Voting deadline is Tuesday September 2nd, with results to be tabulated the following day. May the best story reign supreme!