A Fragment

Incomplete, that is all I can say and yet it is a vision that needs to be furthered. Ever listen to "Signs of life" by Pink Floyd? This story exudes from a childhood being set at an unease by the song. But I hope to repurpose that unease for another direction.

Nights In The Swamp

A Short Story by Cory Kutschker

The rowboat creaks as my paddles slap the water. I have an unease as the moonlight gleams off the water and partially illuminates the cypresses on either side of me. There are deep shadows in the midst, hiding a world from me and it is the hidden that I fear. For even though I have an oil lamp there rigged to a post at the bow, much of this world is still black, murmuring and whispering of odd and ill boding secrets. Small relief is given by the flitting small clouds of fireflies. Yet my mind escapes to necro-worlds of grotesque and lurking phantasms and to hideous beasts that science balks at.

War planes were rumored to have crashed in these placid and thick waters. I can well imagine them half sunk with creepers draped over their wings. The cockpit mostly sunk there concealing the corpse of his bullet ridden corpse. The gunner possibly ejected or half draped out of its doors with ragged clothing, his flesh being picked at by the various carrion eaters. A raven very well sat upon the tail perched comfortably with an eyeball in its beak.

Wild folk make their home here. Odd little shacks are set out on the river's edge. It's keepers made queer practices of some voodoo or maybe some unknown or long forgotten variant of witchcraft. I had business at the swamps edge, a package that needed delivery.