She crouched at the water’s edge, fingertips dug into the soft sand as her heartbeat thundered in her ears. Thick fog blanketed everything, it suffocated, swallowing the trees, the water and the sand. It clung to her face and hair like spider’s web and sprawled out across the surface of the lake. Was it helping to hide her? Or him?
She was afraid to breathe deeply incase she made a sound but her lungs were screaming, begging her to take in a deep breath of dense air.
Hours earlier she’d told him about her application for divorce, he hadn’t taken it well, like many things over the years. He’d screamed and her head and neck were throbbing from being slammed against the wall, hands wrapped tightly around her neck choking her. This time she’d fought back, and run.
She couldn’t swim, she’d never learned, but the sense of him creeping up behind her in the fog had her panicked and desperate. She threw herself into the water, shattering the stillness of the surface and the deafening silence. She gasped as the icy water enveloped her, she tried to swim towards the center of the lake, her arms thrashing frantically, fighting the urge to breathe as she slipped below the surface into the inky dark. Her lungs burned as an involuntary breath dragged water into her mouth and lungs and suddenly, she was still. Silence fell once more across the lake until it was broken by a shout, “hello?”
