Herman sat up. The mist of early dawn glittering in the light of the sun rise. The marsh reflecting the bleeding purple and red of the early morning skyline. Venus shined as the sliver of moon began to sink to the west. He thought he heard one in the reeds. He lifted the shotgun to his shoulder as his hound began to fight back its tendency to bark. Herman licked his lips. He hadn’t seen a duck all morning. Hadn’t seen any the last few times he’d gone out. A particular occurrence. He had been hunting and fishing in this marsh for thirty two years, and he always accumulated a handsome kill count by this time in hunting season. He found empty nests, and found duck bones, so he thought as the reeds began to part that his efforts had paid off.
He blew on the whistle, mocking a faint duck call. His eyes carefully guided by the barrel to point needle where the duck would appear. Foam dribbled down his hound's mouth. The whistle dripped with Herman’s coffee flavored saliva. Something pushed through the reeds, but he dropped his gun in disappointment as he saw that no duck swam past before him, but a mass of weeds, grass, and branches. The hound still growled. Herman took hold of the hound’s collar, and asked him what the matter could be. The hound didn't have any concern with the grassy mass, but instead something on the other side of the marsh where the grass reached higher than Herman could stand.
White breath escaped as he exhaled through his hairy nostrils. He slung the shotgun around his shoulders, and called it another day. Better luck next week. The dog growled at him as he began to wade into the marsh. His waders pressed against his layers of sweatshirts and jackets with a cold but dry weight. The decoys he placed floated just ten feet from where he planted himself. The dog stopped growling and started to whine as the tall grass began to shake. Herman looked up, reaching for his weapon hoping to see some game but when the hound barked the shaking stopped. Stupid mutt Herman remarked. The hound never scared off game before. He wondered what could have him so worked up as the hound stood up and seemed to be following something with his nose, and barking at it once he found it. Herman saw no creature, so he drifted further into the mist coated marsh. The weather report said that it would be around forty or fifty degrees. It felt like thirty, and the water felt like frost. It's too cold for the ducks he reasoned. He waded further until the water was up to his waist. He kicked through grass on creek bed, the ground feeling softer with each step. Only just a few feet from his decoy the dog repeated a tirade of barks towards the bushes of thick weeds. Herman reached to grab his decoy but he missed when his foot slipped from under him. He tried to plant his other foot, but to his horror it began to sink in the mud below. Slipping deeper into the cold mud, the bed swallowed him.
Herman pushed the decoy away and he threw the gun off of his shoulder and planted it into the mud. He tried to use it to prop himself up and it might have given him a few seconds before the mud began to swallow it as well. The sloppy marsh bed sucked on his feet and enveloped his ankles. The algae coated waterline splashed against his breast, dripping down into his waders. He splashed with his arms trying to recover his weapon, by the time he had it loose the creek bed had claimed more of his legs. The dark, frosted water poured into his waders, and he sunk faster. The weigh of the water pressed his legs down. He couldn’t lift them to struggle. The mass that alerted him floated nearer. He grabbed for it but almost lost his balance as the mud sucked on his knee caps. Mud and sweat blinded him as his heart raced. He kept his head up and reached once more. His fingers almost had it. The dog growled with a fierceness that made his blood run cold. His submergence came to a pause when with a flinging grasp he took hold of the mass. It sunk beneath the water but surfaced again, and he clung to it with exertive will. A complex conjunction of forest waste, he laughed in relief that it held him up, but his smile receded back to a grimace as he found that his knees on down still belonged to the marsh bed. The water still ran down his waders, and damn did the marsh chill like arctic seas. The grass behind him rustled more and more as the hound released a conquest of savage barks.
Herman couldn’t lean back, but he twisted his neck until he thought it would snap. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his hound with its hind legs wound up, ready to attack, as the grass parted. Herman almost lost control the mass he clung to, he readjusted his hold on the slimy material as water soaked through his gloves and sleeves. He looked back to his dog. A heavy, slow lump emerged from the grass. It seemed formless, made of mud but with the texture of a frog’s flesh. Ribbited with squirming holes, with thin arms and legs that it used to pull its yellow stomach through the bush. It opened its jaw and lurched towards the hound, exposing its two sets to teeth. One set sharp and jagged. The second set flat and unrefined. Two eyes shone like mirrors as it moved unphased by the mutt’s threats. With unflinching fortitude it lunged at the dog and took hold of it. Herman exclaimed in terror as it lifted its head and swallowed the hound with only gradual chewing. The creature's neck extended as the lump of dog pushed slid down into the gut of the creature. Once it had swallowed the mutt, the creature's neck retracted back to a ring of flesh between the creature’s flat head and round fat body. Herman looked away and tried to pull himself from the mud but doing so only dug a deeper hole.
The water line danced at his arm pits and a chunk of the foliage that supported him broke off and floated away in his vain attempt to free himself. Frigid water dripped down his face. He didn’t know when, but his hat had been knocked off. He saw it float away near the shore. His hair hung loose and wet. He shivered and his teeth chattered. His waders added an extra twenty pounds or more to his weight and then he realized that he couldn’t feel anything lower than his waist. His heart beat so hard that it choked him. His fingertips burned as if the bones tried to tear free of his flesh. He gasped for air as the weight of water pressed against his chest. The creature let out a long, edacious growl. Herman looked back to see it perched on the shore, blood and fur staining its exposed teeth, mirror eyes shining towards him. The odor that permeated from its open jaws soured the marsh. He clung harder to the mass, his finger digging into a soft jelly beneath the mass of grass and weed.
A potent nausea boiled in his stomach. He started to gag but nothing came up. Only painful dry heaves when he wanted to measure slow, conservative breathes. He tried to plan an escape. He looked all around him, and started to call for help. A game warden, or another hunter maybe would hear. He hollered and hollered until his voice went out, and at last some bile that tasted like his coffee squirted up his throat and into the marsh. He looked back at the creature.
It remained perched, its back legs bent under like a frog, and its forearms keeping its head propped up as its body heaved with slow, easy gasps and hot, steaming emissions. The holes along its body grew wide and constricted as it breathed. Inside them he saw black eggs snug inside of the body. Herman laughed as a weightlessness came over him. The creature hadn’t come into the water. It didn’t have a long, serpentining body like a fish or crocodile. It didn’t have flippers or gills. Herman didn’t notice that his skin had become blue or that he lost feeling in his arms. He leaned against the mass, feeling hungry and lethargic. As he did so more of the mass fell away, yet he still floated.
The stars had gone away, as did the moon. The mist started to fade as the sun lit the sky to a morning blue. More of the mass floated away as his body weight caused the mass to gradually sink. His mouth found something salty-sweet like deer jerky. He chewed on the ribbons of it, lifting his head to see that he had been nibbling on flesh. A fat, white face with cheeks and eyes peeled away looked at him blindly with the jaw wide open and stuffed with soiled grass. Dead limbs floated freely. The buttons of his soiled hunting vest strained against his bloated corpse. Marsh colored his orange hunting vest.brown with mud. Herman kept his head up, his mind melting, the bloated body seemed to be speaking to him.
We’re going to get back out, next week… we gotta git back out there and bag some ducks…
Herman laughed “I’m going to get them. I’ve always wanted to get one that I can mount. A real sport, you now.
The creature lurched forward, wading through the water.
Them ducks won’t expect to see us… they’ll just be sitting, floating along, they didn’t even think that they’ll be someone else’s dinner, did they?
“No sir, those birds did not.” He let go of the mass and slipped into the dark waters.
The creature’s body submerged, its body bobbing up and down as it swam towards Herman, with its mouth open and two sets of hungry teeth exposed. Overhead, a triangle of ducks migrated
past.
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