I had a bit of fun with this one, juxtaposing the mundane and the fantastical. It was written around the time England was being submerged by an evaporated Atlantic via the chaotic jet stream above. A dam was threatening to give way. But maybe there's more to these events than meets the eye....
Discovering new words in a local dialect and overlaying just enough accented dialogue to to help frame the setting helped me add another tool to my nascent author's craft box.
Does this ~800 word piece achieve sufficient contrast between the two worlds? Can you easily picture the characters?
The overladen reservoir above Upper Micklethwaite had gulped too fondly from the surrounding sodden hills and was now forced to vomit its greedy excess. The roar of its dam’s sluices crescendoed, curved green glass overtopping the barrier, turning foamy white as it mixed with the runoff, surging downstream under gravity’s pull. Within, a vortex emerged, giving ancient shape to formless liquid. It was an unstoppable force, no object before it immovable. Save one, below…
George navigated his car cautiously through the streets, struggling in the driving rain to see the way ahead. The town centre was already a few inches deep in floodwater, but safer than the inundated roads they’d first tried to navigate. Ahead of him the rising waters now lapped over kerbs and into shop doorways. The streetlights flickered, strobing the falling raindrops. He badly wanted to get home to check how his pigeons were fairing in the appalling weather. Only a cup of tea, their hosts had insisted. Well, three hours faffing later, with the rain still siling down, here they were.
The click-clack of knitting needles was now a discordant accompaniment to the metronome of the wipers.
“What’s that?” said his wife Mary from the passenger seat, looking up from her rabbit-headed tea cosy and peering out.
In the centre of the road, facing away from them, was a tall, broad figure. George rubbed a clear patch in the misted-up windscreen and leant forward intently, staring over the steering wheel. The figure stood, uncowed by the driving rain, supported by a long, thick stick. A cowled hood covered their head, melding into a bottle-green cloak that swept down to the raindrops dancing in the water around their knee-length boots. They struggled to make out any more details.
“Who’s that?” you mean, said George, always a stickler for accuracy. Mary sucked on her new teeth. He slowed the car to avoid creating an unwelcome wash, steering for the kerb to safely pass the errant pedestrian. Might as well be charitable, he thought. He wound down the window, rain sputtering on his ruddy face.
“’Ow do?” he ventured, coming to a halt. The hooded head turned to him, the face still hidden in the orange-lit gloom. He could now make out the large staff they held was topped like a pitchfork. Queer thing to be having in the street, he thought.
“A good night for it, don’t you think?” responded the stranger. It was the deepest voice George had ever heard; oceanic vowels breaking into sibilant shallows. It carried preternaturally well to him, even through the incessant drumming on the car’s roof.
Definitely not from round ‘ere, thought George. Best treat the man’s question as rhetorical and quell any pedantic urge to quibble over what ‘it’ was exactly, especially given the night’s inclement weather. George could be pragmatic when required.
“Want a lift t'anywhere?” he offered. “It’s chuckin’ it down.” It was the least they could do.
“Yes, get in t’back, lad. We’ll take you home, if we can,” Mary suggested, leaning across to peer up at the man.
“Thank you, my friends, but tonight that will not be necessary.” The stranger returned his gaze back up the street. He looked oddly expectant. George caught a whisper, a beach absorbing flecked foam. “Not this time…”
A faint blue glimmer now danced between the tines of the pitchfork. Then an earth-bound rumbling. Must be an atmospheric effect, George reassured himself. “C’mon lad, it’s no problem. You’ll catch your death outside like this.”
“Ah, you do not know the bitter coincidence in your words, my friend,” the stranger intoned. “After this is over, when the waters have receded and your townsfolk have returned, tell them it was Jamie that stood his ground once more.”
“What’s that he said, George?” quavered Mary, “Jammy?”
The rumbling grew louder, but still the downpour shrouded the source of the noise. Around the car and the boots fish began dancing out of the water, sensing a change in momentum.
Jamie thrust forward his Benthic Trident to meet the onslaught. Sparks crackled and a web of blue iridescence enclosed him, enmeshing his body within the rapidly rising waters. He shouted imperiously into the roiling vortex, “Come, Father! I am ready for you now!”
George stared ahead and could now see the oncoming maelstrom. Within it were fantastical shapes, writhing glassy green statues of sea and salt and foam. Then a giant, crowned form loomed over them all. It also wielded a strange pitchfork that was glowing a fierce electric blue. But this one was much larger.
“Blimey…” uttered George. He held his wife’s hand and turned off the windscreen wipers. It wouldn’t do for Mary to know how badly this was going to end.
