MAINE MIST

In the Maine mist, thick as lobsteater stew, a skiff slices the murky water. Not a peep from the oarsmen, just the creak of bone on bone, the sigh of rusted oarlocks. No stars for bearings, just the moon’s greasy thumbprint smeared across the sky.

They weave through drowned trees, skeletal fingers clawing at the fog, each gnarled branch a hungry ghost reaching for a taste of flesh. The river flows like molasses, thick with secrets and whispers of things best left undisturbed.

And still they row, these shadows in the mist, their destination as veiled as their faces. Is it a hidden cove where forgotten gods slumber, or a desolate island haunted by a shrieking wind? They could be ferrying souls to Styx, for all anyone knows.

The silence tightens, a shroud around the skiff. Each stroke of the oars echoes like a dying breath, punctuated only by the skittering of unseen things along the banks. The moonlight spills, revealing glimpses of faces etched with a primal fear, eyes wide with a madness caught from the river’s gaze.

No slowing, no stopping. Only the relentless rhythm of the oars, driving them deeper into the heart of the unknown. Where the river leads, they must follow, even if it leads to the edge of the world, or worse, into the waiting maw of something older than time itself.

For in the fog-choked arteries of this river, secrets writhe and twist, and answers are colder than the grave. And sometimes, the only way out is to row, row, row, even if it means rowing straight into the teeth of what waits in the darkness.

This, you see, is not a journey for the faint of heart. This is a voyage into the belly of the beast, where shadows whisper and madness blooms like barnacles on the hull. This is Stephen King’s river, and these rowers are dancing with the devil on water black as pitch.

Choaking upon the splinters.

:: 01.08.2024 ::