Scott-Patrick Mitchell

Lake Daemon

Don’t visit Lake Daemon, The Old Timers say. Time runs funny there. This is the warning they tell their children. And their children’s children. There’s something off about that place. No fish live in the lake. The dark water is only good for breeding mosquitoes. And tussock rushes. Vermillion clay cakes the banks, cracks when the heat sucks the water up into the sky. And in water, a peculiar viscous fog wafts and ebbs the lake’s surface like an evil, ethereal crown. The local magpies keep camp at Lake Daemon, deep seated nests balancing in the fork of oak trees. They gleefully swoop unwelcome visitors, pecking at their hair, stealing strands for their nests.