Rots Creek

A diary of Danielle Rots

My mother tucked me in as she spoke the familiar nursery rhyme she would always speak as she gave me a goodnight kiss, her voice gentle and her actions sweet.

“Have you heard of Rots Creek? It beckons and it calls, for one and for all. Have you heard of Rots Creek? Where teenagers meet and are buried 6ft. Where children play to their parents dismay and the waters are so cold like a mother’s stern scold”

My mother stroked my hair as she spoke, her eyes glazed as if this rhyme brought back memories she hadn’t wished to relive, or perhaps she was just exhausted.

It’s been a few months since then, my mother grew ill, barely leaving her room or the house we owned by the lake, the lake I never swam in as I had never learnt how, my mother was not fond of the waters, stopping me whenever I would set foot near the waters.

On the occasions my mother would leave her room however she would watch me by the window, sitting as her long thin hair draped over her face, her sunken eyes watching with lack of emotion, but perhaps she was just exhausted, after all raising a 8 year old was a hard job for a single mother.

I did not go to school, there was no need, my mother would take me outside and tuck me in at night, her coughs and hacks filling the halls, my new sickened lullaby.

Mother didn’t leave her room today, or the next, or the day after that. I let myself out and played by the lake, I had my favourites for dinner, ice cream and cookies, mother still didn’t show.

The house smells, I hear sobbing from my mothers room. She came in last night to tuck me in but she had to cover her nose the whole time. Why was she crying and why didn’t she kiss me goodnight? Her sweet voice is one of sadness.

I remember a day, not so long ago, I learnt how to swim. Mother wasn’t pleased. It was before she grew ill, before she plugged her nose. Before she showed up to me with a rose.

It was so much fun, to swim I mean. The cold water against my feet, though heavy they were, I touched the bottom of the lake, oh how I loved to swim.

The water caressed my body, my hair floating in the water as I looked to the ground, my mother watched from the window, as the water went still and I stopped swimming under her gaze, her eyes nothing but void of the lesson she gave.

That one does not go to Rots Creek while misbehaved, now she is tucking me in, her touch gentle and sweet, as she caressed my wet hair that fell out in locks, my body heavy and smelling so foul, now I know why mommy wanted to move out of town.

“Have you heard of Rots creek? Where children who wonder tend to stay, having the water to play, where mothers go mad, due to a lack of a dad, where my sweet Danielle Rots went when we moved out of town, to a house on a lake, where that sweet girl then drowned”

And with that she got up, leaving the room, my eyes glazed with white and my body mortem.

My mother was unwell, but mentally so, my father left us and my mother and I moved south, to play by the lake, where no one would search for a waterlogged body, who slept in my bed, that body was me, laying there, wet and dead.