fragment from a hand-held device #3

a memory came to him of swimming in the dams at the farms of his friends.  how the cold water lay eighteen inches or maybe years below the surface, and would caress the limbs;  stretching its hard fingers through the syrupy warmth to catch and clutch.  how it could tighten around the chest like a python, and squeeze breath from the body.  those fingers, that would sometimes steal a small child or a drunken man, and give them back empty.

those fingers.

that need.