In the Muskgrass
It’s a drizzly early-summer day, and you’re sitting together on the bank at the edge of the pond under the cover of the old oak. Its branches stretch far out over the water, shielding you both from the worst of the rain. The ragged bark of the tree trunk digs at your back, and water worms its way through the branches, dripping onto your head or into your eyes or down your shirt when you least expect it. Better to be right out in it or, better still, floating in the pond, just below the surface, listening to the steady hiss of the rain as it splashes into the water above.
In the Muskgrass is a short story available to read for free on the StoryBottle Co. website.
This (non-horror) story began with the simplest of ideas—a boy with gills who meets a girl with a tail—and grew quickly from there as I sat and made notes on my phone while the idea was fresh in my head, unwilling to move to my computer or even pick up a pen and notebook for fear I might lose the thread of it.
Three hours or so later I was still sitting there on my phone, and had almost three thousand words of notes and roughly-drafted sections. It went through many changes after that, eventually becoming a deeper story about the fears of being different, but it all started with three words popping into my head—”boy with gills.”
