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The Price	By : pip Category: -Misc TV Shows > Het - Male/Female Views: 2857 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own the public information film 'Dark and Lonely Water' nor any of the characters from it. I make no money from this.

Chapter List
- 1-The Price
- 2-Chapter Two
- 1
- 2
Author: Pippychick

Warnings: Horror, M/F, weirdness, hint of necrophilia, character death, mental illness. You have been warned.

Disclaimer: I do not own the public information film 'Dark and Lonely Water' nor any of the characters from it. I make no money from this.
Author's Note: I promised this almost a year ago, and said it would take a couple of weeks. I own several large dictionaries. I haven't looked up the word "timely" in any of them. I also haven't quite fulfilled the request... yet. I will. But for now, I hope you enjoy this first part.

The Price
Chapter One
I am the spirit of dark and lonely water. Ready to trap the unwary, the show off, the fool. Today, I have a story for you. A cautionary tale, if you will.
Once upon a time, there was a girl, and when she was still very young - a mere child - a boy nearly drowned in the river. That's important. He didn't drown. He escaped me. It wasn't only her responsibility, that debt, but the stories of the other rescuers that day are not mine to tell.
While they had looked after the survivor, she'd been sent to get something to wrap him in. That's when she found me, and without so much as a second glance, she threw me away. I noticed her, and from then the debt began to gather interest...

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God! It felt like there were a thousand tiny unseen things dancing on her hands, scampering over and between her fingers, under her nails, stomping tiny feet along the creases of her palms. If she looked for long enough, her skin seemed to crawl. In a kind of revulsion, she scrubbed at her hands with the nail brush, biting her lip at the pain, willing the horrible tingling to go away. It didn't.
"Kathy? Kath! It's teatime!" Her mother called up from downstairs. Shaken out of her reverie, she looked down and almost sobbed when she saw the soap suds on the nail brush had turned a pale pink. Carefully, she emptied the sink and patted her raw hands dry on the towel they kept on the rack.
After tea, Kath's mother smothered her irritated hands in a cream from the Avon, telling her that it looked like some kind of dermatitis. The cream didn't make the tingling go away either, and she slept little that night, convinced that she had picked some kind of disease up from the canal earlier that day.
The next day, she went back to the canal, and found the cloak had washed up on the bank again. Careful not to touch this time, she got a stick and lobbed it out onto the water where it could do no harm. The next day, it was back. Removing the muddy cloak from the bank of the canal became a kind of ritual over the next week or two, just as with the washing of her hands.
She washed her hands in the morning when she got up, then again after using the toilet, again after brushing her teeth, after her bath, then after getting dressed, again after making her bed. Before breakfast. After breakfast.
They never felt clean. They didn't feel like part of her any more.
Two things happened at around the same time. Firstly, after a week and some days, she'd saved enough pocket money to buy some yellow marigold gloves. That day at the canal, using the gloves, she wrapped the cloak around a heavy brick and threw it into the water. The next day it was back, just the same, and something inside her mind crumbled.
The second thing that happened is that her mother took her to see the doctor over the constant washing of her hands. She described how they felt, and said that she couldn't get them clean. She was too afraid to say what she had touched down at the canal, the thing that had started it all. The doctor gave her some zinc and castor oil cream over her mother's objections that the Avon had a better cream for dermatitis that she'd already tried.
When that didn't work she saw a different kind of doctor, and in the end, the upshot of the hand washing resulted in her being sent to live with her aunt for a time, for "respite" too far away from the canal for her daily visits to continue.
Weeks turned into months, then into years during which she became a teenager, and Kath forgot all about the canal and the cloak. Indeed, she sometimes thought that her parents had sent her away for their own sake. The hand washing had ended quickly, and it was only very rarely that she remembered that period of her life at all.
Eventually, she left school, and got an apprenticeship as a typist, working through two years of that while the world around her changed beyond recognition. She was young, and the world was for the young, so when she was finally free she left her aunt's and moved in with her parents who were suspiciously overjoyed to have her back. She had no work, and she was ready for arguments but there were none. Not about her music, nor her clothing which was sourced from church jumbles and held together with safety pins and duct tape. Her mother even knitted her an oversized jumper she could wear as a dress, and slowly, her resentment over being sent away began to wane.
So it was years later when she found herself walking down by the canal again after signing on one day, among vague memories of playing there as a child. On the bank she saw lots of rubbish, and then some movement caught her eye. A cloaked and hooded figure stood watching her by a stunted tree several feet away, and despite herself her heart jumped.
"What the fuck are you? The Ghost of Christmas Future?"
She waited for an answer, arms folded, defiance in every line. The figure moved again - in the wind - and now she saw it wasn't a person, but a garment caught on a branch of the tree. With a nonchalant shrug, she walked over to examine it. No memories rushed in to warn her. No recognition flared in her eyes. It wasn't anything at all but potential.
Suddenly excited, she picked it up to examine it, holding it up against the sunlight, noting the hood and wondering what kind of fucked up red riding hood type dress it would make when it was clean. And quite a bit shorter once she'd hacked a couple of feet off the bottom of it.
On the way home she began to remember. It was the way it felt in her hands, slimy and static all at the same time, as if it had some kind of energy about it. So she put it straight in the twin tub when she got in and waited for it to wash. When she took it out to spin, she knew it was clean - you could smell the Drive solvent powder she'd put in with it, and yet... it still seemed to thrum and vibrate in her hands.
Without a second thought she shoved it into the spin compartment and tamped it down with the rubber cover. There, it was trapped. She set the machine off and sat down to wait for it again. While it did, certain things began to come back to her. The endless washing of hands, the creams, the doctor's visits. But the idea that this was the same garment was absolutely ridiculous. That would have rotted away years ago. So she decided that if her hands itched where she'd touched it, that was just her imagination.
When it was done, she hung it on a wire coat hanger to dry on the outside of her wardrobe door. If anything, it looked even better now. The material was inky black, a large open weave that was like sackcloth, but much softer. Satisfied, she ran off downstairs for tea, while the tingling in her hands slowly but surely subsided.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His touch was cool, but that was all right. It was a perfect companion to her fevered skin. So hot. It soothed her body, even as she arched upwards into it all, completely out of control. His cheek against hers was almost cold, clammy. His breath next to her ear was loud and heavy - too heavy - it almost seemed to be a wet gurgle.
Everywhere his cold fingertips left a trail of fire, as if he continued to touch her in a thousand places all at once, until all that existed was his touch. Still the pace was slow, even though she gave green light after green light, until it felt as though her entire being was opening up to him.
When at last one hand ventured down between their bodies, she was sure she cried out an affirmative, but then there was a sudden thought of caution. His touch there was cold too, and she jumped and gasped, but there was nowhere to go except for deeper into his arms.
"Oh, stay..." the voice whispered, full of something that was like need. Pleading. Or was it amusement?
Unsure if her body was cooling down or heating up, soon it didn't matter, not when he flicked his finger like that. She could hear her own breathing now, louder than his, and when she felt his cock begin to penetrate her, she knew it was too late. She shouldn't do this, because he was a dead thing, and yet she couldn't stop, and her legs opened wide to accept him.
She felt him slide deep inside, and every muscle in her body tightened in response as she suddenly fought to get away from the shocking cold, her breath a gasp at the sensation of it, only to find that he'd slid his arms under her body, and now held her in an inescapable grip.
Fingernails sank deep into the skin of his face, maybe even into his gelatinous eyes as he chuckled, moving her body easily back and forth as he used her, and she was still in shock, shuddering, glad that it was too dark to see. But then the feeling of him moving inside her impressed itself on her body and her mind as her own body heat began to win out over the cold. How could it not? She heard herself moan and couldn't help it.
"Good," the dead thing said in her ear as she wrapped her legs around him in an unspoken plea for more of the friction, tears forcing their way out of her eyes in dread. The gouges her fingernails had left in his face bled, falling onto her face like cool summer rain, onto her lips. His blood tasted like tepid sea water.
In the middle of the night, she awakened, her body still moving mindlessly on the bed, the dark and silence heavy above her, as if it were pressing her into the bed where she daren't breathe. Had she had a nightmare? If there had been one, she couldn't remember it, only the lingering feeling of fear, fascination and sexual contact. She drew in a deep breath and sighed it out in a shaky, halting stutter, the dream making her muscles create a rushing ache inside her. It wasn't quite real enough.
As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight that filtered through the curtains, she looked to the wardrobe, but the cloak was missing. Her heart skipped a beat, and she sat up suddenly in bed, covers clutched to her chest, just in time for the cloak to fall on her from above, smothering the instinctive scream that broke free of her throat.
After a scuffle with the empty cloak, she cast it aside, and sat, heart hammering, waiting... one, two, three... there was nothing. The air smelled tangy, as of the sea, and she shivered, suddenly noticing that her skin was wet. But it was sweat, wasn't it? Just a nightmare. She must have gotten up and fetched the cloak from her wardrobe door while she was sleeping.
With a trembling hand she reached out and switched on the lamp by the side of her bed, then got up and went to the bathroom to wash the cold sweat from her face.
Once there she looked in the mirror. She looked okay. No blood. But why would there be blood on her face? The atmosphere and events of the dream danced closer for a second as the water emptied from the sink in an exaggerated silvery swirl down the plughole that caught her gaze and made her look down at it. The plughole gurgled, and it sounded like laughter. Now she remembered the dream. She had barely enough time to get her head over the toilet before she was violently sick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After that she'd burned the thing. She didn't want to wear it any more, clean or not. And neither would anyone else. It took a while for it to catch, even with the lighter fluid she sprinkled on it. Maybe it was flame retardant. Whatever, it was ashes eventually. Just rubbish.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That should have been that, but of course it wasn't. At first it was easy to hide the truth from herself. She stayed out longer, drinking, working whatever there was to be had, fucking the same. She slept in nameless muddy fields after impromptu gigs in a sleeping bag. Anything so as not to face her own bed, which seemed to have grown bigger every time she came to lie down upon it. After the first couple of weeks or so, she no longer slept with the light off.
Sometimes, she crept downstairs when everyone was asleep so as to sleep on the settee, but it was still there, waiting for her upstairs, ominous and expectant. When she did lie down on her bed the entire surface of it seemed to move and sway beneath her, as if she was floating on water. No matter how many blankets she added it was always too cold, leaving an aching shiver in her shoulders each morning when she got up so that she felt she was coming down with the flu.
She didn't know if she dreamed during all of those nights. Certainly, several times she woke up struggling with her blankets, certain she was far beneath the surface of a still dark pool of water, drowning.
His kiss was like drowning. Every single time.
There were some. One morning when she awoke, she went into the shower, turned the water cool and directed the stream of water at her clit, getting herself off like that until she ended up sat in the bath, shivering and crying as the cold water pooled around her, remembering a dream of him beneath her blankets. That cold kiss on her, in her, licking, sucking, making her orgasm over and over again.
The days grew more and more overcast. Grey leaden skies with little wind. Rain made puddles on the streets that she didn't realise she was avoiding until a bus splashed her and she screamed because it was exactly like his touch.
Over time, her lovers became less desirable. Their hands on her skin were scalding instead of the warmth she craved. Her current boyfriend was just too hot to sleep with, his arm over her suffocating and his body was like a radiator. It became easier then to sleep in her own bed, despite the occasional horrors in the night.
"You left the light on again. Won't you look at me?" his voice was hollow, deep and echoing. She remained frozen, paralysed while he fucked her, his clammy cool skin sliding on hers in a way that was more obscene than the penetration itself. Her lack of response didn't bother him at all. As ever the cold took her breath away but she couldn't absolutely hate it. She imagined what he would look like from the way he felt, and shook her head.
"No. God, no," she replied, a mortified tremor in her voice.
"Are you afraid to open your eyes?" he asked, some infernal amusement in his tone that made her squeeze her eyelids tightly shut.
"Yes," she whispered back.
"I knew you were sensible." He was mocking her, and she could do nothing, kept immobile while his coldness permeated right through her from the point where they were joined, until she was sure she could feel it in her bones, and yet she still couldn't completely hate it. The silence was broken by a long deep moan that came from her while he laughed.
"Yet still, you're almost mine."
How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? She lost the feel of the bed beneath her, and it seemed suddenly as if they must be underwater, weightless and lost in the dark. Her limbs - suddenly free - clutched at him tightly, in case he should let go and leave her here, in the depths. Yet his form seemed to have no solidity, no substance, and his shape dissolved right there in her grip. Panicked, she opened her eyes and stared wildly into the pitch black. She realised she'd been holding her breath for far too long, but she couldn't breathe now.
Kicking and fighting, she tried to surface while her lungs burned and her muscles grew more and more tired. At last, far above her she saw light, and aimed up at it in a frenzy of terrified instinctive movement. When she broke the surface she only cared about breathing, so it wasn't until she was hung over the edge of the bath, having almost fainted, that she realised she'd fallen asleep in it. The water, once warm and steaming, had gone cold around her.
It was hard to get out. All of her muscles were like jelly, and she was shivering now on top of that. When she had clambered out she pulled the plug and stood up to look in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot and water dripped from her soaking wet hair. She looked drowned. With the end of summer and the beginning of the dreams, her skin had become quite pale, and she'd lost more than a little weight. The dark circles under her eyes made the entire effect that much more severe, but things were set to get worse.
As with the original tingling of her hands, she began to suffer the same sensations all over her body, at the worst times. Once or twice, while walking down the street, she'd had to duck into alleys to hide as her entire lower body seemed to vibrate and hum. Sliding down the brick wall, she sat with her arms around her knees, waiting for the sensation to pass, her breath coming in little puffs and gasps until she inevitably orgasmed right there in public, people passing back and forth on the street just metres away.
While others bundled themselves up against the beginning of winter, she took to going out without a coat. She just didn't feel the cold as much any more, and she no longer visited any of her boyfriends, since they'd made a point of telling her that her skin was cool to the touch.
So, eventually, she took herself back to the canal. It was long abandoned, even by the local kids. No one walked their dogs here. She was quite alone, except for the random junk, the car wheels, the rusted shopping trolleys, the leafless trees and weeds, and the water.
She stopped short at a kind of natural part of the bank by a tree. The cloak was back, hanging there as if it was waiting for her. Surely now, she understood, it was always waiting for her.

To be continued...

Author's Note: Comments welcome, as ever.
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The Price