A deer, with a brown tuft atop his head was captured in a beam of headlights bouncing off his hazel eyes. He was being hunted.

He leapt off to the side, where a picket fence blocked off miles of swamp. The headlights passed. In a panic, the deer put his hooves on top the gate and thrusted himself over. He could see his shadow running in front of him as the lamps made a U-turn back in his direction.

Crash! The shadow stopped running, but the deer did not. The shouts of a raging engine stopped.

“Landon!” an angry voice called out, but the deer was too far gone. He moved faster than sound, passing every echo of his name as he found himself lost deeper and deeper in the terrain.

There were no more headlights to guide his escape—only the ghostly glow of the crescent moon reflecting off the brackish sea.

Ribbit! A frog pounced out from behind the thicket. Chirp! A cricket played its song and plugged it into the amp of the night. The wind carried its monotone tune and distributed it like shrapnel into overgrowth. A mudskipper perched on land, beside the muddy dirt which sunk slightly every time it took a step.

The cold gaze held Landon like a blanket. He was a skipping stone slipping past the split-off of the shallow creek, falling forward every motion, before he caught himself. That is, until he lost his foot.

The sludge had stolen it. He felt his stubby legs seek the cold embrace of the moisture. The rest of his body soon followed.

He quickly pounced himself upwards. He brushed the mud off from his eyelids and shook himself just like a mop.

He continued to stumble through the swamp, taking turns until it turned into a labyrinth, with long, hissing Minotaurs which could swallow you whole. Eyes poked out from the water. Pollen picked up in the breeze. His nose all full of clay and snot. The bog banged with a restless song.

“What is this?” A deep resonant voice embedded Landon’s mind.

Shooting his head around like a laser in a room made of mirrors, Landon shouts in a crack. “Hello?”

That same gravelly expression protruded the swamp. “Hmm. How odd. This is a first…”

Landon snapped back, his thoughts more bent up than the turns of the creek, “What’s going on. Where are you?”

“I’m all around you.”

Landon’s eyes widened. The laser shot again, while the mirror walls closed in, so that his eyes moved from surface to surface in a rapid fire. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Landon hovered his hand over his pocket, where the imprint of an old switchblade his father had given him was shining through the denim.

“There’s no use to that,” the voice purred, “although you’re free to cut me down all you’d like.”

“How are you in my head!?” Landon cried out in desperation.

“Am I? I would argue the opposite.”

Landon set off in a sprint deeper into the marsh. He leaped from stone to stone, not missing a single step in this rocky minefield.

Landon was a level-headed kid. He was often the calm in a storm of chaos that seemed to always encompass him. Not today, though. This time, lightning did not avoid the eye.

“Where are you going?” The voice asked curiously.

Landon quipped back, “Away from here. Away from you.”

“I have already told you. I am all around you. The deeper you go, the more I am.”

Landon pressed his hands against his ears. He pushed them together in prayer, his face turning red as he squeezed—the cantaloupe atop his pedestal shoulders about ready to explode.

“I am the frogs, and the mangroves. The fish, and the lilies. I am all that is around you. Although I do find it odd. No one has ever heeded my words so directly before.”

Landon let his palms loose from his ears and lowered them back down to drape at his sides. A weight of visible frustration was lifted off his expression. “What do you mean?”

“I am the swamp.”

Landon looks around again, this time more slowly. He tilts his head, and pans it up and down, like he was looking for some hidden clue.

“I mean no harm. Although I cannot control those who are a part of me. Move with caution. I am not the only one that is here.”

Landon stood still in awe, mixed with disbelief. He continued to look around. Still looking for that clue that wasn’t there. He was speaking to the swamp, but how? How could a swamp speak to him? Where was its heart? Its mind? Did it share its mouth with the river that fed it? There was no such answer. It was everywhere Landon turned; everywhere he stepped, including his reflection in the water, and the slime that lined the soles of his tennis shoes.

“You’re not the only one?” Landon questioned. But he was met with no response. “Hello?” Again. No response. Perhaps he had truly gone mad at just thirteen.

Suddenly, Landon felt a gaze take hold of him, as if he were a plaything. Before he could react, he noticed a leaking from a tree that stood in front of him. Water poured out slowly from its trunk.

One by one, the mangroves started crying in a circle around him. The water propelled outwards. Starting at a drizzle, then a sprinkler, then a jet. The leftover sludge from his tumble was washed from his jeans, which were just starting to dry.

The water started to rise. A frog was swallowed by a snake. The snake was swallowed by the creak. Landon drenched up to his ankles. He could no longer run. He shuffled his legs forcefully through the grime. But it kept on rising every time he took a step.

Landon was melded to the ground. The water was coming from all directions. He jolted up, leaving his sneakers for the soil. His jeans pulled him down with their weight. Up to his chin, he tilted his neck up to breathe. Struggling to tear down his zipper, A pairs of eyes laid claim to his tan-colored face. Something was pulling him down.

His head, a float bobbing up and down, grasping for air. A tree’s roots, holding him down. It caught his pants instead. He swam faster than the fish; flew faster than the birds. It was as if the water was moving with him. Suddenly, that stare returned in front of him. A crocodile. Face to face. Her teeth forming a yellow razor all along the sides of her tongue. He caught sight of a piece of flesh in her gum. She opened her jaw wide. And chomped down.

The vine that blocked his path was broken. Bitten in half. She slid under his miscolored SpongeBob underwear and swam. The water rising faster. It had not stopped.

A circle of alligators and crocodiles lined beside him. It seemed as if the entire swamp had come to his aid. They all swam for what seemed miles. He was half awake. His mind was foggy. His vision black.

A stream of light poured in. The only stream that came faster than the water.

Landon caught glimpse of a headlight through the cracks of a tree. The water suspended in place, as high as 20 feet. It had not spilled over into the street. She had swum to the edge of the barrier. He slipped down slowly. The leaking stopped, and Landon lost what little consciousness he had left.

The car passed by without notice of the young boy that laid at the side of the road. But there was still so

Someone watching. The water all dissipated.