Flashback Fiction #writephoto | Still waters

Still was this week’s #writephoto prompt from Sue Vincent in 2020. It was my first writephoto; I planned to do one a month, and ended up doing them weekly till my hands went just over a year ago (is it really only one year?). I kept this one short… 200 words.

Here’s the photo:

Very pretty!

I wanted to develop it a bit, so I used the ‘still waters’ for my story.

Still waters run deep

The soles of Mary’s feet were burning. She shouldn’t have worn the new shoes but the others were still wet. She sat at the edge of the lake, took off the offending shoes, and dabbled her feet in the cool, inviting water.

The ruined village had not let her down. Even the guide had delivered; a mixture of fact and fiction, but she’d entertained them with a carefully developed narrative. The lives and times of the villagers who had brought ruin on each other through their petty jealousies. Witchcraft indeed!

She felt the guide had over-egged it a bit though, asserting that witches still met here, by this beautiful lake, seeking to avenge the wrongs done to so many women. Or was it their kindred? Mary was always confused by the ducking stool. If you died you were innocent. If you lived you’d used witchcraft, wasn’t that it?

She shuddered. To survive that ordeal only to be burnt at the stake… she was so glad she lived in more enlightened times.

Her soles still burned, even though the water was cool on her arches.

Then a ghastly hand reached round her ankle and pulled her down, down, down.

© J M Pett 2020