Picture: Image created with DALL-E
THE SUN was a merciless predator in the skies above Kimberley, baring its fangs in waves of relentless heat. It was Friday the 13th, and the city sweltered under an ominous sense of foreboding. The heatwave was bad enough, but what made the day unbearable was the whisper of a greater dread – the taps were running dry again.
Martha Lategan stood at her kitchen sink, watching the last dribble of water swirl down the drain. She sighed, opening the cupboard for a bottle of water she’d stockpiled after the last shutdown. Her cat, Skelm, mewed pitifully, nudging the empty dish on the floor. Martha poured the last of the bottle’s contents into the bowl, muttering under her breath about municipal mismanagement and her aching head.
The heat pressed into her old house like an unwelcome visitor, cracking paint and curling her framed photos on the wall. Kimberley’s water troubles were nothing new, but this heatwave felt different.
It wasn't just hotter. It was ... hungrier.
By noon, the streets were empty. No one dared venture out into the cauldron. Yet, as Martha dozed in her armchair, the oppressive silence was shattered by the faintest sound – a dripping. Not from her kitchen. Not from her bathroom. No, the sound was coming from the garden.
She grabbed her sunhat and shuffled outside, the brutal heat hitting her like a slap. A dark puddle glistened beneath the ancient karee tree. The water seemed impossibly fresh, pooling from the ground itself, like a wound oozing lifeblood.
“Strange,” she murmured, dipping her fingers into the cool liquid. It was refreshing, clearer than anything she’d had from her taps in months. Without thinking, she cupped her hands and drank.
It was sweeter than rainwater, richer than spring water. For a moment, the heat melted away. The noise of the sonbesies and the ache in her head vanished. Then she heard the first cry.
Across the street, her neighbour Jerome stumbled from his house, his shirt soaked with sweat. His face was twisted with fear as he clutched his stomach. His wife followed, her screams muffled by her hands. Jerome collapsed on the pavement, writhing as if his body were trying to turn itself inside out.
Martha turned to run back inside but stopped cold. The puddle had spread. The soil bubbled as if the earth itself was boiling, and a dark, red-tinted liquid now seeped up through the cracks in her garden. She backed away, but her foot slipped. The wetness splashed up her leg, and a searing cold raced through her veins.
Voices filled her head. Not the kindly voices of her ancestors or the comforting lilt of her late husband, but guttural, inhuman whispers. They spoke of thirst – not hers, but theirs. A deep, unending thirst. The earth was alive, and it was ravenous.
Across Kimberley, others discovered the water. They drank, desperate for relief, only to fall victim to its curse. The ancient veins of the city – the very pipes that should have brought salvation – had become conduits for something older than the diamond mines, older than the ground itself.
By sunset, the streets were filled with the afflicted, their hollow eyes glowing faintly in the twilight. They staggered, not as humans, but as vessels for the thing beneath, searching for others to join their collective thirst.
Martha sat on her porch, watching the orange sun sink below the horizon. Her throat burned with the unrelenting need to drink. In her lap, Skelm purred, his fur damp with the cursed liquid, his eyes glowing faintly like two ember stars.
The karee tree quivered, its roots now exposed and gorging on the red water. Kimberley had always been a city built on treasure, but this was no prize. It was a debt, centuries old, and it had come due.
And as the first stars appeared, Martha smiled faintly. They would never thirst again.
…
Happy Friday the 13th!