Weekly Story Writing Contest – Week 4 / A Strange Letter – That Was Never Sent

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The letter was also overweighted against its rightful weight.

Not physically--but as it went down my hands, as it had a thing besides a bit of paper and a pencil. Nothing marked on the envelope or addressed. And there is but one name, in goodly slow signs:

Amara Bello.

This is the name of my grandmother.

She died ten years ago.

I shouldn't have opened it. Common sense will be superseded by curiosity more so when the past is accompanied by a knock on the door.

Inside was a single sheet.

No time like Amara Time, Time, Will never see this. But when it had not... then changed again the river.

I frowned. My grand-mother had lived in a little village upon the River Kainji. I had been there at one time when I was a child, and could not remember much of it.

You said that I should never go anywhere near it in the evening. I didn't listen."

It was not a known handwriting.

It did not become clear at the very beginning that something was wrong. The water was calm. Too calm. there was no sound, no insect, no, it was just silence, then I saw my image... and it was not me.

There was a queer feeling at my heart.

"It smiled before I did."

I let out a nervous breath.

You Amara are no longer reflected in the river. It shows you something else. Something wants to intrude into.

I shifted in my seat. The external light was dying in the evening and the shadows were increasing across my room.

"I thought I imagined it. Until it spoke."

My eyes moved faster now.

"It knew things. Things no one else could know. It addressed me not through my voice. The one was a kind of water struggling to recall how it was a human being.

It was beautiful dripping and attracted something near.

I froze.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I looked toward the window.

It was closed.

And you read it, and that is to say that it is already passing the river. It learns. It adapts. It finds new reflections."

My throat went dry.

Don't see into a dark water. Not the river. Not a mirror. Not even a glass."

I slowly turned round and looked at the cup of water which lay on my desk.

There was not a movement in the waters.

Too still.

A good one will it be to see you; and so You say it will.

The dripping sound stopped.

Silence filled the room.

I urged myself to peep through the window.

"And once it sees you..."

and I choked and read the last line.

"...it will try to become you."

The glass was a little undulating.

I hadn't touched it.

I bent forward reluctantly.

It shook once more of the surface--then of the surface there was no more.

And there it was.

My reflection.

But something was wrong.

It wasn't blinking.

I blinked.

It didn't.

My chest tightened.

Frowning... the reflection smiled.

I hadn't.

I fell backwards and knocked down the chair.

Glass tipped--not spilled.

Its water maintained its fashion, it swell unnaturally, breathing.

Then--

A voice.

Soft. Wet. Wrong.

"Amara..."

I shook my head. "That's not my name."

The smile of the water was lengthened.

"Not yet."

The surface swelled in into features and now made something of a face--my face, but disheveled, and they were momentary, as though they were not finished with the learning.

I drawn in my neck and picked up the letter, frantically, and tried to see something--someting I had not seen.

There were words there, appearing on the margin.

New ink, flowing on the page.

There is only one way of averting it, as far as you are concerned.

My hands trembled.

"HOW?" I whispered.

The words continued.

And let it not put your thought to standstill.

I looked back.

The thing on the water was swelling out now and developing shoulders.

Copying me.

Becoming me.

Break the surface and thou hast broken.

I leaped, and hit the glass, without even thinking of it.

On the ground water made its way.

In a different case, the figure would have begun to fall and came to pieces.

Silence.

Just silence.

I stood shaking and looking through the glass and water.

In a second movement I took a breath, of which I knew I had been withholding myself.

It was over.

I think.

The black screen of my phone that is turned off-

Something moved.

And slowly...

It smiled.

Thanks for reading my post I'm inviting @goodybest, @chant and @ninependa.