The old folks used to dish out warnings wrapped in intricate tales, oblique references, and euphemistic stories, forever failing to infix the severity of the danger awaiting in the woods, the water, the wilder and untamed parts of the marshland in us.

We went out to dig the vibes of the swamps in the day’s last light, Jonna and I, young and stupid and fortified by a bottle of the good stuff. The sunset darkened the shadows, deepened the silence; the swampland held its breath for a moment – then exhaled what our flashlights didn’t illuminate and our merry songs would not name.

We didn’t see the fog’s tendrils clinging like lace trains to our heels, didn’t notice it following us home and over the threshold. Sleep swallowed us like a sinkhole, cavernous and cold and hungry, and Jonna and I bobbing along like floaters.

We rose late and from damp bedsheets. Our bare feet left muddy footprints on Grannie Mo’s cedar wood floor. Jonna, choking on her coffee, spit out greenish phlegm. It filled the room with the scent of moss and brackish water.

‘What have you done?’ Grannie Mo asked.
“We lived, laughed–”
“Out.”

We went, giggling, back into the arms of the swamp, leaving four moist handprints behind.