Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“Night at the pool”

She awoke at the pool. Agh, she must have fallen asleep again. Not good. The burns from last time had taken a week to go away. That warm, balmy sun was so relaxing, until it slow-cooked the outer layers of your skin.

It was dark out. Utterly dark. The small lights around the pool glimmered in the darkness. They did little to beat it back. Everything beyond 10 yards was inky and lost. Even the stars were hidden. It was fog, that weird, heavy coastal fog that came in sometimes, thick as soup. She was cold now. She wrapped the towel around her tender skin.

She slid her flip-flops on. Something in the pool splashed. Probably a frog. She got the net to fish it out, otherwise the thing would be dead in the morning. She walked over to the pool, thwack, thwack, thwack. Sometimes they could be so fast. Where did it go? She leaned over the water, her eyes straining to penetrate the dark pool.

Something moved. It was big, person sized. There were alligators around here. It was time to leave the pool. She hastily gathered her things and left the pool deck. The gate did not bang shut behind her.

The parking lot was impossibly dark. What had happened to the lights? It was only a few hundred meters to the apartment, but she had never done the trip blind. Had there been a power outage? But then why were the lights at the pool still function. She made her way as quickly as she dared in the saturating darkness.

She paused. She heard footsteps behind her. The cadence was not human.