Narrator: Tessa M. | Florida, USA
Everybody assumes this is about an alligator. I wish it was. People believe in alligators.
Our apartment pool was lit from underneath. I was swimming late because my shift finished at ten, doing lazy lengths while my boyfriend sat scrolling on a lounger. I stopped in the deep end and looked down.
There were two hands flat against the tile directly below me. Brown, wrinkled hands, fingers spread, as if someone on the other side were trying to push the floor up.
I kicked backwards. They slid under me without changing position. I could see every tile line passing beneath the palms.
My boyfriend thought I’d cut my foot when I started yelling. By the time he reached the edge I was already out, with my knee bleeding from the coping. He looked into the pool and went quiet.
He won’t say he saw hands. He says he saw “something dark.” Fine. He was the one who phoned the maintenance number and asked them to drain it.
There was nothing wrong with the pool. They didn’t drain it. We lost our deposit when we moved, and he still complains about that. I remind him he could have stayed.
