Kapitel 4: 3. Impossible
After gathering her strength back, Serena pushed herself off the beast and scrambled through the churned, bloody ground to put some distance between herself and that thing. The very broken knife was held in a death grip in her hand, and she trembled with the excess of adrenaline.
Slowly she calmed down, and took a proper look at the still beast. It looked like a monster fish, completely unlike anything she had ever heard of before, but it somehow reminded her of a catfish.
A giant mutant catfish that could hide in a pond far too small for it to fit? If she didn't see the eye of the beast under the water, she'd never believe it. This was not catfish country, and you'd be lucky to find a carp in a pond in a cow paddock. Carp are an invasive species, like snakeheads. They eat anything and live anywhere. But even then, it is impossible for a fish to hide in a pond that is smaller than it.
Further, with those crocodile jaws, if this thing was the one that took the 3 cows, it would have left signs. Or, rather, scraps. Lipless jaws drop crumbs, and spatter blood, but the farmer found neither of these things, and no sign of struggle anywhere.
Which meant, perhaps this horrible monster is not the thing that took the cows? There is something else, in that pond, that took 3 cows and left no signs?
Internally Serena started swearing. She leapt up and dashed for the pond, grabbed one of the poles and shook the net loose of it. She took a deep breath and started tapping on the bottom of the water towards to middle of the pond.
The outer 2ft of water was less than 1ft deep, as expected, but then the pole missed the bottom, like it just vanished completely. The pole slipped in deeper, and deeper still, past the 4ft marker on the pole and still no bottom.
Serena paled and withdrew the pole, scrambling away from the shore in complete terror. A pond in a paddock has no need to be so deep. The farmer himself said the water was only 2ft at the deepest spot. Which means something crazy happened to the pond, Serena could hardly guess what, but the crazy thing let that unknown fish monster leave wherever it was living and get into the paddock.
And not just the fish. The thing that took the cows without a struggle must have come from the pond too. And Serena was alone with the hopefully dead monster and the impossible pond...
She didn't waste another second, and dashed back to the beast. Perhaps she can find a clue about where it came from in it's stomach. Using the knife, she fitted the blade into the slit for the gills and dragged hard to cut open the tough scales flesh. Serena needed to be certain it was dead.
It took more strength than she expected, but slowly the flesh was exposed to the air, blood seeping out everywhere. Even dead it was a difficult creature to deal with.
It took 1/2 an hour to expose the ribs to the air, and Serena was stunned to find they were made of thin bones and clear cartilage. She stared through these window segments to the organs within, and became even more confused.
The beast had all the expected organs of a fish, naturally quite large to match it's bulk, but there was a variety of extra organs that looked similar to putty that has been squished into crazy shapes by a child and pushed in randomly. The most astonishing thing though was the complete lack of anything even slightly resembling a lung.
This thing left the water in the morning, and was still alive in the afternoon, and it didn't have lungs? What the hell?
Gills don't work for breathing air, or all the land animals would never have developed lungs, but this fish survived in air, without lungs, while performing a vigorous hunt, for hours.
It didn't make sense. It was biologically impossible for this fish to live out of water for so long.
What the hell kind of place is on the other side of the pond? Just what kind of monsters are hiding there?
What can she do? The fish is impossible, but who can she tell? Who would believe any of this? Even Serena had trouble believing it, and she almost got eaten!
Serena pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily on the pole, knife still in a death grip. Step by step, tormented by numerous aches, cuts, and impossibilities, Serena staggered her way to the Farmhouse.
No matter how impossible this all is, someone had to be told about it. After a long moment, she turned back and cut off some of the fish's scales, as proof of everything that happened in case this impossible thing vanished into thin air, or was eaten by whatever comes out of the pond next.
Step by step, she left the paddock, and didn't allow herself to look back.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein