Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Goggles ❯ Chapter 2

She was racing next. He gazed at her long, lean form as she readied her catlike form for diving into the water. Her face was determined and emotionless. He loved to see her like this, without the slavishly happy look of shallow, insipid attraction she wore when she looked at Dustin. Lila was fierce, strong, and beautiful like this. Eddie's eyes never left her as she flung herself into the air, and with barely a splash slid into the water as if she were running away from the land.

“Eddie?” Carter asked him, but Eddie had already started to glare at Dustin. He was laughing about something with his friends. Eddie had often contemplated how such a wonderful girl could think so strangely as to be attracted to Dustin. Of course he was physically attractive, but Lila was the farther from being shallow that any other girl he had ever met, including his own mother.

He watched Dustin's broad jaw clumsily work and his squinted eyes fight against the sun futilely. He noted his spade-like, crude hand shade his eyes and look at the pool. Eddie watched Dustin's eyes slide from left to right as he watched her swim.

Then, the air changed and Dustin took a huge breath. In fractions of a second, his eyes grew wide and his mouth gaped open. Eddie could see the inky pupils dilate, then contract into tiny pinpoints. His tan developed into a sickly color. Every muscle in his body tensed. Screams started to echo around the pool, and Eddie looked at what everyone was focusing on.

The water of the pool closest to him was a faint rose color. However, as his eyes traveled along the lane lines towards the middle, the color started getting deeper and more potent. A halo of brilliant crimson hung around a mess of tanned limbs and a confused tangle of blond hair. People were swimming furiously towards it. The screams that several people were letting loose seemed to become swallowed up by the water. The noises were muffled, and the violent emotions that were spurting from Eddie's chest seemed to be sucked into the water as well.

Dustin had leaped into the water and swam as fast as he could, but someone had reached Lila first. The siren seemed to be a faint whisper in Eddie's ear, and the world seemed to blur as things moved. Colors were more intense, and the light hurt. The acrid reek of the chlorine seemed to bleach out every other sense he had, and it burned his nostrils.

She seemed so at peace, lying on the stretcher. The EMTs were jogging slightly, and feeling her pulse and temperature. Dustin was speechless, sitting alone in the pink water. Eddie collapsed onto the ground, breathless. The ambulance drove away. Both Dustin and Eddie watched it diminish with identical expressions of disbelief, anguish, and horror. Both boys were trembling.

Dustin stood chest high in the light pink water. Ashen, and staring and the bleak road, people called out to him and attempted to coax him back to the edge of the pool. No one wanted to go into the bloody water.

Eddie slowly walked to the side of the pool, and dipped his hand in the pink liquid. He watched it drip down his fingers. The two boys looked at each other, and everyone fell silent. They stood there for a few seconds, then suddenly Eddie walked away and Dustin waded out of the pool. They exited, trudging zombie-like past the chain link fence. The entire pool watched Dustin turn right, and Eddie turn left.

Eddie closed his eyes, and listened hard. He thought he could almost hear the faint drone of the siren still.