Estimated reading time — 16 minutes

I stand on the beach, watching the great waves of the Southern Ocean roll toward me like endless rows of undulating beasts, their white crests sparkling blindingly under the harsh July sun. The briny scent of the sea drifts upward, carrying with it that familiar ache of melancholy, a feeling that has tethered me to this place like a lingering spirit for as long as I can remember. Staying behind never felt like a burden, though I had little choice in the matter. I was born here, raised in this land, and I know its every crook and hidden corner as well as I know the lines on the back of my own hand.

I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I barely notice Nirina until she is almost upon me. She struggles against the relentless wind, her bare feet slipping in the mud as she crosses the beach, sand and water splashing up around her with every desperate step.

“Raya…” she gasps, collapsing at my feet before I can react. Her body shakes uncontrollably as she tries to steady herself. The hem of her light blue dress is soaked through, heavy with dark mud and clinging sand, as though the land itself had tried to hold her back.

“What is it?” I say, my voice calm by habit rather than kindness. Life taught me long ago that panic rarely solved anything. “Slow down. Take a deep breath.”

“Raya… the mangrove forest… after school… with friends…” The words spill out between sharp, frantic breaths. She presses a trembling hand to her chest, fighting for air. “He hasn’t come home.”

I reach down and take her shaking hands, hauling her gently but firmly back to her feet. She feels almost weightless, as though fear has hollowed her out.

“Has he snuck off to fish again, that stubborn little shit?” I mutter through clenched teeth as we hurry back toward the village, our steps quick and uneven.

“Please,” she sobs, her shoulders shaking violently as she tries to keep up with me. “Find him. Please.”

I sit her down in the rickety chair on my front porch. The wood creaks as she shifts to look up at me, her eyes glassy and unfocused. Long, thick strands of her dark hair have come loose and stick to her wet cheeks and neck.

I look at her and remember how she and her son came into my life.

I had been living on my own for years, minding my own business, before Nirina arrived in the village with her small son in tow. She introduced herself to me privately as my late wife’s distant niece. Her story was simple and heartbreaking. She had been forced into an arranged marriage and, after years of abuse, she had made the difficult decision to leave, taking her two-year-old son with her. Which was how she had ended up here.

To avoid the gossip and drama that the village could barely contain, I introduced her as my distant and much younger cousin from my mother’s side, someone I barely knew. And just like that, the villagers welcomed her and Raya as if they had always been one of us.

Over the years, she proved to be a quiet, dependable presence. She helped around the house, managed things while I was out fishing, and she was an excellent cook. In return, sending her son to school seemed more than enough for a woman in a small coastal village to hope for.

In the first few months, there were nights when she would linger at my doorway after Raya had gone to bed, watching me sleep with an expectant look I understood perfectly. I was no fool. Old, perhaps, and less educated than her, but not blind to meaning when it stood right in front of me. I expected nothing at all and made that clear. I was simply grateful not to face the rest of my days alone, miserable and unnoticed. I had someone to care for now, and that was enough.

“Please,” she pleads again, her fingers tightening around my hands.

I stay with her for a while, long enough to calm her shaking breaths, speaking in low, steady tones until her panic dulls to something quieter and more manageable.

“I’ll find him and bring him back,” I tell her. From the pained look on her face, I know she understands exactly what that might mean.

When she seems stable enough, I take her next door and ask my neighbor and her daughter to keep her company and not leave her alone. Then I go straight to the village head’s house, where a handful of men agreed to help search for Raya.

Among them is Hasan, a young Marine Science student from the city, staying temporarily with the village head and his family for some research project. I never bothered to learn the details. City people love their names and titles, as if the right words can make them belong anywhere.

I’ve never liked intruders. People who know nothing of the sea, who can’t read the wind or the water and yet act as if they understand the place after just a few weeks of observation and note-taking. They disrupt the village’s quiet, deliberate rhythm. A rhythm shaped over generations by tides, storms, and loss. To me, they are a constant irritation, a foreign weight pressing against something long settled.

And this one in particular, broad-shouldered and loud, with his sharp city accent and careless confidence, embodies everything I despise.

Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and we have a child to find. Villagers know better than to wander too deep into the mangrove forest along the western coast. No one crosses the river without good reason, and no one ever ventures into the unexplored stretches beyond it. Saltwater crocodiles are no myth. Sightings have grown rare, but every few years one surfaces again, basking on the riverbank, or drifting into the open sea in search of prey. If that is what we are dealing with, then I need every able-bodied man I can get, city oaf included.

As we leave the outskirts of the village and slip into the forest, the air thickens, damp and heavy against my skin. With every step, a dull ache begins to bloom in my feet. The soles of my old shoes are worn nearly smooth, scuffed and split from years of crab hunting along the eastern stretch of the coast, where a long, narrow bight cuts into the land and curls inland. It has always been the safer place to glean, sheltered from the worst of the tides and sudden swells.

Still, the miles have taken their toll. The leather bites into my heels, and I feel every stone and root beneath my feet. I really could use a new pair. My poor old feet have carried me far more faithfully than I’ve ever given them credit for.

Hasan suddenly falls into step beside me, his massive shoes nearly stepping on my old, bony feet. I wince away at once, trying to put distance between us, but he stays close, crowding my stride. The moment he opens his mouth, I am reminded exactly why I dislike him.

“That daughter of yours, sir,” he says with a grin that makes my skin crawl. “She’s… kinda hot.”

I look at him, blinking once, then again. It takes every bit of restraint I have to not drive my fingers into his small, beady eyes right then and there.

“Hot?” I repeat flatly.

“That’s what we call pretty girls back in the city,” he says with a chuckle, either oblivious to, or deliberately ignoring, the disgust written all over my face. “You think a widowed woman like her would ever go for a younger guy? Someone like me?”

For a moment, I can’t even form a reply. My thoughts tangle, my jaw tightens as I struggle to decide which response won’t end with blood on my hands.

He giggles, pleased with himself. “Well,” he adds lightly, “maybe if I manage to find her son alive.”

He strides past me, his boots crunching loudly through wet leaves, leaving me behind in the thickening shadows, seething, unsettled, muttering curses under my breath. But the moment we cross the edge of the mangrove forest, my anger ebbs and is replaced by something older and far heavier. My thoughts slip back nearly fifty years.

I have not set foot near this forest in years. I’ve never needed to. The mangroves have always been a place best left alone, a boundary rather than a destination. Life had given me no reason to return, at least not until now. Not until a boy has gone missing, a boy whose mother, with a strange mix of reverence and familiarity, had taught him to call me grandpa.

_______

I had only just begun to doze off when a sharp cry rang out from the thickets of tall grass in front of me. I gasped, eyes wide, struggling to grasp what was happening. But before my thoughts could gather, several things happened at once: a brutal, swift kick landed on the back of my neck, wrenching a strangled yelp from me like a stray dog, followed immediately by the rapid stutter of gunfire cracking through the darkness, shattering the quiet night.

A soldier, Saito, barked at me in Japanese, then raised his boot to strike again. This time he missed, the toe of his shoe slamming into the ground instead, kicking up a spray of wet sand and muck that splattered across my face. Before I could scramble out of reach, Saito seized a fistful of my hair and began dragging me along the muddy riverbank. I didn’t understand the words he hurled at me. But I understood the cruelty well enough. I dared not even groan. I simply stumbled along, hunched and silent.

He growled in a low voice, while four other soldiers crept behind us, careful not to make a sound that might betray their presence.

I drew a quiet breath, wondering whether I would make it out of the jungle alive and what might await me if I did. Would they let me go? Or would I share the fate of my cousin whom these very men had beheaded weeks earlier?

My bare feet grew numb as we continued through the swamp’s cold, wet soil, my joints aching from the ocean wind whispering through the mangrove trees.

They had taken my shoes from me. Running would have been futile anyway in the treacherous, uneven terrain, where every step demanded caution. Barefoot, I had been forced onto the sharp shells and jagged barnacles hidden along the ground, their edges slicing into my soles until warm blood slicked the mud beneath my feet.

I thought of my wife and children. Dead, murdered years ago. That was when I’d lost all desire to live. What was the point? The wound in my soul had never stopped bleeding, the pain a constant companion. The sooner it ended, the better, or so I’d thought.

But that night, as I crept beneath the dense canopy with my captors, something unexpected stirred inside me. However broken I may have been since losing my family, my primitive instinct for survival was not completely lost. A quiet urge, born not from peace but from pain, whispered from the depths of my battered body: a renewed desire to live. I realized I desperately wanted to feel the touch of the morning sun and the sea breeze again.

Saito whispered to the broad-shouldered man beside him, Kimura. Even in the faint glow of Saito’s lantern, I noticed something different in their faces. Gone was their swagger. In its place: tension, fear. I took some small satisfaction in that.

The sounds of the swamp, night birds, insects, croaking frogs, chanted around us as we pressed on through darkness in search of a way out that never seemed to appear. After nearly three hours of slogging, my legs were almost numb when Saito finally called a rest. He dropped against the thick roots of a mangrove tree, his pale face lit by the dull yellow lantern. His rifle rested across his chest.
He cast me a disgusted glance and muttered a string of curses and warnings under his breath. My heart thudded as I looked at him, sweaty, tired, half-asleep. I hated this man with everything I had. I understood then that escape was no longer an option. He was not bluffing.

Kimura said something quietly to him, and Saito gave a half-hearted grunt, already closing his eyes. The other men had settled into uneasy rest.

“Don’t even think about escaping,” Kimura said, switching to my native language, his rifle aimed into the dark behind Saito’s sleeping form. “If you do, I might still show mercy and grant you a quick death. He…” he glanced at Saito “…won’t.”

I nodded, watching the flame flicker in Kimura’s eyes.

“Unlike him, I don’t kill because I enjoy it.” Kimura lit a cigarette, exhaling smoke through his nose and lips in thick white plumes.

“Then why do it?” I asked suddenly, surprising even myself.

Kimura turned his face upward, studying me.

“I’m just a soldier. I follow orders. Same as everyone else out here,” he said, gesturing toward the forest. “In war, it’s not about wanting or not wanting. It’s about proving loyalty, in any way required.”

“You don’t have to kill to do that,” I replied.

Kimura gave a tired smile. “Some of us don’t get to choose. Let me tell you something. When I first arrived in your country, I fell in love with its beauty. That’s why I started learning your language. Partly to advance my career, but mostly because I wanted to understand. The deeper I delved into your customs, the more I realized war would destroy every trace of what I admired. I was a farmer, from a quiet mountain village, before I was conscripted and sent here. For what? To destroy? To raze everything to ash?”

He shook his head and crushed the last of his cigarette against a mangrove root.

“Out there, anyone not on your side is the enemy. Their humanity doesn’t matter. And to be honest, not speaking for my comrades, each time I’ve taken a life, a piece of me died with them. My empathy. My soul. Call it what you will. When this war ends, and it will, I know the ghosts will follow me until the day I die.”

Kimura lit up again and offered me the cigarette. I accepted it gratefully, hoping the heat would push back against the cold settling into my bones.

“In the end, we’re all pawns in someone else’s game,” Kimura murmured. “Sacrifices must be made. Not for victory, but for balance. There are no winners in war. Only grief.”

Somewhere deep within the forest, a night bird sang a lonely, bitter song. Its call echoed among the trees, bleeding into every dark corner of the night.

Saito suddenly snapped upright with his rifle aimed into the dark. Kimura lifted both hands to calm him down. They murmured quietly to each other in their native tongue, then Saito rose and disappeared into the trees.

“Need to relieve yourself?” Kimura asked me. “Better do it now. We’ll be moving again before daybreak.”

I shook my head, flicking the cigarette butt into a puddle of thick mud.

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked quietly.
Kimura studied me for a long moment before answering. “I don’t know. We brought you as our guide. You know this terrain. Maybe our pursuers will hesitate if they see a local among us.”

I nodded again, fear still anchored deep within my chest.

“Don’t worry,” Kimura added. “If it comes to that, I’ll do it myself. Like I said… quick and painless. Saito won’t dare argue with me. I’ll even try to convince him to let you live. You’re young. You’ve got a future ahead of you. I don’t want to rob you of that.”

I frowned, unsure whether to feel grateful or afraid.

Kimura opened his mouth to wake his men, but a sudden scream, sharp and shrill, tore through the forest, from the direction Saito had gone. I flinched back until my spine struck a tree. The other men jolted awake and leapt to their feet, aiming their rifles toward the sound.

Kimura snatched up the lantern and crept forward, gripping his rifle tightly. We followed, trembling from head to toe. Had the enemies caught up already?

Impossible. We’d traveled miles, trudging through mangrove swamps and saltwater marshes to avoid capture. There was no way they could have found us here.

When we reached the edge of a murky pool, Kimura halted. The lantern cast a sickly glow across the water, where large bubbles now broke the surface in slow, gurgling bursts. But there was no sign of Saito.

We all stood frozen, paralyzed in horror.
Then a splash. A long, jagged tail cut the surface, vanishing as quickly as it appeared.

I stumbled backward, tripping over a root and landing hard in the mud. My blood ran cold. We hadn’t seen it. In the dim light, we couldn’t have. But now it was too late.

“Swamp crocodile,” I whispered. “We’ve wandered into their territory…”

A second crocodile emerged silently from the underbrush. Without warning, it lunged at the nearest man, clamping its massive jaws around his midsection and dragging him into the swamp. His scream tore into the night.

Kimura’s lantern hit the ground and rolled into a puddle. Darkness swallowed us.
I stared at the rippling water. I’d heard tales as a child… villagers vanishing while searching for crabs, never seen again. I’d dismissed them then, believing they were nothing more than cautionary tales to scare children.

Now I knew better.

Kimura shouted, switching back to his own language, no longer caring who might hear.
We fled blindly, stumbling through mud and over roots as more splashes echoed from all directions. Panic turned to pure instinct. But we kept running.

“How much farther to the hills?” Kimura asked between breaths as he passed me and took the lead.

“Not far. Just a few more kilometers along the southern coast.”

He spat in frustration and whispered urgently over his shoulder to his remaining men. They looked pale, shaken. I didn’t need to understand their language to see the fear in their eyes.

“Dawn’s coming. Once it’s light, they’ll spot us easily. Get us out of here, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll let you live,” Kimura said.
I nodded and quickened my pace.

For nearly an hour, we pressed forward through the clinging mangroves.

Somewhere in the darkness, the crocodiles still lurked, hungry and alert. Time was running out. The end of this flight would bring either life, or death.

Finally, we reached the river mouth. The open sea stretched before us, waves breaking gently beneath the hum of nocturnal insects. The salty air hung thick.

“Where’s the bridge?” Kimura asked.

I stared him in the eye as I answered.

“There is no bridge.”

“What do you mean?” Kimura snapped.

“You asked me to guide you through territory the white soldiers never patrol. This part of the jungle has never been charted, not even by my people. There is no bridge. We have to cross the river.”

He approached the riverbank with caution. The river wasn’t wide, maybe fifty meters across, but it was deep, dark, and silent.

“No bridge?” he asked again, almost to himself.

I didn’t answer. I stepped into the water, the soft splash echoing faintly in the dark.

“Pelan-pelan, move slowly. Don’t splash. They sense movement.”

Kimura turned to his men, nodded, and followed. Their feet sank into knee-deep silt, water whispering cold around them. The sky was paling. Morning was near.

“Pelan-pelan,” I repeated, quieter this time. “Nanti dia dengar…”

“Dia?” Kimura asked, confused by my words.

I turned, pressing a finger to my lips.

“Ssshh… Quiet.”

“Why are you calling it ‘dia’?” His voice quivered. “Isn’t that word used only for peo—”

Kimura never finished. A shriek shattered the silence. Behind him, a pair of long green hands burst from the river and yanked one of his men under. Screaming erupted. We thrashed toward the opposite bank, desperate and terrified, but another flash, another pair of claws, and the river claimed its second victim.

Now only Kimura and I remained.

We swam, arms burning, legs heavy. Kimura’s rifle vanished beneath the surface, lost forever. He didn’t care. All he wanted was to reach solid ground.

I reached the far bank first, grabbing a thick root and pulling myself up with surprising ease. Kimura was just behind me, but he struggled, weighed down by his muscular frame.

“Help me,” he gasped, clawing at the riverbank.

I reached down instinctively, grabbing his arm. But then I paused. Our eyes met.
In that moment, I saw the truth in Kimura’s face. The soldier who had shown me kindness. Who had spoken of his home. His sorrow. His soul.

He wasn’t a monster. He was a man, just like me. A victim of the same cruel war.

“Please…” Kimura begged.

I hesitated.

Then I let go. “Quick and painless,” I murmured.

Kimura splashed back into the river, and the water erupted. Two scaled arms wrapped around him, like a lover’s embrace, and dragged him into the deep.

He didn’t scream.

A pair of yellow eyes glowed beneath the surface, locking onto me before vanishing. And then… silence.

I sat still for a long time, staring into the river, listening to the distant rumble of the ocean. I knew now what the elders of the village had feared for generations. It wasn’t the crocodiles. It was something worse. Something ancient. Something that understood: if it wanted to taste sweet, tender human flesh again, it had to let me live.

When the sun finally rose and bathed the swamp in light, I stepped back into the river to begin the long journey home.

***

I can trace in memory how the morning mist rises from the towering, jagged cliffs and rolls across the landscape like a vast grey blanket. I recall the uneasy dread that settles in my chest when I hear the distant, thunderous rumble of the waves in the dead of night, as I lay in my dimly lit bedroom trying to drown out the sound of the world. Yet, despite its oppressive familiarity, this is the only place I have ever wished to escape and the only place I have ever truly belonged, as though my life itself is rooted deep in its soil.

Once I dreamed of settling somewhere far from here, somewhere the ocean and its briny grip cannot reach. Perhaps even the city, though its constant flux and restless rhythms would likely wear me down. No, maybe somewhere gentler, just beyond the edge of it, where I could begin again and watch, from a safe distance, as the world moved steadily toward the future.

I need a place that exists in that quiet, in-between space, where I can hold onto fragments of my old self without surrendering entirely to the world’s relentless demands to change, to evolve, to leave behind what I cherish. A quiet simplicity.

And yet, like everyone else here, I remain. Not because I lack the will to leave, but because I have grown dependent, over so many years, on what this place has to offer. To leave would feel wrong, violent even, as if I were betraying something older than myself. I have made an unspoken vow with the ocean that no matter what might come, my feet will always remain firmly planted in its muddy coast.

The swamp, in its quiet generosity, offers its watery bounty so that life in the village can continue as expected. Crabs, shrimps, and fish are the staples that allow some families to send their children away to universities in the cities. Others are content to arrange marriages among their own, creating a lineage of fishermen who stay behind, tending the waters and helping sustain the rhythms of the place that shaped them.

Now, I stand at the grassy edge of the river, staring down into the still, murky water, waiting in silence. Far off, the low roar of waves crashing at the river mouth drift through the air, a reminder that high tide is on its way. Soon, the water will rise and swallow the banks, creeping inward until the forest surrenders to it once more. The sooner this place is left alone, the better. Still, I do not move an inch. I keep my eyes fixed on the surface, unblinking.

A small hand breaks through the surface of the water, pale and trembling, fingers stiff with cold. For a brief, terrible moment it falters, as if about to sink back beneath the surface. I lunge forward, grab hold, and haul the rest of Raya out of the river and into my arms.

The boy erupts into violent gasps the moment he’s free, his chest hitching as he sucks in air, coughing and retching, water pouring from him and soaking my clothes.

“Grandpa…” he cries weakly, saltwater spilling from his nose and mouth as his body shakes.

“Easy,” I murmur, holding him close and patting his back as he bends forward and empties his stomach onto the grass. “Easy, boy.”

Any anger I might once have felt over his disobedience has long since drained away, leaving only relief and a deep, settling exhaustion.

After a few more minutes of gagging, crying, and shuddering breaths, his breathing finally steadies. I lift his fragile body into my arms and begin walking back toward the village.

People are already gathered on the porch of the village head’s house. The moment Nirina sees her son curled against my chest, she lets out a sound so raw it barely resembles a scream. She runs toward us, sobbing.

“He’s fine,” I shout over her cries. “He’s fine. I told you I’d bring him back.”

She collapses to her knees in the damp earth and tears him from my arms, pulling him into a fierce, desperate embrace. Her tears carve clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks as she presses her face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in, as though scent alone might convince her heart that he is truly alive.

The village, once buzzing with tense whispers and anxious murmurs, falls into a respectful hush. Only Nirina’s broken, rhythmic sobs remain. I notice the expressions of the men who had accompanied me into the forest earlier, relief tangles with guilt in their eyes. They must have returned before sunset. No one wanted to stay in there after dark. I cannot blame them.

The village head approaches me, worry still etched deep into his face.

“I know you must be exhausted,” he begins. “But… have you seen—”

I shake my head firmly. He stops at once and nods.

I kneel beside Nirina and rest a hand on her trembling shoulder. Her hands move frantically over her son, checking his arms and legs for injuries, while his exhausted body clings to her, unwilling to let go.

“Come,” I say softly. “Let’s go home. Raya’s been through enough.”

Gently, I loosen his grip on his mother and lift him back into my arms. He does not resist.

My feet still ache with every step, but the pain no longer matters. Soon enough, they will not ache at all. Not in my new pair of shoes, two sizes larger than the old ones.

Credit: Eoghan Ferguson

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Please note the author of this creepypasta does NOT give permission for it to be reproduced in any other medium