Estimated reading time — 18 minutes

Chlorine stained the concrete like blood in the glow of the pool lights. Tree limbs offered dying leaves as fall slipped away into winter.
“Are there cameras?” she asked, searching the far corners of the pool yard hidden by shadows.
“If so they don’t work,” he said. “This area got overlooked a long time ago.”
The rotting wood in the fence line, rusted out grill, and stray cats confirmed his argument. Still unsettled by the forgotten environment, Gabrielle pulled her shirt over her head and freed herself from torn denim.
She laughed.
“That’s clever,” she said, indicating the sign listing pool rules. What once had read No Lifeguard On Duty had been spray painted over in red to read:
NO LIFE— ON DUTY.
The slapping of soft ripples hitting the pool side echoed as the girl joined her date in the water, who made no effort to hide the desire in his stare.
“Break the rules and die,” he said. “It’s a warning. A boy drowned years ago. His parents let him go swimming alone too soon after dinner and he cramped up. Found his body at the bottom of the pool the next morning. People say he shows up from time to time to make sure pool rules are respected.”
“Of course you would take me somewhere haunted.”
“The lifeguard that turns CPR into DNR,” he said, swimming up behind her. “Romantic, right?”
“Swimming after pool hours. Check.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Let’s see what other rules we can break.” The night was filled with their disturbance of the water. Cars inched along through the complex and shadows moved.
They weren’t alone.
Tyler shoved Gabrielle away.
“What the hell?”
“I saw-” He brushed his hair out of his face, looking around the empty pool yard. For a moment, he had seen it. A white tower, covered with an umbrella, and occupied by something unnatural. Skin like loose flesh with skeleton leanness and dark sunglasses sitting upon rigid bone lines. “There was somebody there.”
“Probably just some pervert. Let’m watch.”
She moved in closer.
Tyler tried to relax, but the next time he opened his eyes, the water was murky with blood.
“Screw this!” shouted Tyler, hurrying for the wall to pull himself out of the water.
“What’s wrong with you?” demanded Gabrielle, clearly annoyed. “If you didn’t want me here, just tell me.”
“No, it’s not that. I just…” He watched the water, fading from red to purple by the glow of the underwater pool light.
“Oh. I get it,” said Gabrielle. “The ghost. Right?” Tyler continued to look at the water, now shining a bright white. “I’ll play along.” She swam to the edge and grabbed the wine bottle. After a long sip she said, “Glass in the pool. Another broken rule.” She took another pull.
A whistle shattered the air from another world. At the high pitched sound, Gabrielle dropped the bottle, breaking it into pieces on the ledge.
“Get out of the pool,” said Tyler.
“It’s fine. Throw me a towel.”
“Get out of the pool! Now!”
It was too late. He watched as the figure in sunglasses appeared behind Gabrielle, wielding a shard of the broken bottle…and a broken rule.
She didn’t have time to realize that some ghost stories were true before the nightmare took her breath away.
While the pool drank her blood, death turned its gaze on Tyler, giving him the will to flee. Only when he reached the wooden gate, the lock was contorted so much that it wouldn’t release. A whistle screamed again and he covered his ears.
Taking a chance, he turned around and was met with pale flesh and a decaying jaw blowing with fury. With no other option, Tyler took off at a sprint, breaking the golden rule:
NO RUNNING.
His mistake cost him, as his foot slipped and he knocked himself unconscious on the handrail and into the still water.
As Tyler joined Gabrielle at the bottom of the pool the night went silent again. The water, now having consumed two more reckless souls, faded from red to blue.

“I have arrived!” shouted Becca, opening the front door.
“Shh!” scolded Kyle. His body was cramped awkwardly over the top of the couch, ear to a cracked window.
Becca gently set her keys on the mail and hung her purse, hurrying over next to him.
“Are they back at it?” she asked.
“Shh!” Becca joined Kyle on the couch, straining to hear the raised voices coming from next door. “They started right before you got here. She’s trying to get him to admit to something he didn’t do…supposedly.”
This is how it was. Once a week, Kyle and Becca’s neighbors would start screaming at each other, slamming stuff around the house, accusing one another of nothing in particular. One of them would finally leave, then the next day, all would be right as rain until the next thing set them off. It was always hard to tell what they were fighting about. Really, it just seemed like annoyance at the other one’s presence.
“I need them to speak louder,” said Becca. The voices were too muffled to make out.
Suddenly their neighbor’s door opened as the man stormed outside. A backward baseball hat kept his long blond hair from falling in his face. Kyle gestured toward the kitchen and Becca followed him to the window in front. They watched the man get in his car. The girl came out a minute later, got in her car, and drove away while the man ignored her and simply sat with his car running.
“Just another Tuesday night,” said Becca, backing away from the blinds. “By the way, I have girl’s night this weekend, so you’ll have a night free from me.”
“How will I survive?”
“You could drown yourself in books.”
“There’s an idea,” said Kyle, finally stepping back from the blinds. “I’ll think about it over a swim.”
Becca shook her head. “I don’t know how you can go out there so soon. After what happened with those kids.”
“That was just a freak accident. Who would want to bother an old man out for his nighttime exercise?”
“If that’s all it was, who moved the bodies?”
“I don’t know. The HOA? Either way, I’ll be fine.”
“Well, you should at least take out the trash when you go. That’s a man’s job.”
“Of course it is…”
“Remember, you love me.”
After changing into his swim suit, and grabbing a towel, Kyle walked down the lot toward the pool yard. The man from next door was still sitting in his car, the beam of his headlights reflecting in the night air.

When Kyle passed in front of Unit 214, he noticed that mostly flowers and well wishes were surrounding the door left by loved ones. There was one message, however, that had yet to be removed from the memorial. Thrown on top of one section of flowers was an orange rescue buoy that said “The Lifeguard Saves All.”
So there are believers, thought Kyle.
Two weeks ago a couple from Unit 214 turned up dead. The girl’s dad had called it in after he couldn’t get in touch with her. Said something must be wrong because she would never miss family dinner without a good reason.
“It was that young couple!” Mrs. Gunthry had explained. “Both dead on their couch. The girl’s dad blamed the boyfriend. It usually is I guess, but I blame the HOA. I’ve been fighting to get cameras for years. First my garden gets destroyed by the landscaping crew and now this. Let’s see what they have to say now!”
“That’s terrible,” said Becca. Her and Kyle were just getting back from a walk one morning and saw the cop cars lined up in their lot with police going in and out of the taped off unit. They wouldn’t have pried, but Mrs. Gunthry had no problem getting all the details.
“That’s not even the strange part,” continued Mrs. Gunthry. “The cops said it happened at the pool! Someone moved the bodies! Can you believe that? Just another reason we should get cameras around here. She leaned in closer to them. “That’s why I never go to the pool alone. Those gates hold so much uncertainty. Anything can happen.”
The online neighbourhood watch recapped the incident, echoing the police reports which stated the deaths occurred at the pool and then the bodies were moved after the fact.
Long time and foreign residents discussed all the horrible accidents that centered around the pool yard. While some were logical, most of these incidents were attributed to the ghost that watched over the pool yard, known as The Lifeguard. The community believed anyone who faced tragedy in the pool yard deserved it. It was their own fault for testing the limits of pool rules. Enough people had disappeared now for the community to accept it as more than coincidence.
Kyle didn’t believe it was ghosts that killed those kids. Stupidity, maybe. But no ghosts. It was true that this was a forgotten place, tucked away and hiding in the center of town. Theft or noise complaints to draw out law enforcement were common, but death was rare.
Making his way to the dumpster gate inside the pool yard, Kyle threw the trash into the bin, listening to it clatter to the bottom. As he came back out into the pool yard, he stared at the water, shining like a cyan prism illuminating the night.
A shimmer of light from beneath a pile of leaves caught his eye. Pushing back the leaves, he uncovered pieces of a shattered wine bottle. He tried to imagine the night the kids were killed. One daring the other to hold their breath just a little too long. Substance induced bravery turning fatal with biological negligence.
“I knew it,” said Kyle. “Irresponsible kids.”
Ghosts were ridiculous.

When Friday night showed up, Becca and Kyle decided they would abandon the world and stay in for wine and cinema.
“What are we feeling tonight?” asked Kyle, sifting through endless streaming services.
“Nothing horror.”
“Alright. What shows do we need to catch up on?”
“Oh! The new season of YOU came out today.”
“I do love me some Joe Goldberg.”
“Perfect! I’ll open the wine.”
During their third episode, as Goldberg picked apart his new victim through binoculars with lustful demise, Becca finished the last of the popcorn bowl. Kyle was pouring more wine in his glass when shouts drifted faintly through the wall.
Kyle locked eyes with Becca.
“Pause the show!” whispered Becca, whipping around to crack the window behind the couch. “What do you think it is this time? Another girl? Drinking too much?”
“Dishes,” said Kyle.
Two shadows moved behind the downstairs window. More yelling. Every time the man shouted, something slammed against the wall.
“Hold on!” Becca got up and disappeared upstairs. Kyle heard her turn off the dryer then run back down.
The voices were clearer now.
“Stop!…Stop!…” pleaded the woman.
“Why should I?” he yelled. “It’s true!”
“Go! Leave me alone!”
“No! Why don’t you do something?”
“Go away!”
“One more time! Hit me! I dare you!”
“Stop!”
The shadows separated. The man finally gave up on provoking her and it didn’t seem like she ever took him up on his offer, but they were loud. There was more banging. Soon their threats just turned into screaming.
“I think we should call the cops,” said Kyle.
“And tell them what?” asked Becca. “We don’t even know what they’re fighting about.”
“I don’t know,” said Kyle. “That we think that it’s getting violent. Get someone over there and at least let them know other people can hear them?”
The man yelled again. Something shattered on the far end of the house.
“They’ll know that it was us,” argued Becca. “We are the only ones close enough to hear. Besides, how many noise complaints do you think the cops get on a Friday night?”
A few minutes passed without much more than scuffling around. From what they could tell, the fight was over. Becca had a point, but Kyle could tell she was nervous. Possibly even scared.
“What do we do?” asked Kyle.
Becca turned around. “Nothing. Let’s just finish this episode.” She retreated under her blanket. Kyle slid the window shut and joined her, only he was no longer interested. He was too distracted, his mind wrapped up in what was going on in the house next door.
When the show was over, Becca went upstairs to take a bath. Kyle stayed downstairs to pick up the living room, but also to see if anything else would happen next door. He couldn’t help but wonder if something serious had actually happened. That last struggle inside the house sounded so final.
The house was dark and there were no more signs of movement. Kyle shut the blinds and sighed. Maybe Becca was right. He needed something to take his mind off it.
“I’m going for a swim,” said Kyle, grabbing a towel from the upstairs closet. Becca was just getting out of the shower.
“Now? It’s almost midnight.”
“I like having the pool to myself,” he said.
“Aren’t there pool hours?”
Kyle shrugged.
“Well, I’m going to bed. Try not to catch a cramp.”
“I can keep my head above water until morning.”
As Kyle left his building, he noticed a faint light coming from the inside of a car in front of his neighbour’s unit. The man must have gone outside while he was upstairs. It was unnerving locking eyes with the man through the windshield, sitting alone in the dark.
Even stranger was seeing the man still sitting there after Kyle finished his swim, nearly an hour later.

Three days passed before Kyle saw his neighbor again.
The man appeared out of nowhere, standing over him as Kyle came up for air at the end of a lap in the pool.
Hair slicked back with sweat underneath his backwards hat, his neighbor held a bulging trash bag leaking something foul.
“You shouldn’t swim without a lifeguard.”
“What?” gasped Kyle, still catching his breath, both from fright and exhaustion.
“You shouldn’t swim without a lifeguard,” the man repeated. “It’s against the rules.”
“Oh,” said Kyle, wiping water from his face. “I didn’t think this pool had a lifeguard.”
The man ignored Kyle’s comment. He only stood there, observing him. It was as if he was willing him to get out of the water.
The drains gurgled.
Kyle fell into an uneasiness, like prey, beneath the gaze of an unseen predator in the dark.
His neighbor continued to watch him. The trash bag, leaking.
Leaking…
Pooling into a dark puddle of what looked like…
The man jerked away, continuing to the dumpster to throw away his trash. Kyle heard the bag tumble to the bottom of the dumpster.
He wiped away the water running down his face, while waiting for the man to reappear.
There was nothing at first, then a sound. A growl, almost. Starting faint, then growing deeper.
A loud whistle shot through the air. He covered his ears and watched as his neighbor came sprinting out behind the dumpster gates, heading toward the edge of the pool with a red lifeguard whistle in his mouth. Kyle couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The man was blowing it at him!
“No swimming!”
BEEEEEP!
“No swimming!”
BEEEEEP!
“Noooooooo! Swimming!”
BEEEEEEEEEEP!
Terrified by the whistle-accented demands and desperate to make the shrilling stop, Kyle scrambled from the water.
“Okay! Okay! I’m getting out!” shouted Kyle, grabbing for his towel. His neighbor glared at him with fists clenched, chest heaving.
Kyle watched, unsure of the scene before him. He held his towel out in front of him like a flag of surrender, proof that he was finished swimming for the night. This seemed to calm the man down, if only a little.
Struggling to catch his breath, Kyle waited, feeling water retreating from his body and shivering from the cold air. He jumped when the man finally turned around to leave, pausing just before exiting the pool yard.
“Every pool has a lifeguard.”
The gate fell shut and Kyle was once again alone, dripping in disbelief.

After his neighbor had left the pool, Kyle rushed back home. Luckily he made it inside without seeing anyone. He quickly washed off and retired to the patio.
Nothing stirred in the house next door. The windows were dark. The rooms were quiet. And the shadows…still.
A closed book sat on the chair next to him which he had intended to read to put his mind to ease, but the activities of what lived close by had stolen his attention for the foreseeable future.
“Every pool has a lifeguard.” What an odd thing to say.
If you asked him in that moment at the pool what Kyle had felt, he wouldn’t have known how to describe it. Constricted was the best way he could put it. It was in the way his neighbour watched him. A fear wrapping itself so tightly around him he couldn’t breathe, had no air to take in. Like sinking into darkness while life grew farther and farther from view.
Like he was drowning.
Every pool has a lifeguard…
A car horn announced that Becca was finally home. Kyle listened to her footsteps echo off the brick walls as she walked to the front door.
He grabbed his book and opened it, attempting to look as if he was reading. Attempting to hide the uneasiness that consumed him.
“There you are,” said Becca, coming out onto the patio. “Sorry I’m so late.” She hugged him from behind, kissing his cheek, and then took the chair across from him. Noticing he was staring over her shoulder she asked, “Spying again?”
“He came to me.”
“Who? The neighbour?”
“While I was swimming. He came up to me while I was doing laps. Seemed upset I was there after hours.”
“I told you. You should follow the rules. We don’t need any extra fines showing up in the mail.”
“I think he was on something. He didn’t look well. And who takes the trash out that late anyway?”
“Almost as crazy as people who swim laps in the middle of the night.”
“I’m serious…he wasn’t right. You know what he had? One of those cheap whistles you can find in any old toy section. Blowing away as if he was some kind of lifeguard.”
“Maybe we should just leave it alone. What if this guy really did have something to do with what happened with those kids? It’s probably best not to mess with crazy. Let’s just forget about it.”
Kyle continued to stare over the fence.
“Kyle. I mean it.”
Thinking back to that moment, he knew. Could identify it. He had accepted that he was about to die. Kyle had truly believed the next breath he took in would be his last. That the man standing over him was going to walk into the water and hold him under until it was too late.
“Yeah…yeah. Alright.”
“Thank you,” said Becca. “Now come on! I’m starving.”
Kyle got up to follow her inside. As he did so, the lights next door went out.

“What are your plans for tonight?”
Becca was staring in the mirror, doing her final outfit check before she left for the night. Kyle sat in the corner chair in the living room, book open but not really focused.
“Probably dinner on the patio followed by a nice book and Burgundy.” He could see her eyeing him in the mirror. “What?”
“You should stay away from the pool.”
“I didn’t even say I was going!”
“Yeah, but I know you. You’ll get restless half way through your book and want to get in the water. I don’t need you stirring anything up. Making waves so to speak.”
“You just worry about having a good time.”
As reluctant as Becca was to leave Kyle alone with his imagination, she was running late.
“I love you,” she said, “Don’t burn the house down.”
“Tell the girls I said hi.”
Kyle waited until Becca’s jeep lights disappeared and then closed his book. He sat in his chair, looking around the quiet living room, thinking.
He did plan on going for a swim at some point, but it was too early. It needed to be later.
Much later.
If he was to discover anything new, he needed to be there at the same time as his neighbor.
He wandered into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of French red. After popping the cork, he poured a glass, then grabbed the bottle to head outside.
Kyle set the bottle on the patio table and dragged the chair around to face the fence just enough so as not to be obvious, but giving him a clear view of the building next door. Flipping his book open from the bookmarked page, he settled in. He made himself a promise. Two chapters. He would make it through at least two chapters before even considering a swim.
Pleased with his compromise, he began to read.
Kyle enveloped pages like a drug as his world slipped away. He fell into that mystical state between reality and imagination that only a book can allow. A type of selfless sacrifice that storytelling brings on when all you do is forget who, and where, and what you are and transform into something timeless. Three chapters of Bradbury came and went before Kyle realized nothing had interrupted his narrative hallucination. The October Man certainly had a way of distorting time.
When the silence broke Kyle’s concentration, he turned and peered through the boards which provided enough space to see next door, willing something to happen. Disappointing calmness surrounded him. The sky was darker now. He went inside to flip the patio lights on and see if there was anything worth cooking for dinner. While he sorted through vegetables to prepare for pasta, it began.
An accusation. A yell. Movement next door.
“Here we go!” he said, abandoning the tomatoes and garlic and hurrying back outside. Easing the door shut, he sat down, topped off his wine glass and crouched down against the fence, listening. Straining to hear something. Anything.
Everything.
“I know you were there!” It was the girl. They were downstairs. “You were there! Why were you there?”
“I had to!” The man spoke now. “They’re the ones that shouldn’t have been there.”
“No! You should have left it alone!”
“It doesn’t matter!” His yelling became more aggressive. “It’s over!”
“And what about next time? Huh? What happens next time?”
“I…told… you! It’s over!”
Every word was accented by something pounding against the wall. The light inside was faint. Kyle couldn’t see much through the fragmented boards or the blinds on the windows, but it appeared that the fight had moved upstairs. The shadows continued to quarrel.
“I warned you!” Screamed the woman. “You just don’t listen!”
While the woman shouted from one side of the house, Kyle watched the shadow near the back pace back and forth. It came into view. It disappeared. Returning. Disappearing.
Kyle watched. Waiting for a confession that would satisfy his suspicions. What he got was even worse.
A bellowing roar of a yell erupted from the upstairs window right above Kyle. The shadow that had been coming in and out of view vanished once more and the woman’s screaming was cut off. A descending tumble traveled the length of the building and stopped with a thud on the first floor.
Kyle didn’t move. Too curious to leave. Too frightened to stay.
The night was still as if the whole world was waiting for what happened next.
Another yell.
Kyle was silent. The air conditioner kicked on and shook violently next to him. He struggled to hear anything else aside from the obnoxious machine rocking next to him, until finally, a door opened.
Letting the screen door slam, his neighbour struggled to drag a large black bag through his front door cursing under his breath. When he reached the back fence blocking off the coolie that ran along the complexes, Kyle could finally make out his neighbour’s rambling.
“I had to…they were breaking the rules…I had to. I had too!” Only inches away from Kyle, separated by the fence, the man was speaking to himself. “The rules…the rules…”
Now he was pacing. The whistle was still around his neck. Whispering gibberish and growling with frustration. The dog from the house across the coolie caught sight of him. Running to the fence line, it began barking wildly at the strange man sulking in the dark.
The man started hitting his head with his own fists, trying to kill whatever was going through his mind. Kyle was trapped. There was no way he could go anywhere while the man was outside. The same fear he felt at the pool returned and all he could do was watch and wait. Finally, the man turned toward the trash bag and screamed, “I had to!”
The dog continued barking. Kyle’s neighbour grabbed a rock from the ground and hurled it at the fence.
“Shut! Up!”
The dog recoiled and ran away whimpering.
The night was still once more.
The only sound was the man’s labored breathing as he looked around to see if anyone had seen him lash out.
Finally, he grabbed the trash bag and drug it out of sight, disappearing into the darkness along the coolie.

Even psychos have chores.
It was a funny thought. The idea of the monsters of the world staying true to the mundane routine and expectations of society. Kyle suspected that even the effort of trying to seem normal made them even more terrifying. When you see evil in person, you expect it to snarl, slash, consume…but instead it takes out the trash.
Kyle wasted no time with throwing on his swim trunks and hurrying down to the pool to continue the pursuit of the monster next door. He heard the gate at the pool yard close as he made his way down the block, confirming that he was just in time. His plan was simple. He would go for a swim while his neighbor was at the pool and see if he could spark another reaction. Only he wouldn’t be caught by surprise this time. He wanted his neighbor in plain sight as he got in the pool.
The water was alive, shifting colors as it did this time of night. A thin layer of dead insects and leaves drifted along in endless circles. There was no sound or signs of movement but he could feel that he wasn’t alone. Kyle stared at the closed off section which held the dumpsters where he expected his neighbor to be.
Before getting in the water, Kyle took the net down from the fence and began removing the debris from the surface. He made his way around the edge of the pool, moving closer to the dumpsters, expecting the disturbance of the water to draw out his neighbor.
The water shone brighter with every sweep of the net. The light flickered from the ripples that Kyle created. There was still no sign that his neighbor had noticed his presence. Unexpectedly, he began struggling to lift the net out of the pool. He knew piles of wet leaves were heavier than normal, but the weight was practically pulling Kyle down. As he fought to raise the net, a hand shot up from the water.
Kyle fell back in surprise, landing in the grotesque pile he had been depositing on the ground. What he thought to be branches and leaves was nothing that came from trees. Severed human limbs surrounded him in a contorted pile of decay! Disgusted, Kyle jumped away from the chlorinated bones trying to hold him down. The pool was littered with arms and legs and faces bobbing silently up and down.
A graveyard of the drowned.
The fence surrounding the dumpster convulsed as Kyle’s neighbor began to emerge.
Kyle ran for cover behind a deflated pink duck strung out in the brush.
The man surfaced from the dark. His body hunched over, ripping and tugging and pulling something from the black trash bag.
Something that was once alive.
It was worse than anything Kyle could have imagined, watching the man throw the girl’s body over the edge of the pool. Seeing the severed limbs of the dead being pulled over her from the force of the swirling whirlpool created by her sinking corpse.
Kyle’s throat tightened. He was drowning. The girl next door was dead, there were bodies in the pool and he was DROWNING!
A whistle blew and it was something terrible.
“Every pool has a lifeguard.”
These were the words that came to mind. Everyone dreads the shrill warning of a lifeguard’s whistle, but this lifeguard’s fateful blow was more sinister. More permanent. The apparition materialized on the far side of the pool. Beneath an umbrella, perched within a white tower, standing tall and magnificent over the water. The Lifeguard raised its hand and pointed with dead fingers right at Kyle. The whistle sounded again.
Kyle turned to see white eyes beaming through slick hair. A creature that was once a man, once his neighbour, was crawling, not running because that was against the rules, but crawling toward him.
And Kyle, now believing in ghosts, was drowning.

Jeep lights flashed through an empty window. As nice as it had been to catch up with everyone, Becca was glad to be home. Chardonnay and chatter really took it out of a girl.
Meow…
“Hey Crockpot,” said Becca, moving past the stray cat that taunted all the local canines. Then she paused. The front door was open. She was so stunned at her own home intrusion that she failed to notice the faint trail of muck leading out of the building across the walkway.
“Kyle?” she called, to an empty house. The T.V. cycled through previews while the drone of a preheated oven filled the air. Upstairs was deserted, an open bottle of wine sat on the back patio and the kitchen was littered with preparations for a dinner that would never be served.
Becca saw there was a pool towel draped over the kitchen chair, and she knew where to find Kyle. Annoyed at the state he had left the house in, she grabbed the towel and stormed off to the pool to give him a piece of her mind.
The gate clattered shut, closing her off from the outside world. She always thought it strange, the feeling of being enclosed in the pool yard at night. When the sun was out, it was paradise, but at night…it was as if she had entered a den of something hungry.
“Hello?” she called, surprised by how weak the sound of her own voice was. She saw Kyle’s T-Shirt balled up on a sprawled out lawn chair.
The stillness of the night settled in around her.
She listened to the low gurgling of the pool as she walked around the water’s edge. A duck floaty had been tossed into the bushes, behind a lone grill. The pool net was thrown to the ground, half full of dried leaves and branches. Artifacts that life had once inhabited this place.
Her silhouette moved with her over the surface of the water, turning from green to deep indigo.
Above her reflection was a warning that comes with all pools:
6 FT.
Six feet deep, she thought.
Six feet…in the ground…
Car lights splintered through the wooden fence, distorting her image on the water.
When the lights disappeared, she saw him and screamed.
“You scared me!”
Kyle stood at the edge of the pool, looking out over the water.
He wore a whistle around his neck.
“How long have you been out here?” asked Becca, walking over to him. He didn’t move. Didn’t seem to notice she was there at all.
As she moved closer, she finally saw what it was that had captured his attention. Finally noticed what it was that made the pool seem out of place.
At the bottom of the pool, rocking back and forth, were the bodies of a man and a woman. The same man and woman next door who she had watched and listened to screaming at each other for the past few weeks, forever silenced with chlorine in their lungs.
“What did you do?” whispered Becca.
“I had to,” said Kyle. “They broke the pool rules.”
“Who cares about rules? Kyle, they’re dead!”
Kyle finally turned to face her. His eyes were glowing with white light. “They broke the rules,” said Kyle. “And now, so have you.”
Kyle lunged and Becca turned to run, but was pulled back as he caught her hair. He brought the whistle around his neck to his mouth and let it scream.
His grip tightened as he walked down into the water. Becca couldn’t break his hold. Water shot up everywhere as she fought to break free. She stared into his frightful eyes, changing colors with the water that surrounded her.
Above them, sitting high in its tower, The Lifeguard watched it all through poised sunglasses. Whistle at the ready, he sat in wait, prepared to warn anyone who dared to defy the rules of the water.
Becca heard Kyle speak again before being pushed under for the final time.
“Every pool has a lifeguard.”

Credit: C. Scott Raborn