She knelt down at the edge of the hidden lake, hoping to see her reflection in the crystal water so she might check her hair. Billy would be there soon and she wanted it to be perfect. She gazed deeply into her makeshift mirror and nearly screamed. Looking back at her was not the freckled, yet blemish-free face she had seen a million times in her bedroom mirror. Gone were the perfect button nose and brown eyes flecked with gold.
Instead she saw something green. Something scaly. Something with gills and row after row of razor teeth. It stared back at her with eyes like black holes. Before she could scream, a green hand, the fingers webbed together, shot out of the water and grabbed her by the throat. She could feel warm blood trickling down her neck as the claws at the end of its fingers dug into her perfect skin. There was a sharp crack as the immensely powerful fingers crushed her windpipe, silencing the scream that might have been as she was dragged beneath the water.
Moments later, Billy stepped out of the forest. He looked around, expecting to see her waiting for him, but was greeted with nothing more than the wind blowing through the tall pines and making ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the lake. “Girls” he thought, as he stripped his clothes off. He stopped at his underwear for a moment, wondering if he should leave them on, but then decided it would just be the two of them. Besides, that would mean walking home with wet skivvies. He quickly shed them and ran as fast as he could toward the water. As the dirt of the forest floor turned to sand at the water’s edge, he leapt high into the air executing a perfect dive in hopes she might be watching from the trees. He barely made a splash as he broke the surface.