I Went Swimming

It mocked him, the cheap trophy labelled with the number three, displaying a boy in goggles and trunks, in a leaping position, as if to jump into a pool, glaring at him each time he looked to the rear-view mirror. Unable to throw it out, but unwilling to display it pridefully as one oft would with such an object, it was always left in the back of his car, behind the back seats, to be drowned in dust.

His car pulled in front of the house, isolated from others, aside a gravel path that was betwixt tree on one side, and field the other; a small farm with cows that would alternate between the fields, it was, close enough to a town for dog walkers and joggers and hikers to use the gravel path for their own leisure. Already, the old man was waiting outside, sat by a small caravan that had fallen ill to rust and dirt, crippled with holes, and its windows all stained and cracked, or missing entirely. He had bid on it online as a project to renovate.

The old man helped him to hook it onto his car, not after checking one last time he had indeed gotten all his personal items from it. Before the renovator left, the old man spotted through the car's rear-window a swimming trophy; 'you're a swimmer?' he asked, pointing to it as he leaned into the driver-side window. 'Used to swim a lot meself---I was a coach, I was.'

'Not for some time,' the renovator replied awkwardly, keeping his gaze away from the face he knew but could not place, 'I had a bad event, so to speak, put me off.'

'Drowning?'

'Something like that.'

'Ah, drowning's awful, mate,' the old man tutted, 'did that once meself, I did, was fearful of getting in the water for a while, till one day I fell into a pond when joking with me mates, realised I could still swim just fine.'

'I suppose I just have to find someone to push me into a pond, then,' jested the renovator.

The old man laughed, 'suppose that you do!' He shook the the renovator's hand, with a 'see ya, mate, all right, take care,' before the car went away. The trophy tormented the driver throughout his drive, just as it always had.

When brought back to his own abode, the caravan would recieve many fixes over a week: the whole thing was cleaned from the dirt that conquered it, its windows replaced, holes filled with sealant, and its inside contents ripped out; the bed mattress and pillows would be replaced, its cabinets were mostly fine, but required cleaned, though one in particular had a moulded and chipped base. He was also finding many surface, especially the mattress that was on the bed frame, the seat beside it, that lined up against the walls, and the flooring, stained by the same fluid; whether alcohol or soda or even petrol, he had no way of knowing, only that it was dried hard, found in small, seperate splodges, and had stench worthy of a skunk.

It was when he had took out the cabinet with a mouldy and chipped base, after wiping out the fetid splodges, he saw a crumbled photograph that had been hidden beneath it---it was one of those old square ones, that would have came from a camera with a strong flash, printing immediately afterward, that you would have to shake. The renovator, curious, picked up the photograph, uncrumbled it, and saw what image it held: the foul, daemonic ritual seen within it brang his mind a sickness greater than what condition the caravan had been found in, a sea of bile erupting from him to bring the flooring back to a state of filth, his eyes moistening alike the dreaded hay fever sympton of red eye, and his mind connecting a name to the face of the old man.

The renovator drove once more with the caravan hooked to the rear of his car, to the isolated house aside the gravel path, and strode to the front door with malicious intent. Before knocking, he turned back and took his trophy from out the car, returning to knock with it in hand.

As the door opened gentily, the renovator said, 'you were my swimming coach.'

'Is that so?' asked the old man, in optimistic curiousity; when he looked down to see the trophy, gripped hard, and the other visitor's hand a fist, his tone became more dissapointed than anything else. 'Oh, that is so,' he said.

Bloody the old man's face was when it was struck many times with the trophy, which became more dented and misshapen with each thwack; he was dragged, barely-conscious, by the middle-aged renovator to the caravan, thrown upon the bile-floor, and locked within. For several minutes, he struggled to get up---a difficulty caused by both the blunt-force trauma to his head, as well as the slippery floor---before one of the new, clean windows was smashed by the trophy that no longer resembled what it had before. In thrown were many of his own wine and vodka and gin bottles, then the sheets from his bed, then a lit match, making the caravan a beacon in the black of night.

The renovator listened to the old man's horrific screams until they began to extinguish; he hesistantly threw in the trophy, relieved to be departed from it, not even caring his own car had caught alight as he forgot to unhook the caravan from it.

It was a long, tiring walk home; he collapsed onto his bed upon return.

'Where've you been?' his roommate asked wearily, creeping by the open bedroom door.

'I went swimming,' he replied.