[Peverel]

My first attempt at this flash fiction. Hope it's ok, oh and I am on a narrow boat trip for my birthday this weekend..............


I am still not sure exactly what I saw. Even after 15 years that day still haunts me. I can remember it like it was yesterday.

It was June and it was raining. Not hard but that sort of rain that makes you really wet. Wet all the way through to the bone. It wasn't particularly warm for the time of year but it wasn't cold. Pretty much a standard British summer. My girlfriend has given me a trip on a barge for a few days as my 50th birthday present. So there we were in the summer rain, ambling along the Basingstoke canal in a 40 foot narrow boat. The tea had been hot and sweet and replenished on a regular basis and I was really quite at peace with her, myself and the world.

And that's when I saw it.

At first I thought someone had just dumped some rubbish into the canal, then as we got closer I saw it was an animal of some kind. Maybe a deer had fallen in to the water and had not been able to get itself out. But wasn't that a bit large for a deer. More like the size and shape of a man?

The police arrived very promptly. They took us to one side and questioned us. Made sure that they had all the details we could provide noted down in little leather bound notebooks. It all seemed sort of futile compared to the body they had pulled from the canal. That was a man whose life had been snuffed out. I never was good with death, not since I lost my faith in the church.

They asked me if I knew who it was. I couldn't really remember the man's face even though we had pushed him to the side of the canal and check to see if there was any sign of life. I just remember looking at my girlfriend as she quietly cried and thinking that I hoped I didn't look as pale as she did.

They asked me to look at the body again, to see if I could identify it. I looked, but although I felt some hint of recognition, I couldn't place it, just a man in his late sixties, no one special. It's funny the things you remember, he had the same watch as me, a 40th birthday present from my girlfriend. And a wedding ring on his right ring finger, just as I wear my father's.

Fifteen years is a long time yet every time I look in that mirror I recognise that dead man's face just a little bit more. Just a little bit too much. I really don't want to go on another narrow boat trip this weekend.