The God of the Deep: A Short Story

The following is a short story I wrote during the summer of 2025 in an intensive creative writing program. Since then this short story has won a Gold Key for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as well as the 2026 Overture Awards in Creative Writing

Please, enjoy.

_____

The day the water in the lake disappeared, the people of Wilhem gathered around its borders, lined with yellow police tape. The adults, mostly mesmerized and confused, pushing their children back in case danger lurked behind the cops. They didn't know all the children had heard the whispers emanating from beneath the surface of the swampy water from the day they were born.

Quiet, unintelligible rasps that'd floated up into the ears from wayward ripples after their excited splashing games had ended. When they'd felt fish scales tickling their toes and a frigid wind brushing the back of their necks.

They'd all heard the whispers that emerged from the lake but never spoken of them. Not even to each other. But every child knew the others had heard too.

Michael was thirteen when the water in the lake disappeared. He shoved his bike into the dirt, pushing through the clumping bodies of terrified, intrigued adults to reach the front, where he saw a figure clumped in mud at the bottom of the lake.

Murmurs arose as the crowd looked on cautiously, watching the muddy figure move. First, a hand. Slim and pale like a pearl reaching out. Long fingers that didn't belong to a human.

Then, a leg smeared with dirt and wrapped in long, wet grass from the bottom of the lake. Finally, her head peeling free of the mud that encased her. Tendrils of long, wet, silver hair spilled over her shoulders and chest, wrapping her limbs; the hair seemed to have a mind of its own.

As she looked up at the surrounding crowd, gawking at her, they all felt a shudder travel through them as they saw the inky blackness of her sclera.

The adults were in awe as two policemen broke out of their trance, slid down into the lake—now a giant crater—and helped the creature to her feet.

Mud slid gracefully from her pallid, marble body, and a pair of feathered wings stretched outward from her shoulder blades.

The adults looked at her in amazement and terror. Michael watched mothers push their children back and husbands usher their wives away. Everyone wanted to get a closer look at this lake-born creature. This pale girl was wrapped in ferns, had wild hair, and dripped with water. Michael touched his ear tentatively, a sharp pain shooting through it as the whispers of the lake grew louder. As he turned his eyes back to the creature and watched her shriveled lips move softly, as though she was murmuring every secret the universe had ever known into their ears, he felt a profound connection.

The policemen called for backup, pushed the townspeople away, and aided the creature. She was inhuman and freakishly tall. A paramedic ran forward and wrapped a blanket around her. Or, rather, tried to. Her wet, sagging wings in the way.

Michael heard new whispers, ones that didn't hurt. He looked at the older woman beside him and watched as she prayed, clutching a silver cross to her chest.

The day the water disappeared from the lake and the creature was found, the town of Wilhem grew restless. They yearned to see the girl with wings and soulless eyes.

A town meeting was called for at midnight. Landlines ringing inside houses, adults filing out of their homes in pajamas and slippers. Michael crept out of bed and left the house, following his parents' car on his bike to the Town Hall, where the Mayor stood outside at a podium with the creature beside him. Still dripping with lake water, a puddle formed on the concrete at her feet. "Hear me, people of Wilhem!" the Mayor shouted over questioning murmurs. The crowd fell silent, and Michael leaned closer, listening. "I've conversed with Father Gabriel and the creature you see now before us. She's not a creature, though, but a gift from the lord above!"

Gasps sweeping through the crowd, questions arising on perched tongues, only for the Mayor to continue with a hand held to his chest. "The Lord has sent us an angel! A beauty of light and hope! We must do everything in our power to keep our Heavenly Father's favor, for he has blessed us with a creature of divine nature for our goodness!"

Michael spotted his parents and recalled the way they sat at church every Sunday morning. Kneeling in the pews on bruised knees, his mother kissed her knuckles as she clutched a rosary

​Standing under the cloak of tenebrous night at the far edges of the crowd, Michael could see the golden cross emblazoned across the top of the Church behind Town Hall. Stained glass windows imprinted behind his eyelids as he felt the memory of cold, coarse hands running along his body in places he was too scared to look at even now. Every Sunday he sat in those pews, and every Sunday an unforeseen force wrapped hands around his throat while his heart screamed to get out.

Whispers filled the air that night as Michael biked home. A shudder trembled down his spine while a rasping voice filled his head with words that'd be far more harrowing if he dared to imagine what they meant. Before going to bed, a final whisper shook the rest of his thoughts.

A name, a word, a praise, a warning:

God.

Michael had been thirteen when the water in the lake disappeared and the divine creature crawled her way out of the mud. He was thirteen and a half when her whispers grew so loud and horrible that he woke nightly screaming from nightmares, his skull aching when he cried, spilling not salted tears but fresh.

His mother had been attending church more frequently since the day the 'angel' arrived. She sat in the pews until her knees were black and whispered prayers until her tongue felt numb. All of the adults seemed to be doing it.

They wandered from their homes after work and attended midnight masses where the priest, Father Gabriel, placed Wilhem's lake-born angel on display.

One evening, after dinner, Michael's mother took him to mass, and he was forced to seethe whispering creature again. She sat in a wooden chair, her supple form swaying back and forth rhythmically like ripples across a lake's surface. They'd dressed her in finery, in the priests' silken robes threaded with crimson and gold. From where she sat, her hair and wings still wet, a puddle dripped under her feet onto the floor.

At the end of mass, Michael's mother took him by the hand and led him over towards Father Gabriel and the creature. His vocal cords laced themselves into a knot so tight he couldn’t breathe, and the sight of the priest’s politely clasped hands resurfaced the memories he tried so brutally to forget. The creature studied him intently, her head tilted just so where the robes slipped off her wet shoulder and revealed ferns growing from the skin on her collarbone.

Before Michael could point it out, Father Gabriel kneeled down to meet his face. His breath caught. His mother told him, vividly, of the nightmares and tears. Father Gabriel studied Michael, too, as intently as the creature had. 

He opened his mouth to speak about apostles, being ordained by God, and putting an end to his sinning. But he was interrupted as the creature stretched out a long, porcelain arm and pointed one black-clawed finger at Michael's eye. Her lips moved, softly, horrible whispers filling his head. A baby wailed somewhere in the chapel, and Michael winced at the shrieking frequency which caused his ears to snap, a trail of crimson trickling from his earlobe and down his neck.

"Tell me, boy, what do you hear?" Father Gabriel asked, bending down on both knees and seizing Michael by the shoulders.

​He could feel the roughness of Father Gabriel’s palms through his sweater.

His eyes were slick with tears, fresh water pouring down his face, burning his eyes far more than the salt of his normal tears ever could. A sob racked through his chest, the truth unfurling off of his tongue: "I hear death! I hear the end! She's drowning me from the inside!"

Father Gabriel clasped his hands in prayer, turning towards the creature. Michael's mother fell to her knees, bowing her head so low her forehead touched the "angel's" wet, grimy feet.

They shouted prayers at a God that wasn't listening, and exclaiming the good news of the angel speaking to him like a prophet.

A prophet, they called him. He'll bring forth the knowledge of the Second Coming!

But Michael knew there was no Second Coming.

No one was coming. Not when they'd pulled this monster from the lake and dared to call her divine.

Michael was thirteen and a half when his parents sent him to reside within the church. Trapping him helplessly behind stained glass and unwelcoming walls. Sheltering him under the same roof as the creature, where her whispers grew even louder.

He was forced to attend mass, to tell Father Gabriel everything the "angel" said to him.

Michael repeated phrases about death, sin, and worship.

The angel smiled, watching him, her teeth jagged as stones. He became a holy translator, despite how he knew every other child in Wilhem could hear her, too, yet he was the only one being abused.

Days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months. He cried lake water and found wet leaves in his hair, drooping ferns falling from his skin as he undressed each night. His eyelids burned with the sight of death, cascading in waves as he was forced to witness, each time he blinked, how everyone in town would meet their end.

The Henderson boys would die in a house fire; their lungs filled with smoke.

Old man Stevie would spoil his innards with liquor, keeling over on the street outside of his bar.

The Mayor, stabbed.

Father Gabriel, crucified.

His mother, martyred.

Michael stood before the pews, glaring at the people of Wilhem who were so damn oblivious to the way they'd all meet Death face to face. They carried on with their worship, falling to their knees in front of the angel, kissing her feet and ripping "holy" locks of hair from her scalp, tucking them away as they thanked, prayed to, and worshipped like a pack of mindless dogs. Salivating each time, they set their sights upon her false face.

Michael loathed them.

He dragged himself into his room each night, which was hardly a room, more so a dusty closet with a thin, splintered bed and a grimy mirror. Jesus hanging limply above its silver frame. He removed the priest's robes from his back, letting them fall into a silky puddle at his feet.

Then he'd stare at the horrific sight of himself.

At the sight of the unholy lake consuming him while the whispers in his ears grew in sharpness, and became shrill, agonized wails that tore his eardrums, sending black, sludgy blood running down his jaw.

His skin had shriveled and turned gray, his cheeks hollowed out, and his eyes wide and bloodshot. His youth had vanished, transforming him from a boy of thirteen into a monster haunted by another.

He wept.

Lake water poured down his cheeks. Algae growing along his legs. Swampy ferns sprouted from the skin of his collarbone, the backs of his hands sprouting silver scales.He vaguely remembered what life had been like before. Before his first communion, the taste of wine and Christ’s blood still unfamiliar. Before coarse hands wound their way up and down his naked body. Before his innocence was carved out of him and the remnant of himself left behind was hung up limply in a mockery of who he once was. When he would watch Saturday morning cartoons, and ride his bike around Wilhem with all of his friends, and smiled so amicably at every neighbor and stranger that he passed.

Michael screamed at the sight of himself now, clawing at his face, unruly fingernails tearing at the gray flesh over his thin bones and drawing blood from every scratch he inflicted on himself. He grabbed at the mirror, his wild eyes—dark as the lake—peering back at him, revealing the evil consuming him inside and out.

He slammed his fists against the glass, shards flying across the room, cutting deeply through him, drawing blood. He collapsed to his knees, rivulets of black trickling out of him, pooling onto the ground beneath his body. His sobs escaped him, leaving him heaving, breathless.

Something wet dripped onto the back of his neck.

Michael turned his head, matted hair falling against his brow as he saw the ugly, awful creature standing above him.

She whispered.

The sound filled his head, and he watched her lips move, teeth splitting the skin of her lips and the pink of her tongue each time she spoke. Water puddled beneath her, running off her wings, sagging against the wooden floors.

‘’Stop it,’’ Michael demanded.

She persisted, whispering, sending chills down his spine and goosebumps peppering his limbs.

"Stop!" he cried, a fervent rage boiling inside of him. "Stop! Stop! Stop!"

He pulled a shard of glass from his palm and lurched at her, driving it into her chest. It split through her flesh, bone, and innards. Her whispers stopped. Michael reeled back, petrified by what he'd done, yet simultaneously grateful that he had.

The creature stiffened.

Slowly, with long fingers, she pulled the glass out. The squelching sound would live in Michael's head forever. She tore open her robes and revealed the wound between her pale breasts.

From the wound, nothing came. No blood, water, or liquid gold.

She looked at him with dark eyes, and a terrible, jagged smile crept onto her ivory lips.

God, the whispers roared. GOD, they roared again.

But Michael was sure now: there was no god.

The creature stepped towards him. He flinched as her fingers skimmed his bleeding cheek. A tentative touch that sent a nausea-inducing shiver down his spine, shaking him to his core. Past sins resurfacing under his tattered flesh. She leaned down, bending at the waist to press her ice-cold lips to his ear. Her whisper was like a scream: "You," her voice taunted, a wicked grin splitting across her face. He didn't know how anyone thought she was an angel. "And I."

She pulled back, holding up the shard of glass which he'd used to stab her. There was nothing on it. No blood. No guts. No marrow. He saw his ugly self, looking back at him, and noticed he was no longer bleeding. From the scars he'd carved into his own features grew a thick, green fuzz. Algae sprouting from his wounds, water rolling down his cheeks in droplets from the wounds.

The lake was consuming him.

Michael screamed into her face until he felt something snap in his throat. He grabbed the glass and drove it between her black, soulless eyes. She staggered backwards, wet wings knocking bibles to the floor, sending the furniture askew. Michael tackled her to the floor, lifting the shard overhead and tearing into her. 

Defacing her.

Killing her.

He stabbed until his arms went numb. He didn't stop until her whispers had died, a series of long, jagged lines scarring her body, from face to sternum, and stomach to toe.

Michael closed his eyes, the ocean of blood washing over him, bones slipping through the cracks of his fingers, bodies strewn all around his body.

The prophet had killed the angel.

Michael was almost fourteen when he brought the creature back to the crater where it all began, where the lake water had disappeared, and the entire town went mad.

He'd trekked through town, barefoot, black sludge running from his limbs, dragging the creature through the mud, leaving a wet trail behind him. The crater loomed beneath him, deep, dark, muddy.

Michael heaved with every breath he took, the adrenaline coursing through him finally fraying and wearing away. The moon looked down at him pitifully as it sat heavily in the sky, illuminating the land around them.

Tightening his grip, he dragged her forward and shoved her into the crater. Her lifeless body toppled.

Fingers closed around his wrist, and Michael screamed as the angel's dark eyes looked back at him maliciously, dragging him down into the crater with her. Dead fish and rotted ferns were beneath their feet, and Michael hit his head on a rock. He forced himself to his knees, the torn and tattered angel leaning over him with a terrible smile." You," she whispered coldly, outstretching her hand towards him. "And I."

"Go away!" Michael screamed, his throat raw. "Go away! I hate you! I hate you!"

The angel collapsed to her knees, water dripping onto his skin as she grabbed his face, sharp, black nails reopening the algae-covered wounds upon his cheeks.

Splitting him open.

"YOU," she started again, her piercing voice loud. He winced from how badly it racked his head. Everything hurt. He felt like he was dying. "AND I—"

Michael grabbed the rock he'd hit his head on. He arced forward and smashed it against the angel's temple with such force that her eyes bulged, and one popped out.

His ears still rang after she fell.

Finally dead.

Michael dropped the rock, ran his shaking fingers through his hair, ripping out tufts of black coils as he breathed ferociously, desperate for oxygen. He realized he couldn't breathe. Something was blocking him. He choked, coughed, digging his fingers down his shriveled throat until he tossed up clear, fresh water.

Sweat rolled down his brow. He tried to scream, but it came out as a frightened gargle. He pulled at himself, ripping his chest, scales slithering down his body, green ferns growing painfully from his wounds, sprouting outwards.

YOU AND I. YOU AND I. YOU AND I. YOU AND I.

Her words echoed in his mind tauntingly, painting a picture of death and drowning across his eyelids when he squeezed them shut and tried to cry out.

Michael wanted his mother.

He opened his eyes, tears spilling forth and forming a puddle in the muddy earth below. The water from his wounds trickled down, each droplet joining together to create a puddle that grew larger. Growing in size, filling up the crater.

The angel's body beside him deflated, her porcelain skin shriveling into nothing, water pouring out of her.

Then the water kept rising.

Michael tried to call for help. His voice had been taken. He couldn't breathe. As the water began to rise above him, he struggled to swim against it. His body stayed down, unmoving. He clawed at himself, his limbs growing as heavy as stones.

Michael forced his head above the water, his gargled scream getting him nowhere. The moon, staring. The water is rising. The lake is filling.

He choked at the sight of his reflection in the water; his eyes had morphed without notice. Because now, his own gaze mimicked that of the angel. Black, lightless, impure.

The water rose above his head, and he sank to the bottom, his body heavy. His lungs had given up, his heart stuttering to a stop as the moonlight filtered out of reach above the watery gloom that now consumed him.

God had claimed another follower.