In June 2024, we posted a pop-up flash fiction contest where participants had only 48 hours to write a 500 to 1000-word aquatic horror story. Laurel Hightower read through over 200 submissions and the competition was fierce.

The winning story is: “Poolhorse” by Samir Sirk Morató.

Guest Judge Laurel Hightower’s comments on “Poolhorse”:

“Fantastic scene setting, atmospheric dread. I love the use of an abandoned place, the way it’s desiccated and forgotten but easily hides the threat beneath. The unseen in close proximity is a big part of my fear of water, and the creeping feeling that no body of water is safe. My favorite episode of ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK was DEAD MAN’S FLOAT, one about an unseen ghost in a clear swimming pool. Samir did an amazing job of expanding the fear, and Poolhorse itself is so eerie and threatening. Poignant, bizarre and terrifying.”

Congratulations, Samir!

Poolhorse

by Samir Sirk Morató

They condemned the rec center after her stepbrother Tyrese disappeared, but Brooklyn—now almost thirteen—sneaks in anyway. As she pushes on the faded pool room doors, she tells herself: “Maybe it’s dry. Maybe there’s nothing.” Hopefully there’s nothing. She doesn’t want to keep this promise to her stepdad.

But no. The indoor pool is there. It stretches before Brooklyn in a sickly, aqua rectangle. It’s full. The roof has collapsed, so a sunset-filled hole looms above the pool, complete with a moldy, dangling tongue of ceiling panels. Dead leaves rim the water until three feet out. The diving board is broken, the ladders lopsided and sinking, the depth markers faded off. All is still; all is deep.

Brooklyn can’t go closer. She paces around broken sun loungers. Her throat is tight; her breathing hard. Every time she sniffles, it echoes in the ceiling mouth, which makes her anxious. Her fingers are tingling. Chlorine wedges itself under her gums. She’s afraid if she throws up, it won’t come out.

Finally, Brooklyn breaks out of her orbit around the chairs. She kneels at the poolside barefoot, sick with herself, rolling up her capris. This is what promises mean. This is what keeping them takes. When her foot taps the moist cake of decay on the pool and it doesn’t give, Brooklyn gags. After some kicking, her feet break through. She sits at the deep end, bodywarm water stagnating around her calves. She waits.

She doesn’t wait long.

It surfaces slowly. Its diamond nostrils show first. Then bulging, frog-pupiled eyes. Pointed ears. Its mane congeals on the surface like half-dried blood. It’s all starved gaps between bone, rubbery skin, and oily horse stench. Butterfly clips, tiny press-on nails, hair ties, braces wires, pacifiers, and baby doll parts clutter its hair. Brooklyn trembles when it looks at her.

You’re back, Poolhorse says.

When it speaks, its face-lid peels open up to its ear, flashing a spiral of teeth.

“Yeah,” Brooklyn says. Then, remembering what saved her last time, she says: “You’re still a pretty horse.”

Poolhorse laughs. It sounds like a hurt baby screaming into pipes. A sparkly hair band and thread of scalp dangle from its teeth. Brooklyn feels nine again.

You won our little race. Bubbles blow out of Poolhorse’s nose. Its barbed tongue worms out of its mouth, wiping its chin. Brooklyn feels it tasting her skin oils. No one comes back after they win. And almost no one wins.

“I didn’t win because I was a good swimmer,” Brooklyn says. “I won because I was faster than Tyrese.”

That’s all that matters.

“Poolhorse, I need what’s left of him.” Brooklyn’s swallowed tears burn her nose. “A bone. Anything.”

Why?

“Because I promised our dad I’d find him.”

Poolhorse blinks its translucent eyelids. I’ll give him to you. If you play another game.

“No games! I just want the missing poster to be gone! You don’t need him.”

Another game, Poolhorse repeats.

It’s unfair that if she starts crying she’ll never stop; it’s unfair that her stepdad cries every day; it’s unfair that Poolhorse is real just to kids; it’s unfair that her stepdad thinks she’s at a sleepover. That he might put her on a missing poster too. But everything is unfair.

“What game?” Brooklyn says.

Poolhorse drifts up to her paralyzed knees. It opens into a kaleidoscope of teeth.

Go fish, it says.

Poolhorse plays by rules written in toddler sidewalk chalk. Brooklyn is getting too old to read them. If she flees now, she might never get to try again. She remembers Poolhorse cornering them. The cold lightning terror that struck her. She remembers how she looked at slow, afraid Tyrese and accepted the race. Maybe her stepdad wouldn’t say ‘I love you’ every night if he knew that. That scares her more than anything.

Brooklyn’s fast breathing beats inside her ears. Sweat beads under her training bra. Her hand hovers above the pool, hemming, hawing. Poolhorse’s stench clogs her nose. Tyrese’s face floats in her mind. I don’t want to go like you, Brooklyn tells him. Sorry. Shame sets in. Relief.

She’s about to withdraw when Poolhorse’s long neck twitches. Its teeth mandala clacks. Dead leaves crumple against Brooklyn’s exposed calves. Hot, rotten breath mists her. Poolhorse is close. And impatient. She’s been stupid. It doesn’t matter if she loves her family enough or not. If Brooklyn is a bad sport, she’ll immediately lose. There’s only one way to maybe, maybe win. She licks her lips.

She reaches in.

Millimeter by millimeter, squirm by squirm, Brooklyn’s hand works past rubbery lips, millions of canines, worm tongue, and stale screams. It passes elastic rings of throat. It digs into tissue. Poolhorse’s fangs scrape her shoulder. Her armpit. Its drool floods her pores. Brooklyn is almost kissing Poolhorse’s greasy forehead as she reaches into the infinite worst. She’s squeezing its nose. Her muscles scream. If Poolhorse bites—

Please, she thinks, please, and below them rot ripples across heaven-brightpool water that used to be beautiful, broken just by Brooklyn’s splashing legs and Poolhorse’s downpour of drool. Then her fingers brush something slippery. Hard. Brooklyn seizes it. Poolhorse’s throat tightens around her arm as she pulls it out. It’s like dredging in molasses. It hurts. By the time Brooklyn yanks her fist out, black spots cover her vision.

Goodbye, pretty girl. Poolhorse sinks in a whirlpool of toys and hair.

Then it’s gone.

Brooklyn scrambles out of the pool, scraping her palms and knees as she goes. When she can see, when she realizes that she’s clutching a deflated water wing pierced by an arm bone, she wails. She drags herself onto a broken sun lounger and curls around her stepbrother’s crumbs, hiccupping, bloody knees and tears smearing chair plastic. A dam shatters. She hemorrhages years of tears. It’s over. They are going home.

And there is only Brooklyn, and grief, and golden hour, and—in the sun-pierced center of the pool—a stained water wing, drifting alone.

About the Author

Samir Sirk Morató (they/he) is a scientist, artist, and flesh heap. They are also a two-time Brave New Weird shortlister and a F(r)iction Fall 2022 Flash Fiction finalist. Some of their published and forthcoming work can be found in Flash Fiction Online, ergot., NIGHTMARE, and The Drabblecast.

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