Day 51 - Drain the Swamp

 Drain the Swamp 

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

“Drain the swamp!” the villagers demanded. They screamed, they yelled, they cheered. A constant source of illness and suffering, it was time to do something about it… The swamp had to go!

The town council listened. Simple enough. A feat of civic engineering. No more stench. No more smell. No more swamp rats or mosquitoes. The people would be happy and the politicians would be heroes and retain their elected seats.

Or so they thought.

Some envisioned new land for farming. Others a park. Others saw new homes being raised. It was easy to be optimistic.

No one knew how deep the swamp was. No one knew what was hidden beneath. The lies. The secrets. The dead and buried. The well enough left alone.

And so they built their canals and trenches. And the water did recede. The land would dry to positive effect with new flora and fauna to come.

But…

And there always are those unexpected consequences…

But they soon discovered what lay beneath. That which should not have been disturbed.

First it was the head of a statue. But as the water receded further, more “artifacts” were revealed. Statues and buildings and monuments. Designs unseen before. Unnatural. Inhuman. Creatures. Being worshiped being bred along with humans. Their faces so alien, so distinct and hideous.

The villagers didn’t know what to make of these strange new artifacts. Perhaps some remnant of a previous civilization. A native tribe or lost people time had forgotten. Their craftsmanship was impressive, but their constructions were so repugnant and their people so monstrous. Who would have made such things and why?

As the water continued to recede a gateway was revealed. Stone steps, leading below the ground. Whatever chamber was below, it was still flooded. No one knew how to get the water out. No one wanted to. It seemed impossible that so much construction could have been below the water level. An entire civilization dedicated to excavation and building downwards? They stared into the abyss and found it disturbing. No one was sure why this mystery was so unsettling. It was hard to conceive of an advanced civilization that preceded them.

One day the water began to bubble as toxic gasses were released from the submerged chamber. The ground began to shift and a toxic sludge followed. Many could swear they heard a low moaning at night. Paranoia and nightmares set it.

Soon the cries to “fill that swamp!” could be heard in the town square. The people wanted to move on. They wanted to forget. And soon they would. Dirt and shipped in and the land leveled off. No one spoke of what had been discovered before. No one wanted to know what had been in that buried chamber.

Time passed and many forgot or came to believe it was a bad dream. Time moved on, but the ground did occasionally shake. The people looked the other way and didn’t acknowledge it. And when the next generation considered new construction, the cries of hysteria from the elders did erupt.