There was a long, dark, crumbling bridge over Caney Creek. Paul had to cross it every night to get home from work. 'Creek' wasn't a good name for it. Caney Creek wasn't very wide but it was deep. The water was always dark, when the sun shone. It looked still and calm from the bridge, but if one was quiet and still while standing above it, the soft strong rush of its currents were audible. 

Paul tried to cross quickly every time. The bridge was narrow and the cement pads it was comprised of groaned under each footfall. They felt loose and barely connected together. He couldn't cross it without imagining a piece of it breaking under his weight, giving way, plummeting to the water below. His stomach lurched at the though of falling through, down into the cold water. Yanked along by the river's strength, dozens of yards downstream before he could manage to resurface - if he ever managed that at all. He felt foolish for his fear, but knew deep down it never paid to be bolder than your fears. Often your fears weren't nearly large enough to protect you.

And so it was that Paul crossed the bridge under a starless sky, stepping quickly. His footfalls echoed out over the water, and he barely breathed until he was across. He reached the far side with a wave of relief, as always.

"Hello? Is somebody up there?"

A young woman's voice, coming from down under the bridge. Down in the water.

"Hello? Please? I'm sorry. I need help, please?"

Distraught. Scared.

"Can you help me?"

Paul's first instinct was to run. His body told him to pretend he didn't hear anything, and to continue home. He wanted to sprint away from this place, this dark water and this unfamiliar voice. That, he told himself, was the reaction of a coward. What kind of man was he, if he would turn away from a woman asking for help? A woman in the dark of night, alone and frightened?

Paul, too, was alone and frightened, but he wouldn't let that stop him.

"Hello," he called back. "Hello, I'm here. What's wrong?"

He didn't want to go down and look. He didn't want to step down the muddy embankment to the side of Caney Creek and see what was troubling this woman. He hoped that no one would answer, that somehow he had imagined it and that he'd done his duty already. That he could go home.

"I'm - oh god, this is embarrassing. I'm kind of stuck out here?" There was a laugh in her voice, but one that was trying to cover real fear and distress. "I dropped my phone from the bridge. I'm so clumsy. I'm always dropping - it doesn't matter. It landed on one of these shallow spots, and I thought I could wade out and grab it. And I got out to here and... it's more slippery than I thought, and my shoe came off, and... oh, god. I'm stuck."

Paul had eased himself down the slope as the woman spoke, and stood at the edge of the water. The riverside was heavy with rushes and grasses, and exactly as she said, there was a shallow spot where a woman stood. Tall, with dark hair down well past her shoulders. It was hard to make out the color under the wan moonlight, but it seemed to be something dyed. Purple, or blue, or green perhaps? Her dress was flowing and long, soaked to the waist and clinging to her legs and hips. She was pale, and frightened, and stunningly beautiful.

"It's not so deep right at the edge," she said. "If you gave me your hand I'm sure I could make it back to shore. Would you step out just a bit? Please?"

Paul again felt the hook of fear in his stomach. It grabbed his guts and yanked, trying to pull him back towards home. Back away from the river he feared so much. 

But that would mean leaving this woman here. Who knew what would happen to her? Who knew what dangers lurked for someone like that, there in the water, there in the night?

It wasn't so deep right at the edge, she told him, and surely she was right. She was tall, likely taller than Paul, but her dress was only wet up to her waist. That was safe, wasn't it? Cold and unpleasant, but Paul could bear that. Then he could help this girl. Feel like a hero. 

He couldn't leave her like this. He needed to try. So Paul, being foolish, went in to his knees.

The water shocked him with its frigidity. The bed of the creek was smooth stones and heavy mud, and his balance was strained. Even here at the edge the current was strong, and it felt like his ankles were being grabbed and pulled away from him. But he was in, he was doing it. He was committed.

"Oh, thank you," the woman called, watching him step through the water. "I don't know what I'd do without your help. Thank you so much. Just a bit further and I'll be able to reach you." She stood at the edge of the little grassy ridge she was perched on, and she extended her hard towards him.

"Just a bit further."

The riverbed dropped off precipitously. The depth change was dramatic, and would get worse fast. Paul could feel that, but it was only a bit further. Then he'd be able to take her hand - and how his own hand tingled with anticipation of that. Her skin was so perfectly pale and gorgeous in the moonlight.

So Paul, being foolish, went in to his chest.

He knew it shouldn't be as deep as it was. He could feel that something was wrong. She hadn't gone in this deep. Had she gone some other, safer route? Was he going to go under? The riverbed just giving way under him, like the bridge in his horrible fantasies, and there would be nothing but cold and current? He needed to turn back. He had to go back.

"That's it. So close now."

She was standing above him, just out of reach. What bare moonlight there was collected behind her, lighting her frame with an otherworldly glow. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. She didn't sound afraid anymore. She wasn't dry above the waist any longer, he noticed abstractly. She was dripping from head to toe, her hair billowing out behind her like she was underwater. 

"Just a bit further, Paul, and you can save me. Please keep coming."

His name sounded wonderful on her lips. So wonderful that he didn't question how she knew it. He couldn't feel his feet in the cold water anymore, so his steps were difficult, but he couldn't go back now. Not with her so close. So Paul, being foolish, went in to his chin.

Something in the bottom of the river - kelp, or reeds, or algae, some kind of underwater plant Paul knew nothing about - wrapped around his legs. His calves and shins and ankles were met with the slimy binding of it, and through the cold he felt something like bites, all along his skin. He didn't let it stop him. He took another step, and another. The water threatened to meet his nose, but he reached up, reaching for her hand, for her.

She reached down for him.

Her hand felt strange at first. Scaly and sharp. It was almost like her fingers ended in needle-like talons that bit into Paul's forearm, hooking deep, scratching the bone. Latching to him, anchoring him, making sure the prey couldn't swim away before being devoured. 

But no. That sensation passed, and her saw only the perfect alabaster gleam of her delicate hand. He waited for her to pull him up, but instead, she seemed to sink into the water with him. She embraced him, her body wrapping to his. Every curve of her was warm and supple and amazing, and as his hands explored her, if he felt ragged fins or rasping gills or spiny scales, that was an illusion. He didn't feel that for long. The true form, the one that mattered, was the beautiful woman he was saving.

Below her dress, where her legs should have been, her dozens of tentacles spread wide and wrapped around Paul's legs. They swept his feet from under him, and he plunged under the water. They wound up his body, wrapping his thighs and torso and neck, holding him close to her. The hundreds of small barbed suckers along each pseudopod gnawed at him, but Paul felt only pleasure. A tentacle wrapped around his cock, squeezing and pulsing there, and she kissed him as his balls tensed and he came.

She took him into the water, her poisons and her magic clouding his mind so that he never even realized he was being dragged to the bottom. The creek went so, so much deeper than anyone was aware, deep down into the black space of her nest, and she brought Paul all the way there. Every moment of his descent - for as long as he stayed conscious, his lungs filling with cold creek water - was ecstasy.