James Axler – Watersleep

J.B. removed his canteen from his belt and ex­tended the small metal canister to Doc, who ignored it. Doc was busy shifting his body, leaning back on his haunches and getting out of his kneeling position. For a brief time, his body froze in an awkward pose before flopping backward and allowing him to end up sitting on his butt on one of the larger rocks jutting up from the river’s edge.

“While you’re down there playing in the water, fill this up, would you?” J.B. said, waving the battered canteen for a second time.

“In a moment, John Barrymore,” Doc replied, reaching down to pull off one of his high black boots. “I have personal duties to attend to first. If you cannot wait, please avail yourself personally of the facilities. I am afraid we have no running hot water, but at least it is safe.”

J.B. snorted, watching as Doc removed one boot and one grayish white sock. A long bony foot whiter than the pallor of Jak’s skin appeared as Doc peeled away the unwashed hosiery.

Once he realized what Doc was preparing to do, J.B.’s inclination to tend to his own canteen was spurred into frantic action. He bolted forward and knelt on one knee, dunking his open canteen into the river and filling the portable container.

“Help me with my second boot, friend Dix,” Doc asked, struggling to remove his other boot. “I fear it has become a permanent part of my left leg.”

His canteen refilled, J.B. stood and clamped it back securely to his belt. Next to him, Doc impatiently waggled his still-booted foot. “You pull one way and I shall pull the other, and together we shall free my appendage of its leathery imprisonment,” Doc said. “Allowing me to wave all ten toes in a gesture of gratitude.”

“Need my hands free to draw in case some mutie bastard crawls out of the water.”

Doc used his bare foot as a brace on the booted heel and pushed. At the same time, he utilized both his hands to shove down on the upper part of his boot. The result from his efforts took both Doc and J.B. by surprise.

The footwear exploded off his leg and went sailing away, wobbling as the empty boot came down with a splash nearly midpoint in the river.

J.B. almost fell over in the shallows of the river, his entire body shaking with laughter. Doc got to his feet, one leg bare up to his calf, the other covered with a white sock, and marched out into the water with as much dignity as he could muster to retrieve his boot.

“Hold up, Doc,” J.B. called. “We don’t know how deep that river is. You might need some help finding your flying footwear.”

“Thank you for your words of caution, John Barrymore, but I think I can find my way to where my boot landed without your holding my hand.”

“Suit yourself.” J.B. grinned. “But if a croc takes a bite out of your scrawny ass, don’t come crying to me.”

Still, J.B. kept a careful watch. Doc waded out easi­ly enough, and the water never went beyond his waist as he reached his half-submerged boot. He grabbed the boot and held it high like a trophy as he began to return to the riverbank, never dreaming his move­ments had indeed triggered the attention of a silent parasite, but a parasite unlike any he’d ever been ex­posed to before.

Even in Doc’s day, a few quack practitioners could still be found in back rooms and barber shops extoll­ing the curative powers of the common leech. As a young lad in the 1870s, he had an aunt who swore by the slimy creatures. Doc’s primary memory of her appearance was that the old woman was missing many of her teeth.

The aunt came to visit on holidays with a jar of her favorite leeches. She’d laugh at the boy’s discomfort as she plopped an assortment of the pulpy beasts on her fleshy arms.

“Suck the poison right outta there,” she would say, laughing, and always end by extending one of the remaining leeches out under the young Tanner’s nose. “Make you feel twenty years younger! Sure you don’t want to try one?”