THE WATER SPIRIT
Max couldn’t find a job in the anywhere; she’d looked everywhere, pet shops, nurseries, clothes shops, supermarkets, and even voluntary work, nothing. It was like the world wasn’t hiring and she really wanted driving lessons, her mother had said yes just as long as she could pay for them herself.
‘Max’.
Yelled her mother from the car. They were on their way to their local swimming pool that her little sister Chloe wanted to have her 9th birthday party.
‘ Hurry up!’ said her mother again.
Max quickly put on her trainers , grabbed her sunglasses from the dresser and dashed out of the house to the people carrier in the drive-way. Her sister was already there hogging the front passenger seat, and she was determined to stay there. Max reluctantly got in the back seat and got strapped up, her mother Susan started the car.
They drove down some country lanes to be greeted by an enormous old red brick manor house, the only feature that stood out as brand new were the revolving double doors and the sign above them saying ‘ The Acorn leisure centre’.
Inside Max was astonished to find how a traditional manor house could be transformed into such a beautiful leisure centre with glass panels and equipment that could send a space ship into orbit. The main focus in the room was a big reception desk in stainless steal and a glass brick partition to the right sectioning off the café.
They asked at the reception desk to see around the facilities , they saw the gym, with very impressive equipment in a big area, and lots of hot men using the machines, she could get used to this. The place also boasted a sauna, jacuzzi and steam room, along with a swimming pool the size of two football pitches, and a small shallow pool for young kids. Julie really liked it and all the friendly people that were in it, Max was suspicious, everybody was too nice, she reckoned there was something in the water.
On the walk back to the reception desk Max wondered off and explored it’s 3 tennis and squash rooms, Olympic stadium size room with a circuit set up through the middle and fencing going on around the edge. She had never seen such a big place before, or met so many happy people all enjoying their exercise.
Max got lost trying to find reception again, when she did get back to central command, her mother was looking cross and Max knew what she was going to say even before she said it. Then Max thought of something and asked the very well groomed receptionist if there was a job going. The receptionist was a tall, slim with colourful nails and hair extensions. The lady still smiling said yes they were looking for a cheerful lifeguard. Max was delighted she hadn’t done this before although she did possess various swimming certificates and a first aid certificate. They asked her to demonstrate a few things and have an informal interview before giving her the job, she was over the moon to get it and started booking her driving lessons.

Far in the future Emile was working in the lab, he was learning from a true master of physics, Dr Victor Maddox, a pioneer in physics and he had written various papers on wormholes .Emile was finding today slow and boring, he had just measured out some chemicals for the professor when he could hear noises coming from outside. He stopped what he was doing and looked out of the window to see protesters at the gates again, about half a dozen with placards saying things like ‘STOP THE EXPERIMENTS’ and ‘FREE THE HUMANS’. He watched them, sympathetically knowing that him nor them could do anything to stop the universities experiments. But he would get the experience he needed to be able to teach his favourite subject, physics. The professor strolled back into the lab,
‘ What’s going on outside Emile, is it protesters again?’
‘Yes professor, they haven’t been there long’
‘It’s a shame, they do know that they can’t change anything’
‘ At least their peaceful, that other group were very aggressive and tried to save the humans, they didn’t get very far’
‘ Professor I’ve just combined those chemicals you wanted, what would you like me to do now?’
‘ Do me a favour lad and check on the humans, see if they are OK, and calm them down if you need to’
‘ OK, I will be down in holding if you want me’. Emile said getting up out of his chair.
He went down the corridor and walked down towards the basement where the holding cells were. The ‘humans’ were just staring into space. All the people that had any type of experiment done to them, any volunteers that did drug trials or any re-animated bodies that were being used to cure things like cancer were all now blank behind the eyes and herded up into holding pens underneath the university.
Emile did feel sorry for them they still had some awareness of their surroundings, and they made horrible whining noises occasionally, like crying.
Emile had a walk round and was satisfied that they were OK and went to check on the wormhole device in the next room when he saw a shadow not far in front of him, he followed it around the corner into the ‘wormhole’ room, a noise startled him and he turned to see a fist coming towards him and the next thing he saw was black.

Max’s first day of work was a Monday and she had her uniform and whistle, she felt very important she liked it. Unfortunately her first day resulted in 2 emergencies, she was quiet surprised she didn’t expect it to be so busy.
There were also some other injuries due to allegations of someone or something grabbing peoples feet under the water and pulling them down but they came to nothing as no-one saw anything. By her sisters birthday the allegations had died down and they all had a wonderful time.
A few weeks after Max decided to have a swim herself, the pool was deserted due to the previous allegations, Max never believed them anyway.
Until Max felt something under the water pulling her down, she panicked and tried to swim away but she couldn’t, then she looked down at nothing, there was nothing there, Max couldn’t struggle any longer and it went dark.
From the bottom of the swimming pool some arms were bobbing up to the surface covered in futuristic tattoos and detached from the shoulder joint.
She woke up in the hospital with her family next to her bedside, although her family hadn’t noticed her and she was talking, they were paying no attention to her and her mother looked like she had been crying, a lot, Max looked down towards the bed and screamed to see a pale girl with blue lips looking exactly like her, dead.
Then an apparition appeared in the corner of a young man with a black eye
‘ Don’t panic, you’re not dead, yet’ said Emile
‘ Who are you?’
‘My name is Emile, I’m from 2040, it’s hard to explain, you see the professor at the university is studying wormholes and we have kind of got entangled up in it. It’s very wibbly wobbly’
‘ I’m Max by the way and that’s the technical term is it, wibbly wobbly?’
‘ Yes, it’s how I understand it’ he said with a smirk
‘ What year is this?’
‘the year 2000, your from 2040, that’s not far off that’s scary’
‘ Is this fixable?’
‘ I hope so , the professor is close by, he is trying to fix it now. You see some protesters got into the building trying to free someone and got sucked in as well but only part of them got through, you probably could do without the gory details but we have their bodies here without any arms’
‘Nice, thanks for not telling the gory details’
‘Your welcome’
Then all of a sudden there was an all might noise of screaming, Emile vanished and she blinked awake.
Emile took a deep breath and cradled his head in his hands.
‘drink this’ said the professor handing him a drink of water
‘ Thanks professor’ he said taking a sip of water
‘ But if she is in the past along with the arms, what happened to the heads?’
‘ We may never know’ said the professor
‘ I just know that if I hadn’t come to look for you when I did their curiosity wouldn’t have got the better of them’.
Max was now out of the hospital and despite all the journalists prodding and poking into her life she was none the wiser as to what actually happened that day. The centre had closed down and she was out of a job again, but at least with her last pay check she could finally have some driving lessons. As she got into the car with the instructor she looked in her wing mirror and far away in the distance something iridescent glimmered in the noon day sun and a head bounced out of nowhere.