The shape in the water should not have been there. It was too big, too round, too wrong. My heartbeat drowned out the wind

as I stared at the dark, burned-looking circle watching me back from the lake. Within minutes, villagers gathered, whispering, arguing, inventing theories that only made it worse.

No one knew exac… Continues…

What began as a quiet walk turned into an unsettling moment I still can’t shake. Standing by that lake, with strangers clustered around a silent,

floating circle, I felt how quickly ordinary reality can crack. Every new guess — a trap, a weapon, a creature —

added another layer to the unease, as if the water itself were hiding a secret from us.

When the old man finally laughed and named it — an abandoned rubber inner tube, warped by time and dressed in moss and algae —

the tension broke, but not completely. The explanation was simple, almost disappointingly so, yet the image refused to become harmless.

It reminded me how easily our minds stitch fear into the unknown, and how some things, once seen in the wrong light, never quite return to normal.